Reinventing citizenship amidst democratic decline – Colloquium 1

Speakers: Sameer Gandesha, Ozlem Aslan and Subir Sinha

Reinventing citizenship amidst democratic decline – Colloquium Series

The world-wide crisis in democracy is well-documented. Scholars have examined this crisis under the rubric of “democratic backsliding”, “authoritarianisation”, and “populism” among others. The causes of such crisis have been widely debated. What is ignored in these debates are the real and practical ways in which individuals, organisations and collectives of people have resisted the challenge to democracy and built solidarities to overcome the divisions sowed by authoritarian rulers. Under the circumstances, reinventions of citizenship are becoming the focal point for democratic struggles.

In the backdrop to these recent challenges to democracy in many parts of the world, new strategies of participation, resistance, new assertions of identities of historically marginalised and recently disenfranchised communities have emerged. People across the global south and the global north navigate precarious contexts of violence, conflict, discourses of citizenship. These processes that are underway only point to the continued importance of citizenship in the everyday life of people and on the macro processes that are on the move.

Against this backdrop, this workshop series will be a virtual gathering of activists, practitioners, and academics across the world who will together take a critical look at citizenship in an interdisciplinary context. We shall present conversations that will speak to various aspects of citizenship today and explore how different acts and enactments of citizenship have manifested across time, multiple sites, and through different encounters. We look forward to listening and learning from the experiences of our speakers of undertaking their own research and activism.

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