Citizenship Approach

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Citizenship Approach

• Ruth Lister
• Citizenship Feminist Perspectives

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Citizenship ApproachStructure

• 1. Ruth Lister
• 2. Citizenship
• 3. A Differentiated Universalism
• 4. Beyond Dichotomy
• 5. Structure and Methods
• 6. Discussion

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Citizenship Approach1. Ruth Lister

• www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/depstaff/staff/list
  er.html

• Professor of Social Sciences
• Main research interests citizenship, gender,
  poverty and social exclusion, welfare reform
• Recently member of the staff at the Loughborough
  University, Leicestershire, UK, at the Department
  of Social Sciences

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Citizenship Approach2. Citizenship

• Relationship between an individual and a state
  in which the individual owes allegiance to the
  state and in turn is entitled to its protection.
• In general, full political rights, including the
  right to vote and to hold public office, are
  predicated on citizenship. Citizenship entails
  obligations, usually including allegiance,
  payment of taxes, and military service.
  Citizenship may normally be gained by birth
  within a certain territory, descent from a parent
  who is a citizen, marriage to a citizen, or
  naturalization.
• "citizenship." Britannica Concise Encyclopedia.
  2004.  Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
  10. Nov. 2004 lthttp//www.britannica.com/ebc/arti
  cle?tocId9360842gt.

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Citizenship Approach2. Citizenship

• All modern democracies are based on the
  universally applicable principles of the
  Declaration Des Droits De Lhomme Et Du Citoyen
  (1789)
• All men are born free and equal in rights
  (Article 1).
• The rights are specified as the rights of
  liberty, private property, the inviolability of
  the person, and resistance to oppression (Article
  2).
• All citizens were equal before the law and were
  to have the right to participate in legislation
  directly or indirectly (Article 6).

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Citizenship Approach3. A Differentiated
Universalism

• Main aims
• To reveal the false universalism of the
  traditional notion of citizenship as being male,
  white, heterosexual and non-disabled.
• To rethink citizenship, in practice and as a
  status, as a differentiated universalism that
  covers all social cleavages and includes all
  social groups.

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Citizenship Approach3. A Differentiated
Universalism

• 3.1. Main theories
• The historical and actual exclusion of women from
  full citizenship is provoced by both the
  essentialist and binary thinking of gender and
  the definition of citizen as an disembodied,
  abstract individual.

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Citizenship Approach3. A Differentiated
Universalism

• Despite woman also other groups like black,
  older, disabled or homosexual people are
  identified as unable to attain the impersonal,
  rational and disembodied practices of the modal
  citizens.

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Citizenship Approach3. A Differentiated
Universalism

• The challenge of rethinking a notion of
  citizenship that links a necessary universalism
  with diversity and difference leads to a
  synthetic approach
• Citizenship as a practise can be handled as
  politics of solidarity in difference and a
  pluralist politics of community.
• Citizenship as status can be articulated in
  particularist as well as in universalist terms.

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Citizenship Approach3. A Differentiated
Universalism

• 3.2. Structure of argumentation
• Exclusion of women in historical perspective
• Revealing citizenship as gendered and exclusive
• Drawing the attention to the dangers and
  challenges of difference and diversity for
  citizenship.
• Linking the results in a synthesis

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Citizenship Approach4. Beyond Dichotomy

• Main aim
• The chapter Beyond Dichotomy tries to discuss a
  main problem of feminist approaches to
  citizenship
• Solving the equality vs. difference dilemma,
  to create an synthesis of both approaches.

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Citizenship Approach4. Beyond Dychotomie

• 4.1. Main theories
• The dichotomy of difference and equality is
  linked with the terms of
• (relational and individualist feminism,)
• ethic of care and ethic of justice,
• interdependence and independence, autonomy.

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Citizenship approach4. Beyond Dichotomy

• Both approaches fail in being the most useful
  theoretical background for the rethinking of
  citizenship. Through reconstructing them, as not
  being oppositional but potentially complementary,
  interrelational and interdependent, a synthesis
  is possible that can include all women in their
  diversity.

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Citizenship Approach4. Beyond Dichotomy

• 4.2. Structure of argumentation
• Identifying the terms as binary
• Discussing, deconstructing each of them to unite
  them in a synthesis

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Citizenship Approach5. Structure and Methods

• The argumentation is based on the work of other
  political, sociological and feminist theorists.
  By reverting to their arguments and failures Ruth
  Lister tries to verify her thesis of
  differentiated universalism and the approach to
  go beyond dichotomies.
• She often uses the post-structuralist tool of
  deconstruction.
• Theoretical approach

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Citizenship Approach6. Discussion

• Is this theoretical feminist approach of
  citizenship applicable to policy?