Acts of Citizenship

This book introduces the concept of 'act of citizenship' and in doing so, re-orients the study of what it means to be a citizen. Isin and Nielsen show that an 'act of citizenship' is the event through which subjects constitute themselves as citizens. They claim that such an act involves both responsibility and answerability, but is ultimately irreducible to either.
This study of citizenship is truly interdisciplinary, drawing not only on new developments in politics, sociology, geography and anthropology, but also on psychoanalysis, philosophy and history. Ranging from Antigone and Socrates in the ancient world to checkpoints, euthanasia and flash mobs in the modern one, the 'acts' and chapters here build up a dynamic and wide-ranging picture. Acts of Citizenship provides important new insights for all those concerned with the relationship between individuals, groups and polities.

Engin F. Isin is Chair and Professor of Citizenship in Politics and International Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Open University. He is also director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities, Governance at the Faculty of Social Sciences.His books include Cities Without Citizens (1992) and Being Political (2002).
Greg M. Nielsen is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Broadcasting Studies at Concordia University in Montreal.

Preface
Introduction: Acts of Citizenship - Engin F. Isin & Greg M. Nielsen
Part I: Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics
1. Theorizing Acts of Citizenship - Engin F. Isin
2. Can an Act of Citizenship be Creative? - Melanie White
3: What Levinas Can and Cannot Teach Us about Mediating Acts of Citizenship - Bettina Bergo
Acts I: Heroic Intrusions and the Body of Law
Act 1. Abraham's Sacrifice - Charles Wells
Act 2: Antigone's Offering - Charles Wells
Act 3: Socrates's Death - Bora Ali Isyar
Act 4: Euthanasia - Bora Ali Isyar
Act 5: Pat Tillman: soldier-citizen-hero? - Darryl Burgwin
Part II: Citizens, Strangers, Aliens, Outcasts
4. Citizenship without Acts? With Tocqueville in America - Brian C. J. Singer
5. Acts of Piety: The Political and the Religious or a Tale of Two Cities - Bryan S. Turner
6. Arendt's Citizenship and Citizen Participation in Disappearing Dublin - Kieran Bonner
7. No One Is Illegal Between City and Nation - Peter Nyers
8. Acts of Demonstration: Mapping the Territory of (Non-) Citizenship - William Walters
Acts II: Exclusions without names
Act 6. Promising to Become European - Erkan Ercel
Act 7: Checkpoint Gazes - Irus Braverman
Act 8: The Romani - Ebru Üstündag
Act 9: Return to Guatemala - Karine Côté-Boucher
Act 10: Unintentional Acts of Citizenship (The Joke) - Ian Morrison
Part III: Sites and Scales of Answerability
9. Citizenship, Art and the Voices of the City: Wodiczko's The Homeless Projection - Fred Evans
10. Acts of Chinese Citizenship: The Tank Man and Democracy-to-Come - Yon Hsu
11. Answerability with Cosmopolitan Intent: An Ethics Based Politics for Acts of Urban Citizenship - Greg M. Nielsen
Acts III: Rituals and Performance
Act 11. Acts of Commemoration - Ian Morrison
Act 12. Non-Citizens' Politics - John Saunders
Act 13: Flash mobs - John Saunders
Act 14: Spike Lee's 25th Hour - Erkan Ercel