The video "Reforming the Border" brought to light some very interesting issues regarding citizenship as related to physical boundaries, gender and sex. The many boundary constructions we have established along our borders have created a nationalist, almost exclusive sort of mentality among citizens. This got me thinking, 'what makes someone a citizen?'
On the surface, citizenship is created through the physical community in which we live, but what about the many moral communities throughout the world? Are we citizens of these specific communities as well? The more I think about it, the more I realize that individual identity is created through the differences we all possess, both in physical ways as well as emotional and moral. Does this then mean that no one is truly a citizen of anything or anywhere? How can we identify ourselves with others when we are all different in so many ways? And on this note, what are the differences between moral communities and ethnic/physical communities?
The early 20th century saw a rise in the concept of the 'good citizen' and the decline of an autonomous individual with unique identities. With a rise in the emphasis on citizenship, the social divisions we begin to experience also begin to rise. People become more focused on physical borders and differentiating the moral distinctions between all these different cultures. A sense of nationalism and citizenship begins to develop around different moral communities rather than vice versa. It's like forming a club where you find all your members first, and then you decide what you stand for and what your values are. It should be the other way around.
The concept of protecting citizenship was brought up in the video as well. Dialogue and cultural translation between borders is coming into conflict with the idea of preservation and protecting one's citizenship. This is a double-edged sword when you begin to dissect it. We encourage people to be proud of their ethnicity and native cultures, yet it is this pride that tends to create an exclusive mentality in the hopes of preserving your race and cultural identity. While I don't feel any animosity towards people of other races (in fact I respect many of these varying cultures) I do feel a sense of pride in being white. To digress a bit, I think that society today is teaching us that we should feel guilty for being caucasian due to the many atrocities they have committed against other races in the past, but I think it's important to look past this shallow guilt and find a sense of pride in who you are and in your genetic and ethnic makeup.
Anyways, to get back on topic, this video really made me think about the concept of gender as related to national boundaries. Are the women in these videos seen as 'proper citizens?' Do they see themselves as good citizens?
Image from: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0705/feature5/images/ft_hdr.5.jpg
This post is great! The different angles and aspects you bring to the table is incredibly enlightening. The woman in the movie I saw as being citizens defined by their gender and the power they held in society. Citizenship has become such an incredibly complex system, but I see it as simple for these woman as them being defined by their roles in society as a result of being gendered, so therefore they take on only certain jobs, certain responsibilities, and expected to live a certain way if married with children, and expected to act a certain way if not married.
ReplyDeleteBack again to the definition of citizenship, your analysis is something I have never thought of before, or rather a perspective that I have never considered a reality. It brought to mind how citizenship became necessary in America? We became essentially a melting pot of cultures mainly from anglo-saxon Europe, yet how was that founded? By having explorers from already established countries and "worlds" take away land from the Native Americans of this land, the first and in my mind real citizens of the land of the Americas. They were citizens of Mother Earth, and needed no title, paper work, or tests to prove such a thing.