This chapter reviews citizenship constructions in the United States and examines how historic, legal, economic, schooling, and multicultural “melting pot” ideology landscapes shape citizenship and its performance. It introduces cultural citizenship as an alternative starting point for citizenship and its performance, providing a theoretical foundation and empirical evidence for cultural citizenship, and argues in support of incorporating this framework into social psychology when working toward collective social justice. It also discusses the implications of adopting a cultural citizenship perspective for social psychology and how this perspective can extend our understanding of citizenship practices to enact social justice. We conclude with recommendations for research and action.
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199938735.013.5
This material was originally published in The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice edited by Phillip L. Hammack Jr., and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. For permission to reuse this material, please visit http://www.oup.co.uk/academic/rights/permissions.