Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This essay attempts to provide an affirmative answer to three key questions: Is there a place for �global citizenship� in the political life of the United States? Can we improve our standards of political justice to include a greater voice among non-citizens, specifically immigrants and even more specifically as pertains to the issues of immigration? Can we contribute to this gesture in the direction of global citizenship through programs of non-partisan civic education?

In answering these questions, the paper attempts five things: First, we adumbrate a model of good citizenship. Second we show that the model of citizenship can accommodate non-citizens. Third, we identify the major barrier to recognizing non-citizens � civic marginalization. Fourth, we suggest teaching and learning strategies centering on civic hermeneutics and civic staging that promise to yield accommodation. Finally, we ask how a program of civic education using these techniques might include acceptable strategies of assessment.

Good liberal citizenship in the United States is liberal citizenship. There are five components of liberal citizenship: rights, interests, affections, duties and virtues. Effective citizenship requires the ability to be seen and heard in public. Good citizenship requires us to pay close attention to those who are unjustly excluded or consigned to second-class citizenship. The main challenge to this civic attention concerns our ability to pay attention to one another and get attention under conditions of diversity. Coming from a variety of backgrounds including class, sex, gender, ethnicity, religion, race and ideology makes it difficult for us to communicate effectively and respectfully.

Learning how to teach respectful and effective civic communication between citizens and noncitizens when addressing the issue of immigration is at the heart of this paper. This civic learning must include recognition of the essential tension between the civic and the human. The authors invite readers to try the pedagogy of the excluded as presented here and explore the possibilities of informal citizenship in the United States and elsewhere. Informal citizens have rights and interests.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In his paper �Civic Environmentalism�s Search for Identity: Reconciling Democracy and Environmental Protection" Kevin Rowe shows that civic environmentalism has some work to do to reconcile its two fundamental values. After briefly reviewing three broad critiques he offers, I address his proposal that civic environmentalism ought to strike a balance between its two main commitments. I observe that he has identified in civic environmentalism the more general problem of sustaining commitments to plural values. I then suggest that rather than speaking of balancing these commitments, we ought instead to focus on judgment as the faculty for determining courses of action that fulfill multiple values in light of circumstances. I then argue that civic environmentalism encourages institutions whose participants will exercise, and cultivate, their judgments in just this way, hence will be able to carry out the balancing Rowe proposes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Literature on social capital argues that voluntary organizations and voluntarism contribute to the development of civil society at different levels. On the societal level, voluntary organizations and voluntarism are deemed as main sources of social solidarity through creating cross-cutting ties and overlapping social networks to bind society together. On the individual level, associations are “schools of democracy” in which members learn civic skills and civic attitudes that are important for democracy as well as being critical in evaluating the performance of public institutions. Using data from the World Value Surveys collected in China in 2000, we focus in this paper the prevalence of formal and informal associational life in contemporary China and examine how these formal and informal associations contribute to the development of civil society. The findings suggest that informal associational life in China is more effective in inculcating civic attitudes, democratic values and stimulating interests in politics in volunteers than formal organizations. How these impact on the development of a civil society and hence a democratic citizenship will be discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study illustrates the special value of theater for conducting civic education. It begins by identifying the features of good citizenship in the United States. Citizenship in America includes rights, interests, affections, duties and virtues. We focus on one duty, civic respect, and the virtue most necessary to meet that duty � civic attention. Unless citizens pay respectful attention to one another, some will be left in civic bondage � voiceless in the political community or consigned to second-class citizenship. One remedy to the problem of civic bondage is civic education that teaches civic respect through civic attention. We argue that a variety of pedagogical strategies are required to teach civic attention including civic hermeneutics (interpreting other citizens with the aim of granting them civic respect), civic staging (organizing space to allow citizens to better communicate) and expanding the range of discourses we use in civic education. We then argue that theater � including classical and experimental varieties � is especially valuable for teaching civic attention.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study shows that civic participation is often characterized by group inequalities, with mainstream organizations having considerably higher levels of political presence than ethnic organizations. Measures of civic participation that treat all civic participation the same � whether it be with the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, or the Korean American Federation � ignore crucial components of group inequalities that include financial resources, access to future resources, and various aspects of social and cultural capital that relate to an organization�s relative prominence and influence in local affairs. Not only do mainstream groups have more political presence, they also do little to recruit immigrants and nonwhites into their ranks of members and leaders. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for persistent gaps in immigrant political incorporation at the local level.

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