Keywords - Chapter 4: Learning Civics

Belonging – a person’s identity in relation to the state, and how the state deals with the differences among its citizens.

Citizenship – a condition of belonging to a political community governed by a state. In a democracy, citizens elect representatives who are responsible for governance of the state. Citizens are also required to adhere to the laws of the state.

Civic pluralism – a relationship between the state and civil society in which there are many overlapping sites of citizenship to which responsibility is devolved, and where the local and global autonomy of diverse groups requires the constant negotiation of differences.

Civics – a relationship of belonging to a self-governing group.

Civil society – ordinary people going about their everyday lives, associating with each other voluntarily.

Learning civility – the changing role of the institutions of education in shaping the values and capacities of its citizens.

Nationalism – a relationship between the state and civil society in which the state plays a dominant part in society and has a paternalistic or command-and-compliance relationship with citizens. The guiding narrative of the nationalist state is one people, one history, one territory. The differences that the nationalist state encounters are dealt with by processes of exclusion or assimilation.

Neoliberalism – a relationship between the state and civil society in which the state plays a diminishing role in society, allowing markets to determine social outcomes and requiring individuals to be responsible for their own lives and groups to regulate themselves.

Power – the balance of agency between individuals and classes of individuals, those who command and those who comply. The nationalist state tends to promote power relations of command and compliance. The state of civic pluralism involves a shift towards latter and more balanced relationships of agency and power.

Services – what the state provides for citizens, such as education. What is provided and how it is provided changes according to the states of nationalism, neoliberalism and civic pluralism.

State – makes and enforces laws with the assistance of institutions, such as the army, police force, courts and various departments of government administration.