Geography and citizenship: insight into French geography
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Geography and citizenship: insight into French geography Yves Guermond
Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Geography and citizenship. Insights from French geographic history Citizenship is inducing a permanent interrogation among geographers, due to their implication in country planning. This appears in the analysis of the historic evolution of the concept in geographic studies over the past century. The traditional view, connected to nationalism in the early twentieth century, has been followed by a mistrust about an eventual loss of ‘‘scientific distance’’ in the interwar period. After the Second World War, episodes of involvement in the state apparatus and of critical thinking have alternated. At the end of the twentieth century a post national system of citizenship has led to an implication in the various aspects of globalization. The disillusions allowed a deeper withdrawal into micro society and the ‘‘small worlds’’ of social grouping. This has shown the development of a participatory democracy separated from the official public sphere, which represents a challenge for geography. Keywords Citizenship Communities Ecosystem Geography Nationalism Networks Universality
Y. Guermond (&) CNRS, UMR 6266 IDEES, University of Rouen, 76130 Mont-Saint-Aignan, France e-mail: [email protected]
Citizenship is indeed a confusing term, and, to quote Staeheli (2011), ‘‘it takes on different aspects and significance for people in different contexts’’. The traditional definition, that of a virtuous attachment for the homeland, was conceived in the ancient Greece: ‘‘The one who doesn’t take part in politics cannot be described as a peaceful citizen but a useless one’’ (Thucydides). This model was found later on in the Western Civilization of the 18th century: This has been modified by the extension and differentiation of the public sphere along the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The development of critical thinking in the context of neoliberalism have led to a new definition of citizenship, most often referring to a demanding attitude. This civic action may even be potentially violent, as noticed by Staeheli in another paper (2008), who describes with a hint of humor, that ‘‘with so many demonstrations in Washington, if you really want to be on the front page, you almost have to break the rules, unless you’ve got 100,000 people coming’’. That is what has been done in France in 2018 by the adoption of yellow vests by the protesters. This has led to some narrowing of the notion. In a critical approach citizenship may be considered only from outside as non-participating spectator. But for geographers, to the extent in which they are involved in town and country planning, and then partly responsible of its realization, their proposals are part of the process of citizenship. Which may create some self-awareness problems…
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GeoJournal
One may say, misquoting Lacoste (1976), that geography is ‘‘used to make citizens’’. In recent History, these relations hav
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