ANTH 206

Race, Ethnicity, and Citizenship

Syllabus Spring 2016
Professor Nancy Postero
npostero@ucsd.edu
1:50pm.
office: SSB 264
phone: 858-534-7367

Class: Wednesdays 11SSB 105

Course Description:
This course will examine the concept, discourse, and practices of
citizenship, and particularly its relation to race and ethnicity. We will
begin by a consideration of the classic liberal notion of citizenship, and
then trace the ways that notion has been put into practice across the
world. Central to our readings will be an understanding that there is no
abstract form of citizenship unmediated by cultural particularity. Rather
than treat citizenship as a modular relationship between state and
individual that is uniformly practiced the world over, we will consider it
as a form of political belonging that is lived collectively and culturally
and mediated by, among others, religion, race, class, gender, and
sexuality. Second, we will understand citizenship, not only as enacted
through legal/constitutional ideals of formal equality, but also as one
modality for the elaboration of social inequality. We will explore how,
despite promises to the contrary, forms of unequal political belonging
are produced and maintained in putatively democratic nation-states. In
exploring the dynamics of political belonging in a number of national
contexts, we will address the impact of historical forces such as
slavery, colonialism, war, settler nationalism, and patriarchy on the
constitution of citizenship. Finally, we will consider the possibilities and
limitations of a politics of citizenship by looking at how demands for
recognition and rights have played out, and at how other claims to
belonging and sovereignty e.g. of indigenous and diasporic groups
challenge the privileged place of citizenship as the end goal of politics.
Some of the questions that will guide us include: How are political
subjects produced? How do we understand the relationship between
citizenship as a practice of everyday life and citizenship as a legal
formation? How do we think of citizenship, as an ongoing political
process? How do contemporary forms of multicultural citizenship
address or leave unanswered the exclusions of liberalism? What does it
mean to think of citizenship, not as an identity, but as a discourse or
articulating principle through whichdifferentidentificationsandallegiancesare
madepossible?Isapoliticsofcitizenshipnecessarilyaddressedtothestate?

Course Requirements/ Responsibilities of Participants:

You will be required to read, discuss, make presentations to your
classmates, and write a commentary and a research paper:
1. Reading: There will be quite a lot of reading in the course, so you must be ready to do
that reading and participate in the discussions. The texts will be found in pdfs form on
the course TED site.
2. Class presentations: For each class meeting, participants will make brief in-class
presentations and then facilitate the discussion. The idea is to have students engage
closely with one particular reading before the class discussion, and then to make use of
the discussion to deepen that understanding.
3. Class Discussions: All participants should be prepared to contribute to the discussion,
and to respond to the comments of the presenters. This means that you should give
yourself some time after you read the material to THINK about it. Bring questions, ideas,
and critical analysis. This does not mean merely criticisms. For each reading, you
should think about what contributions the author makes and how that might be useful, as
well as what the limitations might be. So, even if it is not your week to present, you
should BE PREPARED and write down a few questions and ideas ahead of time.
In our fields, we must be able to articulate ideas and to have analytical debates with
colleagues. There is no better place to develop these skills than in a class of mutually
supportive peers. This requires two things: that you be brave and try out your ideas in
public, and that you be kind and cooperative with your fellows. Remember that your
colleagues are the biggest asset you have.
3. Term Paper: You must write one 20-page term paper, due the Monday of exam week.
The topic is up to you, but must be approved by the professor. The goal is to use this
writing project to connect the readings and discussions in class to a research project on
which you are working (or plan to work).
Readings:
Week 1. Liberal Ideals of Citizenship
Aristotle 1981. The Politics, translated by T.A. Sinclair, revised by
Trevor J. Saunders. London: Penguin Books. (Read sections IIIi-IIIxi, pp.
167-206.)
Pocock, JGA 1995. The Ideal of Citizenship since Classical Times, in
Theorizing Citizenship, Ronald Beiner, ed. Albany: State University of
New York Press. (pp. 29-52)

Ignatieff, Michael, 1995. The Myth of Citizenship, in Theorizing

Citizenship, Ronald Beiner, ed. Albany: State University of New York
Press. (pp. 53-77)
Fraser, Nancy 1997. Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the
Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. In Habermas and the Public
Sphere, Craig Calhoun, ed. Cambridge: MIT Press. (pp. 109-142)
Recommended Reading:
Young, Iris Marion, 1995. Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the
Ideal of Universal Citizenship, in Theorizing Citizenship, Ronald Beiner,
ed. Albany: State University of New York Press. (pp. 175-207)
Habermas, Jurgen 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere, An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by
Thomas Burger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Week 2. Exclusions from the Liberal Ideal: Race, Slaves, and
Colonialism
Mehta, Uday, 1997. Liberal Strategies of Exclusion, in Tensions of
Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, Frederick Cooper and
Ann Laura Stoler, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press. (pp. 5986)
Dubois, Laurent 2004. A Colony of Citizens, Revolution and Slave
Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804. Durham, NC:
University of North Carolina Press.
Recommended Reading:
Patterson, Orlando 1982. Slavery and Social Death, A Comparative
Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (pp. 1-76)
Larson, Brooke 2004. Trials of Nation Making, Liberalism, Race,
Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810-1910. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press. (pp.1-70, 202-253)
Week 3. Constructions of Difference: Racial Scripts
Molina, Natalia 2013. How Race Is Made in America: Immigration,
Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts. University of
California Press.
Recommended Reading:
Lipsitz, George 1998. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, in The
Possessive Investment in Whiteness, How White People Profit from
Identity Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press (pp1-23).

Week 4. Substantive vs. Formal Citizenship

Holston, James, 2008. Insurgent Citizenship, Disjunctions of
Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Recommended Reading:
Caldeira, Teresa 2000. City of Walls, Crime, Segregation, and
Citizenship in Sao Paolo. Berkeley: University of California Press.
De Souza Santos, Boaventura and Leonardo Avritzer,2005.
Introduction, Opening Up the Canon of Democracy, in Democratizing
Democracy, Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon, Boaventura De
Souza Santos, ed. London: Verso.
Week 5: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Difference
Povinelli, Elizabeth 2002. The Cunning of Recognition, Indigenous
Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Cattelino, Jessica 2010. The Double Bind of American Indian NeedBased Sovereignty. Cultural Anthropology 25(2):235-262.
Recommended Reading
Bennett, David and Homi Bhabha 1998. Liberalism and Minority
Culture, Reflections on Cultures in Between, in Multicultural States,
Rethinking Difference and Identity, David Bennett, ed. London:
Routledge.
Stratton, Jon and Ien Ang 1998. Multicultural Imagined Communities,
Cultural Difference and National Identity in the USA and Australia, in
Multicultural States, Rethinking Difference and Identity, David Bennett,
ed. London: Routledge.
Week 5. Neoliberal Multiculturalism
Postero, Nancy 2007. Now We Are Citizens, Indigenous Politics in PostMulticultural Bolivia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hale, Charles 2002. Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance,
Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala. Journal of
Latin American Studies 34:485-524.
Recommended Reading:
Hale, Charles R. 2006. Ms Que Un Indio: Racial Ambivalence and
Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala. Santa Fe: School of American
Research Resident Scholar Book.

Hall, Stuart and David Held, 1990. Citizens and Citizenship, in New
Times, The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s. London: Verso.
Week 6. Sentiments of Citizenship
Rosaldo, Renato 1997. Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and
Multiculturalism, in Latino Cultural Citizenship, Claiming Identity,
Space, and Rights, Flores, William V., and Rina Benmayor. Boston:
Beacon Press. (pp. 27-38)
Berlant, Lauren 1997. Introduction: The Intimate Public Sphere, and Ch.
6: The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Notes on Diva
Citizenship, in The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, Essays
on Sex and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. (pp. 1-24,
221-246)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015. Between the World and Me, Speigel and Grau
Publishers.
Recommended Reading
Bock, Gisela and Susan James 1992. Introduction: Contextualizing
Equality and Difference, in Beyond Equality and Difference, Citizenship,
Feminist Politics, and Female Subjectivity. London: Routledge, p. 1-13.
Pateman, Carol 1992. Equality, Difference, Subordination: The Politics
of Motherhood and Womens Citizenship, in Beyond Equality and
Difference, Citizenship, Feminist Politics, and Female Subjectivity.
London: Routledge, pp. 17-31.
Week 7. Biological Citizenship: Environment , Health, and the
Body
Petryna, Adriana 2002. Life Exposed, Biological Citizens after
Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Briggs, Charles and Clara Mantini Briggs, 2003. Stories in a Time of
Cholera, Racial Profiling During a Medical Nightmare. Berkeley:
University of California Press. (Introduction only, pp1-17)
Week 8. Governmentality and Citizenship as a Technique of the
Self
Foucault, Michel, 1991. Governmentality, in The Foucault Effect,
Studies in Governmentality, Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon, and Peter
Miller, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (pp. 87-104)
Burchell, Graham 1996. Liberal Government and techniques of the self,
in Foucault and Political Reason, Liberalism, neo-liberalism, and

Rationalities of Government, Barry, Andrew, Thomas Osborne, and

Nikolas Rose, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (pp. 19-36)
ONeill, Kevin 2010. City of God, Christian Citizenship in Postwar
Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Recommended Readings
Rose, Nikolas 1996. Governing Advanced Liberal Democracies, in
Foucault and Political Reason, Liberalism, neo-liberalism, and
Rationalities of Government, Barry, Andrew, Thomas Osborne, and
Nikolas Rose, eds, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (pp. 37-64)
Week 9. Sovereignty, Bare Life, and Citizenship
Agamben, Giorgio, 1998. Homo Sacer, Sovereign Power and Bare Life.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ticktin, Miriam 2006. Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of
Humanitarianism in France. American Ethnologist 33(1): 33-49.
Blom Hansen, Thomas, and Finn Stepputat 2005. Introduction, in
Sovereign Bodies, Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial
World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (pp. 1-36)
Chatterjee, Partha 2005. Sovereign Violence and the Domain of the
Political, in Sovereign Bodies, Citizens, Migrants, and States in the
Postcolonial World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (pp. 82100)
Recommended Reading:
Chatterjee, Partha 2004
The Politics of the Governed, Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of
the World. Delhi: Permanent Black.
Week 10. Decolonizing Citzenship
Radcliffe, Sarah, 2015. Dilemmas of Difference, Indigenous Women and
the Limits of Postcolonial Development Policy. Duke University Press