Citizenship and Autonomy

Abstract

Modern societies have always required self-regulating markets and corresponding autonomous citizens as a fiction ; The 20th century welfare state provided partial citizens with property and education through social citizenship so that they could be considered autonomous and full citizens. In postwar Japan, the establishment of social citizenship had broad social consensus, as in the case of the Conservative Party’s goal of building a welfare state ; after the end of the 20th century, the welfare state was criticized and its social goals became ambiguous. This was a reflection of the transformation of the foundations of citizenship : the nation-state, industrial capitalism, and modern patriarchy. Citizens are expected to participate voluntarily and spontaneously in various organizations of civil society, but the identity bearers of such participation are unclear. To realize this, rather than specific people, the institutional legacy built under modernization and welfare state policies should be assumed as the bearers, and citizenship should be something that people constantly enact, rather than something fixed.