Poor Citizen Essay, Research Paper
INTRODUCTIONIs ?poor citizen? a contradiction
in term? Can we truly speak of a person as ?complete? citizen if he strives day
and night for his survival in poverty? Can such a person exercise the rights
granted to him by the virtue of his membership to the community? Does not the
term poverty suggest the failure of social citizenship rights? This concise
essay will attempt to briefly answer these questions.In order to be able to
sufficiently answer these questions, we need to briefly examine citizenship
rights and look at what is that rights give to the person in whom they are
vested and determine how poverty effects the citizenship rights of an individual. Understanding Social Citizenship Rights. To the Greek philosopher
Aristotle citizenship was the privileged status for all free men of the
city-state. Women and children were not considered citizens and were therefore
excluded. Marshall (1950) sees citizenship as a status bestowed upon the full
members of a community. Marshall argues that there are no fixed inherent rights
in the concept of citizenship, however with historic development rights have
come to be associated with citizenship. Marshall identifies three types of
rights that he argues to be associated with citizenship in modern democracies.
He calls them civil rights, social rights and political rights.? To T.H. Marshall civil rights are rights of
citizenship necessary for personal freedom and liberty and include ?liberty of
the person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, the right to own property and
to conclude valid contracts, and the right to justice? (p. 10). In the economic
sphere, Marshall considered it a basic civil right to be able to follow the
occupation of one?s choice at the place of one?s choice, subject only to
legitimate restrictions. Citizenship in the modern democracy is based on
universal suffrage and equality before the law (Barbalet 1988).Socio-economic rights have
also been reflected in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, as fundamental human
rights. These rights are also further elaborated in the UN?s International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These rights include rights
to social security in the event of unemployment,? sickness, disability or widowhood or old age, rights to food,
housing and clothing, rights to medical care and rights to various sorts of
education (Jones 1994). These rights also include inter alia the right to work, to just and favourable conditions of
employment, to protection against unemployment, to fair remuneration for the
work done, and to rest and leisure. Furthermore, everyone is also said to have
the right to ?freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy
the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits?.[1]There is a debate in academia as
to whether socio-economic rights are fundamental human rights or just
citizenship rights granted to the members of a nation-state. Maurice Cranston (1973)
argues that for a right to be basic and fundamental human right it must satisfy
three conditions of ?practicality?, ?universality? and ?paramount importance?.
Cranston argues that socio-economic rights fail the test of ?practicability?
i.e. it is not practical for governments of the developing countries to provide
all for their inhabitants with goods such as ?a standard of living adequate for
their health and well being?. Cranston argues that for a right to be
fundamental it must be genuinely universal in two ways: it should be a right
for all, and right against all. This, Cranston argues, is not true for
socio-economic rights as a right to periodic holidays is a rights claimed only
by the employees. In the same way socio-economic rights are not against all, as
the right to freedom of expression, rather they are rights against a government
or an employer. Socio-economic rights pass the test of ?paramount importance?,
but because of their failure to be practical and universal they are not
fundamental human rights, but citizenship rights. Donnelly (1985) has
criticised Cranston with being too simplistic. He argues that to say that right
to social security is not universal because not everyone will need to resort to
the welfare facility providing social security, is to say that the right to
fair trial is not a universal right because not everyone will need it. Welfare goods are considered
to be closely associated with social rights as it is through the consumption of
welfare goods that a citizen is able to realise the rights granted to him as a
citizen and attain well being. There are three reasons for considering welfare
goods essential for well being. One, they are regarded necessary for the
quality of life people spend. The second reason concerns the obligation of the
society to cater to the needs of its members. Thirdly, considering welfare
goods as rights tends to reduce the stigma attached with the benefits given to
the people by the government (Jones 1994).UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF RIGHTS Needs as RightsIt has been argued that people
have rights because they have needs. This line of argument is not without
problems. First of all what are needs and how can they be defined. What is the
difference between needs and wants? Needs have been argued to have an objective
quality that wants do not have. Wants are inherently subjective and various.
The needs are said to be limited and identical for all human beings therefore
it is practical to take them as rights for all human beings. Needs are things
that are considered crucial to the well-being of the individuals. Can this be
argued that people have a right to what they need? This can not be done for the
reason that needs in themselves are not ?complete? (White 1975, pp.105-7). The
argument is that if one says that he has a particular need he can be asked for
what. Thus a full statement of needs must have the justification for the need.
Justification aspect of needs is quite important. The essentialness of the need
is judged on the basis of justification. Our response to a person?s claim that
he needs a gun will be different if he needs the gun to defend himself against
criminals or he needs it to kill someone. Thus, it can be said that the moral
claim of the need is entirely dependent on the ends to which they are directed.As already stated, needs can only
be treated as human rights if some fundamental, basic needs can be identified
that are universally sought by all humans. Rawl?s (1971) has identified these
basic needs as what he calls the primary goods. These are the goods that are
rational to want for the pursuit of one?s ends, irrespective of what these ends
might be. In this sense ?basic freedom, and opportunities, income and wealth,
can be conceived as providing for fundamental needs? (Jones 1994, p.151). Weale
(1978) has added specific needs as education and health care to the list of
basic human needs. The identification of basic needs has the advantage that
these needs are common to all and are required for the pursuits of any
purposes. However, if needs are identified as wealth and income than this
approach does not help us in establishing needs as rights as it does not assist
us in determining who ought to get what. Another way to establish fundamental
human needs is to determine them on the basis of what is required by humans to
function properly as humans. We would end up with a list including air, and
certain minimum of food and water. The list may also include a certain degree
of autonomy, physical and mental health as the requisite to act as human beings
(Doyal and Gough 1991). So, it can be said that
socio-economic rights are essential for the well being of citizens. The next
section examines briefly that what is it that rights offer people and see how
poverty effects the ability of individuals to exercise their rights.Rights as Freedoms Rights grant a certain
degree of freedom and liberty to the right-holders. According to the ?Interest
Theory? of rights ?to ascribe rights to someone is to say that some aspect of
that person?s well-being is legally or morally shielded against interference
and non-assistance?. The other dominant theory of rights called the ?Will
Theory? of rights ?maintains that all rights consist in enjoyment of
opportunities for individual or corporate choices?each right invests its holder
with some degree of control over his or her situation (Kramer et al 1998, p.2).So it would not be wrong to say
that rights are basically about the freedom and choices they offer to the
person in whom they vest. Therefore to understand the nature of rights we need
to explore the concept of personal liberty and autonomy.?Personal liberty has often been defined as freedom or liberty to
do or not to do something. This freedom is not unqualified and is restricted in
certain cases by the laws of the land and the rights of other individuals. ?The
rights of individuals to decide and to act as each of them chooses within a
circumscribed sphere of life may be described as the right to personal liberty’
(Jones 1994, p. 122).According to Immanuel Kant human
specie is unique in the aspect that it is capable of autonomous conduct. Unlike
non-humans who can only act in accordance with their nature, humans can act
according to their own conception of what they ought to do i.e. in accordance
of their self-imposed rules. So, in Kant?s view an individual will be deemed to
have acted autonomously if he acted in accordance with the rules and principles
that he had prescribed for himself, or in other words when he acted rationally.
Kantian concept of autonomy has come to be associated with ?neutralist?
liberalism i.e. the state should remain unconcerned with the ends to which its
citizens may devote their lives (Jones 1989). However the liberals who take
that view do not hold that state can and should remain neutral in all matters.
The rules governing the pursuit of these ends may be set by the state, however
the citizens should have liberty to pursue their goals in that framework. To
neutralist liberals there is a distinction between ?right? and ?good?. For them
?right? provides them the framework within which they are free to pursue their
own conceptions of ?good?.Berlin (1969) has criticised the
Kantian concept of autonomy as too narrow and suited to repressive regimes,
which are normally at odds with the basic rights to freedom. Liberal theorists
take a more generous view of the concept of autonomy. In their view autonomy is
the liberty to make choices, to formulate plans and projects, and to be the
architect of one?s life-goals and ambitions.J.S. Mill has placed high value
on individual ?liberty?, the word he has used for autonomy, i.e. the freedom to
individuals to develop their own life in the way they consider proper. Joseph
Raz (1986) argues that ideal of personal autonomy is ? the vision of people
controlling, to some degree, their own destiny, fashioning it through
successive decisions throughout their lives? (p. 369). To Raz freedom and
autonomy means presence of worthwhile options to the individuals to shape their
lives.One finds in the literature that
economic limitations have been treated by some authors as constraining the
freedom of the poor people, whereas others have regarded them as limits on what
people are ?able? to do rather than what they are ?free? to do. It has also
been argued that if lack of material resources amounts to lack of freedom, then
the right to do a particular act will mean the right to have the resources to
do that act. However, if lack of resources is not lack of freedom than the
rights to freedom will be much more modest. Furthermore, if poverty is not
described as ?unfreedom?, the right to freedom will not include the right to
not be impoverished. It has been argued that a way out of this ?able? and
?free? debate is to argue that poor have a negative freedom to achieve their
?good? but they do not have a positive freedom to achieve their well-being. Conclusion From the above discussion it can
be said that rights are about liberties that provide the right-holders with the
autonomy to make choices. Socio-economic rights should be able to grant
citizens with autonomy to shape their socio-economic lives, the way they wish
to shape them by selecting the choices available to them. Do poor citizens have
this autonomy? Do they have sufficient socio-economic choices that make them
capable to shape their lives as they like? Does lack of resources in any way
hampers their pursuit of their own notion of ?good?? Amartya Sen (1992) writes that
the resources that a person has represent the extent of freedom he has to
consume the various ?bundles? of goods available. To use the same argument the
lower the level of resources the fewer the choices available for consumption.
Fewer the choices available lower the level of freedom granted to the person to
act in the way he wishes to act to achieve his own notion of ?good?. Therefore
it can be argued that lack of resources decreases the freedom a person has to
achieve well being. Freedom is central to the notion of rights; therefore it
can be said that with poverty the individual?s capability to exercise his
rights decreases.It can therefore be concluded
that poor citizenship is in fact a contradiction. A person can not be poor and
a full citizen, exercising the freedoms of action granted to him by virtue of
his membership to the state.?? REFERENCES1.
Barbalet, J.M. (1998) Citizenship:
rights, struggle and class inequality, Milton Keynes: Open University
Press. 2.
Berlin, I. (1969) Four Essays on
Liberty, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3.
?Cranston, M. (1973) What are Human Rights?, London: Bodley
Head. 4.
?Donnelly, J. (1985) The Concept of Human Rights, London:
Croom Helm. 5.
?Doyal, L. & Gough, I. A Theory of Human Need, Basingstoke:
Macmillan. 6.
?Jones, P. (1989) ?The ideal of the neutral state? in John Horton and
Susan Mendus (eds), The Nature of
Political Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 7.
__________ (1994) Rights, Basingstoke:
Macmillan. 8.
Kramer, M.H., Simminds, N.E., and Steiner, H. (1998) A Debate Over Rights, ?Oxford: Oxford University Press. 9.
Marshall, T.H. (1950) Citizenship
and Social Class, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10. ?Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of
Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 11. ?Raz, J. (1986) The Morality
of Freedom, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 12. ?Sen, A. (1992) Inequality
Reexamined, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 13. ?Weale, A. (1978) Equality
and Social Policy, London: Routledge & Kagan Paul. 14. ?White, A.R. (1975) Modal Thinking, NY: Cornell University
Press. [1] Article 27(1) Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
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