Investigating citizenship : an agenda for citizenship studies

Modern citizenship is constructed historically from a set of contributory rights and duties that are related to work, public service (for example, military or jury service) and parenthood or family formation. It defines belonging to a society through the entitlements associated with service, and is perhaps most clearly evident in a national system of taxation. This model of citizenship as social rights has been closely associated with the legacy of the English sociologist Thomas H. Marshall (1893-1982). Marshallian citizenship has been subject to extensive criticism over the last two decades and the social model of citizenship has been expanded and deepened by approaches that emphasize the flexibility of social membership, the limitations of citizenship merely as rights, and by perspectives that emphasize identity and difference. Also, concern to defend human rights has often outmatched the defence of citizenship as entitlement, status and social membership. While we recognise the limitations of Marshall, we nevertheless build upon his approach. In particular we stress crucial compatibility of citizenship and human rights, emphasizing the importance of citizenship in effective democratic societies. Citizenship is essentials for cultivating civic virtues and democratic values. The notion of duty should not be separated too sharply from rights and we attempt to develop a notion of rights (such as “rights of mobility and transaction”) that is relevant to globalization. Although globalization is often assumed to create a world in which citizenship loses its importance, we demonstrate its vital importance to contemporary political institutions

Wills, deeds, acts: women's civic gift-giving in Ottoman Istanbul

The waqf (plural awqaf) is the Islamic pious endowment founded for charitable purposes. The Ottoman waqf, especially between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, became a gift-giving practice of solidarity in which women played an active role in founding and maintaining endowments as benefactors. These endowments served almost exclusively civic public services. While there has been considerable research on women and waqf, by moving beyond interpreting the ostensible motives that are always intertwined with women’s role as ‘family caretakers’ or ‘devout Muslims’, we attempt to suggest that, interpreted as acts of piety, awqaf, and especially those that were founded as organized spaces known as külliyes, became institutions by which women were able to cultivate (in themselves and others) civic identities, and articulate civic solidarities as citizens of their cities. This image of women as civic gift-givers recasts them as active citizens of Ottoman cities, especially Istanbul