The World We Want: Restoring Citizenship in a Fractured Age

What does it mean to be a citizen in a world of fractured identities and crumbling nationalism―when people are withdrawing into consumerism, cultural separatism, and self-regarding isolation? Citizenship meets one of our deepest needs, the need to belong; it also makes concrete the ethical commitments of care and respect. Political and cultural theorist Mark Kingwell traces the history of the idea of citizenship, and argues for a new model for the next century. In the style of Michael Ignatieff's The Needs of Strangers, he takes a long look at what citizenship has meant in the past and what it means today.