Citizenship

Civic Practice

Contemporary notions of citizenship began in the 1950s with the work of T. H. Marshall, who understood citizenship as full membership in a community. Marshall proposed three types of citizenship, [Page 102]including civil citizenship, which regulates basic liberal rights (e.g., property, liberty of movement, legal representation); political citizenship, which influences the individual's participation in the political system (e.g., voting, holding office); and social citizenship, which he understood as a person's right to economic and social security (e.g., unemployment insurance, public education). Since Marshall, these three types of citizenship have been used to scrutinize national political realities, including the unequal ways in which civic, political, and social rights are distributed among populations.

Although Marshall clarified the types of rights, responsibilities, and expectations attached to citizenship in modern nations, his emphasis on politics legitimized a most common use of citizenship as political work—as civics—here understood as the exercise of the political duties and obligations of individuals. This traditional use of citizenship implies that civics and activism can do the job of assuring substantive justice within and among communities, thus improving democratic structures.

The notion that democracy relies for its functioning on the ongoing civic work of citizens is rooted in particular versions of the political philosophy of liberalism. In these versions, liberalism is the path toward having a society that balances personal independence and justice. Often in such theorizing about liberalism, citizenship is understood as an ideal identity that individuals must embrace for the health of the nation and to which the political system should be responsive. Here, the citizen is a civic worker who produces the best conditions for democracy and liberalism.

In communication studies, this understanding of liberalism and citizenship informs work on performance and media activism, broadcasting policy, political communication, liberal feminism, and some versions of critical race theory. Though widely done, understanding citizenship only as civics has theoretical limitations. While perfectly suited for envisioning a more energized civil society and public sphere, this notion of citizenship is less suited for radical critiques of liberalism and democracy, thus limiting its critical uses.

Identity

Some radical critiques were already suggested in Marshall's work. Marshall defined citizenship as membership, thus underscoring the need to challenge the way citizenship defines who can and who cannot be a member of the nation. At this level, citizenship is an identity that has legal roots. Simply, our original definitions of national citizenship allowed some and precluded others from having access to this legal identity and thus to the portfolio of civic, political, and social rights that Marshall references. Women, children, prisoners, and racial, ethnic, and national minorities, people without property, could not have access to full citizenship. Since, activisms and wars have expanded legal definitions of citizenship, but even today full citizenship is not legally accessible to some. Felons, children, homosexuals, women, disabled people, and immigrants have legally downgraded forms of citizenship.

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