Oxfam provides some excellent resources for civic education. Among its products is a guide for schools on “global citizenship” (pdf). This document says:
Oxfam sees the Global Citizen as someone who:
- is aware of the wider world and has a sense of their own role as a world citizen
- respects and values diversity
- has an understanding of how the world works
- is outraged by social injustice
- participates in the community at a range of levels, from the local to
the global
- is willing to act to make the world a more equitable and sustainable
place
- takes responsibility for their actions.
By the way, a Global Citizen (so defined) can also be a good national citizen. But what interests me is the mix of principles on this list, many of which are logically separable. You could value diversity, be outraged by injustice, and take responsibility for your actions, but not think of yourself as a “world citizen” or operate at the global level. Or, if you run a multinational oil company, you could very much take a global perspective, understand how the world works–and even value diversity–but not care a fig for injustice.
In the 1800s, progressive nationalists, like Abraham Lincoln and Charles Dickens, were concerned with profound injustices–slavery and urban poverty–and saw advantages to a strong national consciousness. As I argue here, Dickens thought that British nationalism was a means of enlarging human sympathies, and Lincoln argued that preserving the Union as a democracy would serve human-kind. But other nationalists of the 1800s tried to develop nation-states as a means to wipe out hated minorities and dominate their regions.
Nationalism was a means, not an end. I am inclined to think the same of globalism today.
In the 1800s and early 1900s, political thinkers often romanticized “the people” as a homogeneous and progressive force. Marxists assumed that working people were beginning to share class-consciousness that would prevail in a revolution. Democratic populists assumed that the people would vote for justice if they achieved genuinely equal political power. In fact, the working people of Europe supported slaughtering other working people on the battlefields of World War I and then splintered into left and right.
I fear we risk romanticizing the people of the world in the early 2000s. If they all saw themselves as global citizens and wielded equal power in global forums, that does not mean that they would unite. In Canada, for example, climate change may mean an improved standard of living as the extent of arable land expands and oil and gas reserves become even more valuable. If Canadians (who are already quite cosmopolitan) become more active and influential at the global level, that’s not necessarily good news for Bangladeshis.
All of which is to say that fighting injustice is the important part. Being a global citizen is only desirable to the extent that it promotes justice.
