Citizenship, Civil Society and Development ─ Interconnections in a Global World

The book investigates the intersection of citizenship, civil society, and development in today’s global world. The multi-disciplinary collection considers the notion of citizenship in connection with the neoliberal development agendas, participation, security discourses and legal environments. The contributions analyse the development-citizenship nexus grounded in empirical work in African, Latin American, European and global contexts. The book opens exciting avenues to reflect on the notion of citizenship and explores the following pertinent questions: Does citizenship matter for development research? Do international development policy and practice promote certain normative registers for how people should make sense of their social relations and, in particular, how they relate to public authorities? What are their responses? Contributors from various academic backgrounds, such as anthropology, law, and political science, affirm the importance of citizenship for the study of contemporary development processes. Chapters provide empirical analysis of the processes of water privatization in Ghana, the promulgation of new ‘NGO Law’ in Ethiopia, environmental politics in former Yugoslavia, and the global interconnections between the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement. The book is relevant for students and scholars of political science and development studies as well as development practitioners globally.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Civil Society.

Tiina Kontinen, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in social sciences at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland where she teaches in a Master Degree Programme for Development and International Cooperation. Her research interests revolve around civil society and development, development interventions and knowledge production in development NGOs.

Henri Onodera holds an MA in Social Anthropology of Development from School of Oriental and African Studies in London, UK. He has worked as a researcher at Universities of Helsinki and Eastern Finland. His doctoral research focuses on the politicization of young Egyptians in the 2000s.