Search results

International audience ; This special issue reports on a collaborative UK research project which examined how new security challenges are constituted in the intersecting relationships between political and military actors, news producers, news representations and discourses, and news audiences. This article introduces the ethnographic reports which follow, and describes the theoretical premises and methodological strategies of the research. It outlines an innovative, multi-disciplinary methodology - `Integrated Multidisciplinary Media Analysis' - which integrates Collaborative Media Ethnography (a novel method in itself) with institutional and textual analysis. This combination of mutually informing approaches affords unique insights into social and cultural processes. The research process began with explorations of how public knowledge and understanding of security issues relate to and are shaped by everyday cultures of media practice, the subject of the following reports. Combined with the findings of researchers investigating the perceptions and working practices of security-policy and media professionals, and others working on the textual analysis of salient news broadcasts, our study reaches three main conclusions. First, that ritualized interactions between policymakers, journalists and 'citizen audiences' constitute the media-security nexus as a 'battlespace' of mutual disrespect and suspicion. Second, that this exacerbates the marginalization and racialization of many ethnic minority groups but in particular British Muslims, who face declining prospects for multicultural citizenship. Third, that security policymakers must struggle to find public legitimacy in view of the growing scepticism and hostility of national and diasporic news media and audiences.

We inhabit a thoroughly globalized world. People are increasingly and visibly connected by a "World Wide Web," by a world market, and by universalist discourses of human rights and democracy. At the same time, full citizenship in a political community—and the rights conferred by such citizenship—is an exclusive status that remains, remarkably, tied to accidents of birth and historical circumstance. And what one has a right to—gainful employment, education, health care, political voice, mere presence—is largely a function of whether one has the precious status of citizenship or is, alternatively, regarded as an alien. Ayelet Shachar's The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality is a compelling account of the moral arbitrariness of this state of affairs. A study in "normative political theory," it is a work of political science that incorporates legal theory, moral philosophy, political economy, and public policy. The author tackles issues of increasing global political importance—global disparities of wealth; unequal access to clear air, water, and a secure place to live; and the increasingly contentious politics of immigration and immigrant rights.So it seems fitting to invite a range of political science scholars who work on these topics to comment on the book. The basic editorial charge of this symposium is thus straightforward: How do you assess Shachar's arguments and the attention she focuses on the phenomenon of "birthright lottery"? How does this argument bear upon the topics and approaches that characterize your own scholarship? And how do these topics and approaches shed light on the book and its arguments? While the focus of the symposium is this provocative book, the discussion of it should also be regarded as an opportunity to address the question of whether or not the bases of citizenship need to be fundamentally reconceived, and in what ways political science can and should contribute to such a rethinking.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

In der Debatte über (Welt-)Bürgerbildung - (Global) Citizenship Education oder (G)CE - und ihre epistemologischen, moralischen und politischen Grundlagen werden im Wesentlichen drei Positionen unterschieden: Kosmopolitismus, Lokalismus und Relationalismus. Die in diesem Kontext häufig erhobenen Forderungen nach epistemologischer Vielfalt werden im Folgenden kritisch geprüft. Damit ist das Ziel verbunden, plausibel zu machen, dass GCE sich nur auf Basis eines eindeutigen, allgemeingültigen und universalistischen Wissensverständnisses angemessen begründen lässt, welches erlaubt Wissen von Nichtwissen und Wissenschaft von Aberglauben zu unterscheiden. Ein entsprechend modifizierter Kosmopolitismus nimmt Unterschiede in praktischen epistemischen Prioritäten zur Kenntnis, ohne dass diese auf eine Vielfalt von Epistemologien hinauslaufen. (DIPF/Orig.) ; Three broad kinds of orientation can be identified with regard to (global) citizenship education, or (G)CE: cosmopolitanism, localism, and relationalism. They differ in their respective approaches not only to cultural transmission and instruction but also to knowledge and knowledge production. My aim in this paper is to interrogate the notion of local or indigenous knowledge in (G)CE research and to investigate whether the postcolonial idea of epistemological diversity does not involve a mistaken sense of 'epistemology'. I argue that there are good reasons for an unequivocal and universally applicable understanding of knowledge and epistemology in (global) citizenship education and GCE research - and for being able to distinguish between knowledge and non-knowledge. A relevantly modified cosmopolitanism acknowledges differences in practical epistemic priorities, without these amounting to 'diverse epistemologies'. (DIPF/Orig.)