Inclusion Projects: How Muslim Advocates Imagine Civic Membership in U.S. Public Life

How does civic inclusion work in an exclusionary society? Theories on the civil sphere treat incorporation as an institutional process of progressive expansion of the sphere of solidarity. Tensions and divisions are thus conceptualized as analytically exogenous to the civic realm. Theories on racialization, instead, assume that the “civic” is irremediably marked by oppression and domination. Rather than focusing on emergent tensions and divisions, racialization theories thus equate civic inclusion with the reproduction of structural inequalities. However, both theories focus on what civic culture “is” more than what civic culture “does.” As a result, they miss important mechanisms through which advocates from marginalized groups project their cultural membership in U.S. civic life. Advocates in two Muslim civic organizations at which I conducted participant observation sought to be included in U.S. civic life instead of rejecting the status quo or retreating into a subcultural space. Yet, by imagining the civic realm differently, the two groups produced divergent inclusive public images of Muslims that, in turn, generated specific trade-offs. Through the novel conceptual tool of inclusion projects, I demonstrate that seeking inclusion on the rugged terrain of U.S. civic culture might reproduce different patterns of symbolic exclusions as civic culture is embedded, yet not reducible to, racialized meanings. This study advances a critical sociology of inclusion by heeding how advocates themselves encounter hurdles on the ground as they seek acceptance into what they imagine as the civic, moral grounds of American society.