ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author analyzes some general trends affecting the cultural conditions of citizenship in the context of a mixed model of modernity and postmodernization. He examines the concept of citizenship in the frame of both modern and postmodern life strategies, set within the broader institutional possibilities and risks inaugurated in an age of globalization. The author suggests that citizenship need not be theorized pessimistically, but can instead be located as a new departure point for the chronic tension and struggle of civil interchange. He focuses on the complicated relationship between modernity, postmodernization, and the reinvention of citizenship, and examines in particular the altered global conditions of citizenship formation. In noting the institutional settings that under-pin the constitution and reproduction of modern and postmodern citizenship, namely the nation-state and globalization, the author shows how some of the sociological concerns might be more satisfactorily analyzed in the frame of both personal and political life strategies.
