Fragmented Citizens

Fragmented Citizens is a major contribution to the interdisciplinary literature on LGBT rights. The book is meticulously researched and brimming with fascinating historical details.[A] considerable achievement. ~Contemporary Sociology

Offers innovative answers...that will likely be of interest to many sexualities scholars....Identifying five distinct ‘modalities of recognition’ that have been employed throughout the American polity, often simultaneously, Engel shows how the development of various agencies and institutions has led to tensions in policies and practices that have manifested as fragemented, and indeed unequal, citizenship for gay men and lesbians....Fragmented Citizens makes a meaningful contribution. ~Sexualities

In this ambitious and important book, Stephen Engel breaks new ground by introducing a new conceptfragmented citizenshipto the burgeoning field of citizenship studies. He shows how this kind of democratic citizenship is embedded in the general logic of American political development and convincingly connects fragmented citizenship to contemporary LGBT political experiencethereby opening up a whole new way to talk about the civic status of LGBT Americans. ~Richard M. Valelly,author of The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement

Engel delves into the problem of LGBT citizenship at what appears to be its moment of resolution. What he finds are incongruous advances, partial transformations, reconfigurations that open up new and unforeseen issues. In Fragmented Citizens, the LGBT movement becomes a lens through which abiding features of American political development are brought into focus. The result is a profound commentary on the limits of state recognition and the elusive quest for social justice. ~Stephen Skowronek,author of Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal

This is an impressive, well-argued and valuable book. All too often we associate the idea of LGBT citizenship with simply a concern about vindicating constitutional rights as if a proclamation by a court will ensure substantive equality once and for all. Stephen Engel persuasively challenges that view by positing a novel and important concept of a 'fragmented citizen.' This approach argues that rights do not operate independently of institutions and time.We must be attuned to the ways in which public and private institutions often haphazardly, tenuously, unexpectedly and even inconsistently recognize certain features of citizenship while denying others.LGBT citizenship in the United States provides a timely framework from which to develop this argument. ~Sonu Bedi,author of Beyond Race, Sex and Sexual Orientation: Legal Equality without Identity