Download - Lecture 21 November 2005 Citizenship between politics, culture & ideology Marianne van den Boomen
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