Political Psychology, Vol. 25, No.

3, 2004

Constructing the Citizen

Helen Haste
Department of Psychology, University of Bath, and Harvard Graduate School
of Education

Discussions of citizenship and citizenship education have been conducted largely within
the worldview of stable, Western societies and have been based on psychological models
that emphasize individual cognition. The concepts of citizenship that evolved in this context
have become taken for granted. But during the past decade, different concepts of citizenship have arisen from emergent democracies, from societies in transition, from the dissolution of the left-right spectrum in Western society, and from a changing perspective in
psychological theory that attends to language and to social and cultural context. These
developments have implications for defining the goals of citizenship education and for formulating educational programs, particularly in relation to identity, positioning, narratives,
and efficacy.
KEY WORDS: citizenship education, political development, culture, identity, narrative, positioning,
efficacy

At one of the first international conferences at which there was substantial

representation from the former Eastern bloc, more than a decade ago, a young
North American researcher compared democratic values among young people
in a North American sample and a sample from an Eastern bloc country. The
researcher concluded that the North American sample had a more sophisticated
understanding of democracy. However, many Western members of the audience
found this study embarrassing, and many Eastern bloc members were angered by
it. The measure was blatantly parochial, embedded in North American practices.
There was no attempt to find parallel examples from the Eastern bloc country; no
account was taken of how its young people might be formulating their own democratic understanding. Hopefully, such hegemonic mistakes would no longer be
made. The young researcher was in good company. Francis Fukuyama (1992)
declared the end of history in the wake of triumphal liberal democracy. In fact,

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0162-895X 2004 International Society of Political Psychology
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in the past decade we have seen the proliferation of versions of democracy (and
Fukuyama has retracted his position).
The past decade has brought surprises that confront taken-for-granted
assumptions about political processes and their psychological parameters, challenge both theory and method in the field of citizenship, and challenge how we
think about democracy, its functions and antecedents. I consider three such surprises below. I also consider how recent developments in psychological epistemology provide a different, critical understanding of the implications of these
surprises, and how this affects the agendas of citizenship construction. How do
we construct individuals as citizens, and how do we construct the concept of
citizenship itself?
The first surprise concerns the distinction between stable and changing
or transitional societies. It is hardly news that a society in flux has different
characteristics from one in a static state, but the nature of those differences has
become apparent, in particular through the observation of postSoviet bloc countries. It has also become clear that much of the tradition of research on citizenship has been implicitly located within the assumptions of stable societies.
The second surprise concerns nationalism. Much research on ideology treats
nationalism as an extreme right-wing position and in some sense pathological.
However, as recent events show, political upheaval creates the need for new narratives to appeal to different historical precedents that justify new systems; nations
recreate themselves through reconstruction of their history. Newly emergent
democracies sought to define their systems and find a new identity, not by copying
current Western systems (whether U.S. or northern European) but by seeking a
period of their own history that reflected a golden age of democracy and
national pride (Janowski, 1999; Valkova & Kalous, 1999; Wertsch, 1998). For
some nations, this golden period was one in which the nation fought off an oppressor; for others, it was a period of enlightenment and cultural expansion. The
message is twofold: Nationalism is not necessarily pathological, and democracy
is not a universal or a unitary concept but is transmuted by each state through its
own cultural narratives.
A third surprise comes from the dissolution of the left-right spectrum in
Western democracies and the fragmentation of old ideological boundaries. The split
in the Right between free market libertarian thought and traditional religious,
socially conservative thought has been appraised by political philosophers for three
decades, and is reflected in both extreme and moderate right-wing parties (Eatwell,
2003; Eatwell & OSullivan, 1990). The emergence of Third Way socialism and
liberalism reflects the fragmentation of traditional socialism based on class struggle and the welfare state. A key development is the emergence of emancipatory
politics, political movements that reflect the moralization of politics, driven by a
rhetoric based on justice or on responsibility (Giddens, 1994, 1998). These movements cut across the traditional left-right spectrum. Two examples are feminism
and environmentalism. The fragmentation of the left-right spectrum requires us to

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reconsider pervasive assumptions about the nature of belief systems and ideology,
and their philosophical and psychological underpinnings.
What do these surprises tell us? First, they undermine some of the frameworks within which we have been studying citizenship. They challenge many
assumptions about the nature of beliefs and their consistency, such as the idea that
beliefs are static, enduring attributes of the individual. They show that ideological structures in stable societies (where most of the research has been done until
recently) may be very different from those in changing societies. This leads us to
look more carefully at just how these structures function. If nationalism is a key
part of the construction of new identity for a nation in transition, we should also
look again at national identity and collective memory in stable societies.
Second, we should look more carefully at political motivation and engagement. Party commitment is of low salience to most citizens, as research has continually shown. So when we see how effectively a morally engaging issue (such
as the environment) can motivate even pre-adolescent children, we should attend
to the implications of this for citizenship education.
Finally, we should ask questions about what ideology doeswhat is its function? How does it work? Weltman and Billig (2001) argued that ideology is not
so much a preset pattern of thinking, but provides the elements of dilemmas for
the ideological subjects to think and argue about . . . . The psychological study of
ideology, therefore, needs to pay close attention to examining how the themes of
ideology are used and managed in ordinary talk (p. 369). In all the surprises, we
see ideology in process, we see beliefs serving a function in contextproviding
narratives to make sense of history and the future, to justify political or social
practices, to sustain shared identity.
The surprises, I argue, lead us to view the individual as an active being constructingand co-constructing with othersexplanations and stories that enable
him or her to make sense of experience, and to develop an identity in a particular social context. This shifts the psychological emphasis away from looking
solely at internal cognition, toward investigating how active construction and dialogue take place within a framework of multiple and parallel interactions situated
in a social, cultural, and historical context. This is consistent with theoretical
developments in social and developmental psychology that take on board culture
and historical context and have challenged the search for universals. Taking a
cultural perspective requires attention not only to what is believed and valued, but
how and why. This is reflected, for example, in Bar-Ons (2001) critique of Israeli
psychologists for implicitly accepting a U.S. worldview and ignoring not only
how the specific Israeli experience might challenge U.S.-based normative assumptions, but also ignoring the very rich social-psychological material that the Israeli
experience could uniquely offer.
Attending to culture and context also entails a less top down view of political development. If we want to understand how children develop those motives,
skills, concepts, and social practices that foster good citizenship, we must look

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at what kinds of experience engage them. We also need to address the diverse
definitions of participation and the implications of these for the construction of
the citizen. As the British political philosopher Bernard Crick, who chaired a
recent government committee on citizenship education, wrote: Too much of
political socialisation research turns out simply to be over-structured investigation of the attitudes of schoolchildren to adult political concepts. There is too little
on the political language and lore of schoolchildren, there is no political Piaget
(Crick, 1999, p. 342).
In this paper I argue that focusing more on cultural, social, and linguistic
processes will enable us to make sense of the surprises of the last decade and
to provide a richer approach to, and agenda for, citizenship education. I draw on
recent research that offers a somewhat more optimistic, and hopefully less theoretically sterile, picture of political development than Crick indicates.
Stable and Changing Societies
In a stable society, the structures of governance remain largely intact even in
times of temporary change (such as economic crisis). The individual citizen may
participate through voting, campaigning, or becoming involved in a pressure
group. If he or she wishes to challenge the status quo, there are channels for
confrontation and persuasion, whether conventional or unconventional, legal or
illegal. The skills and motivation required are personal efficacy and the ability to
organize within the institutional and human resources of the political milieu.
This is different from a changing society where, although the individual
citizen does not have any more real power than in a stable state, he or she is likely
to feel more personally affected by the changes and thus potentially more engaged.
Van Hoorn, Komlosi, Suchar, and Samuelson (2000) studied young people in
Hungary and Poland during the period 19901995. There was an initial period of
optimism and desire to formulate new ways of thinking aboutand enacting
democracy, which engaged these young people to a far greater extent than
would be found in a parallel cohort in a stable society. Even the disillusionment
that followed the failure of early efforts in many cases sprang from engagement
that did not succeed, rather than merely loss of trust in government. Other studies
of former Eastern bloc countries reported similar findings (Flanagan et al., 1999).
In a study of urban black South African adolescents during the immediate postapartheid era, Abrahams (1995) found extraordinary optimism about both their
own new opportunities and the potential for a new society. Most of them had been
involved in protest throughout their lives; they were engaged and involved, and
were constructing their personal identities around these expectations.
National Identity and Nationalism
Pathologized nationalism is associated with an ideology of exclusion, in
which the outgroup is cast as a threat to the purity of the nation by virtue of

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race, religion, or language. Nationalism in this form is not treated in the research
literature as a morally legitimate basis for group identityin contrast to patriotism, a desirable commitment to ones nation and its values. It is described as
tribalism, ethnocentrism, bigotry, or racism (Hall, 1993). Psychologists have
also explained such manifestations, at least in part, through individual pathology.
In his insightful book Banal Nationalism (1995), Billig pointed out that
pathologizing nationalism ignores the universality of identity attached to nationhood. He analyzed how our membership of our nation is affirmed daily, through
symbols and rhetoric so routine that we do not consciously notice them. It is
because this is so taken for granted that we are surprised when a particular
group, perceiving itself threatened or in need of bolstering its identity, makes the
underlying nationalist criteria explicit. Nationalism, Billig argued, is all around
us all the time, in banal forms. The kinds of nationalism that have emerged in
the past decade cannot be explained only by pathologizing models.
As Hall and Billig reminded us, we can learn much from the great period of
nation-building in the 19th century. At that time there were several different
kinds of nation: those that were politically well established (like the United
Kingdom), and nations that were newly created through reorganization into
republics (such as France) or through unification (like Italy and Germany). All
were engaged in generating a mythic history, with hero figures who were formative in the nations past, and symbols of nationality that would coalesce the
people into a new national identity. As Massimo dAzeglio said after the
Risorgimento, We have created Italy, now we must create Italians (Billig, 1995,
p. 25).
This process frequently involves the suppression of minority symbols, such
as languages (as in the suppression of Welsh in British schools, or Cajun in U.S.
schools). Unsurprisingly, resistant minorities retained these very symbols
overtly or covertlyas a mark of their own national identity, and in response
to such resistance nationalism becomes defined by the majority culture as a
pathological extremism, for it threatens the official national identity. Many
examples of the power of resistant identity could be found in former Soviet states.
Wertsch (1998) noted that in Estonia, throughout the Soviet era two parallel versions of history flourished: the official Soviet version, as taught in schools and
acknowledged in public discourse, and the unofficial versionwhich has now
become the official version.
We speak of the new post-Soviet nations, but most of them are in fact very
old. These nations are redefining their history, their culture, and their salient
symbols. They are also defining the outgroups that are perceived to threaten this
new nationhood. These developments challenge us to find explanations in terms
of a psychology of nation-building rather than mass deviance. They show how,
through collective memory, present identity is formed: Salient past eventsand
their consensually shared interpretationprovide narratives that explain and
justify the present. Margalit showed in The Ethics of Memory (2002) how specific memories become required of nations, a moral obligation to sustain both

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national identity and moral links to past sufferingas, for example, in projects
to ensure remembering of the Holocaust. Past golden ages provide guidelines
for values and practices in creating an effective nation; past tragedies confirm
shared identities.
How the nations history is drawn upon to formulate new versions of democracy is evident in the interviews with young people in Hungary and Poland conducted by van Hoorn et al. (2000). The young peoples discourse reflected the
public debates, tensions, and contradictions as different versions of what it means
to be Hungarian or Polish emerged during the period. Bar-Tal (2000) showed
how the story of Israeli nationhood is told within a recurrent narrative of siege
and response to siege, and how the issue of security plays a vital and central
role in concepts of patriotism and nationhood. Like other Israeli social psychologists, Bar-Tal is sensitive to the contradictions of applying stable, Western concepts of nationalism and citizenship to the Israeli situation.
These developments direct us to take national identity seriously in the development of citizenship. They also draw our attention to the role of narrative and
collective memory in identity. This also shifts explanations of nationalism away
from primarily individual cognitive or personality characteristics, to include the
cultural and historical context within which meaning is negotiated.
The Dissolution of the Left-Right Spectrum
My third surprise is a challenge not only to how we think about the political values map, but to the psychological basis of ideology itself. In psychology
there has been a rich tradition of explaining belief systems on the basis of personality function, or cognitive style. Such explanations make certain assumptions
about the nature of belief systemsmost notably, that beliefs are enduring and
are conjoined by an underlying principle (such as attitudes to authority). The argument for a functional basis for beliefsserving cognitive or personality needs
is much stronger if beliefs are seen as consistent and as bounded. These
psychological models have mapped easily onto the left-right political dimension,
which has existed in some form for more than 200 years. However, the constituents of this dimension have changed substantially over that time. Within both
left and right there have always been strange bedfellows, held together by
political expediency and also by self-identification with party membership, such
as the liberal and populist-conservative wings of the U.S. Democrats and the
mixture of free-market libertarians and social traditionalists of the British
Conservative party (Eatwell & OSullivan, 1990).
The dissolution of the left-right spectrum as a credible and useful value
dimension has come about in part through major changes in the map of ideology.
The split between free-market libertarian thought and traditional religious and
socially conservative thought became explicit in the 1980s, as the programs of
the former became major agendas of many conservative administrations and so

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forefronted some fundamentally different underlying assumptions. The emergence

of Third Way versions of socialism and liberalism, expressly proposed by the
British Labour party and inherent in the British Liberal Democrats, reflected also
a fragmentation of traditional socialism based on neo-Marxist perspectives and
class struggle (Blair, 1998; Giddens, 1994, 1998; Weltman, 2003). These developments are manifested not only in political writings but in lay thinking: Individuals may still identify themselves as left or right but the definitions have
become problematic; even the party faithful struggle to find discourses that avoid
polarization (Eatwell, 2003; Weltman, 2003; Weltman & Billig, 2001). As Eatwell
(2003) noted, one of the paradoxes of emergent extreme right-wing parties in
Europe is that they have benefited from the growing centrism of the mainstream,
for it provides a niche for explicit non-mainstream positions; yet at the same time,
many such parties declare that they are neither right nor left.
A major aspect of the fragmentation is the emergence of what are variously
termed emancipatory or liberationist politics, driven by justice for minority
groups or by moral concerns. Such movements cut across the traditional left-right
spectrum, even though they may take different forms when manifested by liberals and conservatives. The late 20th-century feminist movements derived initially
from the Left, but challenging gender discrimination is no longer confined to the
Left. Right-wing (or liberal) feminists, who vote for conservative political
parties, also emphasize free-market values, liberal principles of equal opportunity,
and individual achievement and progress. Left-wing feminists are more likely
to locate gender politics within the rhetoric and structures of class and inequality,
and to seek more social structural changes to overcome these (Bull, Diamond, &
Marsh, 2001; Haste, 1992, 1994, 2001a; Klatch, 1987). But whole areas of feminism fall outside these parameters, focusing on language and culture, which may
draw from rhetorics of the Left but equally draw from psychoanalysis or literary
theory (Haste, 2001a). Even if one can trace the roots of these perspectives to leftaligned intellectual movements, it is not useful to categorize them primarily within
this framework.
There are many parallels with environmentalist movements. Both the roots
of these movements and their current manifestations draw from diverse sources
and discourses (Harr, Brockmeier, & Mhlhausler, 1999). The left versions
may emphasize globalization and anti-capitalism, but there are strong environmentalist elements on the extreme right who focus on blood and soil and their
heritage (Eatwell, 2003). More mainstream environmentalists eschew the political labels but have been criticized for an inherently conservative, romantic
wilderness myth of a North America empty of indigenous peoples (Cronon,
1995). However, environmentalism is interesting not only for its political diversity but for its moral power. It is astonishing that within little more than 20 years,
environmentalism has moved from being a radical fringe movement to being a
central moral issue worldwide, and a theme within the core school curriculum of
most nations (Greenall Gough, 1993; Scott & Gough, 2003).

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There are important messages for citizenship education from these developments, particularly about what motivates engagement. Issues that have a moral
connotation engage the individual through compassion, anger, or moral outrage.
This may be associated with personal identityeither through identification with
a specific social category (such as gender or ethnicity) or through taking personal
responsibility for pursuing ones moral insight. Ecological issues carry this moral
force. As many studies have found, the environment tops the list of young peoples
concerns, and voting comes lowest. Few young people become enthralled by the
issues that preoccupy political parties. Most strikingly, young children are motivated by ecological moral concerns; a large number of 6-year-olds want to save
the rainforest (Flanagan et al., 1999; Greenall Gough, 1993; Kahn, 1999).
Critical and Cultural Psychology; Challenging Epistemology
The fragmentation of the left-right dimension undermines the assumption that
a particular belief will necessarily be associated with a particular ideology. To
deal with this, as Billig noted, explanation has to move away from models based
on consistency and enduring belief patterns, and needs to consider how particular beliefs and values function in contextin identity, in discursive and social
practices, in rhetoric, in narratives. Our surprises all demonstrate that people
negotiate meaning, rhetoric, narrative, and explanation in highly contextualized
ways. To understand this, we need to look at language and dialogue. We need to
look at rhetorical and discursive processes, not only at cognitive processes
(Billig, 1996; Edwards, 1997; Harr & Gillett, 1994). We need to look particularly at narrative: shared narrative, competing narrative, narratives that are taken
for granted, narratives that locate, explain, and justify the citizen and the nation.
The message of the surprises is that a model primarily focused on individual
cognition is inadequate. Constructing the citizen does not go on just inside
individual heads.
We must pay attention to the individual actively in dialogue, rather than the
individual at the end of a conduit of influence. Rather than being regarded as
passively socialized, the individual actively constructsand co-constructs with
othersexplanations and stories that make sense of experience, to develop an
identity that locates her or him in a social, cultural, and historical context. Self
and group identity, negotiated through narrative and dialogue as well as through
trying to make sense of social structures and representations, are crucial to understanding the construction of the citizen. Identity comprises group membership and
self-definition in terms of social categories, including nationhood, community,
sense of place, and ethnic and religious identity, where these are salient. It defines
who shall be deemed ingroup and outgroup, and therefore, what shall be the basis
for sharing symbols and metaphors with others. It also includes self-identity, in
which adherence to particular values or beliefs becomes part of the self: I am
the kind of person who believes such and such. Identity is therefore a starting

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point for dialogue and argumentation. The construction of the citizen is in part
the construction of an identity (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998).
This is consistent with theoretical developments in social and developmental psychology. Bruner (1990) distinguished paradigmatic and narrative forms
of knowledge. The tension between the paradigmatic and the narrative is longstandingcontrasting a form of knowledge that is representational, and legitimized by factual evidence, and ways of knowing based on narrative storytelling,
drawing upon cultural allusion and shared references, with an emphasis on the
negotiation of meaning. Bruners work is part of the rise of discursive social psychology, in which psychologists are drawing on anthropology, linguistics, and
semiotics to analyze narrative, discourse, and rhetoric, and to see how dialogue
actually works (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Billig, 1996; Edwards, 1997; Harr
& Gillett, 1994).
Bruner originally conceptualized the narrative approach as a rich alternative
to the narrowly paradigmatic, but he later argued that this is an incomplete picture
(Bruner, 1995). The problem with the paradigmatic model was its exclusion of
the social; the problem with the narrative model is that it focused only on the
social, leaving out the active individual agent. In The Culture of Education (1995),
Bruner integrated neo-Vygotskian psychology as a means of bringing the individual agent into the arena, as an active participant in the process of construction
and negotiation of meaning.
Vygotsky conceptualized the human being as interdependent with others, in
scaffolding development of understanding, in active use of language and dialogue
to construct meaningwithin a cultural context (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978;
Wertsch, 1985, 1998). Incorporating culture has had a somewhat problematic
history in psychology (Shore, 1996). For example, Wundt (1921) distinguished
two psychologies: one focused on processes which might have some physiological basis; the other on social and cultural processes, involving language and higher
mental processes. For Wundt, a full picture of the human being was impossible
without both. However, under the pressures for developing psychology as a positivistic science, only the first was historically credited as the origin of psychology, the second being lost and indeed marginalized as folk psychologya
mistranslation that damned it thoroughly for a century. It has taken a substantial
challenge to that very tradition to restore a cultural and language-based perspective to psychology. For some psychologists, personal experience provided the
impetus for taking culture seriously. Cole (1996) reported starting his research
career in West Africa administering U.S.-created tests to children, and wondering
why they did not work. His intellectual journey took him far beyond merely
finding better tests, to recognition that we cannot understand psychological
processes without an appreciation of the cultural infrastructure and how it facilitates development.
Another dimension of neo-Vygotskian perspectives is conceptualizing the
human being as tool-user (Gigerenzer, 2000; Haste, 2000, 2001b; Wertsch,

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1998). The tool-user idea is consistent with philosophical positions such as that
of Rorty (1979) and Bergsons (1911/1983) argument that we are Homo faber
rather than Homo sapiens. It is through our artifacts (which include the tools of
language and linguistic devices such as metaphor) that we experience and interpret our world. A striking example is Gigerenzers (2000) work on how early cognitive scientists metaphors of mind derived fromand differed according
totheir own interaction with the hardware and software of computers.
Cultural Narratives and Discourses
A paradigmatic approach to values and beliefs tends to map individual cognition. An approach that recognizes the narrative and cultural, by contrast, focuses
on values as processeson how values are used, invoked, negotiated, and
managed in dialogue between persons and in the individuals interaction with a
situation. How are the narratives and stories that underpin values used? Is it to
provide explanation, moral justification, prediction, or expectations based on previous experience? Why is this story chosen rather than others? When is entitlement, for example, based on a narrative of fair division, and when on restitution
for past inequity? How does the narrative position the speakeras authority, as
victim, as expert? How are narratives and stories negotiated with the audience?
In what ways is common groundshared understandingestablished? What
allusions and referents are used? What rhetorical devices? What is taken for
granted, implying shared meaning, explanations, and values, and what is presented as problematic, to be justified, elaborated, explained? As Billig (1996)
argued, dialogue involves argumentation, the presentation of a point of view with
the intent to counter another point of view: We only understand what is being
intended when we understand what is being countered.
Values and beliefs held within a particular cultural context are shared, and
thus taken for granted. It is not necessary to explain or elaborate that which can
be assumed to be common ground. Consider one example: The metaphor of
frontier in North America evokes a threshold between civilization and the
wilderness; in Europe the frontier is an administrative boundary between two
equally civilized and populated states (Cronon, 1995). The frontier metaphor in
North America conjures up personal challenge, confrontation with the elements,
and a testing groundor re-invigorationfor the spirit. This elides easily into
Star Trek, space exploration in generaland the Marlboro Man. It does not have
the same connotation in Europe.
Cultural narratives provide explanations and convey normative values. Values
and beliefs are made salient through how they are represented and argued, including whether they are taken for granted or presented as problematic. At the
most basic level, is the material accessible? American children, for example,
are unlikely to access French cultural narratives of the Napoleonic wars. To do
so is a salutary cultural experience, as it is even for the much more culturally

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accessible material, the differently nuanced American and British versions of

1776. Formal access to cultural narratives comes through school curricula, and it
is the overt policy of all governments to ensure that children receive a version of
history that develops national identity and the desired cultural values. The messages of globally transmitted television programs and films that convey a (primarily) Western worldview are informal but pervasive, as innumerable analyses
have shown.
The evidence of parallel or alternative historical narratives in societies
under oppressive rule indicates the importance of not only the overt narrative but
the covert, and also how the narrative is interpreted. A knowledge or paradigmatic model tempts us to examine how well the historical facts conveyed by the
narrative have been internalized, but in fact, we need to understand how the narrative is usedin particular, how it is managed in contradiction to, or competition with, other available narratives. An example is what is forefronted. For
instance, one Northern U.S. narrative was that the Civil War was fought against
slavery. However, the Souths narrative was not that they fought in order to
support slaverythey fought to retain the autonomy of states to make their own
laws (which happened to include legal slave ownership).
Narrative is central to collective memory; governments and cultural forces
deliberately sustain appropriate collective memory that carries ethical force and
justifies current practices in education, policy, and the treatment of outgroups. In
the Greek-speaking part of Cyprus, to take just one example, until the recent
rapprochement, schoolchildren were exposed daily to the motto I struggle and I
do not forget and reminded constantly of the events of 30 years ago when the
island was divided after the Turkish invasion (Christou, 2002). The use of I in
that context was intended to engage the personal and national identity of these
young people, even though the events in question occurred when their own parents
were children.
Positioning
A central feature of dialogue and argumentation is the process of positioningof oneself and of others. In managing dialogue between two persons, we
position ourselves in relation to the other (Harr & Van Langenhove, 1991;
Hollway, 1989). This is a skilled and often subtle process; I may position you
as my friend by the act of self-disclosure, or, by interrupting you, as someone not
to be taken seriously (Tannen, 1994). Davies and Harr (1990) spelled out a
provocative example of disputed positioning: He, seeing himself as a caring
person, tries to look after her when she feels ill; she objects that such caretaking
is positioning her as weak, and is therefore sexist; he feels hurt that she is labeling him as sexist.
In constructing national identity, we define ourselves by what we share with
others whom we deem like us and who affirm a shared response to those

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symbols and referents indicative of that identity. We define as other those

persons whose national characteristics, by being different from ours, affirm our
own nationhood. Recent work suggests that, in contrast to earlier explanations
that treated stereotyping as meeting a need to reduce information overload (the
cognitive miser model), we in fact elaborate stereotypes. We generate narratives that make sense of the otherness of the Xanodian, by choosing to define
the Xanodian negatively on those attributes that are salient to our positive definition of our own ingroup (Gibson & Gouws, 2003; Reicher & Hopkins, 2001).
One of the earliest social skills is turn-taking. From this early base the child
learns how to manage the social and linguistic cues that position him or her
vis--vis interlocutors, and to explicit or implicit social categories or groups. The
child learns when and how to express we-ness and theyness, and how to use
otherness as a way of confirming we-ness and selfhood (Rogoff, 1990). We
share; other (nasty) children dont share. We share with certain people, those
defined as our ingroup, but not with outgroup members. The reasons for sharing,
and the boundaries within which it is required, position the child in relation to
other children and to behaviors that are, or are not, part of our identity. On such
early foundations are the basis of both nationality and ethics laid. It is noteworthy
that politicians invoke such childhood rhetoric, knowing its power; Bush senior
and junior both used the playground metaphor of the bully and the hero who
stops him with regard to Saddam Hussein (Rohrer, 1995).
The Process of Construction and the Agenda for Citizenship Education
What does this theoretical framework tell us about how we construct the
citizen? At the very least, the implications of this approach must take us beyond
citizenship education purely as the pursuit of paradigmatic knowledge. How do
the three issuesidentity, positioning, and narrativetranslate into educational
practice? How can curricula and school experience work with the processes of
identity formation? How can an understanding of positioning enable us to
strengthen community commitment while providing defenses against outgroup
discrimination? How can we use narratives to transmit political knowledge as well
as motivate nationhood?
There is a fourth element also, which is central to effective citizenship: efficacy and agency, in particular the capacity to take responsibility and to participate in the community. The foregoing active model of the individual
presupposes agency, purposive seeking of knowledge, narrative, and interpretation, and proactive engagement in argumentation. The individual does this through
and with others, drawing upon cultural resources. How does actively making sense
of experience translate into educational practice, to foster active and efficacious
citizens?
In constructing our citizen, we set out particular goals and we work with
assumptions about how those goals are achieved through education. What models

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of citizenship inform discussions about citizenship education? What are the

implicit and explicit models of human development, and what are the implications of both for what is assumed to be effective in education for citizenship?
Where does the construction process take place? Such models and assumptions
both what is agreed, and what is contested and problematiccan be elicited from
writings explicitly on citizenship education, as well as from research agendas.
First, there is a longstanding tension in education theory between knowledge and praxis as the route to understanding. This has resonance with the distinction between paradigmatic and narrative ways of knowing, and with the
tool-user model of engagement with our world through artifacts, practices, and
language. The knowledge model presumes that information of itself will lead
to understanding and to appropriate motivation. By providing children with information (including the skills to treat that information critically), both enlightenment and involvement will follow; appropriate civic knowledge will motivate
civic participation. In contrast, the praxis model assumes that practical and theoretical knowledge, and particularly the motivation to use them, are acquired
through actively engaging with relevant tasks. The assumption is that knowledge
comes from making sense of experience rather than vice versa, and that knowledge has limited usefulness unless it translates into the individuals own encounters with salient materials. Praxis-based programs of citizenship education provide
opportunities for community engagement and active participation in the political
process appropriate to the childs age and interests. This is in the direct tradition
of John Dewey as well as Vygotsky, and informs the tool-user model.
Underlying this distinction is another question: Should the goal be an
informed citizenry or an efficacious citizenry? Is the aim to produce knowledgeable people (with the assumption that they will then be efficacious), or is it to
ensure that people are efficacious (which might require practical experience in
addition to knowledge)?
Second, discussions of what constitutes the good citizen also draw on the
rhetoric of the responsible citizen. This term has at least three contested meanings (Haste, 1993, 2001, in press). Responsibility may mean duty and obligationconformity to social expectations and rules. A second meaning of
responsibility concerns connectionties of affect and interdependence, relationship in the family or the wider community. Responsibility here derives from
mutual care and support, based on affective ties. A third form of responsibility
lies in the imperative deriving from a judgment of principle: If I perceive an injustice or a harm, I must act upon my moral judgment. These three forms of responsibility are implicitly in conflict. The responsibility to act in the pursuit of
principle mayand often doeslead the individual to confront the status quo and
act unconventionally, possibly illegally. The responsibility to personal ties may
conflict with demands of the wider community (including legal demands) or with
the responsibility to act for the public good. Responsibility, therefore, is not an
unproblematic concept.

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Third, over the past 40 years there have been significant changes in how participation has been researched. Early work looked at conventional participation inside the systemvoting, canvassing, fund-raising, by implication the
primary attributes of a good citizen. With the social and political upheavals of
the 1960s and 1970s, especially peace movements and the emergence of minority politics, research attention came to include such activitieswhich were now
also seen as a manifestation of good citizenship. From asking What is strange
about these people?, research shifted to asking what facilitated such high-risk
behavior. Some research contrasted the moral health of protesters with apathetic
non-protesters (Haan, Smith, & Block, 1968). Unconventional political activity, efficacy, and social responsibility, and the willingness to challenge unjust laws,
became valued (Jennings & Van Deth, 1990; Sigel & Hoskins, 1981).
As activist movements in stable Western societies have waned, competence, broadly defined, has become an emergent research field. Competence is
contrasted, optimistically, with the apparent rise in political apathy among young
people reflected in low turnout at elections. For stable societies, the definition
of democracy is entwined with the notion of participation. A healthy democracy
depends on an active citizenry; apathy is cause for concern (Ichilov, 1998). The
research suggests that the competent individual is self-sufficient, able to focus
attention and plan, has a future orientation, is adaptable to change, and has a sense
of responsibility and commitment, including believing that one can oneself have
an effect. Agency and efficacy are therefore core elements of competence. These
attributes seem to be fostered by families and communities that provide competent role models, set goals and assign responsibilities, and actually create practical opportunities for involvement (Hamilton & Fenzel, 1988; Hart & Fegley,
1995; Lenhart & Rabiner, 1995). A recent project by OECD has begun to explore
the concept of competence extensively (Rychen & Salganik, 2001).
Defining the attributes of the competent citizen more broadly has also
unpacked the concept of participation. There is first a distinction between political and civic participation. Then, it is useful to differentiate forms of participation that involve service to the community from those that are an extension of
private transactions, and those that involve more effort or cost in terms of commitment. So, giving (in the form of charity, tithing, or alms) is low-cost in terms
of time, can be anonymous, and can be construed as a private act rather than public
service. Helping is also a private, interpersonal transaction, a response to perceived need. Campaigning, whether in the form of canvassing, petition-signing,
or organizing support, is a public activity, an overt statement of commitment.
More public still, protesting and other forms of unconventional participation
can have high costs.
To explore assumptions and goals behind potential agendas of citizenship
education, I draw on two examples. The purpose is not to present a comprehensive account of current citizenship curricula, but to identify themes and consider
how they relate to the theoretical issues I have addressed. The first is a recent

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British initiative to develop citizenship education, under the direction of Bernard

Crick. Britain is the only advanced country that has not had (until recently) a
school citizenship curriculum. The program has needed to make explicit and
justify its assumptions. The second resource is the material from the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) study of 28
nations, which gathered data from 90,000 14- and 16-year-old students and from
teachers on a range of citizenship issues. This explored values, expectations, and
practice. The data therefore elucidate the context of citizenship education, and
also point up striking cultural differences that by no means map onto any simple
East versus West, or First versus Third World, boundary (Torney-Purta, Lehmann,
Oswald, & Schulz, 2001; Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2003; Torney-Purta &
Richardson, in press).
Crick chaired a government committee to explore the criteria and goals for
citizenship education (Crick, 1998). The report uncompromisingly states its aims
and assumptions:
We aim at no less than a change in the political culture of this country
both nationally and locally; for people to think of themselves as active
citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life
and with the critical capacities to weigh evidence before speaking and
acting, to build on and to extend radically to young people the best in
existing traditions of community involvement and public service, and to
make them individually confident in finding new forms of involvement
and action among themselves. (Crick, 1998, p. 10; emphasis added)
The report favorably cites another British educationalist, David Hargreaves:
Active citizens are as political as they are moral; moral sensibility derives
in part from political understanding: political apathy spawns moral
apathy. (Crick, 1998, p. 10)
This explicitly defines participation as proactive and critical, not just reactively
supportive of the status quo. Crick identified three distinct goals: social and moral
responsibility, community involvement, and political literacy. These goals are
desired outcomesthe product of educationbut they are also practices in
the classroom that will develop the relevant skills. The goals incorporate both
knowledge and action.
For social and moral responsibility, Crick identified children learning from
the very beginning, self-confidence and socially and morally responsible behavior both in and beyond the classroom. For community involvement, he identified learning about and becoming helpfully involved in the life and concerns of
their communities, including community involvement and service to the community. For political literacy, he identified realistic knowledge of and preparation
for conflict resolution and decision-making relevant to the main economic and
social problems of the day.

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These goals are notable for their breadth and for incorporating practical as
well as conceptual knowledge. The implicit definition of a citizen is not confined to participating in narrowly political activity such as voting, or party
support. The citizen here configured will take an active role in the community
and will engage in informed judgment about social and political issues. He or she
will also have conflict resolution skills, which apply in many areas of life. The
moral dimensionparticularly moral responsibilityis a salient feature. The
Crick Report was a quite radical document. However, its translation into policy
has been less assertive; the actual new school curriculum for England and Wales
(instituted in 2002) emphasizes qualities of helpfulness and consideration for
others rather more than the kind of critical agency that might lead to proactive
whistle-blowing (Quality and Curriculum Authority, 1999). How the new
curriculum will work in practice is still under review.
The major IEA international study directed by Torney-Purta and her colleagues provides rich and current data on what is happening in schools, and what
explicit and implicit expectations teachers and students have of civic education.
Although there are interesting national differences on some issues, an overview
of the general findings provides a useful picture of what might be termed a global
agenda of citizenship education: what teachers believe students should be learning, and what students perceive that they have learned (Torney-Purta et al., 2001).
The study addressed a range of political activity and goals of citizenship, not
confined to conventional participation, and so it is possible to compare how students and teachers value different forms of engagement. Teachers perspectives
reflected a general tendency toward liberal values and support for broad-based
activism. In all the nations surveyed except Cyprus and Romania, fewer than 20%
of teachers thought that students should be taught that joining a political party
was important. More than half of the teachers thought that pupils should be aware
of the importance of ignoring a law that violates human rights; this rose to more
than 85% in eight countries. Nearly two-thirds thought that pupils should feel confident to participate in peaceful protest; in 11 countries, this rose to more than
80%. Apart from the importance of knowing national history and obeying the law,
most support came for protecting the environment and promoting human rights,
endorsed in 25 of the countries by more than 90% of teachers.
The messages that the students absorbed also reflect this pattern. More than
72% of students believed that they had learned to cooperate with others and to
understand people with different ideas, to care what happens in other countries,
and to protect the environment. Fewer than 60% claimed they had learned the
importance of voting.
It is useful to compare what students perceive that they have learned with
their expectations of future civic and political action. In 17 countries, more than
80% of students expected to vote (Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2003). Collecting
money for social causes came high on the listin half the countries, more than
60% expected to do this. More proactive behavior, such as collecting signatures

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for a petition and taking part in a demonstration, varied considerably by country,

and there are clearly cultural differences in norms for grassroots activism. In 14
countries, more than 45% would collect signatures, and in nine countries, more
than 45% would take part in a demonstration, but the figures were much lower in
other nations. Certain nations stood out as having a culture of active participation, including protest, and a high level of engagement in general. These included
Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Chile, and Colombia. Other nationsincluding some
highly industrialized Western nations where students had a high level of political
knowledgewere notable for the low level of engagement and participation; these
included the Czech Republic, Finland, and Sweden.
A recent British study is instructive. This research was conducted by MORI
Polls for the Nestl Family Monitor (Nestl UK, 2003), with a sample of 914
students aged 11 to 18. The results make an interesting comparison with the
IEA data. The majority were uncertain about intentions to vote; only 12% were
absolutely certain to vote. But when asked about the importance of voting, 44%
agreed that voting is important and 63% agreed that voting had an effect on how
the country was run. These figures do not suggest that voting is highly significant
for these young people, but the data about other forms of participation are more
encouraging: More than 40% had participated in fundraising or a sponsored activity in the past year, 25% had signed a petition, and about 12% had taken part in
a protest demonstration or collected petition signatures. Only 2% had helped with
a political party. More expected to take part in protest in the future (23%) and to
help with a political party (10%).
As the authors noted, the relatively high participation by these young people
might be due in part to the data being collected during the Iraq war. However, the
figures overall compare somewhat unfavorably with the IEA data for England,
where 14-year-olds future expectations were that 80% would vote, 57% would
collect money for a social cause, 45% would collect petition signatures, and 28%
would take part in a protest. Englands figures for expected conventional political activity were similar to the international IEA average, but for unconventional activity, including both legal and illegal protest, they were well below; for
example, the international average for expected participation in non-violent
protest was 44%, compared with Englands 28%. (The U.S. data are close to the
international average on all measures of conventional and unconventional
including illegalpolitical activity.)
The study by Flanagan et al. (1999) adds further information about national
variations and alerts us to the cultural meaning of certain forms of action. This
study involved 5,000 young people aged 12 to 19 in seven countries. The range
of volunteering in the community was from 19.9% in Sweden to 60.4% in
Hungary. In the United States the figure was 51.5%. The authors argued that volunteering plays a very different role in Western nations with and without welfare
states and extensive social services; Sweden does not need volunteers as much as
the United States does. Cultural history is also important; in many former Eastern

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bloc countries, volunteering was a significant aspect of youth organizations (as it

is in the United States) and remains a normative activity.
These figures of political intent, and awareness of modes of political and
social activism, would seem to undermine the rather widespread anxiety that the
young are apathetic. If voting intention is taken as the criterion, then there are
grounds for such concern, but as noted earlier, voting behavior is a relatively infrequent activity, with low cost (in most nations) and, from the point of view of the
voter, fairly low effectiveness. The voter is less likely to feel the power of his or
her individual vote; much more subjective efficacy comes from campaigning and
persuading other people to vote (or demonstrate, or sign petitions). Macro analysis of political change must pay attention to the pattern of voting behavior, but
this is not necessarily a good measure of individual motivation, engagement, or
efficacy (Eatwell, 2003). To comprehend participation, we must look at the subjective perceptions and motivations of the citizen.
The Antecedents of Participation
To understand efficacy and agency, and how they relate to identity, we need
to know about the preconditions for engagement and the antecedents of participation. What happens to make someone get involved? What kind of experiences
facilitate commitment? Effective participation requires identification with the
project; it must be an element of selfhood. It requires a sense of ones agency and
efficacythat action is possible and potentially effective and that the individual
can personally take such action, alone or with others.
The evidence suggests that level of civic knowledge is only a partial predictor of participation, and that cultural factors are significant. For example, the IEA
data show an overall relationship between political knowledge and conventional
political activity. Nonetheless there are large variations between nations, with
some having a low level of civic knowledge but a high level of participation
Chile, Colombia, Portugal, and Romania. Other countries had a high level of civic
knowledge and low level of participation, such as Australia, the Czech Republic,
and Finland. High levels of both participation and knowledge were found in
Cyprus and Greece; low levels of both, in Belgium and Estonia.
In a more detailed analysis of four nations (Australia, England, Norway, and
the United States), Torney-Purta and Richardson (in press) found that different
types of predicted participation had different correlates. Voting was associated
with school factors, such as civic knowledge, curricular emphasis on the importance of elections, students confidence in their ability to participate, and an open
classroom climate. Additionally, family discussion and trust in government institutions predicted voting intent. Future party membership was predicted only by
current political interest (and in any case only 20% of students expected to join
a party). Intention to volunteer was affected by school factors such as learning
about community problems, but otherwise related to experience with organiza-

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431

tions and sense of efficacy. Political interest had no relationship to volunteering.

The likelihood of taking part in a non-violent protest was associated only with
discussion with parents, not with school factors. These data underline the importance of distinguishing different kinds of participation, and also of recognizing
that the effective citizen is not necessarily only the voting citizen.
Culture also influences the meaning of an activity. I noted earlier that a low
level of volunteering, or organizing for charity, in some nations may reflect not
apathy but an effective welfare state (Flanagan et al., 1999). There are also very
different cultural traditions regarding protest demonstrations and how different
forms of participation are perceived. Do the cultural narratives of protest, for
example, cast the protesters as heroes, subversives, or nuisances? How is current
protest located in the historical story? A culture of protest is reflected in frequent
marches and demonstrations (as perhaps in Greece, Cyprus, and Italy); without
such a culture, these will be resorted to only in extremis. In the United Kingdom,
marches have been associated primarily with the Left, or with a few very small
extreme right-wing groups. Yet one of the largest street demonstrations ever in
the United Kingdom was the Countryside March in September 2002, an event
organized and supported by primarily conservative opponents of legislation to
ban fox-hunting and other traditional country pursuits. Such people would never,
in the past, have taken to marching. This may suggest a cultural shift; recent antiwar demonstrations in Britain, drawing from a wide political spectrum, have also
been exceptionally large.
There are two main strands of work on the antecedents and processes of
engagement. The first comes from studies of the peace movement in the period
19641988, the second from more recent work on volunteering and community
activity. The first was more overtly political. The second area of research has
surfaced particularly in reaction to the pessimistic picture of young peoples
apathy; these researchers find extensive community activity among young people.
Both the peace movement and the community action research demonstrate that
the experience of being an effective agent both influences the individuals perspective on an issue and fosters personal engagement and a sense of efficacy.
Active participation in youth groupssuch as membership in 4H and, to a lesser
extent, youth activities such as Scoutsalso predicts participation and civic leadership in later life. Many studies on former peace and campus activists from the
1960s and 1970s show that although their political values may moderate, they
retain a lifelong propensity toward engagement, activism, volunteering, and
choosing careers in education or service (McAdam, 1988; Stewart, Settles, &
Winter, 1998; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995; Youniss, Mclellan, & Yates,
1997).
The peace movement research showed that those who became actively
engaged had a high level of personal efficacy, combined with low trust in government. This emerged from numerous studies (Haste, 1989; Kaase & Newton,
1995; Marsh, 1977; Milbrath & Goel, 1977). Additionally, qualitative data

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suggested that frequently, activist individuals had been sensitized by events that
led to focused attention to salient information. This work was particularly instructive about management of affective responses to perceived threat, and about the
roles of trust and personal efficacy in mediating such affect. It also underlined the
importance of experience. Although preexisting beliefs were important, particularly in relation to level of trust, it was clear that attitudes alone did not account
for commitment; previous personal experience of agency was a vital element in
generating motivation, efficacy, and action (Andrews, 1991; Colby & Damon,
1992; Fiske, 1987; Fogelman, 1994; Hamilton, Chavez, & Keilin, 1986; Haste,
1989, 1990; Locatelli & Holt, 1986).
In several studies, we found that anger about the nuclear threat, anger in
response to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and anger in response to witnessing
cruelty or injustice were associated with a sense of efficacy, and tended to precipitate engagement and action, including heightened sensitization to relevant
information (Haste, 1989, 1990; Haste, Sharpley, & Wallace, 1987; Thearle &
Haste, 1986). We referred to this pattern as Affective Actor. Fear, in contrast,
when associated with low trust and low sense of personal efficacy, produced what
we termed the Powerless Pessimist. Fear combined with high trust and low personal efficacy was associated with faith that the government would keep the
nuclear threat under control, or deal effectively with the fallout from Chernobyl.
We termed this the Deferring Defender. We also identified a fourth group, which
other researchers had notedpeople with high trust in government who expressed
little affective response; they believed that the nuclear weapons policy of power
balance was successful. We termed them Resistant Rationalizers.
The work on voluntary activity clearly shows that young peoples hands-on
experience of sociopolitical issues, and the processes by which they become
engaged, are central to political development and considerably more relevant to
it than party affiliation. This work meets Cricks argument that research should
address young peoples own worlds and lore. Yates and Youniss (1999) brought
together an international group of researchers who were exploring young peoples
involvement in community work and informal political activities. This research
identifies three different kinds of community work, which should be looked at
somewhat differently: helping, fund-raising, and campaigning. It is important to
note the subjective meaning of such participation. For example, helping a disadvantaged person, as well as involving personal connection, both requires and
fosters sensitivity to others needs. In contrast, protecting an environmental
resource can be seen as saving our world (Flanagan et al., 1999). As Flanagan
et al. noted, environmental concerns had a particular political dimension in former
Eastern bloc countries; because pollution could be seen as the responsibility of
the old regime, campaigning against it was a way of indirectly pushing for political change within a fairly safe discourse.
Yates (1999) work on the experience of black adolescents helping in a soup
kitchen for the homeless demonstrates several aspects of the growth of political
awareness. First, it challenged their stereotypes that all homeless people were poor

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433

and blackand therefore made them aware that they had been stereotyping.
Second, the ethnic mix of the homeless confronted their own black identity and
its assumptions about white social power. Third, they began to think about personal and institutional moral responsibility and where the problems of homelessness lay. Finally, their activity gave them access to the experience of civic agency.
A similar pattern of themes emerged in a study of British volunteers (Roker, Player,
& Coleman, 1999). So participation leads to an awareness of social problems, the
opportunity to try to alleviate them, and the growth, through experience, of a realistic assessment of what an individual can do. Also, through participation, actors
form a connection to community organizations and to committed individuals.
Conclusion
My intent here has not been to propose specific curriculum developments,
but rather to take a critical theoretical overview and to reflect on the principles
behind citizenship education. I have selected from existing research to elaborate
concepts and arguments; a more comprehensive literature review, not within the
scope of this paper, might begin to tell us about the effectiveness of educational
practices and of individual experience. I have explored four concepts that emerge
from the critical psychology approach that I have adopted, in relation to citizenship: identity, positioning, narrative, and efficacy. Let us look at these again in
the light of the data to which I have referred, and consider some educational
implications.
Identity emerges as central to engagement. To become involved requires that
one have a sense of ownership of the issue, that one define oneself as a member
of a group or as a holder of particular beliefs. The data show that civic knowledge is not enough; such knowledge has to become salient to the individual
through the experience of participation in relevant action, through the negotiation
of identity with others, and through incorporating narratives about values, selfhood, and national identity into ones self-definition.
There is a large literature on social identity in relation to social categorization and social groups (such as ethnic groups) that demonstrates how ingroups are
defined by the other who characterizes the outgroup, and how people become
members of ingroups. Although this paper has focused on the more desirable and
community-oriented aspects of youth movements, there is a body of data on youth
resistance, ritual, and involvement with football support, squatting, counterculture
leisure, etc. (Feixa & Costa, 2003; Hall & Jefferson, 1983; Skelton & Valentine,
1998; Stott, 2001; Widdicombe & Wooffitt, 1995) that illuminates identity formation. This work is outside the scope of this paper, but may provide insights into
the active construction of identity.
A particularly useful feature of the concept of positioning is the slant it
gives to minority status and the management of being otheredas well as
othering. Positioning is conceptualized as an active process, and in continual
negotiation. The skills are learned very young, as neo-Vygotskian developmental

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psychologists note. This counters the more simplistic view that those who are
otheredby stereotyping or by language styleare passive victims. The insights
of positioning, while not denying the oppressive effects of powerful and consistent othering, nonetheless lead us to look at how this is a continual iterative
process within which there are many forms of resistance.
The processes of engagement can usefully be interpreted as positioning and
repositioning. Consider Yates (1999) study of young black students working in
a soup kitchen for the homeless. Taking the liberty of reflecting on these data
within the theoretical framework I am discussing, one can suggest that, before
their experience, they had positioned themselves (and had been positioned) as part
of a black community within the framework of white power. They themselves
were relatively well off, and the poorwhom they assumed to be universally
blackwere seen as (positioned as) feckless, drug-ridden, or otherwise morally
suspect. First, their involvement in the soup kitchen required that they position
themselvescollaboratively and with teachers assistanceas able to be helpful,
as wishing to identify with helpfulness, and also, perhaps, as being a little brave
in so doing. Yates noted that once they were involved in the activity, there was a
large shift in positioning (although she did not use this language to describe it).
Students discovered that the homeless included white as well as black people,
which disrupted their monolithic view of white power. They discovered that the
homeless were unfortunate, or in other ways did not merit positioning as morally
deficientand that they also had self-respect, and resisted being positioned as to
be pitied. Finally, their experience made them aware of other positionings in
the situation: the role of local agencies and local government in providing, or not,
facilities for the homeless, and in exacerbating their plight in various ways, and
the possible mechanisms by which citizens like themselves could become agents
of social and political pressure.
I have discussed narrative in two ways: in Bruners sense as a form of
knowing that counters the paradigmatic, linear, and factual, and takes account of
the central role of stories that include cause and consequence, and which allude
to shared cultural resources, in the acquisition of knowledge, and in the application of this to how narratives are pivotal to personal, social, and national identity.
As I noted, education programs explicitly provide narratives of national history
and identity, as well as the moral and other stories that underpin social values and
expectations. New narratives emerge as neededin changing societies, as we
have seen, reconstructed versions of history and of relations with other states
provide an identity that forges new independence and unity. We also see new
transnational narratives: Globalization, in both its negative and positive connotations, requires us to find the stories that will enable our young people to frame
their identity beyond the local boundariesand will also provide the story that
motivates them to question multinational capitalism (Winter, 2003). And it is
through narratives of the other that stereotyping and discrimination are perpetuated (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001).

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435

The importance of narrative has been explicit in debates about history curricula for some time. Ethnic identity in particular has been fostered in schools by
forefronting minority groups history within a multicultural curriculum approach.
In some countries, this has come into conflict with pressure to tell a national
story of the heritage of current identity and institutions. What is interesting is that
all parties concerned recognize the power of narrativenot only the power of
factual information. This is a major insight of the theoretical approach I am discussingthat values and factual data are not, of themselves, enough to engage
and motivate, to become part of the young persons identity. It is through the narratives that underpin and justify values that ownership of those values appears
to happen.
Finally, how do we foster efficacy and agency through education? TorneyPurta and Richardson (in press) reported that pupils expected future voting correlated with an open classroom climate and students having a role in school
decision-making. One interpretation of this is that the values of democratic discussion and involvement are presented through institutional practice; we might
add that, through active practical involvement, children learn both the values and
the sense of agency. We might also add that by according children the right, and
the expectation, to make their voice heard, we are positioning them as efficacious
and enabling them to position themselves as such. We have seen that voluntary
community activities, and campaigning and protest activities, are highly effective
means of equipping young people with the identity, values, skills, and efficacy
that make them effective participants. These examples are mainly educational
interventions, working within a stable school and societal environment. The data
from real-life situationssocieties in transitionalso show the power of active
engagement in social change, as we saw in the studies by van Hoorn et al. (2000)
in Hungary and Poland and by Abrahams (1995) in South Africa.
The brief overall conclusion must be that a knowledge model of citizenship education is not enough. It is through praxis, whether in the school or in the
community, that the young person gains an identity as an active citizen, and the
skills and efficacy to become one. A paradigmatic knowledge model, focusing on
factual material about institutions, is also unlikely to fire the growing person. We
may be suspicious that narratives can justify the wrong kinds of positioning,
but understanding discursive processes requires us to recognize the inevitability
of narrative, as well as its appealand to make use of it effectively in education.
Much research on discursive processes needs to be done; knowing that certain
experiences and practices facilitate different kinds of participation is the first step.
Now we need to find out how.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper is based on the Presidential Address to the International Society
of Political Psychology annual conference, Berlin, Germany, July 2002. Corre-

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spondence concerning this article should be sent to Helen Haste, Department of

Psychology, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK. E-mail: helhaste@aol.com
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