ABSTRACT

In contemporary social theory, ‘the dialectic of globalisation’ has been used as a trope to throw into relief the late twentieth-and early twenty-first centuries as a world caught in a tension between internationalisation and regionalisation in a way that has transformed the boundaries of, and the relations between nation states. Internationally, these continuing and contemporary processes are economic growth through further internationalisation of the division of labour and the development of global, rather than national cities, conflicts concerning democracy, solidarity and identity that have occurred in the old and newly formed states in the post-Cold-war era and which have seen the involvement of international and supra-national organisations such as the UN and the European Union, and the internationalisation of social problems such as damage to, and concern for, the environment, poverty, disease, terrorism and crime. Regionally, these processes originate from increasing demographic changes, population movements and the formation of ‘new’ diasporas, the political dynamics between national centres and regional areas, the politicisation and extension of categories of rights, and cultural diversification. As has been pointed out in a recent book by Neil Smelser, the effect of these processes may be increased or decreased sovereignty, increased or decreased military conflict or cooperation, increased or decreased cultural diversity. From this perspective, this dialectic of globalisation is redrawing collective identities that can be either inward or outward looking (in the light of the former, ethnic, sexual or gender tribes and in the light of the latter, ‘new’ ethnic, sexual, or gender diasporas). Thus, a new ‘map’ of integration is being drawn in which the tension between society and the individual (or nation state and citizen) is being replaced by a tension between tendencies towards regionalisation and tendencies towards internationalisation (Smelser, 1997; see also Bauman, 1992). In addition, many commentators point to the experience of twentieth-and

twenty-first-century western societies that have experienced large or significant migration inflows, especially in Europe and the New Worlds of the Americas and Australasia. These migrant flows, especially in the European cases, have

exposed, and indeed challenged the territories of nation states, thus blurring their boundaries. Migrant flows have also challenged the sense of ethnic core of these nation states, and, thus, the way in which these have been idealised as part of the myths and identity of the receiving nations. This experience of migration and the cultural diversity that has stemmed from it has also been termed a multicultural one, or one that, following Maria Markus. can also be termed cultural hybridisation – ‘the crossing of … boundaries in potentially endless combinations of the new and the old’ (Markus, 1998; Pieterse, 1995). However, this postmodern sociological assessment that views the con-

temporary period as one that revolves around post-nationalism, tribalism and globalisation, minimises a more complex set of configurations. The assumed current trend towards trans-or – post-– nationalism is underwritten by a long history of nation state formation. In this context, the language of modernisation can be read as a metaphor for the extension and national institutionalisation of some or all of these aspects. In this way, it is more accurate to speak of a selective development and institutionalisation of features that belong to political modernity which include democratisation, the development of bounded territories and the formation of national identities, alongside the processes of globalisation and regionalisation. These processes of development can be viewed as selective because they are constituted as dynamics in their own right. They may draw on other aspects, which may also become privileged points of orientation by collective social actors in either positive or negative ways. Furthermore, these selective political developments compete with, and even give rise to, renewed forms of selective localisms. This complex configuration means that attempts by national and transnational political and bureaucratic arrangements which aim at functional integration and systemic coordination such as the European Union, are not so much resisted (Foucault), or result in a colonised lifeworld (Habermas), but rather reside within a field of tensions in which conflicts are a permanent condition, and outcomes cannot be prejudged. This study, then, takes a different, although not unrelated tack on these

issues. Instead of invoking the metaphors of ‘blurring’ or ‘hybridity’ it will argue that the modern, internationally contextualised nation state and the forms of citizenship that it is identified with are the result of the selective and competing dimensions of political modernity. These selective processes thus fracture the distinction between state and civil society through which social and political reality has been conventionally thought, and opens onto the plurality of processes and sites. Moreover, they can be given further conceptual focus and definition if approached at least initially from the vantage points of territoriality, identity, sovereignty, democracy and publicity. Thus, and as has been noted by many commentators, nation state and citizenship is a site of condensation – and here it is viewed as a site of condensation of the five processes just indicated (Habermas, 1996, 1997; Nora, 1989; Heater, 1990). In order to further elaborate, this complexity can be further drawn out in

the following schematic way which suggests that each aspect itself has its own

internal dimensions. In terms of the first – territoriality – the nation state is counterpointed by a populace and communities who are defined as belonging to this nation state, but who may also draw on other cultural and regional bases for identity (A. Smith, 1986, 1988; Anderson, 1983). Moreover, the idea of the sovereignty of the nation state is informed by two counterposing traditions. In one, the command of the ‘prince’ (the personalisation of power) is prioritised, while in another, the codification of law (juridical sovereignty) is. Each though is opposed by a tradition of civic sovereignty, which is viewed as a rulership of power based on the idea of the non-inheritable and non-transferable sanctity of ‘the people’ (Pocock, 1985; Baker, 1989). The democratic aspect of the nation state, if it is at all present and this cannot be assumed, has competed between two different models of democracy, a mediated or representative one, with its counterpart of direct or unmediated democracy. Furthermore, theories of democratic practice tend to fall also into two camps, one emphasising the procedural nature through which decisions may be reached consensually, and another one stressing the values that are articulated, and, in fact, are required as background assumptions in the course of reaching decisions democratically (Habermas, 1996; Heller, 1985, 1991). Moreover, models of democracy and its practices assume high levels of the transparency of power and decision making, a transparency that also assumes publicity, or the existence of a political public sphere. However, democracy and the idea of the public are not coterminus, neither historically, nor conceptually. The public itself has been subject to shifting definitions in which it is not only defined as a critico-reflexive social space for the articulation (in whatever forms) of cultural patterns and social conflict, but also as space for specific civic conduct. Furthermore, it has also been interpreted as a social conduit for the integration of a citizenry into democratic life, and in this light the institutional arrangements, which are entered into voluntarily, are emphasised from this often corporatist point of view (Hegel, 1979; Durkheim, 1992). Alternatively, the notion of the public also shows what might be termed administrative slippage, where it (the public) is identified simply as a juridical-administrative-welfare apparatus that services an amorphous citizenry, the membership of which then has to be determined. This latter notion of the public is, thus, most closely allied with territorial and sovereign notions of the nation state (Fraser, 1987; Cohen and Arato, 1992). Thus, citizenship is a site of condensation where national and cultural or

local identity, the exercise of a sovereign state’s explicit power, the vocabularies of participation, and publicly orientated activities, reflexivity and conduct converge and coalesce.1 In other words, citizenship cannot be reduced to the democratic moment or the territorial and administrative imperatives of nation building, and the forms of collective identity associated with this. Even together, these two aspects cannot coextensively capture the complexity of modern citizenship. This chapter is divided into two sections in order to nonetheless explore some, but not all, of its aspects. The first section explores the image of the condensation of citizenship, introduced above, where the nation state is a

site for the coalescence of its different meanings. This section begins with the territorial and administrative imperatives of nation building, before turning to other aspects concerned with sovereignty and democracy. In a second section it is argued that the sovereign and democratic aspects of the nation state, where they exist together, require a particular cultural horizon to orient them, even in the context of their formal institutionalisation in legal codes and practices. This horizon is the horizon of symmetrical reciprocity. This horizon will be explored through work by Marcel Mauss, especially The Gift, and Agnes Heller, especially A Philosophy of Morals.