Examines theories of how citizenship is mediated between lived experiences and formal entitlements in order to map out, confine, extend, name, and enact the boundaries of belonging to a polity. This book assembles deep traditions in social and political thought to provide a examination of acts of citizenship in this useful way.

PrefaceIntroduction: Acts of Citizenship - Engin F. Isin & Greg M. NielsenPart I: Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics1. Theorizing Acts of Citizenship - Engin F. Isin2. Can an Act of Citizenship be Creative? - Melanie White3: What Levinas Can and Cannot Teach Us about Mediating Acts of Citizenship - Bettina BergoActs I: Heroic Intrusions and the Body of LawAct 1. Abraham's Sacrifice - Charles WellsAct 2: Antigone's Offering - Charles WellsAct 3: Socrates's Death - Bora Ali IsyarAct 4: Euthanasia - Bora Ali IsyarAct 5: Pat Tillman: soldier-citizen-hero? - Darryl BurgwinPart II: Citizens, Strangers, Aliens, Outcasts4. Citizenship without Acts? With Tocqueville in America - Brian C. J. Singer5. Acts of Piety: The Political and the Religious or a Tale of Two Cities - Bryan S. Turner6. Arendt's Citizenship and Citizen Participation in Disappearing Dublin - Kieran Bonner7. No One Is Illegal Between City and Nation - Peter Nyers8. Acts of Demonstration: Mapping the Territory of (Non-) Citizenship - William WaltersActs II: Exclusions without namesAct 6. Promising to Become European - Erkan ErcelAct 7: Checkpoint Gazes - Irus BravermanAct 8: The Romani - Ebru UEstundagAct 9: Return to Guatemala - Karine Cote-BoucherAct 10: Unintentional Acts of Citizenship (The Joke) - Ian MorrisonPart III: Sites and Scales of Answerability9. Citizenship, Art and the Voices of the City: Wodiczko's The Homeless Projection - Fred Evans10. Acts of Chinese Citizenship: The Tank Man and Democracy-to-Come - Yon Hsu11. Answerability with Cosmopolitan Intent: An Ethics Based Politics for Acts of Urban Citizenship - Greg M. NielsenActs III: Rituals and PerformanceAct 11. Acts of Commemoration - Ian MorrisonAct 12. Non-Citizens' Politics - John SaundersAct 13: Flash mobs - John SaundersAct 14: Spike Lee's 25th Hour - Erkan Ercel

'Acts of Citizenship is itself an exuberant, startling, act of social theory about the acts that create and transform our bonds as citizens. The names of Derrida, Levinas, and Agamben fly from the pages, along with a range of figures such as the Tank Man of Tiananmen square, Socrates, Seneca and Pat Tillman. This is the book to read if you want to know where social theory is now.' Stephen Turner, University of Southern Florida 'Without nostalgia or sentimentality, this volume revives even as it disseminates and complicates an appreciation of active citizenship. Philosophically rich, culturally wide-ranging and eminently readable, this is a marvelous, indeed inspiring book' Wendy Brown, University of California