V LISBON SUMMER SCHOOL FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURE
MASTERCLASS 1: Cultural Citizenship in a Globalizing World
Esther Peeren & Marie Beauchamps (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis)
Globalization and the intensified migration flows it produces have not led to the fully
cosmopolitan world once envisioned, but to one in which particular national citizenships have
radically unequal political, cultural and economic standing. At the same time, citizenship in the
strict political and legal sense is becoming more and more entwined with cultural citizenship as
concerning “the maintenance and development of cultural lineage through education, custom,
language, and religion” (Miller). This can be seen, for example, in the emphasis right-wing
populist parties in Western Europe place on the cultural incompatibility of new citizens with the
“home” culture; in the obligation for new citizens to assimilate in specifically cultural ways
through the completion of a “naturalization trajectory”; and in the increasing practice of
(threatening) deprivation of citizenship from naturalized citizens if they act against cultural
norms.
The masterclass will explore the consequences of this blurring of political and cultural citizenship.
We will read key texts on both forms of citizenship, and discuss specific instances of their
entanglement: in popular, everyday culture, such as the Dutch controversy surrounding the
celebration of Sinterklaas – a Santa Claus figure who brings presents to children accompanied by
black helpers who are considered racist stereotypes by some and an inalienable part of Dutch
culture by others; in political and juridical practices, such as the ways in which the politics of
denaturalization has been mobilized in response to criminality in France and the UK; and on
social media, which can be seen to produce new, creative and inclusive forms of citizenship but
also as policing existing, exclusive ones.
Required readings:
- Isin, Engin, and Greg Nielsen. “Introduction: Acts of Citizenship” & “Theorizing Acts of
Citizenship.” Acts of Citizenship. Eds. Engin Isin and Greg Nielsen. New York: Zed Books, 2008. 112 & 15-43.
- Rosaldo, Renato. “The Borders of Belonging: Nation and Citizen in the Hinterlands.” Cultural
Citizenship in Island Southeast Asia. Ed. Renato Rosaldo. Berkeley: University of California Press,
2003. 1-15.
- Ong, Aihwa. “Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality.” Flexible Citizenship:
The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. 1-26.
- Orton-Johnson, Kate. “DIY Citizenship, Critical Making, and Community.” DIY Citizenship:
Critical Making and Social Media. Ed. Matt Ratto and Megan Boler. Boston: MIT Press, 2014. 14156.
Additional readings:
- Dolby, Nadine. “Popular Culture and Public Space in Africa: The Possibilities of Cultural
Citizenship.” African Studies Review 49.3 (2006): 31-47.
- Isin, Engin and Peter Nyers. “Introduction: Globalizing Citizenship Studies.” Routledge
Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies. Eds. Engin Isin and Peter Nyers. London: Routledge, 2014.
1-11.
- Maas, Willem. “Unrespected, Unequal, Hollow? Contingent Citizenship and Reversible Rights in
the European Union. The Columbia Journal of European Law 15.2 (2009): 265-280.
- Miller, Toby. “Introducing… Cultural Citizenship.” Social Text 19.4 (2001): 1-5.
- Miller, Toby. “The Truth is a Murky Path: Technologies of Citizenship and the Visible.”
Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1998.
- Mookherjee, Monica. “Affective Citizenship: Feminism, Postcolonialism and the Politics of
Recognition.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8.1 (2005): 31-50.
- Nyers, Peter. “Accidental Citizenship: Acts of Sovereignty and (Un)making Citizenship.”
Economy and Society 35.1 (2006): 22-41.
- Sassen, Saskia. “Foundational Subjects for Political Membership: Today’s Changed Relation to
the National State.” Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2006. 277-322.
- Stevenson, Nick, ed. Culture and Citizenship. London: Sage, 2001.
- Zacharias, Usha. “Trial by Fire: Gender, Power and Citizenship in Narratives of the Nation.”
Social Text 19.4 (2001): 29-51.
Esther Peeren is Associate Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Amsterdam
and Vice-Director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and the Amsterdam
Center for Globalization Studies (ACGS). Recent publications include The Spectralities Reader
(Bloomsbury, 2013, edited with María del Pilar Blanco), The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and
the Agency of Invisibility (Palgrave, 2014) and articles on affect, immateriality and the global
mobility regime.
Marie Beauchamps is a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA),
University of Amsterdam. Through her dissertation project “Affective Identities: Denaturalization
and the Politics of Nationality in France,” she aims to further our understanding of the
performative power contained in the institutionary norm of national identity and citizenship.
Based on the analysis of historical cases, her study explores the relationship between law,
language and emotions, and discusses the extent to which the hybridity of language translates
into a hybridity of the law.