Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship. .

Isin, Engin F.

Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

333 pp.

ISBN 0-8166-3272-3

$24.95 US

"The history of citizenship," writes Isin, suffers from having been "narrated by dominant groups who articulated their identity as citizens" while constructing others as strangers or outsiders (276). The methods of exclusion have changed little over time in the sense that dominant groups have always identified themselves and their virtues in relation to others and their supposed vices. That the dominant group tends to define itself relationally, largely by marginalising others, is standard fare among post-modern theorists of citizenship and politics. Isin's specific concern, however, is that the history of citizenship has tended to downplay or ignore the role the marginalised have played in the political life of a given community.

In one sense, then, Being Political is an attempt to correct the limitations of the history of citizenship, and the primary way in which Isin tries to make this correction is by distinguishing between citizenship and politics: "being political was not the exclusive domain of being a citizen" (111). To be a citizen is as we might think it: a citizen is a full-fledged participating member of a community, complete with the set of rights and privileges that accompanies this status. To be political, however, is more broad; it refers to anyone who is "implicated in strategies and technologies of citizenship as otherness" (275). "Implicated" is necessarily broad, but nevertheless allows Isin a useful framework for analysis: that people might be implicated in citizenship, while not being citizens themselves, is the guiding theme of Isin's work. Put differently, citizens must be distinguished from those who are (mere) members of the city.

Each chapter of Being Political deals with the primary form of social organisation of a particular historical time period: the Greek polis, the Roman civitas, the European medieval eutopolis, for example (these organisations are all referred to as the "city" for convenience, both in the book and in this review). In each, Isin identifies the characteristics of citizenship of that time period and then discusses the range of groups excluded from that definition of citizenship. He argues that in each case these excluded and marginalised groups played a critical role, both in the organisation of city's social life and in the manner in which citizenship was defined within it. We need, therefore, to "focus on how they [the dominant citizens] constituted immanent strangers and outsiders.. .who were definitely needed in the city to enable the articulation of citizenship virtues" (137). Even more, the exclusion of certain groups from citizenship often was not connected to whether they were valuable members of a given c ity. Non-citizens in many cases were recognised as contributing to the successful organisation and maintenance of a city. For example, women contributed extensively to the polis, without ever attaining the rank of citizen (74).

We can draw at least two conclusions from these observations. First, we can no longer in good faith accept the argument that any of these political organisations were unified in the way that dominant groups have tended to present the case. The city has always been a site of contestation and differentiation: we must understand the city as a "difference machine," where city politics is largely about defining ourselves as different from others (1-51, 176). Second, and drawing upon the first conclusion, we can see that creating a "citizen" identity is as much about creating itself as it is about creating identities for others: that is, citizenship struggles are "relational in the sense that each group needs the other" for its identity to be both coherent and recognised (256).

Isin's introduction is lucid and nicely situates his own argument within the ever expanding literature on citizenship. The quality of his introduction is emphasised, unfortunately, by his substantially weaker concluding chapter. Maybe, he suggests, his examination of the contestation connected to citizenship virtues and identities will facilitate the integration of non-citizens--immigrants and the homeless, for example -- with which contemporary cities are faced. But this suggestion throws into relief one important, but still answered question: Given the history of citizenship struggles, is it possible to conceive of a citizenship identity that encompasses everyone? Isin implies that we ought to work towards a conception of citizenship identity that exists without an identifiable group of non-citizens, but he does not ask whether it would be possible to accomplish this task if we put our minds to it. Perhaps, even, it would be best to do away with the concept of citizenship altogether, given the pain and stru ggle that defining the citizen has caused in the past -- but Isin does not suggest this, or any other alternative.

On occasion, Being Political gets bogged down in details -- the long descriptions of medieval corporations and the early history of Italian city-states are difficult to sift through -- which makes it difficult to keep Isin's argument in mind. Moreover, in certain instances, Isin's argument is less persuasive than others: the Greek political thinkers, for example, were amply aware of the participation of non-citizens in the functioning of the polis. In the end, however, Being Political generally accomplishes its goal highlighting the struggles that underlie any one city's accepted interpretation of citizenship.