Citizenship and Social Policy…
Hello everyone!? Although I’ve been a member of this blog for quite sometime, I have yet to log on, introduce myself and get posting!? It is a real pleasure to read all of your posts, and I’m pleased to be a part of it.? And of course, many thanks to David for setting this blog up and quietly but persistently reminding us to use it.
Very very broadly, I’m working on the relationship between citizenship and new media, at least the ways in which new media discourses claim to extend, transform, reconstitute or even all out create new kinds (or dimensions) of citizenship.??Amidst all the claims that?new media is transforming the ways we think of belonging, geographies, nation-states and social, cultural and political? forms of membership, I found it difficult to differentiate between what citizenship?is, what it can be and particularly how it might be changing.? So despite the numerous criticisms?(i.e. glaring ethno and eurocentrism, a total lack of empirical support and what some might term ‘discrepancies’ between civic entitlements and human rights), I found T. H. Marshall’s civil, political and social dimensions - in addition to his critique of capitalism and committment to social equality - a critical starting point for thinking about citizenship.?
As you can imagine I was pleased to hear of a new T. H. Marshall fellowship and exchange program developed by LSE, the social science research?centre of Berlin (WZB) and the University of Bremen.? The new collaboration was launched on Jan.18th with a talk on ‘Citizenship and Social Policy in 21st Century Europe.’? Although the speakers were articulate, the themes have been well rehearsed in the literature and in my opinion there was too much talk about pensions.? Nonetheless, there were a few points I thought would be worthy of posting.Jane Lewis (of LSE) spoke about gender and citizenship and focussed on the ‘profound shift’ in the relationship between gender and the state,?particularly regarding the kind of social expectations attached to gender.? Lewis was primarily referring to the shift in the ‘women-as-domestic-carers and men-as-breadwinners’ model.??The new model is that women are now as obligated to work as their male counterparts as ‘citizen workers’ rather than citizen-carers/mothers. However, Lewis makes clear that the discursive justification for these shifts do not speak of gender but are discussed in terms of market growth and potential contributions to the maintenance of nations. Lewis concluded by noting that althoug these changes have not been accompanied by gender equity, creating an alternative model of citizenship (in contrast to the citizen-worker) based on the citizen-worker-carer will lead to greater developments in gender equity.
I’m intrigued by the idea of ‘citizen-carer’ but am not convinced that such a model will address gender (or other) inequities.? When it comes down to it, ‘caring’?has long been part of women’s unrenumerated obligations to state and society and maybe I’m missing something, but?I don’t see how extending such citizen obligations to all genders will change the socio-economic inequities around the gendered division of labour.Stephan Leibfried spoke on the tensions (or as Marshall claimed - the war) between capitalism and citizenship. Beginning with the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, new politics of citizenship and equality have been emerging (nationality and gender). In the European constitution, there now 18 categories of equality. Some of these include colour, social origin, property, birth, disability and more… I find this interesting in terms of changing expectations/practices of and to citizen rights and obligations. However, I still need to some work around the differences between civil liberties, human rights and civic entitlements; I find it interesting to contextualize the many emerging communications rights within a much broader expansion of rights based frameworks.
Also, Liebfried spoke about the transformation of citizenship from ethnic nationalist notions of citizenship to member citizenship. Again, not new, but it has interesting implications as far as the relationship between media and citizenship?go.? Perhaps more interesting are the implications of an ever widening rights-based citizenship…
Media btw, was almost totally absent from this talk.
All for now, but hope y’all keep posting!
Zoe
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January 25th, 2005 at 12:50 pm
If you had been speaking there what would you have tried to suggest to the assembled throng that they were missing?
January 25th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Hi Zoe
I’m doing some work on news and info in the digital age for ippr, might be good to talk? Give me an email if useful for you…
Jamie
January 26th, 2005 at 6:28 pm
Woohoo - two comments! How exciting!
David - this is an excellent question. I’ve had to think about this.
Ideally I would have liked to see more cultural analysis and some qualitative empirical work. Jane Lewis convincingly illustrated that despite ‘profound shifts’ in thinking about women’s ‘obligations’, women still get the short end of the stick financially while facing an increase in labour (the expectation of paid/career work on top of domestic responsibilities). But despite this, and particularly of note for Liebried’s argument (that there are big shifts in the ways we think of and organize membership) - I would have been excited to learn more about what these shifts mean for specific groups and on the scale of everyday life. Social policy on a micro level, in addition to socio-political trends.
So if I were speaking, I certainly would have put out a general call for thinking of policy and theory with a human face and on a cultural level (and if I were able to work up the guts to publicly speak in that forum), probably would have drawn from my own research to illustrate how this could be done and why it’s important.
I would also emphasize the importance of not just new media, but media generally for thinking about citizenship, particularly transformations to or shifts in the way we understand and instantiate citizenship. On this note, I would also seriously consider interesting things happening in the citizenship field - for example, Engin Isin?s Citizen Lab at York University and all the work being generated there on ?Acts of Citizenship?. Or as Wainer posted a few days ago, the potential implications of having UK MPs blog? Or engage with the dynamics of online civic groups and cultures? Or (and on of my personal favourites) think hard about what location based technologies like moblobbing and Urban Tapestries might mean for cultural understandings of place and locality. I would want to ask how and why these kind of media and these kinds of emergent shifts have anything to do with citizenship. And also, why I think they should or shouldn?t have anything to do with citizenship?
And of course, I would probably speak at great length on the importance of media, although I would likely focus on new media, in changing conceptions and practices of citizenship.
Jamie, I’d be very interested in having a chat, but I’m not sure of your last name (and hence e-mail)? My e-mail is z.t.sujon (at)lse.ac.uk, drop me a line and we can arrange something.
Take care!
Zoe
January 27th, 2005 at 10:29 am
Oh no - my message has squished iteslf up into a giant block of text… Sorry, I’m new to this blogging thing (at least at being one of the ones writing!) and have yet to figure out the basics like formatting.