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Paper short abstract

This history of "citizenship" within anthropology examines the transition from engaging cultural citizenship and novel forms of belonging to theorizing diminishing rights and necrocitizenship. We ask: what does it mean to write about citizenship without simultaneously questioning "democracy."

Paper long abstract

This paper is a meditation on the history of the concept citizenship within anthropology based on our own theoretical transition from a) engaging the concept of cultural citizenship to b) theorizing these difficult times in terms of necrocitizenship. Our retrospective on the anthropology of citizenship asks: where did the concepts of democracy go? What does it mean to write about citizenship without simultaneoulsy questioning "democracy." In the first part, we explore the emergence of citizenship as a topic within anthropology in the 1990s through the introduction of the concept “cultural citizenship,” an idea that focuses on citizenship practices on the ground and in terms of a more general politics of belonging. We explain why and how this concept became a focus of anthropological theory and reflect on how anthropologists applied this concept to explore novel forms of political belonging. Looking back at the anthropology of citizenship, we discuss the marginal role of theorizing democracy and reflect upon the explosion in frames for understanding expressions of citizenship---from "insurgent" to "biological" and "ghost" citizenship. We then discuss our engagement with citizenship as deriving from primarily a U.S. perspective and reflect upon the shift in our own thinking about democracy and belonging. We call for an anthropology of citizenship that both accounts for the researchers' own positionally while questioning the concept of democracy.