The crisis of citizenship and the rise of cultural rights

The issue of cultural belonging confronts us because cultural minorities, whether immigrants or conquered minorities, despite having the civic, political and social rights of citizenship, feel harmed if the state does not recognise their particular cultural identity and does not make certain provisions or exemptions in or from the operation of general laws on this basis. This paper tries to locate the political claims grounded in culture within a liberal-democratic political setup. It attempts to address three questions. First, how did a 'right to culture' come into being? Second, what is the subject matter of a 'right to culture'? This includes an enquiry into the nature of cultural rights. And lastly, how viable is the multicultural approach towards ensuring a meaningful co-existence of different cultural communities within the larger political community? A bigger role for the state to preserve and protect minority cultures is argued for, considering that there is a positive dimension to cultural rights due to which such rights cannot be realised without some involvement of the state.

2013

Cultural and educational rights of the minorities are very important and essential which work as a tool for the uplifment of the minorities. Culture plays a vital role for the congenial development of children who belong to the community of minorities and that is why the preservation of culture, language and religion are important. Without education the progress of a community is not possible and the transformation of a society depends on education. All over the world it has been found that there is a huge gap between the minority and majority communities. For the sake of equality and a healthy relationship between the communities there need some special right of the minority. The world human right documents also recognized the cultural and educational rights of the minorities.

EUROPEAN RESEARCH STUDIES JOURNAL, 2010

In Antiquity the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, sustained that the purpose of the State is to be, within the possibilities, a society of equal human beings. Our days the democracy answers the need of different components of the society to express themselves in the means of respect towards equality. Democratic practices cannot be conceived outside the nation. The problem is if there exists the possibility for it to function on the supranational level. The reflections with respect to the multiculturalism and the new conceptions which is elaborated starting from the European construction, make actual the connection between nation and democracy.

Association of Iranian Culture Abroad , 2015

2017

Models of social belonging have altered radically over recent decades, due to the impact of technological mobilisation on the lives of individuals and societies in the modern era. Information technologies-that have unstoppable consequences on global flows, interpenetration of cultures, and the demand for new identity-based, religious, ethnic and gender rights-have overturned traditional loyalties to the nation, religion, class, and gender identities. However, the multiplication of information and the accompanying encircling influence of the media in modern society, have meant that socio-technical networks now occupy a core position in affirmation of new social movements, with a decisive impact on culture and the arts. In this context, it is possible to state that technological transformations have caused profound changes to social structures and to the organisation of communities. The concept of citizenship has therefore been expanded, and even reformulated, paving the way to political, social and economic recognition of new forms of belonging, and responding to the demand for new social rights, in particular those based on diversity and difference at a sexual, racial, ethnic, diasporic, ecological, technological and cosmopolitan level. This issue of the Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies aims to reflect on how individuals are constituted and emerge in the media, as talking subjects and social actors, with a special focus on asymmetries and inequalities in distribution of the right to make one's voice heard. Some of the topics addressed and furthered herein include social and political movements, digital activism, and mobilisation of the media and cultural networks, in the struggle for social, cultural, political and economic rights, and the power that such networks can exert in modern society, thereby contributing to social and political change. The idea of power runs throughout this issue, which is dedicated to questions of democracy and citizenship. As Foucault (1975, 2010, p. 12) states, "truth does not exist beyond power or without power", because we never act as we wish, but rather as we can, in specific conditions of space, time and interaction. Moreover, societies construct regimes of truth, and mobilise discourses that make them appear to be true (Martins, 2017). Indeed, the dialectical game of discourse "repeats orders, when it seems to be simply affirming freedom" (Martins, 2017, p. 11). The specific perspective that Cultural Studies develop in relation to phenomena of power, which they both assume and challenge, is through analysis of the division between hegemonic and counterhegemonic aspects, i.e. questioning the frontier between the peripheries and the centre, as well as structural divisions, or the tenuous boundaries that exist between culture, society and the economy (Durin, 1992/2007).

2019

Modern theory, starting from the understanding of citizen’s rights as natural, universal and indispensable to any being, creates a horizon of discourse in which the notion of citizen – beyond the legal attribution of this status within a system – is defined by the multiple possibilities of individual freedom in relation to the state and with respect to the others; from the contract involving the assumption of freedom under the conditions of equality of partners, to the autonomy of the religious, legal, political and economic subsystems in which the individual can act on his/her own choice in full awareness.