The Limits of Political Belonging ― An Adaptionist Perspective on Citizenship and Society

Citizenship is increasingly the core concept by which human belonging is defined but do we really understand what it is? This book develops an evolutionist argument to challenge accepted ideas about citizenship and question how well it fits between political prescriptions for sociality and human nature. Though citizenship reflects a dominant, enduring political model of belonging, it has been contested from a range of standpoints such as feminism, social exclusion and human rights. Using a novel Darwinian paradigm, Edwards exposes the limits of citizenship conceived in wholly or overtly political terms, and endorses the validity of citizenship struggles that implicitly and explicitly champion human belonging over political belonging.

Mark Edwards is an independent social sciences scholar and lecturer in the UK.