I would like to focus this week’s reflective commentary on an objective Carens addresses at the end of chapter 8. His conditions for social membership (and by extension, any moral claims) rest on two conditions: residence and time. But is physical presence within the boundaries of a state sufficient for social membership? Carens thinks so, but I am hesitant to agree.

I was relieved to see Carens address this worry about his criteria for social membership (viz. residence and time) being too loose to justify social membership. Carens adds that his motivations were to make the conditions for social membership as verifiable as possible – in his words, “relevant, objective, and easy to measure.” However, the concern is that the conditions for social membership are not rigorous enough to filter out cases where people do not seem to meet Carens’ notion of “social membership.” Imagine a non-native born person that hides under a rock for twenty years. It is hard to say that this person fits Carens’ notion of “social membership” despite meeting his criteria.

Carens responds by saying that such “hypothetical questions” are the fringe cases; however, he does entertain the objection. Carens asks us to imagine the recluse (i.e. no job, no social ties, no political contributions; essentially living under a rock) native born person. We would not say that this recluse is not a citizen, so we should carry that intuition to cases of non-native born persons. I think this is specious.

If I want to push back on Carens’ point, I would have to find some non-arbitrary difference between the native born recluse and the non-native born recluse. I do not have anything fully substantive to offer, but I want to suggest that there is something different about the native born recluse which affords them social membership which the non-native born recluse does not have. I think this thing is the simple the fact that they were born here.

Let me try to explain a little more while also building a possible third condition. I think a shared narrative is essential to social membership. By this I mean how one’s life narrative – entailing whatever their conception of a good life, like projects, relationships, career, etc. – is tied with their society (whatever the “social” part of “social membership” entails). Now, how does this idea connect to the aforementioned objection?

The native born recluse has their narrative tied simply in virtue of birth. The must have had ties to parents, a network of medical professionals, and some minimal provisions to subsist at their birth. Their narrative is minimally and inextricably tied to their society by birth, granting them necessary social membership; the non-native born recluse, however, does not have this privilege.

Is this narrative condition substantive enough to be a condition for social membership? It might be in that it seems to measure one’s ties to society. One’s tie to society might be verified through personal ties, one’s career, or even knowledge of the society’s narrative (this might justify testing for citizenship, that is, through knowledge of the society’s principles and practices).

My conception of “narrative” is suggestive and vague. Nevertheless, I want to say that Carens’ two conditions for social membership are too broad.