Being observant and observed: embodied citizenship training in the Home Guard and the Boy Scout Movement, 1907-1945

Building upon recent studies by geographers and social scientists on the everyday practices of (scientific) observation, this paper focuses on the role of two distinct, yet similar organisations that held observation as an essential and 'automatic' embodied skill. Utilising the examples of Home Guard camouflage and the Boy Scout Movement, the paper critically examines how these organisations sought to articulate the individual as both observer and observed, thereby exposing a much more complex entanglement of different visual positions and practices hitherto neglected in studies of observation. Moreover, the paper emphasises the importance of the act of 'not-being-seen' as a complementary and fundamental aspect of (non-)observational practice, accentuated and promoted by civic institutions in terms of duty and responsibility. Finally, the paper considers the evolutionary aspects of observation through the lifecourse, revealing a complex, relational geography of expertise, experience and skill that crossed age-distinctions. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Teaching (about) Britishness? An investigation into trainee teachers' understanding of Britishness in relation to citizenship and the discourse of civic nationalism

This research was prompted by the developing political discourse proposing the teaching of Britishness and British values in the context of the United Kingdom. This discourse will be reviewed in the first part of the article, in the context of previous work which has sought to assess how Britishness and related concepts might be promoted through education. The second part will be based on questionnaire responses from a sample of students following post-graduate initial teacher training programmes in a number of higher education partnerships. It indicates that, while political discourse and educational policy have sensitised trainee teachers to the agenda, there remains a deep uncertainty and misgiving about this as an educational objective.

Staffing, status and subject knowledge: what does the construction of citizenship as a new curriculum subject in England tell us about the nature of school subjects?

Almost a decade ago, the new subject of citizenship was created in the English National Curriculum and several universities were funded to train teachers in this new subject. This presented a rare challenge, namely how to train people to teach a subject that did not exist in schools, and in which they were unlikely to have a specialist degree. In this article we have taken the opportunity afforded by the
tenth birthday of the report in which Crick recommended this curriculum reform to reflect on that experience from the perspective of teacher educators. Through reflecting on the case study of citizenship education in England we highlight several themes that are of more general interest to teacher educators. The key issues that have emerged in this case study relate to the general problems of translating central policy into classroom practice; the nature and aims of subjects in the curriculum; and the identities of teachers in secondary schools. The article illustrates how teacher educators responded to the formidable challenge of creating (or at least contributing to) a new subject and a subject community.

Citizenship and Structured Dependency: the implications of policy design for senior political power

This paper argues that the structured dependency thesis must be extended to incorporate political power. It outlines a political framework of analysis with which to identify who gains and who loses from social policy. I argue that public policy for older people is a product not only of social structures but also of political decision-making. The Schneider and Ingram (1993) ‘ target populations’ model is used to investigate how the social construction of groups as dependent equates with lower levels of influence on policy making. In United Kingdom and European research, older people are identified as politically quiescent, but conversely in the United States seniors are viewed as one of the most influential and cohesive interest groups in the political culture. Why are American seniors perceived as politically powerful, while older people in Europe are viewed as dependent and politically weak? This paper applies the ‘target populations’ model to senior policy in the Republic of Ireland to investigate how theoretical work in the United States may be used to identify the significance of senior power in policy development. I conclude that research must recognise the connections between power, politics and social constructions to investigate how state policies can influence the likelihood that seniors will resist structured dependency using political means.

Borders, Asylum and Global Non-Citizenship: The Other Side of the Fence

The experience of border crossing for refugees and irregular migrants challenges global border and migration controls in multiple contexts. Using qualitative field research in Tanzania, Spain, Morocco and Australia, Heather Johnson asks how a global regime of migration management and control can be perceived through the dynamics of particular border spaces: refugee camps, border zones and detention centres. She explores how irregular migrants are impacted by the increasingly security-oriented practices of border control, and how they confront these practices. Johnson rejects the characterization of border spaces as exceptional, abject and exclusionary, arguing instead for an understanding of politics as everyday contestation that reveals a radical political agency, re-imagining the global non-citizen as a transgressive and powerful figure. Building on recent scholarship that rethinks irregularity and non-citizenship, her conclusions have broad implications for how we understand irregular migration from a position of dialogue and solidarity.

''We are an island”: Geographical Imagery in Accounts of Citizenship, Civil Society, and National Identity in Scotland and in England

In this article we question recent psychological approaches that equate the constructs of citizenship and social identity and which overlook the capacity for units of governance to be represented in terms of place rather than in terms of people. Analysis of interviews conducted in England and Scotland explores how respondents invoked images of Britain as “an island” to avoid social identity constructions of nationality, citizenship, or civil society. Respondents in Scotland used island imagery to distinguish their political commitment to British citizenship from questions relating to their subjective identity. Respondents in England used island imagery to distinguish the United Kingdom as a distinctive political entity whilst avoiding allusions to a common or distinctive identity or character on the part of the citizenry. People who had moved from England to Scotland used island imagery to manage the delicate task of negotiating rights to social inclusion in Scottish civil society whilst displaying recognition of the indigenous population’s claims to distinctive national culture and identity.

Citizenship and (Un)Sustainability: A Green Republican Perspective

This chapter explores some of the connections (causal and other) between the decline in active citizenship, the displacement of citizenship by consumer identities and interests, and the shift to a transactional mode of democratic politics and how and in what ways these are connected with “actually existing unsustainability.” It proposes an account of “green republican citizenship” as an appropriate theory and practice of establishing a link between the practices of democracy and the processes of democratization in the transition from unsustainability. The chapter begins from the (not uncontroversial) position that debt-based consumer capitalism (and especially its more recent neoliberal incarnation) is incompatible with a version of democratic politics and associated norms and practices of green citizenship required for a transition from unsustainable development. It outlines an explicitly “green republican” conception of citizenship as an appropriate way to integrate democratic citizenship and creation of a more sustainable political and socio-ecological order.

England's Citizenship Education Experiment - Active Citizenship or Service?

This chapter explores the history of active citizenship education in English schools in relation to the more established tradition of service learning in the US.

Citizenship and Collective Identity in Europe

No abstract available

Environmental Inequalities and Democratic Citizenship: Linking Normative Theory with Empirical Research

The aim of this paper is to link empirical findings concerning environmental inequalities with different normative yard-sticks for assessing whether these inequalities should be deemed unjust, or not. We argue that such an inquiry must necessarily take into account some caveats regarding both empirical research and normative theory. We suggest that empirical results must be contextualised by establishing geographies of risk. As a normative yard-stick we propose a moderately demanding social-egalitarian account of justice and democratic citizenship, which we take to be best suited to identify unjust as well as legitimate instances of socio-environmental inequality.

Economic Citizenship and Workplace Conflict in Anglo-American Industrial Relations Systems

This article argues that the expansion of individual employment rights is presenting a series of challenges to the collective model of economic citizenship that prevailed in most of the Anglo-American world during the last century. We examine developments in the management of workplace conflict in Anglo-American countries to highlight the institutional manoeuvrings that have been taking place to mould the nature of national regimes of employment rights. We argue that Governments almost everywhere are actively seeking to create institutional regimes that weaken the impact of employment legislation and we find that statutory dispute resolution agencies are eagerly trying to develop organizational identities that are aligned with rights-based employment disputes.