Resisting Citizenship Feminist Essays on Politics, Community, and Democracy [Paperback]

Political participation in Americasupposedly the worlds strongest democracyis startlingly low, and many of the civil rights and economic equity initiatives that were instituted in the 1960s and '70s have been abandoned, as significant proportions of the populace seem to believe that the civil rights battle has been won. However, rates of collective engagement, like community activism, are surprisingly high. In Resisting Citizenship, renowned feminist political scientist Martha Ackelsberg argues that community activism may hold important clues to reviving democracy in this time of growing bureaucratization and inequality.

This book brings together many of Ackelsbergs writings over the past 25 years, combining her own field work and interviews with cutting edge research and theory on democracy and activism. She explores these efforts in order to draw lessonsand attempt to incorporate knowledgeabout current notions of democracy from those who engage in non-traditional participation, those who have, in many respects, been relegated to the margins of political life in the United States.

Part 1: Rethinking Politics/Rethinking Community  1. Women's Collaborative Activities and City Life: Politics and Policy  2. Communities, Resistance, and Women's Activism: Reflections on Democratic Theory  3. Terrains of Protest: Striking City Women (with Myrna Margulies Breitbart)  Part 2: Challenging Dichotomies: Dependency, Privacy, Identity, Power  4. Dependency or Mutuality: A Feminist Perspective on Dilemmas of Welfare Policy   5. Privacy, Publicity, and Power: A Feminist Rethinking of the Public-Private Distinction (with Mary Lyndon Shanley)  6. Gender, Resistance, and Citizenship: Women's Struggles With/In the State (with Mary Lyndon Shanley)  7. Rethinking Anarchism/RethinlÓî