About this Research Topic
This Research Topic is devoted to the 20th anniversary of the publication of Engin Isin’s Being Political as a relational investigation deepening the analysis of citizenship as a field and academic subject. Although relational approaches have become popular in many fields of social scientific research, this remains less so in citizenship studies. In this context, Isin’s BP represents a major contribution, conceiving citizenship in a Bourdieusian type of field-theoretical framework which is relational and emphasizes differences and asymmetries of power in the constitution of subjects and positions. The Research Topic will focus both on theoretical discussion and empirical application of the relational approach to citizenship as alterity, and will engage with a wider literature on the state of the art in citizenship studies beyond the notion of citizenship as status and/or obligations.
The articles in the Research Topic will examine the central role articulations of sameness and difference play in constituting subjects, subject positions and social groups and the extent to which different ways of privileging of either sameness or difference can contribute to a wider understanding of citizenship embedded in various strategies, technologies, actions and enactments. In addition, the articles will reflect and further contribute to Isin’s innovative approach to citizenship to open up new ways of engaging in the (re)structuring of citizenship in both socio-political and academic fields.
The Research Topic calls for theoretical and empirical original publications to reflect on citizenship in a larger meta-theoretical context to widen and explore the meanings and significance of practices of citizenship today. The articles are expected to engage with the concepts of citizenship as a pluralistic, contested, contextual features of social reality – allowing a greater engagement with forms of citizenship enactments and activism beyond binaries of citizen/non-citizens in local, national, international and global contexts. The call for papers is thus wide in scope, accommodating new ways of being and conceiving citizenship drawing on the relational theoretical insights provided in Engin Isin's work in Being Political and elsewhere.
The articles in the Research Topic will examine the central role articulations of sameness and difference play in constituting subjects, subject positions and social groups and the extent to which different ways of privileging of either sameness or difference can contribute to a wider understanding of citizenship embedded in various strategies, technologies, actions and enactments. In addition, the articles will reflect and further contribute to Isin’s innovative approach to citizenship to open up new ways of engaging in the (re)structuring of citizenship in both socio-political and academic fields.
The Research Topic calls for theoretical and empirical original publications to reflect on citizenship in a larger meta-theoretical context to widen and explore the meanings and significance of practices of citizenship today. The articles are expected to engage with the concepts of citizenship as a pluralistic, contested, contextual features of social reality – allowing a greater engagement with forms of citizenship enactments and activism beyond binaries of citizen/non-citizens in local, national, international and global contexts. The call for papers is thus wide in scope, accommodating new ways of being and conceiving citizenship drawing on the relational theoretical insights provided in Engin Isin's work in Being Political and elsewhere.
Keywords: citizenship, relational approach, enactment, being political, Isin, Political theory.
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
