Citizenship Studies

Vol. 14, No. 5, October 2010, 495–509

The politics of affective citizenship: from Blair to Obama

Carol Johnson*

School of History and Politics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia

(Received 26 September 2009; final version received 12 December 2009)

Politicians have long mobilised emotion in order to gain voters’ support. However, this
article argues that the politics of affect is also implicated in how citizens’ identities,
rights and entitlements are constructed. Examples are drawn from the positions of UK,
US, Canadian and Australian politicians, including Tony Blair, David Cameron, Kevin
Rudd and Barack Obama. Emotions analysed include love, fear, anxiety, empathy and
hope. The article argues for the importance of a concept of ‘affective citizenship’ which
explores (a) which intimate emotional relationships between citizens are endorsed and
recognised by governments in personal life and (b) how citizens are also encouraged to
feel about others and themselves in broader, more public domains. It focuses on issues
of sexuality, gender, race and religion, and argues that the politics of affect has major
implications for determining who has full citizenship rights. The Global Financial
Crisis has also seen the development of an ‘emotional regime’ in which issues of
economic security are increasingly influencing constructions of citizenship.
Keywords: citizenship; politics; affect; sexuality/sexual orientation; race; identity

Introduction
The last few years have seen an increasing literature on the Politics of Affect.1 It is widely
accepted that emotion has been a significantly under-researched area in political studies
(Barbalet 2006, p. 32, Redlawsk 2006, p. 1). This is surprising given that the power of
emotions has long been acknowledged by political theorists ranging from Aristotle to
Burke (Robin 2004, p. 81, Charteris-Black 2005, p. 11). Emotion has also been a key field
of study in closely related fields. Demertzis (2006, p. 103) comments that ‘it is strange to
think that the political sociology of emotions is quite immature when compared with the
enormous growth of the sociology of emotion over the last 25 years’. Indeed, some of that
sociological research is highly relevant to the arguments developed here (e.g. Fortier
2008).
Much of the recent literature on politics and emotion have focused on politicians’ use
of emotion to mobilise electoral support. Westen (2007, p. 125) claims unequivocally
that ‘the data from political science are crystal clear: people vote for the candidate who
elicits the right feelings’. Similarly, Redlawsk (2006, p. 10) draws on opinion poll and
neurophysiological research to argue that politics is ‘about feeling every bit as much as
it is about thinking’. This article also focuses on politicians and emotion. It takes the
fact that politicians regularly use emotion to try to gain the interest and support of the
electorate as a given. However, it pursues a different approach by focusing on how
politicians’ use of affect interconnects with the way in which citizenship is constructed

*Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1362-1025 print/ISSN 1469-3593 online

q 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2010.506702
http://www.informaworld.com
496 C. Johnson

and citizens are governed (including via citizens self-governing their emotions). The
concept of ‘affective citizenship’ is used to explore (a) which intimate emotional
relationships between citizens are endorsed and recognised by governments in personal
life and (b) how citizens are also encouraged to feel about others and themselves in
broader, more public domains. It is argued that both these aspects influence how
citizenship is constructed, impacting on conceptions of citizens’ identity, their rights and
entitlements. Such constructions of citizenship in turn reflect different ‘emotional
regimes’, to adapt a term of Reddy’s (2001, p. 62), in the form of particular ideals and
strategies that an individual is meant to adhere to, and the emotions (towards themselves
and others) that they are expected to feel.
The term ‘affective citizenship’ is not new. Jones (2005, p. 145) uses the term to refer
to the ‘affection and loyalty’ which citizens are encouraged to feel about their nation.
Mookherjee (2005, p. 36) uses the term, in the context of French debates over the Muslim
wearing of headscarves, to argue for the need for governments to acknowledge ‘the
emotional relations through which identities are formed’. This article builds on both those
meanings but the broad concept of ‘affective citizenship’ used here emphasises that the
recognition and encouragement of emotions has long been part of the very way in which
citizenship itself is constructed.
The article particularly focuses on the interactions between ‘affective citizenship’ and
issues of gender, race/ethnicity, religion and sexuality, as well as issues of economic
security. Key examples from political debate are used to illustrate some of the ways in
which the interaction of affect with social power relations can influence constructions of
citizen identity and entitlements, and involve different emotional regimes. Given that this
article already covers a wide range of issues, it was decided to limit the analysis to
(predominantly) English-speaking politicians. Consequently, the article draws on
examples from the UK, US, Australia and Canada. Using examples from four countries
demonstrates the cross-country relevance of issues of affective citizenship, while
acknowledging the impact of local political circumstances. The resulting analysis
illustrates the variety of emotional regimes involved, in different historical circumstances
and locations, as well as their contested nature. Given the existing scope, broader
approaches regarding the origins and nature of emotions also could not be pursued. These
include insights from psychosocial approaches (see e.g. Clarke et al. 2006) and
neuroscience (see e.g. McDermott 2007). Rather, this article focuses on politicians’ use of
specific feelings such as love, empathy, anxiety, security, fear and hope. It merely seeks to
analyse particular aspects of the politics of affect, related to politicians and citizenship,
thereby complementing research that uses other approaches in a field where much work
remains to be done.
The article begins by establishing that emotion has long played a role in
constructing conceptions of citizen identity. Conceptions of intimate affective couple
and familial relationships influenced how citizen identity and citizen entitlements were
originally constructed. Current political debates over issues ranging from same-sex
marriage to the recognition of indigenous family relations are then analysed to reveal an
ongoing relationship between the recognition of intimate emotional relationships and
particular constructions of citizen identity and entitlements. The analysis then moves
from the discussion of those personal emotions to a discussion of the emotions that
politicians encourage citizens to feel about themselves and others in more public
domains. Finally, the article concludes by exploring some of the implications of
previous arguments about the role of affect, particularly empathy, in the conceptions of
the good citizen.
 Citizenship Studies 497

Intimate emotions: personal life and the construction of the affective citizen
Feminists have long pointed out (Moller Okin 1979, Pateman 1988) that the traditional
liberal western citizen was constructed in gendered terms as a married male head of
household. That conception of citizenship also had affective underpinnings. First, one of
the justifications for denying women citizenship in their own right was that women were
seen to be too emotional, therefore less ‘rational’ than men, and properly confined to
private, family life (Lloyd 1984). Second, despite the emphasis on the male’s ability to be
a ‘rational’ citizen in public life, it was also recognised that his role as a head of household
involved personal emotional commitments. Indeed, from the eighteenth century on,
marriage was increasingly constructed, including in law and politics, as a relationship
between affective individuals and the household was correspondingly constructed as a
caring, loving family.2 So, the unit around which citizenship was constructed always had
significant affective components, despite the apparent focus on ‘rationality’.3
Giddens (1992, p. 195) has gone so far as to argue that the emphasis on intimacy
between individuals eventually facilitated more equitable gender relationships and was
thereby implicated in the development of western democracy. Giddens may have a point
given the history of inter-connected justifications for family forms and forms of
government. Developments in personal life potentially challenged traditional arguments
that lines of formal authority flowed downwards from feudal monarchs ruling over their
subjects to male heads of household ruling over their wives and families (Peters 2004,
pp. 94 –95, 201). Povinelli has argued that Giddens’ analysis is also relevant to western
interventions in colonial settler societies. She claims that ‘the intimate couple is a key
transfer point’ of ‘liberal forms of power in the contemporary world, including being seen
as constitutive of western civilisation’ (Povinelli 2006, pp. 4, 17). Consequently, other
forms of kinship relations, which did not centre on an intimate couple and nuclear family,
could be constructed as inferior and as justifying colonial government interventions.
Furthermore, as Stoler (2002, pp. 112– 139; 41 – 78) has documented, intimate feelings
became an important site of governance and self-governance in colonial societies,
particularly in regard to issues around the care of children or sexual relations. In short,
affect, intimacy, citizenship and governance have long been intertwined. This history is
sometimes overlooked by those who imply that morally conservative views, which
‘downsize’ citizenship to construct ‘the sphere of private life’ as ‘the core context of
politics’ (Berlant 1997, p. 3), are a relatively new phenomenon. Rather, such ‘family
values’ conservatives are harking back to older conceptions of citizenship.
Even if one does not see such intimate relationships as being as pivotal as Giddens does,
affective relationships still clearly play a role in how citizenship is constructed. Plummer
(2003, pp. 67 – 84) has argued that forms of ‘doing intimacy’, for example around more
diverse forms of family life and sexuality, are integral to new, highly contested, forms of
citizenship. The emphasis here will be on how forms of intimacy, in turn, involve particular
forms of emotion. Specific emotions are recognised and approved of, while others are not,
in different emotional regimes constructed around issues of sexuality and family relations.
For example, traditionally the intimate couple being constructed as the basis of citizenship
entitlements was heterosexual. The initial design of welfare policies assumed that women
and children would be dependent upon a male wage earner (Pateman 1996, pp. 13 –17).
The serious implications that had for same-sex couples have been analysed in the literature
on sexual citizenship (Bell and Binnie 2000, Richardson 2000, Phelan 2001) and
heteronormative citizenship (Johnson 2002). Forms of heteronormative citizenship are
also forms of affective citizenship. As Kirby (2005, p. 31) notes: ‘Same-sex relationships
498 C. Johnson

were the outward manifestation of impermissible emotions’ and that is one reason why
‘such emotions, or at least the physical acts that gave them expression, were criminal in
many countries’.
Homosexuality may now have been decriminalised in the western world but there
is clearly an ongoing political struggle over whether the affective intimate couple is
constructed as heterosexual. Conservative politicians such as George W. Bush (2004),
Canada’s Stephen Harper (2005) and Australia’s John Howard (2004) have argued that
marriage is an exclusively heterosexual institution. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton
and Australia’s Kevin Rudd also agree that marriage should be heterosexual, although
they advocate various other forms of legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Not
surprisingly, given the previous arguments regarding how the unit of citizenship is
constructed, issues of marriage and legal recognition of same-sex relationships have major
implications for citizens’ entitlements. There are over 1000 federal rights associated
with marriage in the USA, ranging from social security to employment benefits that have
been denied to same-sex couples (Kotluski 2004, pp. 56 –57). In Australia, the failure
to recognise same-sex relationships as equivalent to heterosexual de facto ones prior to
2008, resulted in over 50 major pieces of discriminatory legislation. These ranged from
welfare benefits, superannuation and immigration to taxation law (Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission 2007; Commonwealth of Australia 2008d, pp. 6686 –6699). The
loving family of parents and children was also traditionally constructed in heterosexual
terms, and there are consequently ongoing debates over recognition of same-sex familial
relationships in many jurisdictions (e.g. Rayside 2008, pp. 167 –220; Commonwealth of
Australia 2008c, pp. 5931 –5998; 12 November 2008, pp. 82– 84). Once again, recognition
has implications for family benefits. In short, sexuality provides an excellent example of
how the recognition and endorsement of emotions such as sexual and parental love
influences how citizen entitlements are constructed. It also reveals the heteronormative
nature of traditional sexual emotional regimes that are still being challenged today.
So, in many parts of the West, same-sex couples (and their families) still have not
made the leap to being constructed as loving, affective individuals that in Britain, for
example, was made in the eighteenth century for heterosexuals. This in turn has had
implications for whether gays and lesbians are seen as eligible for citizen entitlements.
The foregoing analysis, therefore, adds an additional, affective component, to Kaplan’s
argument (1997, p. 3) that ‘the achievement of equality for lesbian and gay citizens is part
of the unfinished business of modern democracy’ and to Phelan’s (2001, p. 5) argument
that ‘lesbians and gay men are not currently citizens in the full political sense’ in countries
such as the USA. In short, the identity and entitlements of the citizen were shaped by
heterosexual emotional norms.
Given the foregoing analysis, it is also not surprising that more recent arguments in
favour of recognition of same-sex relationships are often based on constructing same-sex
couples as affective individuals in loving relationships equivalent to heterosexual ones
(see e.g. Smith 2003, Blair 2005). If public recognition of emotions such as love is
implicated in constructions of citizenship entitlements, then such recognition needs to be
engaged with, despite the normalising consequences rightly identified by queer theorists
(see e.g. Valverde 2006).
However, gender and sexuality are only two of the social power relations that have
influenced which intimate personal emotions are recognised by the state. (Needless to say,
individuals often have multiple identities in which factors such as race, gender, religion
and sexuality intersect.) Current contestations around love, marriage and relationship
recognition in the west are largely around issues of sexuality. Yet, even four decades ago
 Citizenship Studies 499

in the USA there would have been debates about race. There are also racialised emotional
regimes that are relevant to issues of how citizenship is constructed. Several US states had
banned mixed race marriages until they were overridden by a 1960s Supreme Court
decision with the Court subsequently asserting that the right to marry is ‘one of the basic
civil rights of man [sic]’ (Gerstmann 2004, p. 200). Emotional attachments between
couples and families were constructed in racialised ways. Members of marginalised races
were dehumanised in a complex interaction between the denial of full citizenship rights
and the non-recognition of, or lack of empathy for, particular emotions.
For example, the denial of the love between indigenous parents and their children
contributed to both the ‘stolen generations’ of Aboriginal children taken from their parents
in Australia until the 1970s, and the over 150,000 Canadian aboriginal children separated
from their families to be placed in Indian residential schools. Both the Australian Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd and the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made formal
apologies for these acts in 2008. Rudd acknowledges the past failure to recognise
emotional attachments in Aboriginal families as equivalent to those of colonial settler
Australians:
The pain is searing . . . . The hurt, the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the
act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault . . . on our most
elemental humanity . . . . I ask those non-indigenous Australians . . . who may not fully
understand why what we are doing is so important to imagine for a moment that this had
happened to you. (Commonwealth of Australia 2008a, p. 169)
Harper (2008) also acknowledged the lack of empathy for others’ feelings in
‘a dehumanizing system’ that ‘destroyed the fabric of family in first nations’ and made
parents and children ‘feel worthless’. However, taking indigenous children from their
families is just one of the more recent instances in a very long history of the emotions of
non-white families not being recognised. For example, the US House of Representatives’
(2008) apology for slavery, acknowledged that the brutal treatment of slaves included
families being ‘torn apart after having been sold separately from one another’.
Significantly, the above statements do not just involve an apology for past wrongs, they
also signal the development of more racially inclusive conceptions of citizenship rights and
entitlements. As part of that process, the intimate emotional relationships of indigenous
and African American families are being publicly accorded the same status as those of the
white families around which western conceptions of the unit of citizenship were originally
constructed. The appeals to ‘family feeling’ are not just being used by politicians as an
emotive trope that can engender empathy among whites who have reservations about
indigenous rights. The argument here is that, given the significance which the family plays
as a unit of citizenship, the appeals to ‘family feeling’ also signify a broader, more racially
inclusive, extension of the citizen unit and citizen rights. There has been a shift in racialised
emotional regimes in terms of whose emotions are being recognised as legitimate and
who it is legitimate for socially powerful racial groups to feel empathy for (see further
Johnson 2005).
Nonetheless, just as sexual contestations are ongoing in constructions of the unit of
affective citizenship, so are contestations over race and ethnicity. The previous Australian
government steadfastly refused to apologise to stolen indigenous children (Commonwealth
of Australia 2008b, p. 6158). Hancock (2004) has analysed how previous US governments
mobilised the ‘Politics of Disgust’ against African American single mothers, depicting
them as bad mothers and ‘welfare queens’. Furthermore, whether couple and familial
emotional relationships are adequately recognised still has implications for who is let into
countries as potential citizens. Hillary Clinton (2007) argued that US laws were ‘tearing
500 C. Johnson

legal immigrant families apart’ as permanent residents waited many years for their spouses
and children to get permission to join them. In other words, ongoing gender and racial issues
over who is constructed as a legitimate loving family still have implications for conceptions
of citizens’ rights and entitlements. (It will be interesting to see the impact of having an
African-American first family in the USA.) Such examples already suggest that affective
citizenship does not just involve whether intimate emotions, such as those within couples or
families, are recognised or endorsed. Affective citizenship also involves which emotions
citizens are encouraged to feel about themselves and others in more public contexts.

Public emotions and the construction of the good citizen

Intimate emotions within couples or families are often the subject of public debate as the
controversies over apologies to indigenous families or over same-sex marriage make clear.
Personal emotions are also evident in relations within communities, as Fortier’s (2008)
analysis of ‘multicultural intimacies’ reveals. Here, as elsewhere, there is not a clear
demarcation between the private and the public (cf. Miller and Rose 2008, p. 19).
However, the analysis in the following section will move beyond focusing on analyses of
intimate emotions, in couple or family contexts, to analyse the link between constructions
of citizenship and the broader, more public, emotions that ‘good’ citizens are encouraged
to feel towards themselves and others. It will be argued that this is also an important way in
which citizens are governed and in which emotional regimes are constituted. The
examples used come from recent British and US political debate and cover issues ranging
from issues of integration and social inclusion to issues of economic security. Once again,
issues of affect will be seen to play a significant role in how conceptions of citizenship,
including views of the ‘good’ citizen, are constructed.

Affective citizenship in British political debate

The rhetorical mobilisation of affect by political leaders was advocated as far back as
Aristotle (Charteris-Black 2005, p. 11). There is a particularly long history of fear being
mobilised (Robin 2004, Bourke 2005). Nonetheless, commentators such as Berlant (2005,
pp. 47, 48, 51) have argued that the mobilisation of a fearful ‘affective public’ has become
particularly prominent during the past century (partly assisted by the development of mass
communications technologies). Similarly, Isin (2004, p. 217) has analysed a strategy of
‘governing through neurosis’ in which the ‘neurotic citizen’ is encouraged to have a
number of anxieties, including ‘about the Other’ (Isin 2004, p. 217). While Bigo’s (2002,
p. 63) analysis of the ‘Governmentality of Unease’ draws attention to the ways in which
‘migration is increasingly interpreted as a security problem’. Fear of the migrant ‘other’ is
common in contemporary emotional regimes.
There are certainly examples of these forms of governance in recent British political
debates. Anxieties about increasing Islamic immigration, in particular, have become key
issues in the politics of affect. Even before the London bombings by ‘home grown’
terrorists, then Prime Minister Tony Blair had argued that government should address the
public’s feelings of anxiety about Muslim immigration. He claimed that while ‘the vast
bulk of the British people are not racist . . . . they expect government to respond to their
worries’ (Blair 2004). Those worries included not just an anxiety about terrorism but also a
fear that British national identity was being undermined by groups who became citizens
but rejected traditional British values and culture (Blair 2004). In short, both the identity
and the security of the British citizen were at stake.
 Citizenship Studies 501

It became increasingly clear that Blair’s arguments both had particular implications for
some British Muslims and had implications for the politics of affect. Blair privileged the
emotions of particular groups when constructing the national identity of good British
citizens. He not merely asserted the right of mainstream Britons to feel concerned but also
suggested that minority groups needed to ensure that mainstream Britons did not feel
uncomfortable. When asked ‘do you think it is possible for a woman who wears the veil to
make a full contribution to British society?’, Blair replied:
That is a very difficult question. It is a mark of separation . . . it makes other people from
outside of the community feel uncomfortable [emphasis added]. No-one wants to say that
people don’t have the right to do it . . . But . . . we do need . . . to confront this issue about how
we integrate people properly. (Blair 2006)
Anne-Marie Fortier (2008, pp. 15, 96) has argued that the ‘“veil row” . . . is part of
an ongoing systematisation of a disciplining gaze. It constructs distinctions between the
moderate and the fanatic and between those who are willing and those who are unwilling
to reassure fellow nationals’ by making them feel comfortable (see further Ahmed 2004,
pp. 132– 133, Butler 2004, pp. 47 – 49, Khiabany and Williamson 2008). Clearly the
debate involved issues of whose feelings were being privileged and legitimised. The
emotion of a woman who feels uncomfortable not wearing a veil is subordinated to
the (unquestioned) right of other Britons to feel uncomfortable around women wearing
veils. Mainstream Britons are clearly the focus of empathy in a way that marginalised
Britons are not.
Furthermore, as Fortier points out, affect becomes implicated in the very construction
of ethnic and national identities:
the prescription of sentiment – of feelings for the nation, for the community, for the
neighbour, for the Muslim, for the suicide bomber, for minorities – is also what race and
ethnicity are about . . . . the very act of naming who and how to love, suspect, befriend, care
for, embrace, welcome, and so on, performatively constructs racial, ethnic, cultural and
national differences along with their gender, sexual, class, and generational ‘identities’.
(Fortier 2008, p. 89)
Those emotions and identities are also implicated in the constructions of citizen
identity. In other words, the good citizen both feels and performs particular emotions.
Fortier (2008, p. 98) notes that, especially since the London bombings, the ‘“internal
states” of some citizens’ have become of great concern to politicians and public servants,
and in public debate. Feelings of supposed loyalty or alienation experienced by Muslim
citizens have become of particular concern. The politicians’ statements are a form of
normalising discourse that encourages both forms of self-government by some citizens
and forms of casual surveillance by those who feel they belong. So, citizens are expected
to demonstrate that they feel loyal, patriotic and integrated. Those citizens are to be
welcomed. People who are suspected of not having the correct feelings, including those
accused of making a point of their difference (for example, by wearing a veil, or even
preferring to speak a foreign language), are problematised and identified as legitimate
subjects for critique, fear or suspicion. Particular identity categories are thereby
constructed and reinforced, and there is pressure on minorities to change both the
behaviour and the performance of affect. In Foucauldian terms, it is an additional form of
governmentality attempting to ‘shape and fashion the conduct of persons’ (Miller and
Rose 2008, p. 19). So, for example, Fortier (2010) provides a detailed analysis of how
British government strategies for fostering ‘community cohesion’ involve forms of
‘governing through affect’ by attempting to influence citizens’ feelings about the
community they live in.
502 C. Johnson

Similarly, the current British leader of the opposition, David Cameron (2007, 2008),
has identified a form of emotional pathology in the British body politic. Britons do not
‘feel’ sufficiently British. They do not perform their national identity by displaying their
attachment to values, the national flag and other icons, like Americans do. Cameron is
particularly concerned about how British Muslims feel.
31% of all Muslims . . . feel they have more in common with Muslims in other countries than
they do with non-Muslims in Britain. This cannot be explained simply in terms of the bonds of
kinship which anyone will feel to the homeland of their ancestors. There is something
deeper . . . . A feeling of alienation. . . . It is now absolutely vital that we address this trend . . . .
those who feel simply disillusioned and disaffected today can turn to something much more
sinister . . . tomorrow. (Cameron 2007)
Prime Minister Gordon Brown (2006) made similar comments regarding integration
and displaying patriotism. Nonetheless, in Cameron’s view, it is not just the ordinary
citizen (and particularly the Muslim citizen) who is not feeling sufficiently British, the
condition has spread to the top:
Gordon Brown’s view of Britishness is mechanical, not organic, it’s something to be
redesigned, repackaged and relaunched by Whitehall, not something which lives in our
hearts . . . . What the Prime Minister’s response lacks is the emotional connection with the
institutions that define Britishness. (Cameron 2008)
In other words, Cameron argues that Brown is neither feeling nor encouraging the right
emotions. However, the emotions that are seen to be crucial can change in response to the
particular anxieties of the electorate. Brown’s alleged emotional coldness is apparently
seen by the Conservatives as a generalised archilles heel which Cameron, who projects
himself as a new age man more comfortable with emotion, hopes to address. As the Global
Financial Crisis deepened, voters became increasingly concerned about issues of
economic security. By October 2008 The Independent was reporting that ‘Tory strategists
believe Mr Brown lacks the emotional intelligence and empathy to persuade the public he
is on their side as the recession bites’ (Grice 2008, p. 9). Yet, arguably Brown’s bailing out
of the British banks and his massive economic stimulus packages were designed not just to
avoid financial meltdown but also to make voters feel more economically secure.
Conceptions of the good affective citizen are changing in the Global Financial Crisis.
Neo-liberal conceptions of the citizen as someone who should feel entrepreneurial and
self-reliant (see e.g. Corner and Harvey 1991, pp. 1 –21) have been increasingly contested
by welfare liberal conceptions of a citizen who is encouraged to feel protected by
government when buffeted by economic circumstances beyond their control.4 Barack
Obama’s discourse provides a particularly good example of this form of affective
citizenship, thereby reflecting a change in the political economy of US emotional regimes.
He also provides a very different example of how race and affect can intersect with
conceptions of citizenship.

Affective citizenship and Barack Obama’s politics of emotion

Mobilising emotion not only played a prominent part in Barack Obama’s campaign for the
US presidency – a concern with emotion is integral to his conception of what a good
citizen, citizen entitlements and American national identity should be.
Obama’s campaign promised an alternative politics of emotion to the conservative
Republican one. Berlant (2005, p. 73) has argued that under Bush the US political sphere had
been ‘saturated by the deployment of emotion’ that trumped ‘dissenting counternarratives’
on issues ranging from the conduct of the War on Terror to the just distribution of resources.
 Citizenship Studies 503

Obama (2007a) similarly claimed that ‘for nearly 7 years, President Bush has ignored
Franklin Roosevelt’s wise counsel about the corrosive effects of fear. Indeed, instead
of urging us to reject fear, he has stoked false fear and undermined our values’. American
values were undermined by the Iraq War, waterboarding, extraordinary rendition,
Guantanamao Bay and illegal wiretapping (Obama 2007a). Obama argues that such actions
have contributed to foreigners no longer feeling positive emotions towards America:
When you travel to the world’s trouble spots as a United States Senator, much of what you see
is from a helicopter . . . . And it makes you stop and wonder: when those faces look up at an
American helicopter, do they feel hope, or do they feel hate? (Obama 2007b, p. 228)
For Obama, son of a Kenyan who saw an American education as exemplifying hope, the
fact that America may now engender negative emotions is deeply troubling (as well as a
security issue).
Above all, Obama is promising to restore Americans’ own feelings of pride in their
country and national identity. Obama’s diagnosis is that American society has been driven
by the wrong, negative emotions and his job is to offer hope in a better (and more
inclusive) America based on more positive feelings: ‘We are choosing hope over fear.
We’re choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming
to America’ (Obama 2008c). It was a theme that he returned to in his Victory Speech:
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are
possible . . . who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer . . . . It’s
the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and republican, black, white,
Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. . . . It’s the answer
that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful
about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more
toward the hope of a better day. (Obama 2008a)
Obama’s own persona of difference is meant to exemplify not only the narrative of hope,
unity and inclusion but American exceptionalism and the American dream. Feelings of
hope should replace feelings of fear: ‘Hope, hope is what led me here today. With a father
from Kenya, a mother from Kansas and a story that could only happen in the United States
of America’ (Obama 2008c, p. 11).
In short, Obama is arguing for a more inclusive conception of American citizenship,
and one that counters the forms of governance identified by Berlant, Isin and Bigo. As we
have seen, Obama explicitly rejects the focus on emotions such as terror (Berlant 2005,
p. 50) in his arguments against the politics of fear. His personal story is used to construct
a narrative about hope and the American dream that counters attempts to encourage
anxieties about the ‘Other’ (Isin 2004, p. 217) or to foster feelings of unease that construct
migration issues as security problems (Bigo 2002, p. 63). It is a very different emotional
regime from Bush’s, and also reflects a more positive mobilisation of emotion around
issues of migration to that in the British examples that have just been discussed.
Obama’s narrative of hope and inclusion is partly about race, as the implicit references
to his father show, but it also has economic ramifications. In Obama’s view, the emotional
pathology in the American body politic is not just reducible to Bush’s mobilisation of fear.
The problem is also anger in the heart of American society which Obama is offering
to heal. Some of that anger is amongst black Americans. It is related to the legacies of
slavery, continued disadvantage and discrimination: ‘the anger is real; it is powerful; and
to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen
the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races’ (Obama 2008d).
However, Obama (2008d) has also diagnosed a ‘similar anger’ which ‘exists within
segments of the white community’. These are whites who ‘don’t feel that they have been
504 C. Johnson

particularly privileged by their race’; who believe they have worked hard for what they
have achieved; who are worried about the effects of globalisation; low wages and the
possibilities of losing their jobs overseas. They ‘are anxious about their futures, and feel
their dreams slipping away’. Such whites can feel resentment at those they believe are
getting something at their expense, whether via welfare entitlements or affirmative action
(see further Barbalet 1998, pp. 75 –76). Obama argues that the resulting resentments and
anger ‘helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare
and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition (Obama 2008d)’. In other words,
it is an anger that fed into neo-liberal arguments that ‘special interests’ were gaining
benefits to the disadvantage of ‘mainstream’ Americans.
The feeling of anxiety and that ‘dreams are slipping away’ has been heightened by the
turmoil of the global financial crisis. Indeed Obama has been accused of also mobilising
a politics of fear – fear of economic meltdown – as in his statement that ‘We meet at a
moment of great uncertainty for America. The economic crisis we face is the worst since
the Great depression’ with Americans losing ‘their jobs, and their homes, and their life
savings’ (Obama 2008e). It was a theme that he returned to in his Victory Speech when he
talked of the ‘mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and
wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their
children’s college education’ (Obama 2008a).
For Obama, a key to a better society has long lain in placing less emphasis on cutting
government expenditure on welfare and more emphasis on a form of affective citizenship
that involves feeling empathy for others:
There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more
about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the
world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off
steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your school dorm. (Obama 2006)
In short, Obama’s politics of empathy (which resonates too with Rudd’s politics of
compassion) is an attempt to develop a citizen identity that is more compassionate and
socially connected than extreme neo-liberal forms of the abstract, self-reliant citizen. It is
also a citizen identity that facilitates a larger role for government welfare and, therefore, has
a different conception of citizen rights and entitlements. Obama is countering the emotional
economy of neo-liberalism, which Jodi Dean (2008, pp. 54, 58), drawing on Žižek, has
described as the ‘fantasy of the free market promises that everyone will win’. Whereas, in
the words of a 2008 Obama campaign advertisement: ‘Instead of prosperity trickling down,
pain has trickled up’. Obama mobilised an opposing economy of emotion, in which the state
will lessen citizens’ feelings of pain; protecting and offering security in times of private
sector economic downturn (Obama 2009a). In Obama’s diagnosis, this approach will lessen
white feelings of antagonism towards other groups that (in neo-liberal ideology at least)
were perceived to be getting special benefits at the expense of mainstream white Americans.
Once again, the emotions Obama is trying to encourage are related to a different model
of citizenship. This is not the self-reliant, entrepreneurial citizen of neo-liberal mythology,
eschewing the role of government, expecting people to help themselves while rational
economic man provides for his family and protects them from ‘others’ ripping off
taxpayers and threatening the American way of life. This is a model of citizenship that
helps to justify a more active role for the state in supporting the less fortunate. It reflects an
alternative ‘emotional regime’ and a different model of governmentality.
One can see the differences in emotional regime and in governmentality particularly
clearly if one compares Bush’s attitudes to the unemployed with Obama’s. Bush (2002)
 Citizenship Studies 505

tended to construct the unemployed as being welfare dependant and implied that their
personal failings had contributed to their not making sufficient effort to obtain a job. He felt
compassion for those who helped themselves (see further Berlant 2004, pp. 2 –4, 77 –79,
Johnson 2005, pp. 53 – 54). It was a form of neo-liberal governance designed to construct
self-reliant, entrepreneurial citizens (Corner and Harvey 1991). Obama, by contrast,
proudly lists the steps which government is taking, as part of its massive economic
stimulus package, to increase the number of jobs available and also ‘to help folks who’ve
borne the brunt of this recession’ (Obama 2009b). The unemployed are depicted as victims
of circumstance who people should feel empathy for. Obama describes visiting a job
centre where peoples’ faces reflected ‘the sense of anxiety, the fear’. He acknowledged the
need to ‘remind ourselves that behind these statistics are people’s lives, their capacity to
do right by their families’ (Obama 2009b). He is encouraging a form of governmentality
that is based on a less individualistic and self-reliant conception of citizen identity and that
encourages feelings of solidarity with others less fortunate than oneself. It is also a form of
governmentality that encourages a much larger role for the state.
Obama argues that a just society will recognise and address the various forms of pain,
anxiety and anger that citizens are feeling. He is attempting to forge a more inclusive form
of affective citizenship by mobilising empathy. Many of the examples given in the first
part of this article also involved mainstream citizens being asked to empathise with the
emotions of people who had previously been marginalised, whether indigenous families or
same-sex couples.
However, there is a problem that Obama’s rhetoric cannot address (partly for strategic
electoral reasons). Even if it is successfully mobilised, empathy itself cannot ensure
desirable outcomes (not least because views of what constitutes desirable or good
outcomes differ). Are we meant to feel empathy for indigenous victims of colonialism or
for the claimed white victims of political correctness (Berlant 1997, p. 2, Johnson 2005)?
Should empathetic policy involve Bush’s (2002) ‘compassionate conservatism’, with
its sympathy for those who exhibit neo-liberal self-reliance (see further Berlant 2004,
pp. 2– 3), or a more welfare liberal emphasis on government assistance for the needy
(Johnson 2005)? As Nussbaum (2001, pp. 435, 439), who advocates more compassionate
leaders and citizens, nonetheless notes: ‘A compassionate society might still be an unjust
society. It might weep about the fact that taxes cause people to miss out on luxury goods
such as peacock tongues (Nussbaum 2001, p. 414)’. Indeed, Nussbaum herself has been
criticised for risking reproducing both surrogate forms of western liberal superiority
(Bhabha 1996, p. 193) and a neo-liberal insensitivity to the ‘undeserving’ poor (Hoggett
2000, pp. 169, 179, 2006, p. 151, Nussbaum 2001, p. 439).
Obama’s own politics of empathy and hope inevitably prioritised some forms of social
exclusion and marginalisation, and downplayed or dismissed others. It is not just
conservative Republicans who might feel that their concerns, fears and anxieties are not
being adequately characterised or addressed. The same day that saw a black president
elected also saw Proposition Eight, which removed rights to same-sex marriage, win in
California. The cover of America’s leading gay rights magazine proclaimed in ‘open
letters to the next president’ that ‘Gay is the New Black’ and gay rights ‘the Last Great
Civil Rights Struggle’.5 Obama’s own emphasis on the legacies of black slavery
downplays the role of settler colonialism in regard to the American Indian population and
in annexing the Hawaiian Islands (that Obama grew up in).6 It also downplays the fact that
there are many different stories of racial resistance and liberation that can be told. Gilroy
(2005, p. 441) has noted the importance of ‘dislodging America from its position as our
inevitable destination’ in order to learn from histories, concepts and strategies in other
506 C. Johnson

parts of the world. Furthermore, it would have been harder for a female politician such as
Hillary Clinton to mobilise emotion as effectively as Obama. As Messner (2007, p. 473)
notes, being caring and compassionate can easily be depicted as weakness in a female
politician (while strong women are depicted as ball-busting). By contrast, Obama can talk
openly about the need for fathers to pass on empathy to their children, arguing against
conceptions of masculinity that wrongly dismiss kindness as ‘soft’ (Obama 2008b, p. 238).

Conclusion
The advocacy of empathetic forms of citizenship, therefore, offers no simple solutions.
Yet, the arguments here demonstrate that one needs to pay attention to who is seen as the
legitimate object of empathy as well as who is seen as the legitimate object of fear
(see further Johnson 2005). Indeed, these arguments indicate the importance of adding
an affective component to the aspects of inclusive citizenship previously identified by
theorists such as Ruth Lister (2007). Consequently, George E. Marcus (2002, p. 8)
arguably had a point when he claimed that: ‘the solution to good citizenship is located in
our capacity to feel’. Nonetheless, emotions can obviously be mobilised in a way that
many see as negative and dysfunctional. For politics is clearly, in Lauren Berlant’s (2005,
p. 47) words, a ‘scene of emotional contestation’. It has been argued here that a concept of
‘affective citizenship’ can help to explain how that emotional contestation has crucial
implications for constructions of citizen identities, rights and entitlements.

Acknowledgement
My thanks to the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper. My thanks
too for feedback received when an earlier version of this paper was presented at the Colloquium,
Moving citizens: exploring worlds of emotional politics, Birkbeck College, 24 October 2008.

Notes
1. See e.g. Clarke et al. (2006), Redlawsk (2006), Neuman et al. (2007) and Westen (2007).
2. See e.g. Stone (1997), Shumway (2003, pp. 1 – 28); and Coontz (2005, pp. 5– 12).
3. Marcus (2002) makes a convincing case that emotion and reason are not opposed.
4. For a critique of the traditional welfare state’s deficiencies in meeting citizens’ broader
emotional needs, see Hoggett (2000, p. 165).
5. See the front cover of The Advocate, issue 1021, 16 December 2008. Available from: http://
www.advocate.com/TOC.aspx?id=98760 [Accessed 8 October 2010].
6. Bill Clinton apologised for the annexation of Hawaii in 1993.

References
Ahmed, S., 2004. The cultural politics of emotion. New York: Routledge.
Barbalet, J., 1998. Emotion, social theory, and social structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Barbalet, J., 2006. Emotions in politics: from the ballot to suicide terrorism. In: S. Clarke, P. Hoggett,
and S. Thompson, eds. Emotion, politics and society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 31 – 58.
Bell, D. and Binnie, J., 2000. The sexual citizen: queer politics and beyond. Cambridge: Polity.
Berlant, L., 1997. The queen of America goes to Washington city. Durham and London: Duke.
Berlant, L., 2004. Compassion: The culture and politics of an emotion. New York and London:
Routledge.
Berlant, L., 2005. The epistemology of state emotion. In: A. Serat, ed. Dissent in dangerous times.
Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 46 – 80.
Bhabha, H.K., 1996. Unsatisfied: notes on vernacular cosmopolitanism. In: L. Garcia-Morena and
P.C. Pfeifer, eds. Text and nation. London: Camden House, 191– 207.
 Citizenship Studies 507

Bigo, D., 2002. Security and immigration: toward a critique of the governmentality of unease.
Alternatives, 27, 63 – 92.
Blair, T., 2004. Speech delivered to the Confederation of Industry on migration, 27 April. Available
from: http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/pages5708.scp [Accessed 10 January 2007].
Blair, T., 2005. Why we should all share in these celebrations. The Independent, 21 December.
Available from: http://www.independentco.uk/opinion/commentators/tony-blair-why-we-
should-all-share-in [Accessed 16 February 2008].
Blair, T., 2006. Prime Minister’s monthly press conference, October. Available from: http://www.
pm.gov.uk/output/Page10228.asp [Accessed 10 January 2007].
Bourke, J., 2005. Fear: a cultural history. London: Virago.
Brown, G., 2006. Speech delivered at the Fabian New Year Conference, held in London, 14 January.
Available from: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/1864.htm [Accessed 12 December 2008].
Bush, G.W., 2002. ‘President promotes Compassionate Conservatism’, Speech delivered at Parkside
Hall, San Jose California, 30 April. Available from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2002/04/20020430-5.html [Accessed 15 June 2004].
Bush, G.W., 2004. President called for Constitutional Amendment protecting marriage, 24
February. Available from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040224-2.html
[Accessed 26 February 2004].
Butler, J., 2004. Precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. London: Verso.
Cameron, D., 2007. Islam and Muslims in the world today, Speech delivered 5 June, 2007. Available
from: http://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/cip/documents/DavidCameronSpeech2.pdf [Accessed 24
October 2008].
Cameron, D., 2008. Speech delivered to Scottish Conservative Party Conference in Ayr,
23 May. Available from: http://www.davidcameronmp.com/articles/viewnews.php?
id¼2c1085cc972a7ec660cb5726218c9111 [Accessed 2 June 2008].
Charteris-Black, J., 2005. Politicians and rhetoric: the persuasive power of metaphor. Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Clarke, S., Hoggett, P. and Thompson, S., 2006. Moving forward in the study of emotion.
In: S. Clarke, et al., eds. Emotion, politics and society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
162– 175.
Clinton, H., 2007. From the Senate: Clinton, Hegal, Menendez introduce measure to remove
Barriers to Reunification for Immigrant Families. Available from: http://www.hillary.clinton.
com/news/release/view?id¼1781 [Accessed 8 December 2008].
Commonwealth of Australia, 2008a. Parliamentary debates, Representatives, 13 February 2008.
Canberra: House of Representatives. Available from: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/hansreps.
htm#2008 [Accessed 8 October 2010].
Commonwealth of Australia, 2008b. Parliamentary debates, Representatives, 30 October 2008.
Canberra: House of Representatives. Available from: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/hansreps.
htm#2008 [Accessed 8 October 2010].
Commonwealth of Australia, 2008c. Parliamentary debates, Senate, 14 October 2008. Canberra:
Senate. Available from: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/hanssen.htm#2008 [Accessed 8
October 2010].
Commonwealth of Australia, 2008d. Parliamentary debates, Senate, 12 November 2008. Canberra:
Australian Senate. Available from: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/hanssen.htm#2008
[Accessed 8 October 2010].
Coontz, S., 2005. Marriage, a history: from obedience to intimacy or how love conquered marriage.
New York: Viking/Penguin.
Corner, J. and Harvey, S., 1991. Introduction: Great Britain limited. In: J. Corner and S. Harvey, eds.
Enterprise and heritage. London: Routledge, 1 – 21.
Dean, J., 2008. Enjoying neoliberalism. Cultural politics, 4 (1), 47 – 92.
Demertzis, N., 2006. Emotions and populism. In: S. Clarke, et al., eds. Emotion, politics and society.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 103– 122.
Fortier, A.M., 2008. Multicultural horizons: diversity and the limits of the civil nation.
London/New York: Routledge.
Fortier, A.M., 2010. Proximity by design? Affective citizenship and the management of unease.
Citizenship studies, 14 (1), 17– 30.
Gerstmann, E., 2004. Same-sex marriage and the constitution. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
508 C. Johnson

Giddens, A., 1992. The transformation of intimacy: sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies.
Cambridge: Polity.
Gilroy, P., 2005. Multiculture, double consciousness and the war on terror. Patterns of prejudice, 39
(4), 431–442.
Grice, A., 2008. Conservatives still haunted by failure of Hague and Brown. The Independent,
18 October, p. 9.
Hancock, A.M., 2004. The politics of disgust: the public identity of the welfare queen.
New York/London: New York University Press.
Harper, S., 2005. Parliament of Canada Hansard, 16 February 2005. Available from: http://www2.
parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/publication.aspx?DocId¼1640291&language¼E&Mode¼1&
Patl¼38&Ses¼1#Int-1132853 [Accessed 16 June 2008].
Harper, S., 2008. Apology, Parliament of Canada Hansard, 11 June 2008. Available from: http://
www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublicaions/Publication.aspx?langague¼E&Mode¼1&Parl¼39&
Ses¼2&DocId¼3568890. CHECK13512944 [Accessed 16 June 2008].
Hoggett, P., 2000. Emotional life and the politics of welfare. Houndmills: MacMillan.
Hoggett, P., 2006. Pity, compassion, solidarity. In: S. Clarke, et al., eds. Emotion, politics and
society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 145–161.
Howard, J., 2004. Address to the National Marriage Forum, 4 August 2004. Available from: http://
www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/speech1051.html [Accessed 4 August 2004].
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2007. Same-Sex: same entitlements. National
inquiry into discrimination against people in same-sex relationships: financial and work-related
entitlements and benefits. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
Isin, E., 2004. The neurotic citizen. Citizenship studies, 8 (3), 217– 235.
Johnson, C., 2002. Heteronormative citizenship and the politics of passing. Sexualities, 5 (3),
316– 336.
Johnson, C., 2005. Narratives of identity: denying empathy in conservative discourses on race, class
and sexuality. Theory and society, 34 (1), 37 – 61.
Jones, R.J.B., 2005. The political economy of European citizenship. In: R. Bellamy and A. Warleigh,
eds. Citizenship and governance in the European Union. London: Continuum, 143– 162.
Kaplan, M.B., 1997. Sexual justice: democratic citizenship and the politics of desire. London:
Routledge.
Khiabany, G. and Williamson, M., 2008. Veiled bodies-naked racism: culture, politics and race in
the Sun. Race & class, 50 (2), 69 – 88.
Kirby, M., 2005. Sexuality and Australian law. In: H. Graupner and P. Tahmindjis, eds. Sexuality
and human rights: a global overview. New York: Harrington Press, 31 – 48.
Lister, R., 2007. Inclusive citizenship: realizing the potential. Citizenship studies, 11 (1), 49 – 61.
Lloyd, G., 1984. The man of reason: ‘Male’ and ‘female’ in western philosophy. London: Methuen.
Marcus, G., 2002. The sentimental citizen: emotion in democratic politics. University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania University Press.
McDermott, R., 2007. Cognitive neuroscience and politics: next steps. In: W.R. Neuman, et al., eds.
The affect effect: dynamics of emotion in political thinking and behavior. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 375– 398.
Messner, M.A., 2007. The masculinity of the governator: muscle and compassion in American
politics. Gender & society, 21 (August), 461– 480.
Miller, P. and Rose, N., 2008. Governing the present: administering economic social and personal
life. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Moller Okin, S., 1979. Women in western political thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mookherjee, M., 2005. Affective citizenship: feminism, postcolonialism and the politics of
recognition. Critical review of international social and political philosophy, 8 (1), 31 – 50.
Neuman, W.R., et al., eds, 2007. The affect effect: dynamics of emotion in political thinking and
behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nussbaum, M.C., 2001. Upheavals of thought: the intelligence of emotions. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Obama, B., 2006. Speech to Campus Progress, 12 July. Available from: http://obama.senate.gov./
speech/060712-campus_progress/ [Accessed 17 December 2007].
Obama, B., 2007a. Statement of Senator Barack Obama on International Human Rights Day, 10
December. Available from: http://obama.senate.gov/press/071210-statement_of_se_12/
[Accessed 17 December 2007].
 Citizenship Studies 509

Obama, B., 2007b. The war we need to win. In: D. Olive, ed. An American story: the speeches of
Barack Obama. Toronto: ECW Press.
Obama, B., 2008a. Barack Obama’s victory speech. Available from: http://www.america.gov/st/
elections08-english/2008/November/20081105101958abretnuh0.580044.html [Accessed 10
November 2008].
Obama, B., 2008b. Father’s Day 2008. In: Obama for America 2008, Change we can believe in:
Barack Obama’s plan to renew America’s promise. Melbourne: Text, 233– 241.
Obama, B., 2008c. Iowa Caucus Night, Des Moines, 3 January 2008. Available from: http://www.
barackobama.com/2008/01/03/remarks_of_senator_barack.obama_39.php [Accessed 19
January 2009].
Obama, B., 2008d. More perfect union, 18 March 2008. Available from: http://www.barackobama.
com/2008/03/18/remarks_or_senator_barack_obam_53.php [Accessed 1 September 2008].
Obama, B., 2008e. Rescue plan for the middle-class, Toledo OH, 13 October. Available from: http://
www.barackobama.com/2008/10/13/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_136.php [Accessed 17
October 2008].
Obama, B., 2009a. President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, 21 January. Available from: http://
www.whitehouse.gov./blog/inaugural-address/ [Accessed 22 January 2009].
Obama, B., 2009b. Remarks by the President on Job Creation and Economic Growth, 8 December
2009. Available from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-job-crea-
tion-and-economic-growth [Accessed 10 December 2009].
Pateman, C., 1996. Democratization and citizenship in the 1990s: the legacy of T.H. Marshall.
Vilhelm Aubert memorial lecture, delivered at the Institute for Social Research and Department
of Sociology, University of Oslo, Oslo.
Pateman, C., 1988. The sexual contract. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Peters, B.R., 2004. Marriage in seventeenth century political thought. Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Phelan, S., 2001. Sexual strangers: gays, lesbians and dilemmas of citizenship. Philadelphia, PA:
Temple University Press.
Plummer, K., 2003. Intimate citizenship. Private decisions and public dialogues. Seattle and
London: University of Washington Press.
Povinelli, E.A., 2006. The empire of love: toward a theory of intimacy, genealogy and carnality.
Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Rayside, D., 2008. Queer inclusions, continental divisions: public recognition of sexual diversity in
Canada and the United States. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Reddy, W.M., 2001. The navigation of feeling: a framework for the history of emotions. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Redlawsk, D.P., 2006. Feeling politics: new research into emotion. In: D.P. Redlawsk, ed. Feeling
politics: emotion in political information processing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Richardson, D., 2000. Claiming citizenship? Sexuality, citizenship and lesbian/feminist theory.
Sexualities, 3 (2), 255–272.
Robin, C., 2004. The politics and antipolitics of fear. Raritan, 23 (4), 79 – 108.
Shumway, D., 2003. Modern love: romance, intimacy and the marriage crisis. New York: NYU
Press.
Smith, J., 2003. Civil partnership: a framework for the legal recognition of same-sex couples.
London, UK: Women and Equality Unit DTI Publications.
Stoler, A.L., 2002. Carnal knowledge and imperial power: race and the intimate in colonial rule.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Stone, L., 1977. The family, sex and marriage in England 1500– 1800. London: Weidenfield and
Nicolson.
United States House of Representatives 194, 2008. Apologizing for the enslavement and racial
segregation of African-Americans July 29 2008. Page: H7224. Available from: http://thomas.
loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?r110:./temp/, r110eDiJ57 [Accessed 26 August 2008].
Valverde, M., 2006. New entity in the history of sexuality: the respectable same-sex couple. Feminist
studies, 32 (1), 155– 162.
Westen, D., 2007. The political brain: the role of emotion in deciding the fate of the nation. New
York: Public Affairs.