ABSTRACT
Is citizenship gendered or is it beyond such particularism? Is it a concept which can be successfully universalist, or is it always affected by deeply rooted social divisions of gender, class and ethnicity? These issues relate to both a political project for which the concept of citizen serves as a unifying symbol, and an intellectual understanding of social integration. In contemporary Britain the term ‘citizenship’ has been used to indicate a populist notion of fairness and justice for all Britons, as in the development of ‘Citizens’ Charters’. The intellectual focus of British social science debate on the topic has often been concerned with the extent to which class restricts effective access to citizenship, as in the debates around T.H. Marshall’s work (Mann, 1987; Marshall, 1950; Turner, 1990), although there is also an interest in the relationship of citizenship to social cohesion (Marquand, 1988; Pahl, 1991; Taylor, 1991; Turner, 1991a, 1991b).
