8th Annual Conference of the International Political Science Association
(IPSA)'s Research Committee #49:

The political economy of democracy:
Citizenship in an age of globalization - Transforming
communities and identities.

Institute of Political Science, University of Copenhagen,
Copenhagen, Denmark, August 23-25, 2001


SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS


Citizenship has been the academic talk of the town for at least a decade.
To conceptualise different normative and functional versions of
citizenship, to dispute its proper theoretical ancestry, and/or to
reformulate more traditional theoretical and empirical concerns inside the
wide framework of this new, old term – all this has long formed important
part of the repertoire s of journals, departments, and conferences inside
the field of political theory  – as well as those of political science,
social policy, and historical sociology.

The main theme of this conference is the future of cititizenship in a global
(ised) society : conceptual and functional prospects of a contested ideal.
The conference proposes to look at citizenship as a contested ideal and a
functional reality, rooted in specific historical societies. And it aims to
ask questions about the future of citizenship in the face of a series of
challenges to its underlying assumptions and structural properties, posed
by processes of globalisation and European integration. Citizenship may
well crystallise the promise and inevitable shape of things to come in a
liberal century of further, Habermasian 'rectifying revolutions'. But
equally evident, it suggests the sheer diversity of possible liberal
futures.

Citizenship is a multidimensional category with several generic aspects.
One concerns the legal and material content of civil, political and social
rights – with possible extensions into new spheres of social interest and
conflict (cultural resources, environment, new technology). Another
concerns social status and identification, i.e. conceptualisations of
modes, mechanisms, and substantial types of belonging and feelings of
obligation. A third dimension is about juridical and administrative
specifications of conditions of membership, i.e. stages towards a
full 'right to have rights', for instance in connection with immigration or
naturalisation and the rights of free movement for non-citizens in the
European Union. A fourth dimension concerns the concepts and values – and
possibly the practice – which become associated in specific historical and
national contexts with being 'a good' or virtuous citizen.

On each dimension, the category may be analysed, first of all, as a concept
employed in normative theories and abstract models of the relationship
between individual and community – i.e. of Rawlsian citizenship, or the
citizenship of this or that understanding of an egalitarian, libertarian,
deliberative, or multicultural society. Or it may be investigated,
secondly, as the material of ideological contestations by historically
situated actors employing available vocabularies of alternative futures,
desirable institutions, and the formation of political identities,
alliances, and terms of exclusion. At the same time, thirdly, citizenship
is also a functional category: a social, legal, psychological and economic
organisation of forms of relationship between individuals and the state,
and between different individuals as they interpret their roles and
identities  as, somehow, 'political' beings. Here, on each dimension
citizenship may be analysed as so many contingent outcomes of specific
trajectories of national history, war and revolution, class struggle and
class compromise, state building and movement mobilisation, colonialism,
migration and transnational integration all evolving into more or less
stable, coherent, or hegemonic systems of citizenship. Each system works in
ways which presuppose specific allocations of rights, status, roles, and
membership criteria. Finally, citizenship may indeed be treated to a little
of all of these three modes of analysis – as is the case when political
theorising is also critical theory:  an attempt to link the grievances and
normative horizons of historical actors with conceptualisations of future
possibilities in the present.

Citizenship, like most traditional political concepts, has been linked
historically to the reality (and the myths) of the nation state. Processes
of globalisation – of capital, cultural identities, information, political
authority, or people – have long been seen to threaten or at least
challenge the contemporary format of this state, exposing the limitations,
ambivalence, and exclusionary preconditions of national citizenship models
in the process. The conference aims to discuss citizenship in its
transformative modes. What happens to citizenship – and what may one
suggest could and should happen - as political and administrative
jurisdictions of states are replaced or doubled by transnational political
institutions? Or when citizens increasingly have to live alongside large
numbers of modern day metoiks? Or when the national(ist) back ground
cultures of 'universalistic' identities are exposed or mobilised, at the
same time that minority groups call for a citizenship of many colours? Or
when the very diversity of (post)modern life projects, and the complexity
of present political conditions, either fragments or requires radically new
forms of political agency and solidarity? Or when welfare state models come
under siege – or are peacefully renegotiated as the case may be – in the
face of new logics of segregation, exclusion, or dependency?

The conference stresses that the conceptual and functional diversity of
national citizenship models make for different agony points in the face of
the future. These may be compared and contrasted. But it also proposes to
keep in mind two anchors of broader normative reference, and to query their
possible reformulation under new circumstances. One is the ideal of a
universalistic, enabling a citizenship of equal social status and effective
autonomy in a common 'material culture' – the old promise of T.H.Marshall.
Another is some version of a republican or participatory citizenship,
enabling individuals to be masters of their own collective destinies,
securing, defending, or delineating their rights and liberties in the
process, and identifying themselves in terms of the past and future tasks
and accomplishments of political projects rather than in terms of pre- or
extra political essences.

We invite a variety of papers - on contemporary or historical developments,
of a theoretical or empirical kind, using case-oriented or comparative
approaches - to answer parts of the following kinds of questions in order
to contribute to the recapturing of the complex meaning of politics and,
thus, the meaning of the citizen as 'homo politicus': What are the function
and the purpose of being a citizen of a nation-state? Is the idea of
cosmopolitan citizenship necessary and/or possible, and is both a)
desirable and b) practicable? How is the idea of citizenship bound up with
the modern idea of 'republic'?  What are the relations between the concept
of citizenship and  different dimensions of the concept of democracy? How
can democratic citizenship be based on other communities/identities than
nation or ethnicity? Is it possible to define and defend citizenship more
substantially or fully than merely in formal terms? What are the dangers,
if any, of making citizenship formal? Can this be otherwise under
conditions of globalisation? Should citizenship be primarily a political
concept or a social one? And what are the specifying differences of 'the
political' and 'the social'? Does the political/societal category of
citizenship differ in the different economic systems of capitalism and
socialism? Does vital citizenship require moral consensus? How are the
rights of citizens and the rights of man (or the human) related? Does one
require or presuppose the existence of the other? How does citizenship
enable or bar the exercise of justice and human solidarity?

All these questions touch in one way or another upon the question of the
nature of citizenship as being either a constraining or enabling factor of
political action. In essence, the question of citizenship is inseparably
linked to the question of political alternatives and choices. Arguably,
this also presupposes and requires a critique of the deconstruction and
reconstruction of citizenship that is part of the process of globalisation.

Deadline for submitting an abstract for a paper is 15th of July 2001.
Deadline for papers is 15th of August 2001.

Paper proposals or questions of any kind can be directed to the organisers:

Uffe Jakobsen, University of Copenhagen
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Koula Mellos (University of Ottawa)
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Vladimir Suchan
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and the local organising committe:

Thomas Berg
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Per Mouritsen
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Marlene Wind
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8th Annual Conference of IPSA RC #49
University of Copenhagen
Department of Political Science
Rosenborggade 15
DK-1130 Copenhagen, Denmark
Telefax: +45 35 32 33 99
Telephone: +45 35 32 33 83

For practical information on travel and lodging, venue and academic
programme, availability of conference papers etc., please go to the
conference homepage  www.polsci.ku.dk/citizenship/welcome.htm