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Semester | fall semester 2017 |
Course frequency | Irregular |
Lecturers | Teresa Pullano (teresa.pullano@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
Content | Recent events, such as the Arab Spring, or movements against austerity such as Indignados in Spain and Occupy movements in North America, but show how struggles for democratic participation and equality are still very much part of our present political life, both in Europe and at the global level. The displacement of people, such as in the recent refugee crisis involving Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, is another central site for struggles about citizenship rights and for activist forms of citizenship. Citizenship is thus here understood as “an institution that mediates between political subjects and their political communities, and as such it is open to contestations about the meaning and content of the institution, the terms of the mediation and the sites of belonging” (Isin and Nyers, 2014, p. 8). The question this lecture addresses is twofold. The first one concerns the empirical investigation of the sites and of the modalities of struggles of citizenship that happen both within specific political communities but also across states, through diasporic and global movements of contestation. The second question is how to practices of citizenship across the world shape it beyond Eurocentric assumptions. Indeed, citizenship has often been understood as a characteristic of European or Western civilization, and classical sociologists such as Max Weber remarked that it was absent from other contexts, such as the Arab world. The present lecture challenges this assumption and look at how relations between political subjects and polities are mediated in non-European contexts. This will bring us to look at how it is possible to challenge Western, liberal understandings of citizenship through struggles and experiences taking place in the Africas, Americas, Asias and Europes. |
Learning objectives | Students: - Learn about how to think citizenship struggles at the global level; - Learn about the new voices and vocabulary that expands political subjectivity in the context of the Arab Spring; - Learn about existing struggles for sexual, cultural, environmental citizenship in the Arab world, in India, in China; - Learn about struggles around citizenship, gender and race in contemporary Africa, in places as different as South Africa and Sudan; - Learn about diasporic form of struggles for citizenship, such as refugee struggles and activism in refugee camps in Europe and in Africa; - Learn about movements of contestation of European and Western forms of citizenship in times of neoliberal policies; - Acquire theories and methods derived from sociology and from social and political theory to inquire around struggles for citizenship and their global and post-colonial dimension. |
Bibliography | - Bayat (Asef), Life as Politics: how ordinary people change the Middle East, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2010. - Calhoun (Craig), „Occupy Wall Street in Perspective“, The British Journal of Sociology, 64, 26-38. - Dabashi (Hamid), The Arab Spring: the End of Postcolonialism, London, Palgrave, 2012. Harvey (David), A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007. - Isin (Engin), Being Political. Genealogies of Citizenship, Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2002. - Isin (Engin) and Saward (Michael) (dir.), Enacting European Citizenship, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013. - Isin (Engin) and Nyers (Peter) (dir.), Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies, London, Routldge, 2014. - McNevin (Anne), Contesting Citizenship: irregular migrants and new frontiers oft he political, New York, Columbia University Press, 2011. - Mezzadra (Sandro)and Nielson (Brett), Border as Method, or the Multiplication of Labor, Durham (N.C.), Duke University Press, 2013. |
Weblink | Europainstitut |
Language of instruction | English |
Use of digital media | No specific media used |
Course auditors welcome |
Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
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No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
Modules |
Modul Culture and Society (Master's degree program: African Studies (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Europäisierung und Globalisierung (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) Modul Fields: Governance and Politics (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul Forschungsfelder der Ethnologie (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology) Modul Internationales Zusatzwissen (Master's Studies: European Studies (Start of studies before 01.02.2015)) Modul Sachthematische Fragestellungen der Ethnologie (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Sachthemen der Ethnologie (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology) Modul Themenfeld: Herrschaft, Normativität und symbolische Ordnung (Bachelor's degree subject: Gender Studies) Modul Themenfelder der Geschlechterforschung (Bachelor's degree subject: Gender Studies (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Vertiefung Themenfeld: Herrschaft, Normativität und symbolische Ordnung (Master's degree subject: Gender Studies) Modul Wissen/Kommunikation (Bachelor's degree subject: Social Sciences (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul: Vertiefung Politikwissenschaft M.A. (Master's degree subject: Political Science) Vertiefungsmodul Global Europe: Staatlichkeit, Entwicklung und Globalisierung (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) |
Assessment format | record of achievement |
Assessment details | Oral examination at the end of the lecture. Participation in the lecture will also be taken into account. |
Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
Scale | Pass / Fail |
Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
Responsible faculty | University of Basel |
Offered by | Europainstitut |