「〈対話〉論的シティズンシップ」をブータン村落で考える

―民主的な〈対話〉の実現に向けて―

抄録

In this article, an alternative approach to citizenship promotion is explored, drawing on the author's fieldwork in rural Bhutan. The country's recent democratic reforms encourage its citizens to become self-reliant and avoid ongoing relations of dependency, drawing on the conventiona ‘l liberal/civic republican’ models of citizenship. This move has caused ambivalence among villagers, who appreciate the reforms, but are also concerned about their adverse effects on communal bonds that have bound them by trust and reciprocity. While the ‘radical democratic’ model of citizenship would urge villagers to divulge such dilemma, they would have to articulate it in a public arena with the protocol of decorum that they are not conversant with. This disadvantageous nature of political deliberations would be overcome, under the ‘symbolic’ citizenship model, which would serve to allow villagers to narrate their views on the democratic reforms in a more informal, spontaneous setting. Such citizen participation, however, is not always the top priority of villagers, given the multitude of tasks and issues that they deal with in their daily lives.

In the view of real-world complexities that prevent any of the existing models from capturing the entirety of villagers' lives, an alternative ‘dialogical’ approach is called for, which accords them the leverage to set the terms of their own citizenship, through continual dialogue and conversation among themselves, and with researchers and policymakers. In this way, citizenship promotion will not only be able to better take into account the polyvalent nature of people's daily experiences, but will also arrive at an approach that problematizes and marks a departure from the scientifically constructed models of citizenship, which project regularities and logic onto the non-theoretical and multi-dimensional flows of people's daily lives.