Transformation of Citizenship, Volume 3

This volume Struggle, Resistance and Violence examines the fact that all over the world the rights of citizens have come under enormous pressure and addresses the many ways in which people are ‘making claims’ against both autocratic and democratic authority. Without any doubt rule-breaking, riots and violent upheavals have become an aspect of political struggles for citizenship. The book takes up a conflict perspective that directs attention to these recent phenomena. It stresses the necessity of a careful analysis of resistance and violence as critical factors for coming to terms with social conflicts for citizenship from Europe to South America, as well as the Near East, the Far East and the Arab World.

Citizenship is on the decline. Citizenship is on the rise. Which is true? In fact, this is the civic differential that a remarkable collection of essays seeks to illustrate, cutting across unstable borders of peace and war, welfare and dereliction, the rule of law and the states of exception. Once again, they show, insurrection and constitution, agency and status have become inseparable. The issue of rights: conquering them, defending them, defining them, is our collective challenge. (Etienne Balibar, Columbia University)Mackert and Turner proclaim T.H. Marshall’s famous paradigm of civil, political, and social rights is now outdated. Instead of peaceful evolution towards ever-wider sharing of the rights of citizenship, we need to recognize that rights historically grew out of war mobilization and often-violent domestic struggle. Will struggles, violence, and rule-breaking as a tactic for acquiring rights open the way for more peaceful politics at the other end of a new transition? These are the questions raised by the provocative essays of this volume. (Randall Collins, UPenn)While social movements have been at the basis of citizenship rights, the theories and empirical research on the two issues in the social sciences have grown quite apart from each other. This important volume starts filling this gap, by looking at a broad variety of recent movements as struggles for citizens’ rights face to neo-liberal challenges, while reflecting on the relations between resistance, the state and violence. (Donatella Della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence)This is a very timely book for it deals with the wave of challenges to citizenship rights and indeed to social order itself, which have been sweeping across the world. From France, to Turkey, to Colombia - the authors give authoritative and insightful analyses of these challenges. Definitely a book for our times. (Michael Mann, University of California, LA)

Jürgen Mackert is Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Economics and the Social Sciences, and Co-Director of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity at Potsdam University, Germany.Bryan S. Turner is a Professor in the Institute for Religion Politics and Society the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne and the Director of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity at Potsdam University, Germany. He is the Max Planck Research Award Winner of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Max Planck Society 2015. He is Honorary Professor at Potsdam University, Germany.