Picturing Citizenship
Images, Belonging and Colonial Legacies in the Settler Nation
Melissa Miles editor Jane Lydon editor Fay Anderson editor Professor Amanda Nettelbeck editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:21st Aug '25
£85.00
This title is due to be published on 21st August, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

This book collection considers the unique role of visual culture in defining, contesting and advancing ideas of citizenship and its attendant rights in settler national contexts.
For many, the conditions and privileges of citizenship, and the access it provides to equal civil, political and social rights, are taken for granted. Yet citizenship always implies histories of inclusion and exclusion and in settler nations with colonial roots, the history of citizenship is entangled with the legacies of colonisation. Looking beyond its legal definition to the wider historical processes through which citizenship and its associated ideas of rights and belonging have been imagined, debated and found lasting form, this collection considers the unique role of visual culture in defining, contesting and advancing ideas of citizenship in settler national contexts from the 19th century to the present day.
Addressing citizenship’s particular entanglements with colonial histories in contemporary settler nations, the collection considers how images have shaped the meanings and experiences of citizenship from the colonial era, through periods of mass global migration to contemporary geopolitical change and debates on Indigenous rights and recognition. Contributors explore the role visual culture has played in imagining or interrogating ideas about belonging, rights, civic identity, and the ideal citizen in societies that continue to grapple with their settler colonial origins. They ask how image-making may be used to negotiate or contest the limits of citizenship, whether as a legal or as an imagined cultural category, and the role of visual culture in building relationships between citizens, non-citizens and the state. This collection will provide a new and compelling history of citizenship and the ways it has been defined, not only by historicising citizenship’s visual imagery but by exploring its present effects and legacies.
Through important and compelling case studies drawn from different historical periods and across a range of nations, Picturing Citizenship examines how boundaries of citizenship and non-citizenship have been constructed and challenged via visual culture in the context of settler colonialism and its complex legacies. These are not just historical questions. The issues discussed here are an urgent concern, as conservative and authoritarian political actors increasingly utilise visual material to stoke ‘culture wars’ and draw distinctions between citizens and ‘illegals’. An essential volume! * Dr Tom Allbeson, Reader in Media & Photographic History, Cardiff University, UK *
At a moment when global mobility and forced displacement push at the limits of national belonging, Picturing Citizenship demonstrates the ongoing potency of visual claims to rights and sovereignty. Drawing on visual examples from Australia, Canada and New Zealand that range from the banal to the spectacular, these authors question long-held assumptions about the liberatory potential of photography and citizenship, disrupting any easy equation between visibility and political recognition. A welcome intervention into the growing field of visual citizenship and comparative imperial studies, Picturing Citizenship draws our attention to the ‘liveness’ of colonial histories on the present. * Gabrielle Moser, Associate Professor Aesthetics and Art Education, York University, UK *
ISBN: 9781350455887
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
240 pages