My thanks to Jackie Smith for her thoughtful observations on Beyond Citizenship. My only point of disagreement goes to the nature of a world that, if not truly postnational, has witnessed the dramatic rise of nonstate forms of association. On the one hand, the ability of individuals to more fully actuate identities not anchored in the state advances autonomy values. On the other hand, these nonstate forms of association should not be romanticized. They, too, will implicate exclusion and conflict.
I agree that various nonstate communities “unite people around values and interests that cannot be fully realized within the boundaries of national politics,” and that “nationality is not the only identity that generates altruism and self-sacrifice.” The core proposition of Beyond Citizenship is that the state (and the American state in particular) is waning as a location of community and redistribution, and that other forms of association are taking up the slack.
But I do not mean to elevate nonstate forms of community. Nonstate communities are no more or less “human” than national ones. In institutional form, nongovernmental organizations are political entities representing distinct political interests. Even groups that purport to advance universalist values work for nonuniversalist constituencies (consider, for instance, how slow Amnesty International has been to press economic, social, and cultural rights), never mind groups that by definition represent bounded communities (on the basis, for instance, of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability). Nonstate communities are just as capable of reproducing “illiberal practices of inequality and exclusion” as are states.
Indeed, nonstate communities may have a greater tendency to such behavior to the extent that liberalism brackets private governance. That explains why liberal theorists are retreating to the relative safety of the state as a sanctuary for democracy and a site for redistribution; the alternative looks risky, perhaps even a little scary, as a matter of both practice and theory. But wishing for the retrenchment of the liberal state will not make it so, and nonstate governance (detached from the state) will have to be engaged. Smith and I appear to agree that the state is not what it used to be and that other forms of community are now consequential. But nonstate communities should not be given a pass on the scrutiny that theorists have applied to state-based predecessors. On the contrary, precisely because nonstate communities (including transnational ones) are increasingly salient in the regulation of everyday life, they should be policed for injustice.
Citizenship has been a foundational vehicle for protecting against such injustice in the nation-state. Today's pressing question is whether the institution of citizenship can be put to work beyond the state. As globalization knocks the state off its pedestal, that challenge can no longer be evaded.
