‘Learning Our Native Tongue’: Citizenship, Contestation and Conflict in America explores the American conceptions of citizenship from colonial times to present-day social media and terrorism. The question of American citizenship should or can cast the question of citizenship of Americans not as a “right” (though it is that) but politically. The question of being or becoming a citizen as requiring that individuals can publicly and successfully claim to meet certain criteria that are taken to define (at that time, at that place, for this particular set of reasons) what “being a citizen” entails ... More

‘Learning Our Native Tongue’: Citizenship, Contestation and Conflict in America explores the American conceptions of citizenship from colonial times to present-day social media and terrorism. The question of American citizenship should or can cast the question of citizenship of Americans not as a “right” (though it is that) but politically. The question of being or becoming a citizen as requiring that individuals can publicly and successfully claim to meet certain criteria that are taken to define (at that time, at that place, for this particular set of reasons) what “being a citizen” entails and requires, and that they have that claim acknowledged. Being a citizen thus entails more than simply suffrage, although it most often does entail that. These criteria change over time in and as response to historical developments; as important, they are thus always the subject matter for political controversy and conflict. (One has only to think of voting rights for women or for blacks). I pay attention to what difference each change makes and what each particular “winning” conception entails socially and politically. As the criteria change, some qualities are lost, others are gained. The nature and value of these losses and gains are the subject of this book