Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship

by Engin F. Isin

What does it mean to be political? Every age has based its answer on citizenship, bequeathing us such indelible images as that of the Greek citizen exercising his rights and obligations in the agora, the Roman citizen conducting himself in the forum, medieval citizens receiving their charter before the guildhall. Being Political disrupts these images by approaching citizenship as otherness, presenting a powerful critique of universalistic and orientalist interpretations of the origins of citizenship and a persuasive alternative history of the present struggles over citizenship. Who were the strangers and outsiders of citizenship? What strategies and technologies were invented for constituting those forms of otherness? Focusing on these questions, rather than on the images conveyed by history's victors, Being Political offers a series of genealogies of citizenship as otherness. Engin F. Isin invokes the city as a "difference machine," recovering slaves, peasants, artisans, prostitutes, vagabonds, savages, flextimers, and squeegee men in the streets of the polis, civitas, metropolis, and cosmopolis. The result is a challenge to think in bolder terms about citizenship at a time when the nature of citizenship is an increasingly open question. Engin F. Isin is associate professor in the Division of Social Science at York University in Toronto.

Genres: Anthropology, Politics

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Engin F. Isin holds a Chair in Citizenship and Professor of Politics in Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Open University. He is also director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities, Governance (CCIG) at the Faculty of Social Sciences. He served as Canada Research Chair and Professor in the Division of Social Science at York University, Toronto, Canada between 2001-2006. His research and writing have focused on the origins and transformations of citizenship as a political and legal institution that constitutes certain ways of being political enabling subjects to become claimants of justice. His books include Cities Without Citizens (1992) and Being Political (2002).

Reviews

[Cameron Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great exploration of ideas of citizenship and the role of identity within 'the city.' For Isin 'the city' represents something indivisible from politics: Not an arrangement of material structures (buildings) or geographical spaces (municipal boundaries), but operation of on going social interaction that create ever more categories/identities and arranges them in a hierarchy of perceived political validity.