Cultural Citizenship in Political Theory

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-a-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.

Judith Vega is Lecturer in Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Groningen. Her research addresses crossroads of politics and culture, viz. social justice and recognition, republicanism and feminism, and representations of urban life. She was editor-in-chief of the Dutch academic journal Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies.

Pieter Boele van Hensbroek lectures in Development Studies and Political Philosophy at the University of Groningen. He studies political thought in non-Western societies, was editor of the African journal of philosophy Quest and works at Globalisation Studies Groningen (GSG).