Cultural Citizenship in Political Theory

This book takes up the debates on culture and politics that have arisen in response to globalisation, multiculturalism, and consumerism, by exploring the concept of cultural citizenship from a range of political-philosophical angles.
Issues of culture and cultural exclusion are at the core of contemporary political contestations, both nationally and globally. This book develops political-philosophical angles to this field, starting from the notion of cultural citizenship.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

Cultural citizenship is a recently developed concept in discussions on multicultural society, the media society, consumerism, and political theory. It addresses the various ways in which citizenship is becoming mixed up with culture, either through globalisation processes (involving new cultural identities, immigrations, culture industries) or by increasingly life-style oriented types of action. In the face of these challenges, the good old notion of citizenship seems in need of some assistance.
This book takes a fresh look at cultural citizenship by exploring it from political-philosophical angles. It seeks to develop explicitly normative perspectives on the present debates around culture. What do the novel national and global constellations mean with respect to inclusion and exclusion, participation and marginalisation, political rights and ‘mere’ cultural practices? Moreover, this volume’s authors aim to develop notions of cultural citizenship beyond the liberal political paradigm that associates it with ‘cultural rights’, ‘cultural capital’ or the ‘consumer-citizen’. They engage the concept to re-think politics in both its meanings of citizenship practices and governance practices vis-à-vis citizens. The authors address a range of pertinent issues, exploring historical as well as present-day understandings, and theoretical as well as policy applications of the notion of cultural citizenship.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.