Beyond Citizenship: A New Geography and Ontology of Belonging
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Manisha Desai
University of Connecticut, USA
Since the 1990s, feminists and other theorists of citizenship have moved beyond the critique of liberal citizenship to articulating a new kind of citizenship, variously described as transnational, cosmopolitan, or post-national citizenship. This post-national, post-liberal citizenship focuses on the practice of citizenship in civil society. Yet, the geography in these formulations is still constrained by the nation and the various scales are often seen as bounded spaces. And the individual versus collective rights are often seen in opposition to each other.
To address these limitations, I turn to native American, Indian, and Southern African articulations to propose a new geography and ontology of belonging. The fluid and interconnected understanding of space in Navajo and Hawaiian native cultures and the relational ontology of belonging in Ubuntu (human kindness) and Sarva Vishwa Kutumbh (the whole world is a family), I argue, can be the basis not only of a new form of belonging beyond citizenship, but also of radical democracy in a globalizing world.
Manisha Desai is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women, Gender and Sexuality studies at University of Connecticut, USA. Her research is at the intersection of feminism, gender and globalization, and transnational social movements. She employs a critical, feminist lens that seeks to decolonize knowledge and contribute to social justice even as it problematizes those efforts. She has just completed a book manuscript on subaltern struggles in India, based on nine months of field research funded by Fulbright Hays.
Significant publications include the book, Gender and the Politics of Possibilities: Rethinking Globalization and co-edited books, Gender, Family, and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia and Women’s Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles to Transnational Politics. She is the recipient of the Sociologists for women in society's 2015 Distinguished Feminist Lecturer Award.
Organised by UiB's Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK) and Gender and Development (GAD).
