Susan Condor

Although elite commentators have regularly predicted an English backlash to the asymmetric devolution settlement, public opinion surveys generally reveal widespread acceptance of the principle of Scottish self-governance. In this article, I explore some of the reasoning behind English responses to UK constitutional change, drawing on a comprehensive programme of conversational interview research initiated in 2000. Analysis suggests that although people in England often endorse sincere and consistent views on various aspects of the devolution process, currently these are not typically salient, central or strongly held, and are rarely rooted in detailed domain-specific information. In the first decade following the devolution settlement, English responses to UK constitutional reform have tended to be based on abstract values of national rights and procedural justice rather than on calculations of comparative national self-interest. However, popular acceptance of the new constitutional arrangements may be contingent upon a particular set of ideological circumstances, and it would be premature to assume that asymmetric devolution necessarily reflects the settled will of the English people.

Prejudice is understood as the human individuals’ psychological tendency to make unfavorable evaluations about members of other social groups. Ibanez et al. (2009, p. 81) It blunts the thinking to speak of the participants in the social scene as ‘individuals’. Asch (1952, p. 180) The vagueness of prejudice As Pawlik and d’Ydewalle (2006) have noted, psychologists generally tend to refer to their research objects in common-language terminology. Consequently, authors of academic texts often start out by providing formal definitions of any key terms in order to establish a clear boundary between their own scientific understanding and the imprecise, inaccurate, forms of conceptualization typical of ‘mere’ common sense (cf. Billig, 1990; Shapin, 2001). Social psychological work on prejudice is, of course, no exception, and most authors offer their readers a definition of the term ‘prejudice’, which they typically distinguish from purportedly less accurate or precise everyday uses of the word.

The concept of citizenship is currently the subject of extensive, and often heated, debate on the part of policy makers and social scientists. Many of the key concerns encapsulated in the idea of citizenship—collective identity, solidarity, pro‐social behaviour, group boundaries, intra and intergroup conflict—also represent longstanding concerns on the part of social and community psychologists. However, at present, very little psychological theory or research directly addresses the subject of citizenship. The aim of this Special Issue is to explore how the construct of citizenship might contribute to social psychological understandings of social conflict and solidarity and, conversely, to consider how existing social psychological theories and methods might contribute to contemporary understandings of citizenship. The authors of the six articles in the Special Issue apply a range of theoretical perspectives (self‐categorization theory, social identity theory, rhetorical psychology, the theory of social representations) and methods (experiments, surveys, interviews, ethnography) to examine situated understandings of citizenship in a variety of domains (civic and political participation, immigration attitudes, minority identities, nationalism). Despite their different approaches, the authors display a common concern to recognize complexity, contradiction and contestability as inherent, and often productive, features of the everyday construction and performance of citizenship. As a consequence, social psychological perspectives may have the potential to restore the damaged reputation of the citizen currently apparent in much policy and social scientific discourse. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this commentary I point to some inherent tensions within the article Dissolving the Diaspora. First, I suggest that the author may be in danger of underestimating the extent to which the values of the multiculturalism promoted in the article rely upon an acceptance of the incorrigible stats of culturally‐specific ideologies of liberalism. Second, I point to the way in which the author adopts a banal nationalist frame of reference whereby constructs such as ‘society’ and ‘polity’ and understood to be conterminous with ‘nation‐state’. I suggest that, in this respect, the author may be in danger of overlooking the ways in which the same liberal values which under pin an advocacy of multiculturalism might also be associated with utopian visions of transnational or cosmopolitan forms of solidarity and polity. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper we examine the construction of categorical distinctions and the negotiation of category labels in interview accounts given by a sample of the majority population (Orthodox Christians) in Thrace (Northern Greece) concerning their co-existence with the Muslim minority. Employing a rhetorical approach to categorisation, we argue that category labels constitute argumentative positions which reflect culturally specific assumptions around which Greekness and Otherness are constructed. Analysis points to the ways in which the rhetorical invocation of certain category labels may be treated by social actors as potentially open to the charge of racism. However, what counts as racism or discrimination in relation to various category labels is not unproblematic and straightforward. As the meaning attached to particular categories shifts, the meaning attached to ‘racism’ also changes.

Conversational interview accounts were used to explore everyday understandings of political participation on the part of young white adults in England. Analysis focussed on dilemmatic tensions within respondents' accounts between values of active citizenship and norms of liberal individualism. Respondents could represent community membership as engendering rights to political participation, whilst also arguing that identification with local or national community militates against the formulation of genuine personal attitudes and rational political judgement. Respondents could represent political participation as a civic responsibility, whilst also casting political campaigning as an illegitimate attempt to impose personal opinions on to others. Formal citizenship education did not appear to promote norms of political engagement but rather lent substance to the argument that political decision‐making should be based on the rational application of technical knowledge rather than on public opinion or moral principle. In conclusion we question whether everyday understandings of responsible citizenship necessarily entail injunctions to political action. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Vernacular representations of nationhood collected in England differed from canonical accounts of social categorization in three respects. First, nations were not typically constructed as simple person categories, but rather as hybrid collectivities of human beings, objects and geographical locations. Second, national representation was not confined to the present tense, but was typically conveyed through temporal distinctions and narratives. Third, speakers displayed a reflexive concern over the rationality and morality of national categorization and stereotyping. Speakers could manage the tension between the need to recognize both national diversity and entitativity by forging a distinction between Englishness (identified with homogeneity, ethnic nationalism and the past) and Britishness (identified with pluralism, civic nationalism and historical progress). However, accounts had a dilemmatic quality. The strategies speakers used to promote images of contemporary national in‐group diversity often implicitly presupposed a normal moral order of national cultural homogeneity. The association of pluralism with values of progressive social change meant that accounts of ‘our’ distinctive lack of national character could carry tacit implications of relative superiority. General implications for social identity approaches to social categorization are discussed.

Social scientific work on the suppression, mitigation or denial of prejudiced attitudes has tended to focus on the strategic self‐presentation and self‐monitoring undertaken by individual social actors on their own behalf. In this paper, we argue that existing perspectives might usefully be extended to incorporate three additional considerations. First, that social actors may, on some occasions, act to defend not only themselves, but also others from charges of prejudice. Second, that over the course of any social encounter, interactants may take joint responsibility for policing conversation and for correcting and suppressing the articulation of prejudiced talk. Third, that a focus on the dialogic character of conversation affords an appreciation of the ways in which the status of any particular utterance, action or event as ‘racist’ or ‘prejudiced’ may constitute a social accomplishment. Finally, we note the logical corollary of these observations – that in everyday life, the occurrence of ‘racist discourse’ is likely to represent a collaborative accomplishment, the responsibility for which is shared jointly between the person of the speaker and those other co‐present individuals who occasion, reinforce or simply fail to suppress it.

At the time of the devolution settlement in the UK, there was widespread concern that the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales would prompt a rise in English identity at the expense of British identity and, in turn, threaten polyethnic constructions of citizenship. Such presumptions typically rested on reified understandings of the category labels British and English, and conflated the construct of national identity with the constructs of territorial belonging, social inclusion and citizenship. Post-devolution survey data do not currently reveal a decline in British identity in England. Measures of attachment to Englishness vary as a function of ethnic origin of respondent, but also as a function of question wording. A qualitative interview study of young adult Pakistani-origin Muslims in Greater Manchester, north-west England, illustrates how Englishness may be understood to pertain variously to an exclusive cultural or racial category, or to an inclusive territorial entity or community of political interest. Ethnic constructions of English identity need not imply exclusive understandings of citizenship, but their meaning depends crucially on the ways in which nationality and identity are in turn understood in relation to matters of polity and civil society. Conversely, inclusive understandings of national identity do not guarantee the existence of effective ethnic integration or substantive ethnic equality.