The idea of citizenship as a performing sphere that transforms the abstraction "the people" into individual political subjects and participating citizens lurks within both classical and contemporary perceptions of citizenship. But many theorists, while incorporating notions of perfo rmed citizenship, fail to translate the spheres of enactment through which a participatory polity can be realised (Joseph, 1 999, p. 1 5) .
Introduction
This chapter seeks to ascertain what it means to be a citizen, to belong as one among many "individual political subjects and participating citizens" (ibid) in contemporary society. The term 'senior citizen' is in such common usage in our society that in a sense it is unproblematic because everybody knows what it means. It is most often just a polite way of saying 'old person ', A rudimentary analysis of the term 'senior citizen', however, soon makes explicit the meaning that 'senior' takes on when l inked to 'citizen', a meaning which is very different from that which it carries in other contexts such as 'senior management', 'senior policy analyst', or 'senior partner' . The image conveyed by the word 'senior' in those labour market contexts is one of generally male authority, status, power and standing worthy of respect. Instead , a 'senior citizen' in an advanced western society such as New Zealand is one who is entitled by virtue of age to a state pension and to certain limited discounts on public transport and at entertainment venues. The term describes a person who is assumed to be excluded from the labour market and therefore economically dependent. In theory the term carries connotations of authority and respect. In practice it is loaded with images of dependence, decrepitude and decline. As Hazan (2000, p. 1 3) observes, it is one of a n umber of such terms:
The term 'aged' not only describes individuals but also is used as a collective noun, and once individuals are identified as 'old' they are perceived exclusively as such. Even the alternative terms, sometimes used to soften the negative connotations of the word 'old' - 'the elderly', 'older persons', 'senior citizens' , 'elders', or 'old age pensioners' - all serve to stigmatize the aged.
As discussed in Chapter Two the reductionist effect of ageism is to transfer the stigma of old age to old people and thence to the words, even positive ones like 'senior', used to describe them, so that when linked with 'citizen' it indicates membership of a special , lesser class of citizenship, and symbolic exclusion from the 'mainstream ' community of citizens.
As the population ages and older people constitute a larger proportion of the adult community, an i ncreasing amount of attention is being paid to the notion of inclusion, and the importance of policy makers seeing older people as a part of, rather then separate or d ifferent from, the community. The United Kingdom's Coming of Age Report (quoted in Willis, 1 993, p. 1 3) , arg ues, for example:
Getting the most out of life is partly up to individuals, but a major part of our plans must be to remove the barriers that prevent older people making the most of life. It is only when we have adjusted to making the most of all our citizens, irrespective of how old they are, that we will truly have come of age as a society.
This chapter will discuss the concept of citizenship, where it originated , how it has evolved and how it is applied in current debates. I n the absence of a general over-arching theory of citizenship, this chapter will cite some of the various writers in the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first who have developed theories of citizenship from different perspectives. These theories are mostly based on Marshall's (1 950) class-based framework, and represent attempts to accou nt for the effects on citizenship of gender (Lister, 1 990, 1 997, 1 998 ; Pateman , 1 988, 1 989; Young, 1 989; Yuval-Oavis, 1 991 ) , race (Oommen , 1 997) , ethnicity (Joseph, 1 999; Castles, 2000, Yuval-Oavis, 1 991 ) , conflict and struggle, (Tu rner, 1 990) , relational networks (Somers, 1 993) and voice and representation in a politics of difference (Yeatman, 1 993, 1 994) . Others have written about the effects of disability for men (Oliver, 1 990; 1 996) and women (Morris, 1 991 ) on citizenship rights. New Zealand writers have framed their discussion of rights in terms of culture (Wilson, 2000; Hunt, 2000) , mana (Ourie, 1 998) , and Maori women's experiences of colonisation and gender oppression (Johnson and Pihama, 1 994; Hoskins, 1 997; Irwin , 1 992) .
The Language of Citizenship
Language, as demonstrated in the opening paragraph of this chapter, is not a "value-neutral medium" (Lister, 1 990, p. 445) and while the language of citizenship is employed increasingly in contexts where there is a struggle for equal rights (Oliver, 1 996) , the concept itself is contested "at every level from its very meaning to its political application, with implications for the kind of society to which we aspire" (Lister, 1 997, p. 3) . There is general agreement that citizenshi p is about belonging to a community and about relationships, both within communities and between individuals and the state (Voet, 1 998) . But whether that membership is defined primarily by the rights or by the "duties, actions, virtues and opinions" (ibid , p. 9) that follow from those relationships is a matter of debate, as is the
nature of those rights and duties, or (to use the official language of the New Zealand citizenship application form) privileges and responsibilities.
Words like "citizenship" and "dependency" are the embodiment of ideas, and as such they shape our political culture (Lister, 1 990, p. 446) . If, Lister argues (ibid) , "the ideas that they embody are assumed , wrongly, to be gender-neutral, such language is helping to perpetuate the invisibility of women and of their needs in our political culture" . Focusing on the meaning of citizenship for women, Lister recognises that it will also be mediated by other factors such as social class and race, and she examines how this meaning is shaped by women's roles as mothers, as carers and as paid workers and is also "constricted by the ideology and reality of women's economic dependency" (ibid) . Age is another factor that mediates the meaning of citizenship for women and for men because, as Lister argues, "neither the question of dependency nor of citizenship can be divorced from that of power" (1 990, p. 445) .
Theories of Citizenship
There is a flourishing academic literature on citizenship, from a variety of countries. I have drawn on work primarily from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, drawing particular inspiration from Lister's (1 997) work towards constructing a feminist theory of citizenship. Her work is focused on developing a citizenship theory and practice which is universal, in that it includes both women and men , and specific, in that it pays attention to the ways in which women and men are differently positioned in relation to the public and private spheres. Her focus is to pose a challenge to the historic and enduring exclusion of women from full citizenship. My focus is on older women and men , and on the extent to which they are able to enjoy full citizenship in New Zealand. Taking Lister's feminist perspectives of citizenship as a starting point for a broadly inclusive perspective, I have also built on the work of theorists whose interest in citizenship focuses on the processes through which and the relational networks within which citizenship is able to be exercised or performed (Cox, 2000; Somers, 1 993; 1 994; Joseph, 1 999) .
When a former mayor of the New Zealand city of Napier, Ernest Ron Spriggs M B E JP and a Knight in the Order of the Legion of Honour, died in April 2000 in his 1 03rd year, his funeral was described as "a memorable, fitting and emotional send-off for an old soldier who served his King and country, and who in civilian l ife served his home town and its people so very well " . I n the eulogy he was
described as "a great citizen" (Hawkes Bay Today, Wednesday, April 5, 2000, p. 3) . Except for the reference to a king, these words could be a tribute to a citizen of ancient Greece, aptly describing the attributes of the earliest ideal citizen, who was of course male, and whose commitment to the ' polis' or city-state was based on property, military service and patriotic identity (Heater, 1 990) . Paid employment has replaced military service as "the key to citizenship" (Pateman, 1 989, p. 1 86) , and women and men have a very different relationship to the official economy of paid employment, with implications for their role as citizens in relation to both the state and the arenas of society in which people enact their citizenship (Lister, 1 991 ) .
The low status accorded to elderly people resu lts not only from capitalist relations in which they are viewed as non-productive, but also from patriarchal relations because most elderly people, especially very elderly people receiving care, are women . I n talking about gender and citizenship, Lister (ibid) argues that there is a danger of treating women and men as two monolithic groups, when other factors such as race, class, poverty, disability, sexual orientation and age will affect the relationship of both groups to citizenship. Thus the development of a gendered conception of citizenship becomes part of a broader project which attends to diversity and difference and focuses not only on the rights of citizenship but on the political , social and economic conditions which shape people's ability to exercise their citizenship rights. Emphasizing the importance of participation in decision-making as a means of increasing respect, Voet (1 998) proposes an active, sex-equal , woman-friendly type of citizenship. In her conception of citizenship, the highest form of human capacity is building and shaping a community. If women want to be respected, and to respect themselves, Voet argues, they must participate in public decision-making, sharing responsibility for developing and practising "public virtues", in particular "doing the best one can for the public good, promoting political justice for women and men, and developing and using the skills of speaking, acting and judgement" (ibid , p. 1 45) . Citizenship is likened to a craft which citizens practise in order to develop their skills for their task of governing. It is not necessary for all people to be active citizens all of the time in order to be full citizens, but Voet argues for active participation for both men and women over time, so that women as well as men are included in the process of ruling and being ruled .
Ultimately then, the question of citizensh ip concerns the d istribution of power (Lister, 1 991 ) , and my own project is to use notions of citizenship which address
the structures on which social power is based to extend and strengthen the social rights of citizenship in a way which makes the contribution of older women and men count, without trapping them into limited , and l imiting, roles as consumers or u n paid carers. A first step is to examine the ideal of citizenship. The next few sections of this chapter will consider citizenship in its historical context. Using a broadly chronological approach , I will trace the development of the concept from its beginnings in ancient Greece to twenty-first century debates which g rapple with notions of citizenship in various contexts such as globalisation , migration between nations, and ethnic and cultural differences within nations.
The Citizenship Ideal
It is to Aristotle that we owe the earliest thorough discussion of the nature of citizenship, a subject about which he declared that there was no universally agreed definition (Heater, 1 990) . There is, however, some agreement that notions of citizenship are central to political discourse, and that there has been a resurgence of interest in the idea of citizenship since the early 1 990s (Lister, 1 997; Vogel and Moran (Eds) , 1 991 ; Heater, 1 990; Andrews (Ed), 1 991 ; Kymlicka and Norman, 1 994; Yuval-Davis, 1 991 ; Yeatman , 1 994) . Yeatman (1 994, p. 57) argues that it is "postcolonial conditions, the success of the welfare state in delegitimising old ideas of hierarchy based i n class or race, and the contem porary fem i n ist m ovement" that h ave p ro m pted a reco nsiderati o n of what we mean by "citizenship". Kym licka and Norman (1 994, p. 352) argue that at the theoretical level the concept of citizenship is a natural successor to "the demands of justice and community membership - the central concepts of political philosophy i n the 1 970s and 1 980s respectively". Citizenship, accord i ng to them, is "intimately linked to ideas of individual entitlement on the one hand and of attachment to a particu lar comm u n ity o n the other" (ibid) . They suggest that a n u m ber of international political events and trends, including increasing voter apathy, have created a renewed interest in citizenship theory.
In Britain , it has been claimed (Heater, 1 990; Yuval-Davis, 1 991 ) the parties of both Left and Right appropriated the concept of citizenship in response to a decline during the 1 980s in citizens' rights and in civic virtue respectively. The debate about citizenship is about the relationship between the individual and the state, with those on the political left stressing citizenship rig hts and the state's responsibility to resource people so that they can exercise their citizenship, and those on the political right emphasising citizenship responsibilities, in particular the responsibility of the ind ividual citizen to be self-supporting and to contribute
to society through voluntary work. While the debate over the exact nature of citizenship continues without final agreement, the way we define citizenship is nevertheless important because of the way it is intimately linked with the kind of society we want for ourselves. This has been so since ancient times, beginning explicitly with Aristotle's ideal citizen i n the Greek city-state of the ancient world.
The Ideal Citizen
Aristotle's vision of ideal citizenship was naturally linked to the social and political environment in which he lived , with many people, including foreigners, women and slaves, excluded (Heater, 1 990) . Citizenship in this tradition of the Greek city-state was a privilege, bestowing a status which was generally inherited and which depended not so much on rights to be claimed as on responsibilities to be shouldered . Citizens were required to be actively involved in the judicial processes and the public debate which preceded the formulation of policy and the political decision-making of the city-state. The existence of a diversity of interests among the citizenry was considered essential to the practice of citizenship, with good government depending on a balance between the various perspectives. Citizens, for Aristotle, were those who were "able and willing to rule and to obey with the virtuous life as their aim" (cited in Voet, 1 998, p. 1 37) . The dimension of citizenship which implies belonging, contributing to, and participating in a political community is reflected today in our opportunities to vote and stand for public office, and in the requ irement to u ndertake j u ry service. The link between citizenship and participation can also be seen in the assu m ption underlying official information legislation "that citizens should have information about the decisions of our political representatives (i.e. open government) in order to be able to scrutinise decision making and to make an informed contribution to the public policy process" (Forgie et ai, 1 999, p. 7) . A report prepared for the Office of the Ageing, Department of Human Services, Government of South Australia (Ranzijn and And rews, 1 999, p. 1 6) has indeed suggested that contributing to society "seems to be a normal and natural part of life at all ages, including older age " . There may, the authors argue "be an innate psychological urge within all adults to do things for the benefit of society". This is consistent in theory, though not of course in practice, with the conviction of the Greeks of the city-states that "participation in public life was crucial to the full and proper development of the human personality" (Heater, 1 990, p. 2) .
The concept of world citizenship, while not confined to western civilisation, seems to have emerged in the fifth century BC in Greece. Citizenship in the Greek city-
state was practical but exclusive, while citizenship of the cosmopolis was, Heater argues, "generously ecumenical but hollow" (ibid , p. 1 6) . Its successor, Roman citizenship, was in turn, according to Turner (1 990, p. 202) , "of very circu mscribed significance, being the status of (rational) property-owners who had certain public d uties and responsibilities within the city-state" . The Romans also introduced the concept of dual citizenship, so that a man could be simultaneously a citizen of his own city and of Rome, and a limited citizenship, by which the private, but not the public rights could be exercised .
Our u nderstanding of the ancient world depends on the surviving literary evidence, much of it written by elderly G reeks and Romans, who were almost u n iversally male and belonged to the ruling classes. This literature, it can be argued, tends to present two images of elderly people and of ageing: one insistently positive, asserting that the elderly have a vital role to play in society, and one harshly negative, to the effect that old people are a nuisance to and a burden on society (Parkin, 2000) . It seems that, as today, demographic and social variables played a large part in determining the status and role of the elderly, a status that depended very much on gender and social standing, as well as on an individual 's economic and physiological status. Old age was acceptable so long as it was useful . An older person who could no longer fight was expected to govern wisely, and an old person who could not maintain his or her position in society was likely to be effectively excluded. The extent to which an individual was included in society both determined and was determined by status. Responsibility for welfare lay with the family, and ultimately with the individual. The idealised image of a golden age for elderly people in the ancient world is likely to have been restricted to rich, healthy, patrician males.
The Medieval Citizen
The Graeco-Roman model of citizenship, in which tradition, law and education had required loyalty to the state, gave way to a multi-faceted and more complex pattern of relationships in which both the Church and the local lord claimed alleg iance. I n England the cou nty was the real focus of comm itment, and elsewhere the term 'citizen' was confined to the medieval city or tow n , and depended on the principles of freedom and fraternity, the latter invoked in military service, and commonly, membership of a guild (Heater, 1 990) , an association of men sharing the same i nterests, such as merchants or artisans. It was the city states of northern and central Italy, especially Florence, which went farthest toward