Framing the Good Citizen
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2010.00424.x |
| Author | Anja Schaefer,Jessica Pykett,Michael Saward |
| Published date | 01 November 2010 |
| Date | 01 November 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2010.00424.x
B J P I R : 2 0 1 0 V O L 1 2 , 5 2 3 – 5 3 8
Framing the Good Citizenbjpi_424523..538
Jessica Pykett, Michael Saward and Anja Schaefer
This article interrogates the norms of good citizenship invoked in and across different social
domains, using the example of citizenship education in the UK as one field in which good
citizenship is constituted. It is possible to make visible the political struggle inherent in the
mechanisms of framing the good citizen by unpacking the differences between citizenship as acts,
status and virtues. This is a necessary step in assessing good citizenship claims in the absence of
moral and political absolutes. We deploy a two-tiered account of Butler’s theory of performativity
to examine how ordinary citizenship acts are preceded by elite rhetorical framing. We conclude that
citizenship, like democracy, is always enacted in particular contexts in which positioning, method
and motives play an important part.
Keywords: citizenship norms; performativity; context; virtues
Introduction
Our aim in this article is to contribute to the important task of bringing to the debate
on good citizenship greater theoretical depth and empirical richness. We interrogate
the norms of good citizenship invoked in different social domains and extend our
analysis across as well as within particular domains, using the example of citizen-
ship education in the UK to illustrate our argument. At the centre of our efforts is
the specification of a framework for analysing invocations of the good citizen. The
aim of this style of analysis is to reveal or unmask the making of conceptions of the
good citizen and good citizenship. The good citizen is a figure who is ‘framed’, or set
up, by political and academic observers alike; framed in the sense of viewed from a
certain perspective, and in the different sense of set up for a particular purpose (to
contribute to a sustainable society or cohesive community, for example). Indeed,
the frames constitute ideas of the good citizen and the desired practices that flow
from that: there is no single normative ideal outside frames. By deploying an
interpretative methodology, it is our intention to make visible the political struggle
inherent in the practices and mechanisms of framing the good citizen, and to
speculate on the possibility of assessing such claims in the absence of moral and
political absolutes.
We argue that a focus on good citizenship means a focus primarily on acts of
citizenship, showing how key actors performatively construct both the content
(approaches) and products (domains) of good citizenship, indicating a constitutive
relationship between ‘elite’ representations and ‘ordinary’ performative acts of
citizenship and their specific contexts. As we will go on to elaborate, the invocation
© 2010 The Authors. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2010
Political Studies Association
524
J E S S I C A P Y K E T T E T A L .
of the good citizen is twofold: the frame itself is produced through elite actions (the
constitution of a domain and an approach) and in turn provides the repertoires of
possible acts and social roles that are deemed to be ‘good’, as performed by ordinary
would-be citizens themselves. Analysts therefore need to embrace the inevitable
plurality of conceptions of the good citizen, and would benefit from a specific set of
linked concepts that can genuinely help us to map and to understand invocations
of good citizenship. Given this plurality we also need cross-contextual ways in
which to judge varied claims about the capacities, behaviours and attitudes of good
citizens. Our hope is that the framework generated and illustrated here is suffi-
ciently flexible to aid analysis across countries, cultures and contexts, despite its
roots in UK experience. Because of its sensitivity to context, we argue that as an
interpretive device the framework can usefully ‘travel’.
The enigmatic figure of the ‘good citizen’ is conjured up regularly in UK politics—
Michael Sandel’s Reith Lectures (Sandel 2009) on ‘A New Citizenship’ provide a
prominent recent example—but the notion rarely comes under close analytical
scrutiny from the perspective of citizenship ‘acts’. This has been the case, we argue,
for two key reasons. First, established patterns of normative thinking have squeezed
out close analytical work, and second, where the latter has been evident it has been
confined too closely to single areas of concern or policy. Let us look at these two
issues briefly.
The notion of the good citizen is important, not least because it plays a key role in
politicians’ discourses, when some forms of behaviour among citizens are being
encouraged and others discouraged. Perhaps it is this role that makes scholars wary;
certainly the strongly normative (if not moralising) and often ideologically moti-
vated nature of good citizen discourse does not chime readily with aspirations to
analytical neutrality.
Of course, there is a long tradition of normative discussion in political theory
around models of citizenship. Republicans see good citizens as ideally possessing
certain virtues and oriented primarily to the collective good of the community.
Liberals see good citizens as individuals, with rights and freedoms, who respect the
rights and freedoms of others as they pursue their interests. Socialists see good
citizens as seekers and defenders of social and economic equality. Greens see good
citizens as those who live sustainably, and encourage the same in social and political
institutions. Feminists have viewed citizenship as a gendered term, not with-
out potential but needing transformation towards new forms of inclusion and
recognition.
Where norms of good citizenship are invoked by political scientists, they often rely
on culturally specific images of the democratic citizen derived from ancient Greece,
conflating citizenship with behaviour and values (Van Deth 2007, 404). The same
holds true for accounts of the ‘bad citizen’ (Christ 2006)—taken as someone
uninterested in public affairs. The relationship between good citizenship norms,
behaviour and virtues is an important one which we take up in the next section, but
it is important here to distinguish our approach from those that seek to gauge,
measure or define conceptions of good citizenship (Conover et al. 1991; Theiss-
Morse 1993). These accounts carefully and empirically examine shared norms,
understandings and self-identifications of the good citizen, but offer less sustained
© 2010 The Authors. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2010 Political Studies Association
BJPIR, 2010, 12(4)
F R A M I N G T H E G O O D C I T I Z E N
525
discussion of the practices and mechanisms associated with the rhetorical framing
of the good citizen—or the influences on how people arrive at understandings of the
good citizen.
Mapping these discussions and positions is a reasonable task, but differs from the
task we set ourselves here, which is to focus on how the good citizen is invoked in
particular contexts—deploying an interpretive mode in which normative discus-
sions play only one part. Sensitivity to context is central. This includes sensitivity to
the fate of good citizen discourse in different times or periods. Concern about
citizens’ attitudes and activities tends to come and go in waves. Different political
actors at different times raise citizenship issues as part of other current issues or
debates on the public agenda. In the 1980s, for example, debates centred on liberal
versus community notions in politics and political theory. In the UK today, citizen-
ship issues are raised in the complex and overlapping contexts of global dependen-
cies, movement of peoples, religion and tolerance, for example. Waves of concern
also give rise to new institutions; for example the government-linked NGO, the
Institute for Citizenship, was set up in the late 1980s as a response in part to the
then prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s assertion that there is ‘no such thing as
society’.
A further limitation of existing scholarly accounts is that invocations of the good
citizen tend to arise in specific domains of public concern or public policy. ‘Faith’
has been one prominent recent example. In the UK, issues of faith, culture and
citizenship have risen up the public agenda in the midst of concerns for community
cohesion and security following the attack on the World Trade Center in New York
on 11 September 2001 and specifically in the UK following the terrorist attack on
the London transport system of 7 July 2005. Positions within this domain of
citizenship discourse have differed widely. Government concerns have tended
towards security and cohesion; inter-faith groups have stressed the search for
common values, while academic observers have pointed out complexities of
within-faith and inter-faith connections and issues of definition of ‘faith’. Questions
of ‘Britishness’ (and ‘loyalty’, ‘shared values’ and ‘commitment’) have also been
prominent. These debates and contestations have jointly produced a new domain of
concern—that is, faith and the good citizen—specific to particular situated events
and in the context of a heightened state of anxiety about terrorist threats and ethnic
diversity in the UK. Just as in this one domain, invocations of the good citizen in
other domains, such as education, healthcare, environmental responsibility or the
citizenly responsibilities of corporations, are subject to sporadic and at times equally
fierce debate. The key point...
To continue reading
Request your trial