Citizenship

Citizenship, denoting full and active membership of the national and political community, has been recognized as a critical concept since ancient times. However, three key and related changes have occurred to each of the basic components of this concept that have altered dramatically to whom and to what it now refers, and the contexts in which it seems proper to use it. First, the scope of membership—or who can be a citizen—has broadened considerably. Second, the rights and duties of citizenship have likewise been transformed. Finally, the contours of the political community, or the loci where it is appropriate and necessary to adopt civic behaviour, has similarly altered. Changes in one dimension have tended to lead to concomitant changes to the others. For example, the inclusion of women as full members of the political community has initiated a long process of reform to the entitlements and obligations of citizenship, and has challenged not only the traditional contours of the public and private, but also the venues for citizenly activity and the forms it might take.

This new collection from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Political Science series brings together in four volumes both canonical and cutting-edge research to enable users to make sense of the theory and practice of citizenship. Volume I explores the classic theories of citizenship: starting with historical accounts of ancient and early modern citizenship, and then charting the shift from republican to liberal citizenship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The volume’s focus is then on T. H. Marshall’s view of citizenship within the liberal democratic, national welfare states that emerged after the Second World War, and the critiques that came from new left and new right alike from the 1970s onwards. Volume II asks ‘Who is a Citizen?’. The major works gathered in this volume take particular account of the impact of feminist activism and scholarship; the emergence and critique of multiculturalism in addressing ethnic, ‘racial’ and religious diversity; and the rights asserted by immigrants and asylum seekers. Volume III, meanwhile, gathers the best scholarship on citizenship practice, and explores how the rights and duties of citizenship have moved from the state sphere strictly defined, to encompass a much broader reading of politics that also includes much of civil society. The final volume of the collection addresses the ways in which issues about and around citizenship have simultaneously extended beyond the state into transnational and supranational contexts (such as the European Union), and have also, in some instances, become devolved from the state to the regional and local levels.

With a full index, and a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Citizenship is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as a database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar—and sometimes overlooked—texts. For researchers, students, and policy-makers, it is as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.