Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference: Historical Perspectives

by Frederick Cooper

A succinct and comprehensive history of the development of citizenship from the Roman Empire to the present day

Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference offers a concise and sweeping overview of citizenship's complex evolution, from ancient Rome to the present. Political leaders and thinkers still debate, as they did in Republican Rome, whether the presumed equivalence of citizens is compatible with cultural diversity and economic inequality. Frederick Cooper presents citizenship as claim-making--the assertion of rights in a political entity. What those rights should be and to whom they should apply have long been subjects for discussion and political mobilization, while the kind of political entity in which claims and counterclaims have been made has varied over time and space.

Citizenship ideas were first shaped in the context of empires. The relationship of citizenship to nation and empire was hotly debated after the revolutions in France and the Americas, and claims to imperial citizenship continued to be made in the mid-twentieth century. Cooper examines struggles over citizenship in the Spanish, French, British, Ottoman, Russian, Soviet, and American empires, and he explains the reconfiguration of citizenship questions after the collapse of empires in Africa and India. He explores the tension today between individualistic and social conceptions of citizenship, as well as between citizenship as an exclusionary notion and flexible and multinational conceptions of citizenship.

Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference is a historically based reflection on some of the most fundamental issues facing human societies in the past and present.

Genres: History, Immigration, Politics, World History

224 pages, Hardcover

Published May 1, 2018

About the author

Frederick Cooper is an American historian who specializes in colonialization, decolonialization, and African history. Cooper received his Doctor of Philosophy from Yale University in 1974 and is currently professor of history at New York University.

Cooper initially studied the labor movement in East Africa, but later moved on the a broader consideration of colonialism. One of his best known conceptual contributions is the concept of the gatekeeper state.

Reviews

[David Sogge · Rating 4 out of 5]

At a time when the use and abuse of ethnic, cultural and other kinds of identity are the stuff of micro-to-macro politics and of policies stipulating who has rights to have rights, this book's relevance has only increased since its beginnings in 2016 as a lecture series.

Clearly written and richly documented, it discusses the sorts of circumstances in which citizenship has been exercised and contested – and also dissolved, such when the French government stripped French ‘citizenship’ from its colonial subjects, having earlier granted them that status, premised on an imperial notion that France and its colonies were indivisible.

The book’s second major focus is on citizenship not as a fixed status, but as “a framework for debate and struggle over the relationship of political belonging to religious, linguistic, and cultural difference and over the tensions between the citizenship ideal and political oligarchy and economic inequality.” Note the latter point: matters of class power (commonly neglected in discussions of identity and belonging) are addressed directly.

Anchored in specific historical cases, this book underlines the inconstancy of public sentiment and law as colonized people, minorities, migrants and other 'outsiders' assert themselves in political arenas.

[Adrián · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parecería que ciertos conceptos ya se encuentran instalados plenamente en el imaginario colectivo, la ciudadanía es uno de ellos, solemos considerar que basta con haber nacido en determinado territorio para adquirirla y que poseerla supone el establecimiento de un tipo de contrato social basado en obligaciones y derechos frente a la entidad política del Estado. No obstante, Cooper nos conmina a reflexionar con mayor profundidad sobre la noción de ciudadanía en el siglo XXI, sus tensiones, conflictos y mutabilidad, sobre todo cuando, en un mundo interconectado, desigual y diferente, como nos adelanta desde el título, la ciudadanía no significa lo mismo para casi nadie, habida cuenta de los conflictos socio-territoriales y las profundas divergencias según la región del mundo que habitemos. Hoy, en suma, la ciudadanía debe reformularse bajo la óptica del mundo contemporáneo, en la búsqueda de que otorgue, con los marcos jurídicos adecuados y los patrones de cooperación y entendimiento global, los derechos consagrados en la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos.

[Paul Womack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume introduced me to differng notions of what is meant by the idea of citizen or citizenship. It is helpful in noting the core basis of such can be, and often is, based on many considerations, and that a person may consider himself/herself or others as fellow citizen or not based on those considerstions. It is a fluid and historically contingent notion, and one maybe a citizen one day and not another... or at least the definitional content may change. And, of course, there are de jure and de facto approaches at play. A question raised is whether or not citizenship is limited to a category within a state or whether or not the very idea of a capacious citizenship can involve criterion applicable to all contexts, such as universal human rights. This is a book to which I shall return.

[SandersonLover · Rating 4 out of 5]

It could definitely be longer but gives a great overview of the concept of citizenship, how to define it and what it is.