‘Everybody's entitled to their own opinion’: ideological dilemmas of liberal individualism and active citizenship

Abstract

Conversational interview accounts were used to explore everyday understandings of political participation on the part of young white adults in England. Analysis focussed on dilemmatic tensions within respondents' accounts between values of active citizenship and norms of liberal individualism. Respondents could represent community membership as engendering rights to political participation, whilst also arguing that identification with local or national community militates against the formulation of genuine personal attitudes and rational political judgement. Respondents could represent political participation as a civic responsibility, whilst also casting political campaigning as an illegitimate attempt to impose personal opinions on to others. Formal citizenship education did not appear to promote norms of political engagement but rather lent substance to the argument that political decision-making should be based on the rational application of technical knowledge rather than on public opinion or moral principle. In conclusion we question whether everyday understandings of responsible citizenship necessarily entail injunctions to political action.

Knowledge, autonomy and maturity: developmental and educational concerns as rhetorical resources in adolescents' discussions regarding the age of electoral majority in England

“…These findings suggest that the commonsense assumptions found amongst a sample of 18-24 year olds by Condor and Gibson (2007) also represent the taken-forgranted background against which this younger sample discussed the age of electoral majority. Ultimately, participants in both studies treated political participation as requiring rational and responsible involvement, with the corollary that it would be more responsible for anyone incapable of meeting these requirements not to participate.…”

“…The observation that these young people frequently treated knowledge as a prerequisite for suffrage follows Condor and Gibson's (2007) finding that their sample of 18-24 year old young adults could often treat formal political knowledge as a criterion for political participation, and that this led to an image of a population composed of members who are differentially qualified for political participation. In the present study, the possibility of formally assessing political knowledge could be raised as a solution to the problem of variation in levels of political knowledge amongst 16 year olds.…”

“…As noted, such arguments create an impression of a differentially politically qualified populous, who might therefore be differentially entitled to political rights (Condor and Gibson 2007).…”

“…Although the citizenship curriculum is not overly prescriptive -schools can, for example, teach citizenship in separate classes or integrate it into other subjects -the aims of Citizenship Education, as laid out in the Crick Report, have been to increase levels of social and moral responsibility, community involvement and political literacy (Advisory Group on Citizenship 1998). As Condor and Gibson (2007) noted, the Crick Report was introduced as a direct attempt to effect a 'change in the political culture of this country both nationally and locally' (Advisory Group on people's own constructions of the objects of political and scholarly concern. It is the aim of the present study to undertake such an analysis, and it does so by adopting an approach informed by rhetorical psychology.…”

Citizenship education: social science teachers' views in three European countries

“…Knowledge does not need to have the narrow depiction of a collection of facts, and can be acquired in diff erent ways, including actively (for a discussion of defi nitions and measurements of political knowledge in education (see in more detail Emler & Frazer, 1999). Knowledge transmission is often associated with 'formal citizenship education', which is also seen as rational and technocratic (value-neutral) as opposed to promoting norms of political engagement on a moral basis (Condor & Gibson, 2007). Formal citizenship education did not appear to promote norms of political engagement but rather lent substance to the argument that political decision-making should be based on the rational application of technical knowledge instead of on public opinion or moral principle.…”