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Citizenship

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posted on 2023-06-08, 11:47 authored by Gerard Delanty
Modern political thought has bequeathed two conceptions of citizenship, one leading to a conception of citizenship as participation in civil society and the other a view of citizenship as a legal status based on rights and generally defined with respect to the state as opposed to civil society. In republican political theory, from classical thought through the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, citizenship has been largely associated with the idea of the participation of the public in the political life of the community. This has given rise to a strong association of citizenship with civil society and in general with a definition of citizenship that stresses "virtue", the active dimension of what membership of a political community entails. In contrast to this, in fact, quite old tradition, the liberal idea of citizenship is one that emphasises citizenship as a largely legal condition. In this understanding of citizenship, which had its origins in English seventeenth-century political theory, citizenship concerns the rights of the citizen. In addition to the dimensions of right and participation, an adequate definition of citizenship will include the further dimensions of duties and identity. A full definition of citizenship, then, includes the four dimensions of rights, duties, participation, and identity. The first two of these refer to the formal dimensions of citizenship, while the dimensions of participation and identity refer to substansive dimensions.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Volume

1

Page range

93-98

Pages

1056.0

Book title

Encyclopedia of Social Theory

Place of publication

London

ISBN

9780761926115

Department affiliated with

  • Sociology and Criminology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

George Ritzer

Legacy Posted Date

2012-06-07

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