Introduction

To understand the contemporary idea of active citizenship we need to note the intellectual shift that was taking place in the social sciences during the 1980s, which focused attention on the importance of human agency in social change. At one level this shift was reflected in the growing interest in new social movements (Melucci, 1989; Touraine, 1988). At another level it found expression in new approaches to welfare. Giddens, for example, writing in Britain, argued for a ‘positive welfare’ approach (Giddens, 1994, p 152), which would recognise the role of self development and the importance of reflexive engagement with life chances and social security systems. This approach can be understood as setting the scene for self determination. However, it also provides a policy platform for ‘self responsibilisation’, requiring individuals to rely on their own resources and take individual responsibility for their own livelihoods. Indeed, Fuller et al (2008, p 157) argue that the emphasis on the self responsible, active citizen emerged in explicit contrast to the earlier needs-/rights-based notion of citizenship. Arguments for self responsibilisation and self help are easily crafted to accord with the principles of neoliberalism – a recurring theme throughout this book.

The refocusing of thinking about the role of human agency in social change has not been limited to Western societies. In other parts of the world, the failure of anti-poverty strategies organised around top-down structural economic adjustment policies led to a rethink of aid policies by international agencies (Chambers, 1983; Bhatnagar and Williams, 1992; Eade and Williams, 1995; World Bank, 2013). By the late 1990s many international development programmes were being reworked, emphasising new programmes for capacity building to ‘empower’ local people to develop and act upon their own policies to improve their lives.

Citizenship in theory

While we can trace the intellectual interest in human agency to the 1980s, the specific theoretical construction of human agents as active citizens has mainly come about through the field of citizenship studies. Much contemporary discussion and debate in citizenship studies has been informed by the writings of T. H. Marshall (1992) in the immediate post World War II years. For Marshall, citizenship denoted membership of a political community, with members entitled to equal rights and participation.