Organic vs. inorganic citizenship

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4525536
AutoresBarbara Arneil (0000-0003-0426-1622, University of British Columbia, autor de correspondencia)
Año2022
Volumen26
Número4-5
Páginas365-371
Fecha de publicación2022-07-04
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCitizenship Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1362-1025 • E-ISSN: 1469-3593
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13621025.2022.2091215
OpenAlexW4283585112
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas15

Social contract theories from John Locke to John Rawls are rooted in a flawed ontological foundation as autonomous, self-interested individuals with interests/rights abstracted from any relationship to each other, land/animals they live on/amongst or even time/history live within a state of nature or original position. Political authority and/or fundamental principles of justice are produced as inorganic artifices, constituted via the aggregate consent of natural/pre-political beings. While citizenship may appear universal, in reality, ‘freemen’ were defined along gendered, racialized, class-based, and/or ableist lines. Thus, a hierarchically defined subset of people consents to authority or the principles of justice. In contrast, an organic theory of citizenship is rooted in the opposite ontological premise with human beings understood to be living, growing interdependent beings born into relationships and ecosystems that pre-exist and upon which they depend to live at all, are explicitly anti-hierarchical. Relations between people, society, and the ecosystem must be theorized as a priority rather than bracketed outside of consideration and/or constituted as the byproduct of consent. The central question for an organic theory of citizenship is thus: how to create a healthy ecosystem and non-hierarchical set of relations so humans from birth to old age, creatures, and the earth itself are all able to flourish interdependently

Citizenship · Economic Justice · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Premise · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism