Lecture 21 November 2005Citizenship between politics, culture & ideology

Marianne van den Boomen

About the course NMNC● Level 3: heavy workload, indeed 20 hours

a week, English● Academic level: references and sources;

analyzing, confronting and criticizing concepts Tip: scholar.google.com, Omega

● Lectures and seminars, active participation, reading (60-70 p.)

● Formats = weekly mini-essays ● Missed something? Compensate with

substantial extra work● Rough grades: Jan. 5th, Jan. 26th

LITERATURE

1. Book Re-reading popular culture

2. Reader: Incomplete! To be copied: 10 p. Fraser, 30 pp Chapter 5 David Trend

3. Online articles:Print or copy (course mailbox KNG 29)

Assignments/requirements

Individual Assignments1. Min. 7 formatted min-essays (21 Nov.-16 Jan.)2. Individual course review (3 Feb.)

Formats: Comparative review of min. 2 articles/chapters Mini-essay, building block final paper Choose from:

1. motto, 2. critique, 3. reference, 4. authors background, 5. hot issue, 6. lecture,7. debate

Group Assignments 3. Presentation citizenship project (12 or 19 Jan.)4. Paper on citizenship project (3 Feb.)

Content of the course

● Colaboration Womens Studies & New Media● Gender is an issue● New media is an issue,

new = changing media● Cultural citizenship

popular culture, mediated culture

What is citizenship about?

● location, nation, state, nation-state● politics, elections

● rules, regulation, law● rights, duties

● culture, ideology ● public infrastructure, state and non-state media● public debate, public sphere● values, norms, habits● traditions

● belonging, community● participation, shared morality● differentiation, assigning subject positions

● inclusion/exclusion● on all the above levels

5 themes in the course

1. Rights: human, civil, political, & social rights

2. Public sphere: public infratstructure, public opinion, public debate, ‘popular culture’

3. Subjection/subjectivation: surveillance and data gathering, discipline, normalization of subject positions

4. Inclusion/exclusion: based on subject positions defined by class, gender, color, sexuality, age, nationality, ability etc.

5. Democracy: political representation; equality and expression of difference; local and global structures

Definition

Citizenship is the sense of belonging to and participating in an abstract social whole, on a mediated level somewhere between politics and

ideology.

Not only nation-state

● Greek city states ● Roman empire● 18th century Republic of Letters ● French revolution (freedom, equality, fraternity) ● European citizenship?● World citizenship?● Netizenship? Cyborg citizenship?

New media characteristics

● digital, computerised (stand alone and connected)● access to a wide range of information● communication at relatively low costs● space & time compression: almost instantanious,

worldwide● do it yourself-culture (DIY): producing information, tools

and environments, creating new public/private spheres● interactivity, connectivity, multimediality, virtuality● distributed intelligence

Top-down & bottum-up

Tension between top-down/bottum-upPolitics = top-down & bottum-up!

Ideology = top-down & bottum-up!Top: not a univocal monolitical unity

Bottum: not a univocal monolitical unity

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

● Political economy of communication (advertising, entertainment, media conglomerats)

● General political-economical tendency to privatization, deregulation, and commodification

● The emergence of a labour force of symbolic analysts, a.k.a. digerati or the virtual class

● The widening gap between the poor and the rich

Barbrook & Cameron

● the rise of a virtual class: ‘cognitive scientists, engineers, computer scientists, video-game developpers, and all other communications specialists’

● laisser faire ideology, promoting an electronic marketplace instead of an electronic agora

● myths of the free market as a determinating force of wealth and democracy

● private ownership of estate and people (slaves) as the fundament of society

Cultural-political contradictions…

Revolution? What kind of?

music.mp3

Barlow’s Declaration of Independence

● declaration of independence from all outside powers

● intended to keep any state intervention out ● recognizing only individual agency● assuming a inherent democratic and

egalitarian domain● declaring no material constraints

Critiques on Barlow

● 60s heritage of utopian visions, as a merger of alternative hippie culture and entrepreneurship

● disembodied Western platonic philosophy (free Mind, not material conditions or restrictions)

● critique on notions of presumed inherency of liberating and democraticizing dynamics of ICT, in short: utopism

Utopian perspective

● no bodily or material constraints● autonomous new social formations● media monopolies broken● free floating minds, free speech● no state regulation needed● clean technologies● everyone sender/receiver● direct democracy (electronic agora)● new liberated citizenship

Dystopian perspective

● erosion of social cohesion by pseudo communities

● cultural decline, trivial entertainment and crime

● state surveillance and discipline everywhere

● consumerism and commodification

● exhausting natural resources

● citizens reduced to consumers

● exclusion, digital and other divides

● state protects private ownership and slavery

● big revolution of ownership relations needed

Left

● non-equality is not natural but social-economically induced

● improving position of the poor● including minorities● citizenship: a matter of rights and public

protection● state regulation and policies● collectivity and public goods above individual

freedom

Right

● non-equality is natural ● stimulating free market or elite power ● law and order● citizenship: a matter of duties ● minimum of state regulation● individual freedom or elite above collectivity

and public goods

Political spectrum from left to right

communist -> marxist -> old left -> new left ->

-> communitarian -> libertarian -> liberal ->

new right/neo-liberal -> old right/conservative

Indications political spectrum

communist: total state planning and control

marxist: struggle between capital and labor

old left: political organisation of working class

new left: inclusion minoritieS, alternative life styles

communitarian: social cohesion in local civil society

libertarian: individual freedom and independence

liberal: free market, no law and order state

new right/neo-liberal: free market, but law and order state needed

old right/conservative: established elite, strong law and order state