Citizenship, social theory, and social change (original) (raw)

The concept of citizenship -the nature of the citizen status and role, its rights, duties, and powers, and the nature of the community of citizens -is much used but little analyzed in social policy analysis. And, outside of political philosophy, it is surprisingly little used or analyzed in social theory in general. Some of the reasons for the relative neglect may have to do with the assumptions that ground the enterprise of political sociology and that render it, unlike "political economy," merely a department of sociology rather than a general version of social theory. These assumptions tend to hold that political phenomena like states, citizens, and their activities are dependent variables that can be understood and explained by reference to deeper historical and social forces. In the classic tradition of the social theory, social changes in the mode of production (Marx), in the rationalization process (Weber), and in the development of the division of labor (Durkheim) have all been used to explain political phenomena. Sociology's underlying suspicion of eighteenth century "bourgeois" individualism and contractarian political philosophy tends to be carried over against the notion of the citizen that may be assumed to embody them. Thus political sociology tends, when examining the political phenomena of citizen's actions, struggles and movements, to reveal their impotence, dependency, and in any case their ignorance, in respect of the powers of such phenomena as the state's bureaucracy, the ruling groups and elites, dominant and mystifying ideologies, and ultimately socioeconomic forces.