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Dr Trevor StackLecturer
BA Hons. (Oxford), MSt (Oxford), PhD (University of Pennsylvania)
| Telephone: | +44 (0)1224 272543 |
| E-mail: | t.stack@abdn.ac.uk |
| Address: | Department of Hispanic Studies Taylor A13 University of Aberdeen Aberdeen AB24 3UB |
I came to Aberdeen as a Lecturer in Hispanic Studies in 2002, after completing a BA in History, a Masters and PhD in Anthropology, and having taught Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. I have been doing research in Mexico since 1992, and I now also do research in the East Bay Area of northern California.
I teach in Hispanic Studies and have close ties with the Anthropology Department, the Centre for Modern Thought and the Philosophy of Religion seminar.
I am currently setting up and will direct the Research Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law at Aberdeen.
1. How is history linked to citizenship?
I have completed a book manuscript with the title "Knowing History, Being Citizens of Mexican Towns", drawing on years of research into how people talk and write about history in Mexico. I focus on the link made by many of my informants between knowing history and being citizens. Why did people link history and citizenship? What was it about knowing history that made for good citizens? Who was able to know enough history to pass for good citizens, and what did they get from being good citizens?
I found that different people got different things from history, but two things stood out: some kind of rooting or membership of community, and a sense of culture or civility. And both being rooted and having culture were associated with being citizens. The link between history and citizenship is certainly not exclusive to Mexico - many countries require aspiring citizens to take a test on their national history. But while other scholars have discussed the links between national citizenship and national history, I focus on the history told and written of towns and cities, and argue that people were also citizens of their towns and cities.
The manuscript is under review but a summary of the argument appears in my article "Rooting and Cultura in Mexico".
2. What does it mean to be a citizen?
My current project on citizenship goes beyond my earlier focus on history. Citizenship has been trumpeted in the UK and overseas as the remedy to such ills as socio- economic inequality, terrorism, anti-social behaviour and the crisis of representation. Scholars have contributed to the debates but have often begun with a definition of citizenship – usually the rights of members of nation-states –instead of exploring the diverse notions of citizenship in any society let alone across the world. Andrew Gordon and I noted in a special issue of Citizenship Studies (2007) that citizenship in different socio-historical contexts had meant many other things.
I returned to Mexico in 2007 to conduct a series of interviews starting with the question "what does it mean to be a citizen?" I identified four notions of citizenship during interviews in two regions: political participation in government; entitlement to a share in national patrimony; "guarantees" of individual rights by government under rule of law; and the condition of living in society (ideally in a civil way). This fourth notion of citizenship was the most common but it has received the least attention in the social science literature. I extended the project to California in 2008 to compare Mexicans' ideas of citizenship in Mexico and, as migrants, in the context of California, as well as comparing Mexican ideas of citizenship (both in Mexico and in California) to those of Anglo informants in California. I found similar notions of citizenship but a greater accent on exclusivity in California among both Mexicans – many of them undocumented - and Anglo informants.
I will complete the fieldwork in 2010 by returning to the three regions: the rural area of the Sierra de Tapalpa, Jalisco; the provincial city of Zamora, Michoacán; the small city of Concord, California (also home to migrants from the Sierra de Tapalpa). What different notions of citizenship do people across the three regions invoke in interviews and other contexts such as public events and the meetings of organisations? And what do those notions of citizenship do in practice? I will investigate in particular whether the various notions of citizenship serve to counter or reproduce the various kinds of marginality in those three regions.
Meanwhile I held a CINEFOGO Network of Excellence workshop on Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law in August 2009, and I am planning a series of events and PhD studentships under the aegis of the new Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law, which I will direct.
3. How does "religious" get distinguished from "secular", and with what consequences?
I argued in my contribution to Tim Fitzgerald's volume Religion and the Secular that my Mexican informants narrated the history of a local Virgin from a secular perspective. Since then, I have since developed an interest in the many different ways in which people (including scholars) distinguish between "religious" and "secular". Even if we feel that we know what "religion" is and what it is not, where and how we draw that boundary still has its consequences, however unintended. It matters, for example, whether a museum exhibit is considered cultural or religious; a crucifix on a necklace is deemed an expression of faith or a fashion accessory; shari'a law is regarded as integral to Islam or as another lawcode; a particular state is classified by Europe as secular or not; a minority is viewed as religious or ethnic; and a PhD thesis is considered religious or just about religion. Tim Fitzgerald and I have organised a series of events to examine religious-secular distinctions, including a major conference on Religious-Secular Distinctions at the British Academy on 14-16 January 2010. We are committed to editing a volume of papers selected from the workshop and conference.
I have received a series of grants in support of my research in Mexico and California from the British Academy (2005, 2007, 2008) and the Carnegie Trust (2004, 2007, 2008), as well as a British Academy Conference Support Grant to hold the conference at the British Academy on 14-16 January 2010. I have also received funding to set up and direct a Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law at Aberdeen, which will host a series of conferences and offer PhD studentships.
I teach advanced undergraduate courses on a wide range of topics including “Citizenship in Latin America”, "The Rule of Law in the Americas", and "The Golden State: History, Culture and Politics of California". I also teach on the Masters programmes in Social Anthropology, Ethnology and Cultural History, and in Latin American Studies. I have just finished supervising a PhD thesis on Mexican intellectuals and journalists during the 1970s, and I would be interested in supervising PhD research on citizenship and related topics, whether in Latin America, the United States, or anywhere else in the world.
Recent publications include:
In preparation:
Hispanic Studies, School of Language & Literature
Taylor Building · University of Aberdeen · Aberdeen · AB24 3UB · Scotland
Telephone: +44 (0)1224-272549 · Fax: +44 (0)1224-272624 · Email: p.thomson@abdn.ac.uk
Page last modified: Wednesday, 26-Mar-2008 14:18:39 GMT
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