Framing the Good Citizen

Abstract

This article interrogates the norms of good citizenship invoked in and across different social domains, using the example of citizenship education in the UK as one field in which good citizenship is constituted. It is possible to make visible the political struggle inherent in the mechanisms of framing the good citizen by unpacking the differences between citizenship as acts, status and virtues. This is a necessary step in assessing good citizenship claims in the absence of moral and political absolutes. We deploy a two-tiered account of Butler's theory of performativity to examine how ordinary citizenship acts are preceded by elite rhetorical framing. We conclude that citizenship, like democracy, is always enacted in particular contexts in which positioning, method and motives play an important part. IntroductionOur aim in this article is to contribute to the important task of bringing to the debate on good citizenship greater theoretical depth and empirical richness. We interrogate the norms of good citizenship invoked in different social domains and extend our analysis across as well as within particular domains, using the example of citizenship education in the UK to illustrate our argument. At the centre of our efforts is the specification of a framework for analysing invocations of the good citizen. The aim of this style of analysis is to reveal or unmask the making of conceptions of the good citizen and good citizenship. The good citizen is a figure who is 'framed', or set up, by political and academic observers alike; framed in the sense of viewed from a certain perspective, and in the different sense of set up for a particular purpose (to contribute to a sustainable society or cohesive community, for example). Indeed, the frames constitute ideas of the good citizen and the desired practices that flow from that: there is no single normative ideal outside frames. By deploying an interpretative methodology, it is our intention to make visible the political struggle inherent in the practices and mechanisms of framing the good citizen, and to speculate on the possibility of assessing such claims in the absence of moral and political absolutes.We argue that a focus on good citizenship means a focus primarily on acts of citizenship, showing how key actors performatively construct both the content (approaches) and products (domains) of good citizenship, indicating a constitutive relationship between 'elite' representations and 'ordinary' performative acts of citizenship and their specific contexts. As we will go on to elaborate, the invocation of the good citizen is twofold: the frame itself is produced through elite actions (the constitution of a domain and an approach) and in turn provides the repertoires of possible acts and social roles that are deemed to be 'good', as performed by ordinary would-be citizens themselves. Analysts therefore need to embrace the inevitable plurality of conceptions of the good citizen, and would benefit from a specific set of linked concepts that can genuinely help us to map and ...

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