Department of International Relations2024-11-0920121362-102510.1080/13621025.2012.6676072-s2.0-84861130803https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14288/2877This article studies the proliferation of discourses of rationality and responsibility among a particular elite social group in Lebanon and Turkey, as they remember student mobilization of their past. I offer these episodes of student mobilization as acts of citizenship that create and make use of rapturous moments in the histories of their countries and institutions. I extend these acts of citizenship to the contemporary context and study the ways in which they become part of discourses of citizenship in unexpected ways. I propose that these narratives draw upon a set of local practices that reflect meanings of citizenship, originating from Western discourses of liberalism, albeit following a different route. In the narratives, violence and irrationality become the defining features of politicized behavior, whereas being civilized epitomizes good manners and rationality. Such boundary-drawing exercises contribute to making conceivable exclusionary social orders based on the idea of a hierarchical distribution of reason and social utility.pdfPolitical scienceCitizenshipSociologyJournal Articlehttps://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2012.667607303560400001Q3NOIR00202