If the nation is an imagined community constructed through discourse, then belongingthe feeling of being part of that nation - can only arise when citizens are empowered to enter the discourse and modify it. Linking political science and cultural studies to explore the mutually constitutive role of discourse and institutions, this volume argues that citizenship is an ongoing and evolving discursive project. Further, it studies the role of culture and different media in the process of citizen-making by taking postcolonial India as its case study. The volume explores discursive plurality and the monopolization of interpretation as the poles from which inclusion in and exclusion from the national community are negotiated. By interfacing political sciences interest in the power of institutions and cultural studies focus on the power of discourse, the author is able to investigate into the ways in which citizenship manifests itself - and is contested - outside the institutional realm, thus revealing conceptual relativity, ruptures, and creative re-interpretations of citizenship.

About the Author
Lion Koenig is a DFG Post-Doctoral Fellow at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

Reviews
A generative and thought-provoking work, Cultural citizenship in India analyses the key concepts of citizenship, censorship and the media. Moving beyond the legalistic understanding of citizenship to incorporate time, cultural memory and space, Koenig presents a cogent and challenging range of arguments, and explores the constructed character of national narrative and the relativity of surrounding categories constantly being negotiated and re-negotiated. In investigating citizenship from a cultural vantage point, the book brings forth the complexities of belonging and alienation in a society. * Ananya Sharma, Contemporary South Asia *
This book is valuable scholarship for both political scientists and cultural studies scholars whose work engages with Indian politics, social movements and mass media. Cultural studies scholars of media, in particular, will appreciate Koenig's stress on qualitative analyses of media production, texts and audiences that provide deeper historical and socio-political understanding than quantitative methods such as survey research do. The case studies that Koenig provides in the context of cultural citizenship are illuminating in their study of power and identity formation, and highly relevant for scholars of India in the current era.This monograph demonstrates that interdisciplinary studies, when done well, can be cohesive and comprehensive in both their particularity and their generality. * Pallavi Rao, Journal of South Asian Studies *
The meticulously referenced and extensively annotated work makes a significant contribution to an emerging field of scholarship. It not only lays the ground for systematically unravelling an understanding of the social processes through an examination of 'cultural citizenship', but also raises some interesting questions: would 'cultural citizenship' develop into 'transculturality'? It offers a theoretical and methodological framework within which to evaluate how state and non-state powerful actors shape the discursive space, consequently impacting upon cultural citizenship ... Koenig's work thus is an invaluable book for social sciences researchers who seek to explore nuanced understandings of cultural citizenship. * Maya Ranganathan, Postcolonial Studies *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199466313
Author Lion Koenig
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint OUP India
Publisher OUP India
Weight(grams) 468g
Dimensions(mm) 224mm * 149mm * 31mm