12041 Citizenship: A Comparative Perspective 1

Credits: 3 graduate credits in Democracy Studies / Society and Politics or Communication and Culture or Government and Public Policy or History, Education and Citizenship

Prerequisites: Democracy: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Israeli Democracy: Selected Issues, Contemporary Democratic Theories; one of the following: Democracy and Democratization, Selected Problems in the History of Western Democracies, Liberalism: Texts, Contexts, Critiques, Education Policy: Education for Democracy in Democratic Societies; and exemption from bibliographic assignments on computer searches in the “Alef” catalog and databases.

Citizenship is a socio-political institution located at the center of the modern social order, and defines the relationship between the individual and the state. In recent years, citizenship has become subject to an extensive theoretical debate, in which citizenship is also viewed as an important tool for the understanding of power relations. This debate thus extends our understanding of citizenship beyond its institutional and legal meanings.

The course has three parts: Part One deals with the political history of the concept of citizenship, the meaning and role of citizenship in the liberal-democratic context, and critiques of the theoretical debate. This part of the course is based on The Citizenship Debates: A Reader, edited by G. Shafir (University of Minnesota Press, 1998). Part Two examines the politics of citizenship in Israel: contemporary debates on the question of citizenship and social relations in Israel, based on an anthology of the major papers dealing with citizenship in Israel. Part Three provides a wide comparative view of the development of the institution of citizenship and of the theory of citizenship in Israel and the world. Through a collection of up-to-date articles, the course reexamines the status of citizenship as an organizational framework for discourse on politics and sovereignty in an era of globalization.


1Students who took Citizenship: Theory and Politics (10903) as part of their undergraduate studies may not take this course.

Students may write a seminar paper in this course, although it is not required.