BU-06586     Nov. 1995

To Order

Reinventing Citizenship: The Practice of Public Work

Citizenship

The ongoing public work of citizens to build our common fund of resources; our commonwealth.
Active, public citizenship begins and is grounded in our everyday institutional environments - the places we live and work, go to school, volunteer, participate in communities of faith. It is public-spirited and practical: not utopian or immaculate but part of the messy, difficult, give-and-take process of problem solving. Citizenship links our daily life and interests to larger public values and arenas. Through citizenship we build and exercise our power.
Active citizenship is tied to an understanding of public life as diverse, contentious, and linked to, but distinct from, private and communal life. Thus the role of citizen can connect people across lines of difference for the purpose of governing and problem solving, drawing on distinct cultural identities and other communities.

Public Work

Public work is cooperative civic work that is visible and whose significance is widely acknowledged . Public work helps build our larger common pool of wealth and resources-our commonwealth.
Public work can be paid or voluntary. It can be done in communities. Or it can be done in institutions and across institutions as part of one's regular job. In fact, adding public dimensions to one's occupation-recognizing the large potential significance and impact of what one does as a teacher or nurse, as a county extension agent or a computer programmer or a machinist or a college professor or anything else-often can turn an unsatisfying job into much more significant work.
In the fullest sense of the term, public work takes place not solely with an eye to public consequences. It also is work of a public; a mix of people whose interests, backgrounds, and resources can be quite different. This requires political skills such as listening, bargaining, understanding diverse self-interests, and being able to map power relations. Everyday politics (or citizen politics) is an important aspect of public work, but not the same thing.
Public work focuses attention on something that we have largely lost sight of in our age of high technology, a point larger than politics: we help to build the world through our common effort. Public work develops our core identities as citizens who are broad producers, rather than simply consumers or clients or experts or any narrower role. What we build and create we can also re-create. Thus, public work also makes clear that the world is open and fluid, not static and fixed.

Politics

(From the Greek word politikos, meaning the work of citizens.)
Politics is a key aspect of the public work of problem solving and governance, full of ambiguity and practical tasks, and takes place in everyday environments. This understanding allows people to recognize and develop their public roles and capacities. It highlights the fact that politics is everywhere; every individual, institution, community, or arena practices some kind of politics. Politics here is under stood as a cultural practice: the customs, habits, structures of power and governance, formal and informal rules in the environments in which we live and work.

Citizen Politics

Citizen politics (civic organizing) is a method of organizing that locates the practice of politics with citizens in everyday environments as they solve public problems and do other public work. A conceptual framework, citizen politics is not limited to government but is adaptable to many different environments. It provides tools, not techniques.
At its core is civic education - the development of ordinary people's capacities for public leadership. This requires paying attention to our roles, capacities, and identities so that we can become agents for problem solving in the multiple arenas of our public work. These capacities are developed best, we believe, through practice coupled with tough, self-conscious reflection.
The core concepts of citizen politics include: public; diversity; self-interest; and power.

Public

(From the Latin, publicus, from the people, and pubes, meaning maturity.)

1. A body of individuals acting together around common issues.
2. Linked to, but distinct from, private.
3. The public world is open and fluid. Beyond the world of family and close friends, it is characterized by diversity of outlook, interest, and perspective. Thus in public life we are linked not necessarily by common values, histories, and cultures but rather by common problems. When working in the public world, we connect our own individual life in a particular environment with larger settings and goals. The public world is a place for debate, developing public judgment, wrestling with other points of view, as we work together to solve common problems. Our relationships and actions in the public world are strategic. Concepts of self-interest, diversity, and power come out of an understanding of public life as a space in which we act on diverse self-interests to solve common problems, using our collective power.

Diversity

In the context of public work, diversity - including different skills, knowledge, and interests as well as ethnic, racial, religious, or class backgrounds - is used as a source of knowledge and resources for solving problems.

Self-interest

(From the Latin words inter esse, meaning to be among or between others.)
Self-interest is a product of our history, motivation, and experience. It is complex, multidimensional, and changes over time. In a particular problem solving context, it is your connection or stake in the problem, and your reason for working with diverse others to solve it.

Power

(From the Latin word, poder, meaning to be able.)
The capacity to act in and influence the world. Power is dynamic, relational, and interactive. To achieve a broad base of support, it actively seeks out diverse interests.

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Produced by Communication and Educational Technology Services, University of Minnesota Extension.

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