Identity versus Citizenship: Transformations in the Discourses and Practices of Citizenship
| DOI | 10.1177/a010358 |
| Date | 01 December 1999 |
| Published date | 01 December 1999 |
| Author | Alan Hunt,Trevor Purvis |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
IDENTITY VERSUS CITIZENSHIP:
TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE
DISCOURSES AND PRACTICES OF
CITIZENSHIP
TREVOR PURVIS AND ALAN HUNT
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
ABSTRACT
The recent surge of theoretical interest in citizenship has been shaped in important ways
by a growing sensitivity to the politics of identity. Citizenship, conceived as a matrix
of rights and obligations governing the members of a political community, exists in
tension with the heterogeneity of social life and the multiple identities that arise there-
from. This tension expresses itself in the clash between the ‘universal’ citizen and
numerous dispersed identities of which citizenship is but one. Citizens share the rights
and obligations arising from that status, and the concept of ‘equality’ arising from this
shared status has very real implications for the politics of identity, since citizenship has
traditionally claimed priority over other identities. In practice this has often resulted in
the relegation of alternative identities to an extra-political or even pre-political status.
Today these alternative identities have become overtly politicized and as a result the
stability of the identity of ‘citizen’ has itself been destabilized and contested. The ‘rise’
of identity politics has thus ushered in a number of challenges to, and transformations
in, the discourses of citizenship. In this article we bring the resource of governmental-
ity theory to bear upon the changing conditions of a modern complex citizenship that
is not confined to the political arena, and a conception of politics not confined to the
state. To this is added a neo-Gramscian consideration of counter-hegemony. This yields
an agonistic vision of citizenship in which universal elements are not imposed from
above, but are the outcome of projects in which social forces change themselves in con-
stituting alliances with other political identities.
INTRODUCTION: THE TENSIONS AT THE CORE OF CITIZENSHIP
OVER THE PAST DECADEthere has been an upsurge of interest in
the topic of citizenship. After a prolonged post-war hiatus the sub-
ject is once again a matter of pressing concern across the political
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (199912) 8:4 Copyright © 1999
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 8(4), 457–482; 010358
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SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 8(4)
spectrum. Who can legitimately lay claim to the rights and benefits arising
from citizenship status, and who is subject to the obligations which that
status entails? These questions have acquired a new salience in a world domi-
nated by the profound inequities engendered by late-capitalism. Finding
adequate responses has, however, been rendered all the more difficult by the
apparent rise in recent years of ‘the politics of identity’. The latter has
brought to the fore an age-old tension at the heart of the concept of citizen-
ship: the tension arises from the actuality of a plurality of social identities and
the singular identity implied by citizenship, that is, between the particular-
ism of the former and the universalistic aspirations of the latter.
The apparent proliferation of identities and the rise of identity politics has
raised the thorny issue of how the singular identification of social subjects as
‘citizens’ competes with the other identities thrown up by the profound
structural and institutional changes typically characterized in terms of the
‘late-’ or ‘post-modern’ condition. The fragmented political identities and
conflicting political loyalties and obligations associated with this condition
pose important challenges to the pretensions of universality associated with
citizenship. In turn, the rising intensity of identity politics presents for-
midable challenges to any efforts to theorize citizenship.
This article examines both the roots of, and the practical and theoretical
implications arising from, the emergent tension between citizenship and
identity. At the centre of our concerns is the question ‘How does (indeed,
can) a concept which has at its core the principles of universality and of equal-
ity of status accommodate the politics of particularity and difference associ-
ated with the new wave of identity politics?’ We arrive at two conclusions.
First, the tension between citizenship and identity politics is not as new as
the recent ‘rise’ of identity politics might suggest. Second, while citizenship
and the politics of identity might stand in tension with one another, this
tension cannot be avoided by a simple rejection of either concept. Neither
can it be resolved by reasserting some necessary transcendent priority of one
over the other. Rather, we argue that this tension is a uniquely productive
one, marking a crucial condition of possibility for sustaining democratic poli-
tics. Citizenship, we suggest, is best conceived as a project through which
alternative identities vie for instantiation in the political institutions and dis-
courses of society. This is a project which is never complete but remains open
to contestation and supplementation, and the theoretical elaboration of
which is crucial to the development of democratic responses to the problem
of the constitution of political community.
Our exploration of these themes is located at the intersection of three
broad sets of debates in contemporary social and political theory. The first of
these is a still-nascent literature advocating an agonistic conception of
democracy as central to the future vitality of democratic practice.1 Second,
we draw upon the insights of neo-Gramscian theories of hegemony, counter-
hegemony, and political strategy.2 But it is in the relation of these to a third
literature that the novelty of the present article resides. In our effort to shed
light upon the tensions between identity and citizenship we draw upon the
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PURVIS & HUNT: IDENTITY VERSUS CITIZENSHIP
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resource of governmentality theory in order to flesh out the implications of
the ‘new-ethics of the self’ ushered in by the hegemony of the New Right.3
The addition of theories of governmentality into this fray offers insights into
the broader techniques of rule at play in the transformations currently under
way in the liberal democracies of the West, as well as a means whereby new
light might be shed upon both the ethical limitations attending their present
operations and their potential as touchstones for democratic transformation.
THE SHIFTING FOUNDATIONS OF THE POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP
The transformations in the discourses and practices of citizenship to which our
title alludes are closely related to pertinent features of contemporary life.
Theoretical debate on citizenship has had to respond to a shift in the terrain
upon which the practices of citizenship are played out, and this has shaken
whatever complacency might, until recently, have dominated thinking on the
subject. The unprecedented economic growth of the liberal democracies of the
West in the post-war era had been regarded by many as holding out the possi-
bility of not only taming the worst excesses of capitalism, but of progressively
expanding participation in public life to include the great majority of the popu-
lation as well. Yet the persistence of relations of domination and disadvantage
in those societies has undermined the optimism of post-war discussions of
citizenship. The rhetoric of universality and equality has strained against the
persistent actuality of marginalized groups subordinated on the basis of their
race, class, gender, ethnicity, language, nationality, sexuality, etc. This stubborn
persistence of unequal social relations has been heightened with the subsequent
retreat of the welfare state in virtually all of the advanced capitalist countries.
This retreat, in turn, is closely related to the globalization of capital, the con-
comitant restructuring of the economies of the advanced capitalist countries
along so-called ‘post-industrial’ or ‘post-fordist’ lines, and the ideological
ascendancy of the New Right. Each of these features has combined to call into
question the discourses of citizenship which dominated the post-war era.
The roots of change lay not only within the individual nation-states of the
West. The subject of citizenship has also been tackled with renewed vigor in
the wake of the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’ in Eastern Europe.
The demise of the Soviet regimes and the push for political restructuring in
their successor states has forced into stark relief the relationship between
those states and their populations, with a pressing emphasis on the future of
civil, political and social rights in those countries, and, more generally, on the
relationship between the heterogeneity of civil society and the potentially
oppressive unity of the state. The effects of events in the East have not,
however, remained confined to its component states. Uneven economic
development and social and political instability in the region have ushered in
the prospect of mounting economic migration from these areas to the West,
adding further fuel to debates on the subject of citizenship on both sides of
the East/West divide.
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SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 8(4)
The flight from economic and political insecurity is in no way limited to
the countries of Eastern Europe. The increasing polarity which has mani-
fested itself inside the countries of the West has been mirrored in important
ways...
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