Events | "Citizenship As Political Membership: A Fundamental Strand of 20th and 21st Century European History" – A Lecture by Thomas Mann Fellow Dieter Gosewinkel
Los Angeles | November 1, 2024
Department of Sociology | UCLA
As part of his 2024 Thomas Mann Fellowship, historian and lawyer Dieter Gosewinkel will give a lecture about the critical role of citizenship in 20th-century Europe as the primary marker of political affiliation. Professor Gosewinkel visited institutions such as Queens College (CUNY), Georgetown University, New York University, and UCLA.
In his lecture at UCLA, Dieter Gosewinkel discusses the importance of citizenship as the key form of political affiliation in 20th century Europe and how it remains central despite modern trends such as globalization and Europeanization. The importance attached to citizenship is what distinguishes the 20th century from previous historical periods and other forms of political affiliation (religious, party, ethnic, nation-state, and social class). With the democratization of political regimes, the expansion of participatory rights, the development of social welfare rights, and the increasing isolation of states from one another, citizenship began to grow in importance for the individual. Even the current processes of transnationalization, Europeanization, and globalization can bring about only gradual and inconsequential changes in the preeminence of citizenship, because the delineation of political membership and the distinction from non-membership remain the primary functions of the state, even as it increasingly loses its nation-state character.
Attendance
By Invitation only
Participants
Dieter Gosewinkel is a historian and lawyer whose research focuses on European modern history and the history of citizenship, civil society, constitutional law, and European thought. From 2011 to 2021, he was co-director of the Center for Global Constitutionalism at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. He also held a number of fellowships, including at the European University Institute in Florence, the Institut d'études avancées de Paris, and the University of Oxford. He has taught at Freie Universität Berlin, Sciences Po, Paris, and others.
The lecture tour is organized with Queens College (CUNY), Georgetown University, New York University, and UCLA.
