Towards a New Social Politics: Citizenship and Reflexivity in Late Modernity

There is little agreement about the meaning of citizenship in the rapidly changing social, economic and political conditions of late modernity. This article examines three accounts of citizenship - state-centred, pluralist and post-structuralist - and argues that none offers an entirely convincing understanding of the idea suited to the fragmented conditions of contemporary social politics. Instead, it is important to move away from these accounts and consider citizenship as a reflexive condition of `defensive engagement'. Citizenship becomes a variegated social form concerned with the differential negotiation of social change as social and political actors struggle to create new identities and solidarities across a range of possible settings in an increasingly fractured public sphere. This interpretation has implications for our understanding of social inclusion and exclusion, as the conclusion to this article suggests.