Connected Citizenship

Virtuous Subjects: A Critical Analysis of the Affective Substance of Social Studies Education

“…Additionally, how do the affects and emotions bound up in thinking about one's relation to one's nation and the world at large invite "an understanding of civic ideals and practices" that serve as "an essential component of education for citizenship, which is the central purpose of the social studies" (p. 23)? The "we" and the "our" implied in the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) standards are always already inextricably bound together by America, prior to joining a class or reading a textbook, by our felt and lived presence in the spaces bounded by borders of America (Tupper, Cappello, & Sevigny, 2010;Vinson, 2001). For Lucas and for the NCSS standards, "America" seems to be an assumed relation, a quick explication of all the practices subsumed under "social studies" that offer an occasion for exploring what it means that national subjects share private/public feelings, identities, and distinct subject positions as political and economic citizens.…”