ABSTRACT
This formally political segment contextualises and links the theoretical frame of citizenship to the historical and contemporary application to land and people explored in Chapters 2 and 4. Consideration is also given to the underlying political theory that legitimates or challenges such citizenship constructions in the light of the examination of citizenship theory in Chapter 2. The central concerns of this chapter are the contemporary policies and attitudes of successive UK governments, which are explored in terms of citizenship, the use of citizenship rhetoric and the claiming of rights and enforcement of responsibilities/obligations. Particular emphasis is placed on the political project of Conservative governments in the UK between 1980 and 1997, which invoked the concept of ‘citizenship’, and the similar deployment of communitarian citizenship rhetoric by ‘New Labour’ under Tony Blair since 1997. In all cases these governments have designed policies to construct citizenship and have used rhetoric of ‘active’ or ‘engaged’ citizenship. They have promoted a new governance based on an explicit conceptualisation of citizens as consumers and superficially as part of ‘communities’. This is critiqued and linked to the changing and claimed relations for citizens (and consumer-citizens) to the land.
