Citizens in the making : critical perspectives on civic identity and culture

Sammanfattning: This study aims at critically assessing contemporary discourses, processes and experiences of citizen identity and participation in the everyday life of members of the Nicaraguan women’s movement.Theoretically the project draws on critical theories from political science,political anthropology, gender, communication and cultural studies.Methodologically the study builds on a critical ethnographic approach and discourse studies, and the material consists of interviews, participant observations, video recordings, organizational documents and various online materials.Empirically, the research focuses on the women’s movement in Nicaragua. The findings indicate that citizen identity and participation are constructed and performed through a variety of rituals that merge local, as well as ‘global’ forms of citizen culture. Citizen identity construction is not consistent or coherent and therefore requires different strategies of negotiation in order to hostsocial, cultural and religious contradictions and demands.Cultural practices and communication technology make way for new rituals and perceptions of the self and communicative rituals become an important tool for the informants’ development of democratic practices and civic culture. Furthermore, the rituals are a vehicle for powerful discourses on democracy, agency, participation and social change and the underlying ideas and ideologies. Rituals constitute valuable resources that are used, individually as well as collectively, for strategic political and social purposes. They also alter the informants’ spatial experiences and appropriations. The contribution of the thesis is to challenge and broaden current understandings of civic identity and culture.