Oecumene: Citizenship After Orientalism

This project, led by Prof Engin Isin, is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant (Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour ERC-AG-SH2). The project focuses on the interaction between two controversial and contested concepts: citizenship - the process by which belonging is recognised and enacted - and orientalism - the assertion of the superiority of western culture over its eastern counterparts.

The First Symposium: Citizenship after Orientalism

6-11 February 2012

The Oecumene project is holding its first six-day Symposium 'Citizenship after Orientalism' that includes the Conference 'Opening the Boundaries of Citizenship', an International PhD School 'Tracing Colonialism and Orientalism in Social and Political Thought', and a series of workshops addressing specific topics on critical new ways of conceptualising citizenship.

Keynote speakers

Bryan Turner (CUNY) - 'City, Nation, Globe: Three Movements in the History of Citizenship'
Paul Gilroy (LSE) - 'Subjects in the kettle: Notes on citizenship, dissent, and securitocracy'
Judith Butler (University of California) - 'Self-Determination, Palestinian Statehood, and the Anarchist Impasse'
Engin Isin (The Open University), Inaugural Lecture -  'Citizens Without Frontiers?'

About the project

As regards citizenship, what it means to be a citizen, who can act as a citizen, what obligations derive from citizenship are at the forefront of much political discourse as the nation-state dissolves into regional identities, integrates - or fails to integrate - new social groups, and is transformed by supra-national entities. The question of citizenship lies at the heart of the legitimacy of rule and political subjectivity. What connects citizenship to orientalism is that when we investigate the origins of ideas about (European) citizenship we discover that it is essentially considered a Judeo-Christian development juxtaposed against Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, and Hinduism. The project begins with a critique of the argument that explains the success of European capitalism in terms of differences in social structures that had effectively prevented the emergence of ‘citizens’ in oriental societies. The project aims to revisit questions of citizenship as political subjectivity in ‘orientalized cultures’ - Indian, Chinese, Islamic and Indigenous - through 'genealogical investigations' untrammelled by orientalist assumptions. The research methodology is genealogical through which the origins, interpretations and mutations of ideas and actions will be traced through their historical and cultural struggles. The project is deliberately designed to generate disagreements. Rather than working with like-minded collaborators, the project will engage with its antagonists through a series of workshops where opposing views will be debated and disseminated to diverse audiences. Rather than a 'critique' the project is a combination of intervention and invention.

For further information, please visit the Oecumene: Citizenship after Orientalism project website or contact the Oecumene team via email, Oecumene-Project@open.ac.uk.