Citizenship in a globalizing world summary PDF

Preview

Summary

B.(Hons.) Eng. II Year Discipline Centered Course –Citizenship in Globalizing WorldSM:1(1-6)LESSON 1THE CLASSICAL CONCEPTIONS OF CITIZENSHIPThe term classical denotes two important senses for our understanding. Pocock (1995) explains this in two important ways. First, the classical is referred to be...

Description

B.A.(Hons.) Eng. II Year Discipline Centered Course – Citizenship in Globalizing World SM:1(1-6) LESSON 1

THE CLASSICAL CONCEPTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP The term classical denotes two important senses for our understanding. Pocock (1995) explains this in two important ways. First, the classical is referred to be expressed ‘as an ideal in durable and canonical form though in practice the authority is always conveyed in more ways than by its simple preservation in that form. Second, it is referred to in terms of classical times, which we always refer to the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, in particular to Athens in the fifth century and fourth century B.Cs. and to Rome from the third century B.C. to first A. D.’ The classical ideal of citizenship as a fundamental value is also reflected in our thinking in the contemporary period. suggests that the concept of citizenship is related to the citizen’s obligation toward dispensing of

Before the advent of the early modern state the conception of citizenship was attached to the legal and civil rights of the individual. The early stages of modern period the development of the concept took place in the writings of Pufendorf and Hobbes. Our concern in this chapter is related to classical conceptions of citizenship. Usually the classical ideals of human history inherit from two great traditions. This is a form of human association allegedly unique to these people which latter on transmitted to Europe and the West. The notion of the good is coined with the idea of citizenship to rule and to be ruled. his capacity to rule and it follows that the rule over one’s equals is possible only where one’s

The important thing in this chapter we want to consider is that how far the ideas on citizenship have developed in both the periods of history. Secondly, whether there is a common conception of citizenship attached to both the periods of history or there are separate ideas cropped up in two traditions of history? In doing this our discussions shall focus on the Greek conception of citizenship, the Roman conception of citizenship, the commonalities and the differences between the two traditions. 1

The Greek conception of Citizenship Sparta Approximately about 700 B.C; a cluster of four villages in the south of the Peloponnese Peninsula formed the Polis, the city state of Sparta. It was a fertile plan of Laconia, or Lacedaemon. Hence there inhabitants are referred to alternatively as Spartans or Lacedaemonians. Sparta might, indeed, appear a strange originator of the idea of citizenship, which we today essentially associate with the notion and the practice of liberal rights to extended political discussions. After all, from a modern perspective, the accepted image of Sparta is most unprepossessing. Yet to start the reader on the historical journey of citizenship in Sparta is not an eccentric whim or paradox. We must keep in mind three considerations. One, is that we have little knowledge of any earlier form which we can trace a continuous narrative o f principle and practice of citizenship. Second, by no means all political thinkers and commentators from ancient Greece down to the present have harboured darkly negative feelings about the Spartan system. And third, history as evolution is, of course, just that a process of change and adaptation from the starting-point. So, then, what happened in Sparta that brought about the farming up for a cadre of its inhabitants of a status we can genuinely recognize as and justifiably call citizenship? From their four villages the Spartans gradually expanded, annexing their neighbours’ lands to the east. To the west, in the opposite direction stand Taygetus Mountains. In the late eighth century B.C. the Spartans ventured across these heights and in a fiercely contested conflict worsted the inhabitants of that region, the Messenians, conquered their land and subjugated them to a condition akin to slavery. They became helots, a form of subjection which was then transmitted through out all the Spartans’ territories and became consolidated as the defining socio-economic basis of their life. However, the Messenians did not respond meekly to their loss of freedom. A military elite of select Spartans was accordingly necessary to impose stable control. It was this elite, called Spartiates, who had the identifiable status of citizens. The emergence of this citizenly class in these circumstances poses two important questions: How did their status originate? What criteria were established that distinguished them as citizens? The Facets of Spartan Citizenship

, which may be regarded as ‘equals or peers’. Since

The prolific Greek writer Xenophon explained in 400 B.C. that Lycurgus gave an equal share in the state to all law abiding citizens without regard for physical or financial deficiencies. The peers were unlikely to have been equal in wealth, though several commentaries suggest that they were. What the Lycurgus reforms probably did enact was a redistribution of parcels of 2

public lands (kleroi) to the Spartiates so that each has at least a minimum flow of income from agricultural produce. Ownership of a Kleros was therefore the second feature of the Spartan status (Heater, 2001, P-8). However, the citizens did not firm their lands themselves: this was the task of helots who under the threat of capital punishment for noncompliance were required to handover the produce they garnered from the land they worked. Indeed citizenship and manual work, even the pursuit of craft were generally speaking reckoned mutually incompatible. Thus, the Spartan citizenry were economically dependent on slave labour; the whole Lycurgen concept of citizenship was founded on this system. What, then, did the Spartiates in fact do? They govern and defend the state. For military service they go through rigorous training. At seven years of age each boy was allotted to a group of companies with whom he lived and trained until he was twenty. The curriculum was assigned to develop feats of endurance to the limits of human physique and will power. This objective was attained by fierce discipline. During their twenties the young men were quasi-citizens, with military duties but without civic rights and responsibilities. Some of these young men, serving under the adult chief trainer, are placed in charge of the boys for the purpose of leading them and instilling the demanded attitudes and behaviour. When the young man was ready to be incorporated into the body of citizens, he had to be elected to a mess and be able to pay his mess dues, which he could meet from his Kleros. Both election and payment of dues were crucial for becoming and remaining a citizen. Problems with Spartan Citizenship Three great historians gave us the details about the declining figure of the Spartan citizenship. They are Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. Gradually, in Sparta, there was growing inequality between the rich and the poor which led to the social imbalance. It affected the prime objective of stability for citizenship. The poorer people could not be able to pay their mess fee and consequently they were debarred from the status of citizenship. Therefore, foreign families were recruited to citizenship and Spartan families were ceased to hold the status of citizenship. Firstly, the Lycurgen precepts of Spartite caste excellence were relaxed. Non-Spartans were recruited; and there is even evidence of cowardice being exonerated to prevent derogation. This was not the only problem related to the dilution of citizenship. Secondly, intrinsic faults were also attached to the system. The rank of citizen was a highly privileged position, based upon and sustained by the exploitation of the helot underclass. The stress on military training and service as the primary distinctive feature of citizenship was a distortion of what the civic status would entail: Lycurgen citizenship was a lop-sided interpretation of the concept. Athens One of the most useful sources for the history and working of Athenian citizenship is a study, ‘The Athenian Constitution’, which was probably written by one of Aristotle’s students under his supervision (Heater, 2004). This text tells us that Solon gave citizens easier access to the law than hitherto and classified them in the following manner: He divided the citizens into four classes by as assessment of wealth, as they had been divided before: the five hundred bushel 3

class, the cavalry, the rankers and the labourers. He distributed among the five hundred bushel class and the cavalry and the rankers the major offices….., assigning offices to the members of each class according to the level of their assessment. To those registered in the labourers’ class only membership of the assembly and jury- courts (Aristotle, 1984). Three top classes by wealth – reckoned in dry and liquid measurements of produce – were relatively privileged. Nevertheless, membership of the Assembly and jury- courts – the sole privilege of the lowest class – were still very real citizenship rights. The description of these classes is rounded off with a nice little touch: because members of the lowest group were ineligible for public office, ‘even today, when a candidate for allotment to any office is asked which class he belongs to, no one will reply that he belongs to the labourers class (Aristotle, 19894). Despite the resultant social mobility of Solon’s reforms which allowed the poor, by acquisition of wealth, to rise in the hierarchy of citizen classes, and despite the collapse of these regulations through later democratic changes, the stigma of Solon’s division of the citizenry persisted. Further reforms were forthcoming at the end of the sixth century, devised by Cleisthenese. His measures are usually taken as the inauguration of the Athenian democratic age, that is, 508-332. His reforms were based on a rather complicated clustering of citizens into various groupings, cutting across the ancient clan allegiances and Solon’s four classes. The process involved both the territory and the population. The citizen body, formerly divided into four tribes, were now recognized into ten tribes, in the words of the Athenian constitution, to mix them up so that men should have a share in the running of the state (Ibid.). At the same time two other constitutional changes by Cleisthenese should be noted. One was the matching of the membership of the council to the new structure of tribes. The second constitutional innovation was the introduction of the power of ostracism, which was used in the fifth century. Each year the Assembly could censure one man, e.g. a politician of whose policy they disapproved. Ostracism was a relatively mild form of punishment – it did not involve loss of citizenship: just ten years’ exile. In the middle of the fifth century some other changes were introduced to strengthen the powers of the Assembly. Also of importance was the introduction by Pericles of payments of attendance at the jury-courts, so that the poor would be able exercise this citizenly right. However, he reduced the number of citizens by a law requiring that the status be restricted to legitimate sons of Athenian mothers as well as fathers. There was not a little irony in this law. Stoics: Theory and Practice Zeno, coming from the city of Citium, the south coast of Syprus, had settled in Athens, gave a new theory all round philosophy. Many students were attracted by him toward a new allembracing philosophy, known as, stoicism – a long lived school of philosophy. However, the development of stoicism took place in three waves. It is calculated roughly as 300 B.C, 100 B.C. and 100 A.D. Stoicism as an all round philosophy embraced all spheres of knowledge and enquiry. Two things are important for our purpose. One is the stern requirements of dedication to the state and of duty to undertake public service: civic virtue of higher order. The other is the belief that one should be a world citizen by living in accordance with a universal moral code of good conduct, 4

Stoicism un this can be interpreted as a philosophy or a stream of thought in which individual is considered as a virtuous political being must be loyal, and feels a deep loyalty to both his state and universal natural law. For he is a member of both polis, the city - the legally, constitutionally existent state, and the cosmopolis - the world city, a metaphorical, notional universal moral community. But can both the views reconcilable? Can the duality possible? Now we shall briefly outline these stoic ideas namely, duty to the state, commitment to universal moral law, and the problem of their reconciliation. These complex issues can be better explained with special reference to Roman writers, such as, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. First of all is the civic duty. Zeno’s stoa (English translation as stoically and stoicism) indicates an uncomplaining commitment to fulfilling one’s duties, responsibilities and obligations. The stoic philosophy indeed laid stress on the age old feature of citizenship in a manner reminiscent of the Spartan interpretation of arête. It is practically possible that all citizens can be relied upon to display such demanding personal qualities? Perhaps only an elite can achieve this excellence? Stoicism has hinted at this by teaching that the right mode of life is attainable only through the acquisition of wisdom which in turn is obtained by the exercise of man’s rational faculty. Cecero reflects this selective view of civic duty. By his time the ancient republican virtues, personified by the story of Cincinatus were in sad worrying decline. The civic standards of upper classes, who had always set an example where decaying. Cicero adjured them to mend their ways. He advocated that men who led private lives are traitors of social life (quoted in Heater, 2004). He wrote an essay entitled ‘On Duties’ giving a message to upper classes higher ranking Roman citizen, and one who deserves to hold the reins of the government… well give himself so to the service of the public, as to aim at no riches or power for himself, and will so take care of the whole community, as not to pass over any part of it..... (and will rather part with life itself, than do anything that is contrary to the virtues I have maintained (Heater, 2004:40). The second conception is the issue of world citizenship. It projects homogeneity of human kind that all human beings have the capacity to recognize the superficiality of cultural and ethnic differences. Such a notion cut clear across the Greek belief that the world had composed of the cultural people who spoke Greek and those who did not, who babbled – the barbarians. Even so, the two interpretations of humanity – homogeneity and bifurcation – did mange to coexist in Greek thought. The Stoics stressed the homogeneity of all men capable of reasoning. The Greek word which is often translated as citizen of the world of the world’ is cosmopolites, but it is more accurately rendered as citizen of the cosmos or universe. All life forms, including the Gods, not just humans were encapsulated in that term. It is necessary to note this because the Stoics like Marcus Aurelius, who passionately believe themselves to be citizens of the world, would have found it inconceivable to propound the need for a world state, of which they would be citizens. Exponents of the idea of world citizenship used the word to express themselves because it was the obvious one to hand not because they imagined it to be taken literally. 5

The belief in world citizenship challenges the view that the state has the monopoly of what is right, challenges Aristotle’s assertion that man can achieve social and moral excellence only by membership in a polis. Cosmopolitanism asserts that there is another higher criterion. At the turn of the second millennium A.D. the validity of this thought came to be reemphasized. Marcus Aurelius grasped this truth and logically paved that a cosmopolis, a city of the universe exists as one of the stoic principles, and asserted the unremitting duty of the good man to obey its code of conduct by another of its principles. He explains in his ‘Meditations’ as following: If the intellectual capacity is commonly to all, common too is the reason which makes us rational creatures. If so, the reason is common which tells us to do or not to do. If so, law is common. If so, we are citizens. If so, we are fellow members of an organized community. If so, the universe is as it were a state—for of what other single polity can the whole race of mankind be said to be fellow-members? And from it, this common state, we get the intellectual, the rational, and the legal instinct, or whence do we get them? Whenever a man lives, he lives as a citizen of the world-city (Hater, 2004:41). Marcus Aurelius believed that as a citizen he belonged to Rome, as a Man, to the universe. But was it, could it be, as simple as that? Were not the two personalities and loyalties bound to conflict? If so, then surely stoic political thinking contained a fundamental internal contradiction. Seneca was responding to this problem. He argued that there are two commonwealthsthe one, a vast and truly common state, which embraces alike Gods and men…. The other, the one to which we have been assigned by accident of birth. Men owe duties to both; however, ‘some yield service to both commonwealth at the same time – to the greater and the lesser – some only to the lesser, some only to the greater.’ Although, individuals may choose a priority, there is no serious contradiction. The reason for this judgement is that service to the cosmopolis is of a contemplative, self-educative kind. This greater commonwealth, he wrote, we are able to serve even in leisure – nay, I am inclined to think, even better in leisure – so that we may inquire what virtue is (Ibid.). The Greek conception of Citizenship, we shall now theoretically evaluate for our purpose. The III rd Book of Politics written by In this Book he categorically discusses the types of regimes and their distinctions as well as their relative claims to political justice. . It is, however, obscure as to what makes a person to be qualified as a citizen. Generally speaking a citizen was defined as ‘one who shares in decision juries (Charles Lord, 1987).’Ultimately citizenship was understood in relationship with regime. It

Aristotle goes further after making relationship between citizenship to the relationship between the good citizen and the good man. On this basis of function, Aristotle suggests that a good citizen needs to preserve the political partnership; but since it is the regime that holds this partnership, the virtue of the citizen is necessarily linked to the regime. The city is made up of 6

difference based on their profession, thus the virtue of all citizens is not the same. It is therefore a question is arising as to whether the virtue of a citizen coincides with the virtue of a man who is good without qualification? The good citizen is one who is at the same time a ruler, for only the ruler possesses the prudence that is necessary for virtue in the full sense. According to Aristotle the subject of polity contains the constitutions of forms of government. What is the essence and attributes of each of them? What is the nature of the polis? They are three things. Firstly, the nature of polis or state is a disputed question. The dispute is whether the state acts or governments acts – the governing oligarchy or tyrant. Secondly, the activity of the statesman and the law giver is concerned with the state. It is, thus, at first hand understanding of state makes it easy for understanding for functions of it. Finally, a polity or constitution is a scheme established (in order to regulate the distribution of political power) among the inhabitants of polis. State is understood as an organic compound. It is a whole thing constituted by its parts. The nature of citizenship like that of state is also not free from disputes. This dispute relates to the definition of citizenship. The man who is a citizen in a democracy is often not one in an oligarchy. A citizen proper is not by virtue of residence in a given place: resident aliens and slaves share a common place ...