The Limits of Political Belonging : An Adaptionist Perspective on Citizenship and Society

"Citizenship is increasingly the core concept by which human belonging is defined but do we really understand what it is? This book develops an evolutionist argument to challenge accepted ideas about citizenship and question how well it fits between political prescriptions for sociality and human nature. Though citizenship reflects a dominant, enduring political model of belonging, it has been contested from a range of standpoints such as feminism, social exclusion and human rights. Using a novel Darwinian paradigm, Edwards exposes the limits of citizenship conceived in wholly or overtly political terms, and endorses the validity of citizenship struggles that implicitly and explicitly champion human belonging over political belonging."-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-8 A Contested Concept....Pages 9-36 An Adaptionist Heuristic....Pages 37-54 A Selection Rationale....Pages 55-70 An Interaction Rationale....Pages 71-92 A Sociological Rationale....Pages 93-116 A Psychological Rationale....Pages 117-129 The Limits of Political Belonging....Pages 130-151 Claims, Implications, and Evaluation....Pages 152-166 Back Matter....Pages 167-184