ABSTRACT
Plurality seems to have frozen into hard groups, whose chilly relations are reinforced through repetitive social construction. Temporary conflicts seem to have become permanent enmities. Group membership has become a primary reality—take that away, and deprive people of the world they live in and make sense of. Group life itself may involve relations in which some are permanently powerless and intimidated. Their position verges on slavery, which may be defined as a situation of long-term powerlessness. The community of fate that forms the given substance of citizenship is further defined by the way in which aspiring citizens are included. Citizenship is a position, an office within a hierarchy, which gives individuals an equal voice that is heeded and effective even in the presence of structures of inequality. The preferred state of affairs from the neorepublican point of view is that members of "deep" groups participate as citizens.
