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Forthcoming in: In L. Dahlberg and E. Siapera, eds (2007) Radical Democracy and the Internet. London: Palgrave MacMillan
Civic Identity and Net Activism:
the Frame of Radical Democracy
Peter Dahlgren, Lund University
()
While the discourses about the dilemmas or even crises of liberal democracy have become familiar, especially in its emphasis on the decline in civic engagement, we also witness a kind of resurgence of political involvement, but mostly in ways different from traditional party politics. The numbers involved are probably comparatively small (it is difficult to accurately assess the magnitude), yet the manifest energy and intensity manifest are encouraging. Extra-parliamentarian groups and movements, NGO’s, global networks, etc. are manifesting re-engagement in politics, not least in regard to what is often called ‘anti-globalisation’, but more accurately could be termed alter-globalisation, since the critiques are not directed at globalisation pr se, but rather at its neo-liberal character. In fact, those engaged in such oppositional politics are often active at the global level themselves. Much of this engagement not only makes use of the internet and other newer, interactive communication technologies (such as mobile telephony), but are in fact quite dependent on it. Without this technology to facilitate this participation, much alter-globalisation politics it would simply not happen. Yet, the technology, even if we at some level deem it necessary, can never be sufficient. Only a simplistic position of technological determinism would argue that the internet ‘causes’ such engagement. We have to understand such civic engagement in broader socio-cultural terms. Yet, the technology facilitates, helps prepare, and tends to define the conditions and character of the engagement.
In this chapter I will be exploring some of the theoretical parameters around the citizenship and the notion of democratic participation, with alter-globalisation politics and the use of the internet as my empirical referent. My analytic horizon will be that of radical democracy, especially as formulated in the writings of Chantal Mouffe (1992; 1993; 1999; 2000; 2005), as well as the concept of civic cultures that I have been working with in recent years (Dahlgren, 2000; 2002; 2003; 2006). What I hope to show is that the radical democracy perspective, as a strong version of the republican theory of citizenship, opens the door to fruitful analyses of identity in regard to civic engagement and civic agency. The radical democracy perspective, given its theoretic premises, allows us to probe citizenship in terms of cultural theory, opening up citizenship as a category to be interrogated in terms of meaning, practices, and subjectivity. Such a ‘cultural turn’ extends the notion of citizenship by connecting it to the theme of agency, moving it beyond the rather formal boundaries usually set by political science and political theory. Given the central role of the internet in alter-globalisation movements, it offers a handy concrete focus for probing the dynamics of civic identity and agency.
The first section provides an orienting overview on the theme of disengagement and reengagement. From there I explore conceptually the notions of civic agency and identity, and highlight the centrality of the radical democracy framework. Connecting this with the model of civic cultures, I suggest that civic identities encompass two fundamental dimensions. In the second part of the discussion, I turn, more concretely, to the theme of the internet and civic engagement, and follow up specifically on the alter-globalisation movements. I conclude with some reflections on the practices around the net in these movements, and how they interplay reciprocally with civic identities.
Disengagement…and re-engagement
We must first acknowledge that there can be – from the standpoint of citizens themselves – many good reasons for not participating politically, ranging from a sense of personal powerlessness and despair over one’s life circumstances, to a sense of bitterness of having been abandoned or betrayed by political elites. This demoralisation with formal politics is a theme addressed by many today (e.g., Putnam, 2000; Sandel, 1996; Eliasoph, 1998), and it is in part framed as a crisis of citizenship (Blumler & Gurevitch, 1995) that can be linked to a more pervasive cultural malaise (Bellah et. al, 1985). Further, material circumstances and consequent stress must be understood as significant factors for the conditions of civic and political engagement; such a view also evokes a type of argument about the social welfare prerequisites for citizenship. Today, the economic and socio-psychological realities of large segments of the employed population, not just the unemployed, impede their participation as citizens. People find it difficult to manage work life, leisure, and the role of citizen if they do not have secure employment with reasonable wages.
Of course, there are notable exceptions to these trends, as illustrated, for example, in political engagement among U.S. citizens during the presidential campaign of 2004. Election campaigns typically tend to raise the political temperature and to invigorate otherwise semi-dormant political sentiments among citizens. In the U.S., the climate of increased fears about security in the US – both national and individual – as well as pervasive economic uncertainties resulted in heightened political passions and consequent political polarization of the citizenry.
Generally, however, I would argue that the growing structural gaps between organized political life and people’s everyday realities, reinforce a sense of distance from the political system. This growing atmosphere of ‘anti-politics’ must be understood as the consequence of the inability of the political system to meet social expectations and an absence of an alternative and compelling political vision.
A different, cautiously optimistic view can of course be justified if we look at what is happening within what can be called ‘new politics’ (Giddens, 1991, speaks of ‘life politics’). The ostensible political apathy and disaffiliation from the established political system may not necessarily signal a disinterest in politics per se. That is, if we look beyond formal electoral politics, we can see various signs that suggest that many people have not abandoned engagement with the political, but have rather refocused their political attention outside the parliamentary system. For example, many groups are directly targeting large global corporations for their activities in regard to the environment, working conditions, or other issues rather than going via the formal political system (Danaher and Mark, 2003; Amoore, 2005; Eschele and Maiguashca, 2005; Arnowitz and Gautney, 2003) or they are in the process of redefining just what constitutes the political (Bauman, 1999), We also see frames of reference and engagement beyond the borders of the nation-state, as evidenced by, e.g., transnational social movements, such as the alter-globalization movement and diasporic communities..The boundaries between politics, cultural values, identity processes and local self-reliance measures become fluid (Beck, 1998; Bennett, 2003). Politics becomes not only an instrumental activity for achieving concrete goals, but also an expressive activity.
In the Swedish context, Sörbom, (2002), using life course interviews, finds that political commitments at the personal level have in fact grown in the past decades, while commitments to parties and traditional social movements have declined. In an ambitious international comparison, Norris (2002) offers a varied account that is nuanced in regard to electoral politics, and hopeful about new politics. She finds that while participation in elections has declined in many established Western democracies, it has remained fairly stable in others. Moreover, it is clearly on the increase in many of the newer democracies. In regard to the growth of new politics, she suggests that we are seeing the emergence of important new patterns of civic engagement:
… political activism has bee reinvented in recent decades by a diversification in the agencies (the collective organizations structuring political activity, the repertoires (the actions commonly used for political expression, and the targets (the political actors that participants seek to influence). The surge of protest politics, new social movements, and internet activism exemplify these changes. If the opportunities for political expression and mobilization have fragmented and multiplied over the years… democratic engagement may have adapted and evolved in accordance with the new structures of opportunities, rather than simply atrophying. (Norris, 2002:215-216. Italics in original text).
‘New politics’ is typified by personalized rather than collective engagement, and a stronger emphasis on single issues than on overarching visions of a different society. Some analysts claim that part of this development can be understood as a move away from politics based on production to one focused on consumption; political attention is geared more towards the needs of clients, customers and consumers than in the past (Gibbens and Reimer, 1999). Further, political activity within the new politics is more ad hoc, less dependent on traditional organizations and on elites mobilizing their standing cadres of supporters. It is more typified by decentralized networking (Cammaerts and van Audenhove, 2003). Along with social movements, particularly in the areas of alter-globalization, ecology, feminism, peace, and social self-help, we find a large number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that also can mobilize and absorb citizens’ engagement, even across national borders.
Citizenship: agency in radical democracy
In this context of de- and re-engagement, the notion of citizenship becomes very significant. A common and convenient starting point in discussion about citizenship is to say that the concept traditionally builds upon a set of rights and obligations, historically evolved in society, and underscores universalism and equality. In the modern world it has almost always been linked to the nation-state. In this sense, citizenship is treated as a formal, legal framework that underpins democracy. However, the discontinuity between formal inclusion, and the dimensions of civil, political, social, and (more recently) cultural citizenship has actually been an historical driveshaft for a lot of political activity: democracy has witnessed many struggles, as various groups and cultures have made claims for inclusion, recognition, and redistribution. These new demands have made the traditional notion of citizenship problematic (see, for example, Kymlicka,, 1995; Taylor, 1992; Spinner, 1994). Struggles based on identity and difference – for example, in regard to gender, including medical and sexual control over the body (see, for example, Plummer, 2003), sexual preference, ethnicity, diasporas – that demand not just legal or formal status, but political and social recognition, and even economic redistribution.
The demand for recognition, for instance, points to the importance of citizens to develop as autonomous individuals with self-esteem and self-confidence. The relevance of recognition in the context of political struggles has been receiving increased attention within philosophy and social theory. The work of Honneth (see, for example, Honneth, 1995; Fraser and Honneth, 2003) has played an important role here. Authors such as Taylor (1994) address the need for a politics of recognition specifically in the context of cultural difference. Moreover, in the wake of globalization and the growth of transnational actors, communities, and networks, we see the themes of global citizenship, post-national citizenship, and global civil society increasingly appearing in the debates (Held, 1995; Miller, 2000; Delanty, 2000, Isen, 2000; Sassen, 2002, 2003).
To bring some order in the many debates about citizenship, Isin and Turner (2003: 2) identify three axes of contention over citizenship: extent, having to do with rules and norms pertaining to inclusion and exclusion; content, addressing rights and responsibilities; and depth, the ‘thickness’ or ‘thinness’ of citizenship in terms of how the identities of members should be understood and accommodated. Certainly in terms of the history of democracy, the definitions and guarantees of formal citizenship have been major political accomplishments and must be defended. Yet, if the formal, universalist and statist concept of citizenship was a starting point, the newer challenges facing democracies today evoke the need for a complementary view that is differentiated and based on agency (in this rendering, I follow Stewart’s (2001) discussion, even if I take some liberty with his labels to better integrate the perspective into my discussion). In fact, it could be argued that just about all major gains towards a more just and inclusive citizenship have been the result of political struggles – for example, the labour movement, the women’s movement, the civil rights movement.
Thus, we have a second notion of citizenship, that which is based on political agency. Its premise is that democratic universalism and genuine civic equality remain an unfinished project, and it asserts that there are key differences among citizens that must be recognized and politically addressed. Its contentions have to do precisely with the extent, content and depth of citizenship. There remain conditions such as marginalization, powerlessness, and exploitation among certain groups, related to status in regard to, for example, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. This opens the door to a politics of difference, a starting point for political agency; differences as such are not seen as insoluble problems, but rather as a point of departure for civic participation. Political communities that thus arise in the process can be seen as the result of concrete civic practices (Stewart, 2001:208). If the first, state-centred version, can be seen as a received citizenship, the second, agency-based notion can be viewed as an achieved citizenship.
The notion of achieved citizenship, based in agency and difference, resonates clearly with the radical democracy wing of republicanism. The most characteristic element of republicanism, is its insistence on the active participation of citizens in democratic self-governance (Barber, 1984; Petit, 1997; van Gunsteren, 1998). As Tocqueville observed in his study of the U.S. in the 1830’s, involvement in public life is seen not just a duty, but as something offering its own personal rewards. Republicanism asserts that democracy requires civic virtues from its citizens, and cultivating these virtues turns citizens into better people by developing abilities that would otherwise remain unfulfilled. In terms of the three axes of tension around the concept of citizenship (Isin and Turner, 2003: 2), republicanism can be said to reside on strong side of all three: extent (republicanism strive for inclusion) content, (responsibilities and virtues as well as rights are emphasized, and depth (republicanism leans towards ‘thickness’ concerning the identities of citizens).
The radical democratic turn in republicanism is informed by poststructural theory; it combines notions about the contextual nature of identity and subject positions with a view of political struggle as shaped by ever-shifting contingencies. There is no end point for conflict (or for democracy). We-they boundaries are continuously being redrawn as new issues and conflicts arise. It accentuates the centrality of difference and heterogeneity, and the importance of progressive groups building alliances. Even one individual can at a particular point in time encompass several (even contradictory) political positions by virtue of multiple group identities or memberships. The basic strategy is to encourage the development of alliances between groups that share similar, progressive political views. Radical democracy retains a republican quality in its emphasis on agency and in its view of the common good being: it is anchored in a commitment to democratic values and procedures, but also on the importance of difference. Easy? Hardly. Does democracy have any alternative to dealing with such dialectical tensions? Not if it wants to remain true to its ideals. (Key texts here are Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Laclau, 1990, 1993; Mouffe, 1992, 1993, 2000, 2005. For a short overview, see Rasmussen and Brown, 2002; for an extended treatment of Laclau and Mouffe, see Smith, 1998).