Not life but the world is at stake: Hannah Arendt on citizenship in the age of the social
This article evaluates Hannah Arendt's contribution to ‘thinking citizenship’ in light of her controversial account of the modern rise of ‘the social’. It argues that Arendt's writing on the social is best understood not primarily as analytical and normative
but as an historical argument about the effect of capitalism and modern state administration on meaningful citizenship. This short piece analyses one important element of Arendt's story about the historical rise of the social: that it is a peculiar hybrid of polis and oikos,
a scaled-up form of housekeeping, and its threat to the public, political world.
Keywords: Arendt; citizenship; social
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Department of International Relations,University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
Publication date: 01 April 2012
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