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rfmcdonaldMichael Byers' article "Are You a 'Global Citizen'?", a transcript of a lecture that he had delivered earlier this month now available at TheTyee.ca, considers the question of citizenship and the relevance of citizenship to a globalized and globalizing world.
Byers argues that people who care about the idea of a global citizenship, those who don't want the concept to be reduced to its lowest common denominator or denied altogether, should intervene to establish a global citizenship with actual content.
The problem with Byers' stirring call is that, so expressed, the concept of "citizenship" is meaningless. The idea of the "citizen" only developed in the North Atlantic world at the end of the 18th century with the American and French revolutions, totalitarian phenomena which, after securing control of given territories, demanded that the individuals living on the territories think of themselves as autonomous political actors in a public sphere. Participation, for the individual fully socialized and politicized, wasn't optional. Americans and French had to participate in the post-revolutionary regimes, if only through their quiet acquiescence to the new revolutionary orders.
I've nothing against the idea of creating global citizenship per se. First, though, we have to create a global state that's capable of coercing everyone into becoming a citizen. I worry about just how much damage this process of state-creation will inflict on the world's societies, and, of course, on the world's individuals. The American and French revolutions inaugurated the modern republican citizen, true. They were also highly contested, and in the short term arguably hurt far more people than they helped. One must be careful when one talks of revolution, unless you're willing to have other people be hurt.
UPDATE (8:27 PM) : Certain lapses have been corrected, or filled.
My Canadian citizenship gives me the right to reside, vote, express my opinion, associate with others, travel freely within and leave and enter this country. It does not give me the right to reside, vote, express my opinion or associate with others outside this country; indeed, it does not give me the right to enter any other country. If such a thing as global citizenship exists, it clearly doesn't amount to the rights of national citizenship, transposed to the planetary level. There is no world government, since the UN is little more than a collection of member-states, many of them non-democratic. And there are many parts of this world where the local inhabitants have no right to reside, vote, express opinions, associate or travel, not even as part of a national citizenship.
Byers argues that people who care about the idea of a global citizenship, those who don't want the concept to be reduced to its lowest common denominator or denied altogether, should intervene to establish a global citizenship with actual content.
It is in this context-of a potentially broad and active conception of global citizenship-that I wish to speak now to the many young and hopefully still idealistic people in this room. The term global citizenship is not only complex and contingent; it's also relatively new and therefore still open to appropriation. So here's what I think you should do. Just as women have decided to "take back the night", you should decide to "take back global citizenship", to make it what you want it to be, rather than what Martha Piper, George W. Bush, or some corporate advertising guru might wish to make it. Now, I can't presume to speak for you, but here's one possible definition that might possibly appeal:
Global citizenship empowers individual human beings to participate in decisions concerning their lives, including the political, economic, social, cultural and environmental conditions in which they live. It includes the right to vote, to express opinions and associate with others, and to enjoy a decent and dignified quality of life. It is expressed through engagement in the various communities of which the individual is a part, at the local, national and global level. And it includes the right to challenge authority and existing power structures-to think, argue and act-with the intent of changing the world.
The problem with Byers' stirring call is that, so expressed, the concept of "citizenship" is meaningless. The idea of the "citizen" only developed in the North Atlantic world at the end of the 18th century with the American and French revolutions, totalitarian phenomena which, after securing control of given territories, demanded that the individuals living on the territories think of themselves as autonomous political actors in a public sphere. Participation, for the individual fully socialized and politicized, wasn't optional. Americans and French had to participate in the post-revolutionary regimes, if only through their quiet acquiescence to the new revolutionary orders.
I've nothing against the idea of creating global citizenship per se. First, though, we have to create a global state that's capable of coercing everyone into becoming a citizen. I worry about just how much damage this process of state-creation will inflict on the world's societies, and, of course, on the world's individuals. The American and French revolutions inaugurated the modern republican citizen, true. They were also highly contested, and in the short term arguably hurt far more people than they helped. One must be careful when one talks of revolution, unless you're willing to have other people be hurt.
UPDATE (8:27 PM) : Certain lapses have been corrected, or filled.
