Citizenship

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge

by Dimitry Kochenov

The story of citizenship as a tale not of liberation, dignity, and nationhood but of complacency, hypocrisy, and domination.

The glorification of citizenship is a given in today's world, part of a civic narrative that invokes liberation, dignity, and nationhood. In reality, explains Dimitry Kochenov, citizenship is a story of complacency, hypocrisy, and domination, flattering to citizens and demeaning for noncitizens. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kochenov explains the state of citizenship in the modern world.

Kochenov offers a critical introduction to a subject most often regarded uncritically, describing what citizenship is, what it entails, how it came about, and how its role in the world has been changing. He examines four key elements of the concept: status, considering how and why the status of citizenship is extended, what function it serves, and who is left behind; rights, particularly the right to live and work in a state; duties, and what it means to be a “good citizen”; and politics, as enacted in the granting and enjoyment of citizenship.

Citizenship promises to apply the attractive ideas of dignity, equality, and human worth—but to strictly separated groups of individuals. Those outside the separation aren't citizens as currently understood, and they do not belong. Citizenship, Kochenov warns, is too often a legal tool that justifies violence, humiliation, and exclusion.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Law, Philosophy

344 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 18, 2019

Reviews

[Abrazella De Spell · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book is interesting in the beginning and offers many new perspectives, but then it turns into a long rant about why citizenship is the most evil thing imaginable that it must be abolished immediately. He repeated like a million times how citizenship is "totalitarian", "racist" and "sexist". It is also the embodiment of an intellectual ivory tower given that there is no consideration of practicalities.

[Aditi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The argument of this book—that citizenship as a concept is illogical, unequal, and unnecessary—is an interesting and necessary one. I agree with everything the author argued, but most of the book was just dry repetition of ideas he had already brought up and analyzed to death. 90% of this book could have been scrapped to convert the remaining 10% into a fine, concise essay.

[Marc · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book promises a lot. After 121 pages, however, all the author has really said is that some nationalities are more advantageous than others. No kidding. My patience is up. I won’t be finishing.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kochenov neatly sums up my own thoughts on the subject, albeit far better argued than I could likely manage. I agree with pretty much everything he has to say here... if only he said it in a less dry and occasionally repetitive manner.

[Vladimir Bošković · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was impressed by erudition, wit, skillful and elegant style in this book, but above all, the bursting desire for justice, that radiates from the text. It felt like reading one of the Enlightenment treatises – a naturally flowing argument based entirely on reason and logic, focused exclusively on discovering the truth without prejudice and not the “communities of interest.” But it was above all the fine and exquisite irony that made it such an irresistible and enjoyable read (irony is the ultimate instrument for preserving human dignity, as Socrates, Cavafy, and my life in Belgrade had taught me). I was excited all the time I was reading it, something I haven’t experienced in years. I would recommend the book to theorists, activists, historians, and others writing on the issues of social justice, to see how it’s done.

[Captain Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Way too dry but acts as a great reference. Needs to have the "identity" types of questions answered instead of just talking about historic injustices. As it stands, there it's too far on the descriptive instead of prescriptive side of things.

[Kieran Wood · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book itself has good information, and lays a good foundation. The problem is how the information is presented. Before that though, there are some good things. If you are not politically savy, this will catch you up with tons of examples and justifications for points made. Likewise the graphics are handy to break up long portions of the text. Now for the bad.

Citizenship bad. You now understand the first ~130 pages (including 1 chapter that is nearly a third of the book!). In all honesty this book may have some insights if you don't follow geopolitics very closely, but for me it was largely uninteresting and offered nothing new.

The biggest problem is the repetition, and the examples. Many points are repeated over and over for dozens of pages at a time, and will include tons and tons of examples. I am all for making a point, but it does feel at some point like the author was writing more of an encyclopedia than a book about political theory.

There also is quite a bit of pretentiousness in the writing. It's marred with tons of Latin quotes that you have to memorize that add very little to the writing itself, it feels very late 70's-00's style political writing. The last part is that it clearly has an agenda, this doesn't bother me because I already agree with the authors point of view, but it isn't written to be very persuasive if you don't have the same perspective.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this one unless you need a collection of references for an assignment. Beyond that there are much shorter articles online that go into the same level of philosophical, and political depth at a 10th the length.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

a little scatter brained at times and could be better organized, but overall pretty good. this is a highly critical view of citizenship, and it helps you to reconsider the value of that status in the modern world. as dimitry shows, the arguments in favor of citizenship have become increasingly irrelevant, if they were ever true to begin with.

the book may come off as hyperbolic when the author claims things like that citizenship is totalitarian at its root. but that attitude comes from years of interaction with citizenship and the frustration from realizing how hollow its justifications are.

biggest gripes: no historical section, and no section on what a post-citizenship world looks like.

[Krissy Callahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholarly book breaking down the essence of citizenship in a historical to present, global setting. The author covers citizenship’s status, rights, duties, and politics. My biggest takeaway was how illustrative he proved that “citizenship [is] one of the key tools for locking the poorest populations within the confines of their dysfunctional states, thus perpetuating and reinforcing global inequality.” I read this book while traveling through several central Asian countries, and having many conversations with people from these countries; so learning about the nuts and bolts of the idea of citizenship and how applicable it is around the world was fascinating. The arbitrary randomness of citizenship is an interesting system we find ourselves in, and it’s worth considering why.

[Daire Maginn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great introduction to citizenship and identity politics. Kochenov effectively highlights the hypocrisy of the ‘good citizen’ and the negative impact citizenship can have on ‘others’. Instead of producing inclusive societies where all people are welcomed regardless of the status of their citizenship, the modern world has seemingly doubled down on nationalist principles in order to subjugate minority communities and migrants for the states gain as well as the states citizens. Kochenov highlights atrocities as well has hypocrisies historically and contemporarily. Instead of accepting citizenship as it is, Kochenov offers alternative solutions to foster better relationships between people of the world.

[Alex Duque · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kochenov presents us a very critical analysis about what citizenship is all about, its core functions and effective consequences. I may agree with many of his thesis, but in general I find his analysis very repetitive and (bare minimum) discussable. Many of his attacks against citizenship could've been written in less pages, and you have this constant feeling of not advancing while you read the book. However, a very interesting approach to citizenship, I would say this essay is fundamental if you really want to study the main critics that citizenship has to face to survive.

[RJTK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a deeply critical book arguing that the idea of Citizenship, which is a completely arbitrary labeling over which you have essentially no control, is a "governance you'll that teaches us to ignore the plight of those who have not been assigned the same status at birth... Crudely nationalist in essence."

[Alice Chau-Ginguene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good and insightful book from a world expert in this subject matter. There are repetition at times and it’s rather dry, which is to expect for an academic read. It’s a great book for those of who are interested in human rights, political science, migration policy and citizenship law.

[Don Scalise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting take on what citizenship does and it’s not pleasant. Good concept but feels repetitive and at some points, just boring.

[cypher · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting topic, some ideas felt a bit repetitive though. great book series.

[Anita Joven · Rating 1 out of 5]

Found it repetitive and like it doesn’t really seem to get deeper than ‘citizenship is unfair and being born anywhere is like buying a lottery ticket.’ I liked the beginning, tho. The rest felt like a lot of numbers, but not much opinion. I wish it had more theory. Only made it 3/4 of the way through. The cover’s pretty tho.