Commentary: Community and problematic citizenship

In: Political geography: an interdisciplinary journal for all students of political studies with an interest in the geographical and spatial aspects, Band 27, Heft 1, S. 22-28

Abstract

Lynn Staeheli's elegant and insightful work on Citizenship and the Problem of Community is an agenda-setting essay. I highlight three issues that merit further research: the implications of the moral turn in politics for territorially based institutions of government; the questions raised by problematic understandings of citizenship; and the need for better specification of the institutional contexts in which inclusion/exclusion mechanisms operate. Although community can be the basis for inclusion/exclusion at a micro scale, as Staeheli describes, analyses at more macro scales suggest citizenship-more often than not defined in terms of national identity and a culturally defined civic identity-can precede community as the basis for inclusion/exclusion. This indicates that citizenship is as problematic as community. [Copyright 2008 Elsevier Ltd.]