Global Citizenship †Towards a Definition

globose Citizenship Towards a Definition Taso G. Lagos Copyright protected chthonic Taso G. Lagos. Permission to cite should be directed to the author. Abstract world(a) jib activity is on the devise. Demonstrations in Seattle in 1999, Genoa in 2001 and in piles of different sites brought activists together from around the field and localized military manwide issues in unprecedented ways. These and other activities suggest the possibility of an emerging globular citizenry. Individuals from a wide variety of demesnes, dickens in the North and South, move crossways boundaries for different activities and reasons.This trans guinea pig activity is facilitated by the development ease of get off and by communication fostered by the Internet and telephony. period it is toughened to determine these numbers, or to give universe of discourse(prenominal) citizens a leg onlyy defined policy-making precondition, these qualifications do non obviate the existence and influen ce of trans subject activists seek new institutional forms in an interdependent piece. We examine realism(prenominal) citizens as active governmental, social, environmental or economic agents in an interdependent foundation in which new institutional forms beyond nations atomic number 18 beginning to e link up.Introduction By itself, citizenship has certain legal and democratic overt onenesss. C erstptually, it is wrapped up in rights and obligations, and in owing dedication to a sovereign state whose berth is kept up(p) by the citizenry but with rights that be sh bed by all members of that state. We distinguish citizen from issue or subject, the latter two implying protection of a state. Citizenship, as it has come d give to us via the ancient Greeks and Romans, via the Enlightenment, and the Ameri gutter and cut Revolutions, is buttoned into the emergence of members of a polity with specified privileges and duties.To speak of a citizen is thus to speak of man-to-m ans with distinct relationships to the state, along with the social status and author these relationships imply. The lift the citizen idea into the globose sphere presents difficulties, not least of which is that spherical citizens argon not legal members in good standing with a sovereign state. More importantly, in that location atomic number 18 no re sprocket wheelnizable privileges and duties associated with the concept that would envelop globular citizenship with the status and power (in an ideal world) currently associated with field citizenship.Since modern nation-states are the repositories and main mien of citizenship, discussion of spheric citizenship needfully dictates an existence outside the personate politic as we know it. If we wed Prestons (1997) poseur of citizenship (who belongs to the polity, how the members of the polity in general are opineed and how they course session power), then global citizenship back toothnot be expressed in any(prenominal )(prenominal) legal sense. It is, how always so, expressed in other ways that whitethorn study a significant and profound impact on the development of polite engagement and citizen-state relations.Three employments are worth mentioning. Since January 1, 2000, negotiations amongst WTO member states regarding the movement of professionals to and from member countries has taken place, under the General Agreement on Trade in Services, bind XIX. While this does not signal de facto recognition of trans- interior(a) citizens, it may indicate gimpy steps toward it. This is all the more(prenominal) significant given that around the cosmos there is greater and easier movement of goods than human worlds.The europiuman Community has taken halting steps to tran enjoyment this it takes the free movement of its nations to live, work, pay taxes and, significantly, to voter turnout in other member states. Habermas (1994) notes this as a utilitarian model that may collapse greater implications than merely for Europeans it is possible the model may be expanded in other regions of the world, or to the entire world itself. The ability of a Spaniard to pick up and move to Germany and be a citizen there indicates that notions of ties a country of origin may weaken.The Spaniard may be quite happy livelihood in Germany and not wish to go back to Spain. Is she still a Spaniard, a German, or now a global citizen? Finally, there is the move tide of individuals with more than one passport. Where once the U. S. State Department frowned on its citizens carrying more than one passport, the reality is that straight off that it is turning a blind eye. (In war, this may change). Many immigrants to the U. S. in the 1990s, a decade that saw the largest influx of newcomers to the state, came to work but still bear their old passports.While many immigrants permanently stay in the U. S. , many others each go back to the old country, or drop dead back and forth. If not global citizens, what label do we give them? T. H. Marshall (1949), in his immaculate study on citizenship, noted that citizenship as it arose in Western giving democracies has both positive and negative connotations. In the positive sense, citizenship is an expression of activism on the part of citizens in its negative quality, it is the freedom from bureaucratic control and intervention.If his hypothesis is true, where does global citizenship get into it? Very nicely it would seem. A visible expression of global citizenship is the many global activists who debuted spectacularly at the meshing in Seattle. These protestors continue to carry on in other venues, much(prenominal) as at meetings for the macrocosm Bank and the IMF, and most recently at the bakshis of the Americas in Quebec City. Other activists fight for environmental protection, human rights to the impoverished and the unrepresented, and for restrictions on the routine of nuclear power and nuclear weapons.Freedom fro m bureaucratic intervention seems to be a hallmark of global citizenship the lose of a world body to sanction and protect these citizens also means to a certain tier freedom from bureaucratic control. To parry to our Spaniard, how much control does Spain exercise over her when she lives in Germany? Towards a Definition Since global citizens are not recognised legally, their existence may be best represented as associatively. 1. globular citizenship is less defined by legal sanction than by associational status that is different from national citizenship.Since there is no global bureaucracy to give sanction and protect global citizens, and despite intriguing models suggested by the EU, global citizenship remains the purview of individuals to live, work and play deep down trans-national norms and status that defy national boundaries and sovereignty. Assocational status in this realm does double duty. It dish ups to let off a unique characteristic of global citizenship while i t also expresses that crabby lighthouse of invest-modernity known as lifestyle politics. (Giddens, 1991, Bennett, 2000, et al) Steenbergen (1994) so far comes nearest to explaining this relationship mingled with global citizenry and lifestyle politics as more sociological in composition. Rather than a technical description of a citizen on his or her relationship to the state (p. 2), Steenbergen suggests that the global citizen represents a more wholistic version you choose where you work, live or play, and therefore are not tied down to your land of birth. The greater number of choices offered by modern life (from consumer roducts to politics) lies at the root of lifestyle politics. (Franck, 1999) As Falk (1994) launch it, in global citizenship there is the rudimentary institutional construction of arenas and allegiance what many persons are really identifying with as no longer spring by or centred upon the formal relationship that an individual has to his or her own territor ial society as embodied in the form of a state. traditional citizenship is being challenged and remoulded by the important activism associated with this trans-national political and social evolution. 1994 138) Traditional ties between citizen and the state are withering, and are replaced by more garbled loyalties that explain lifestyle politics. Notions of ties between citizen and state that arose in the aftermath of the American and French Revolution, and the creation of the modern state after the 18th century no longer hold sway. It is not by coincidence, for example, that the first to gather in the enfranchisement were adult males who also happened to serve in American and French armies. (Kaspersen, 1998) The citizen army today is replaced by the professional army, and a fundamental cog in the bonds between state and citizen removed. right to vote turnout decreases, and the public has low regard for politicians. With such(prenominal) loose ties between citizen and state, doe s the emergence of global citizenship seem implausible? Many of newly emerging global citizens are actively set-aside(p) in global efforts whether in line ventures, environmentalism, concern for nuclear weapons, health or immigration problems. Rather than citizenship, being the pass on of rights and obligations scarpering(p) by a rudimentary authority, the lack of such authority gives primacy to the global citizens themselves not a top-down but a down-up scenario. . While mixed types of global citizens exist, a common thread to their emergence is their base in grassroots activism. We may identify different types of global citizens, yet many of these categories are best summarized by their emergence despite a lack of any global governing body. It is as if they have spontaneously erupted of their own volition. Falk (1994) determine five categories of global citizens which he named as, global reformers elite global business people global environmental managers politicall y conscious regionalists trans-national activistsWith the exception of global business people, the other categories have grassroots activism at their core. i If the battle in Seattle is an applicable demonstration, these activists are responsible for their own activism rather than granted by an institution. This earmarks global citizenship as qualitatively different from the national variety, where rights and obligations came (even when fought and protested for) at the behest and generosity of the state. With global citizenship, individuals exercise communicational and organizational tools such as the Internet to make themselves global citizens.No government sanctioned this development. None, it seems, could. Jacobson (1996) noted this unwrap of the state as dispenser of citizen rights and obligations, although he sees the decline of overall citizenship as a result. Keck and Sikkink (1998) on the other hand, regard such global activism as a possible new engine of civil engagement . These global activists, or world-wide society of individuals (p. 213) as they call them, transcend national borders and skillfully use pressure tactics against both government and private corporations that make them practicable actors on the merging global public sphere. A striking example of this pressure is the nearly-publicized anti-sweatshop campaign against Nike. Literally dozens of websites are devoted to exposing Nikes labor practices in manufacturing shoes in overseas factories. In 1996, with the embolden of Global Exchange, a humanitarian organization that later helped to organize the Battle in Seattle, Nikes labor practices became the subject of increasing mainstream media attention. In the process, Nike was joined to sweatshop labor, a label it has tried to shed ever since.Is the Internet central in the development of these emerging global activists? The Internet and other technologies such as the cell phone play an instrumental role in the development of global a ctivists, as do easy and cheap direct travel and the wide use and acceptance of credit cards. But there are other forces at work decline in civil engagement, rise of lifestyle politics, homogenization of products, conglomeration in media systems and communicational tools that let us know more about each other than ever before.Add to the mix the rising concern for universal human rights and for trans-global problems such as environmental degradation and global warming, the result is a embellish that tends to be more global than national. This is not the first time in the register of our civilization that society has been internationalized, but never has it been easier for average citizen to express herself in this globalized fashion by the clothes she wears, soda she drinks, practice of medicine she listens to (e. g. world music) and vacation land she visits.It is progressively obvious that our identities, as Lie and Servaes (2000) and Scammell (2001) suggest, are tied to our r oles as citizens. Scammells citizen-consumers vote with their purchases and are engaged in their communities to the extent they have the freedom to shop. Engagement, in this modern sense, is as reference members at a play clapping at the high points of drama. earth-closet we say this is true of global citizenship? The evidence is scanty to make such judgment if global activists are replaced by global citizens-consumers the sea change will be complete. 3. Global citizens may redefine ties between civic engagement and geographics.The town hall meetings of invigorated England and other regions of the U. S. seem increasingly supplanted by electronic spheres not contain by space and time. This heralds a potentially startling new mechanism in participatory democracy. If we return to the Spaniard animation in Germany, what can we say about the geography of community? An output of modernity is greater and greater choice placed upon the individual the social networks and systems that su ited hundreds if not thousands of generations are breaking down in favor of personal choice and individual responsibility.No longer do we all rely on the social bulwarks of the past the family, the community, the nation. Life is continually being personalized. Can the Spaniard still be called one while living in Germany? Absentee ballots opened up the way for expatriates to vote while living in other(prenominal) country. The Internet may carry this several(prenominal) steps further. Voting is not limited by time or space you can be anywhere in the world and still make pick out decisions back home. Most of our nations history has been bound up in equating geography with sovereignty. It did matter where you lived, worked, compete.Since travel was expensive and cumber many, our lives were tied to geography. No longer can we all in all make this claim. Thompson (1996), writing in the Stanford Law Review, suggests that we can do away with residency and voting in local elections. Fru g (1996) even suggests that alienation in the way we regard our geography already creates a disconnect between it and sovereignty. If we are not entirely home at home, do boundaries make any difference anymore? This is not on the dot an academic question, but one rife with overflowing and disheartening social and political possibilities. Global citizens float within, outside and done these boundaries.The implications seem significant. Many elements seem to spawn global citizenship, but one is noteworthy in this discussion the continuous tension that globalization has unleashed between various forces local, national and global. An interesting paradox of globalization is while the world is being internationalized at the same time its also being localized. The world shrinks as the local community (village, town, city) takes on greater and greater importance. Mosco (1999) noted this feature and saw the growing importance of technopoles, or high-technologized city-states that heed b ack to classical Greece.If this trend is true, and I believe it is, then it seems global citizens are the glue that may hold these separate entities together. Put another way, global citizens are people that can travel within these various layers or boundaries and somehow still make sense of the world. 4. Any rights and obligations accorded to the global citizen come from the citizens themselves, growing public favor for universal rights, the rise of people migrating around the world, and an increasing tendency to standardize citizenship.Difference may exist on the cultural level, but in bureaucracies, increasing favor is placed on uniformity. Efficiency and utilitarianism lie at the core of capitalism naturally a world that lives under its aegis replicates these tendencies. Postal agreements, civil air travel and other inter-governmental agreements are but one small example of normalization that is increasingly moving into the arena of citizenship. The concern is raised that global citizenship may be closer to a consumer model than a legal one. The lack of a world body puts the initiative upon global citizens themselves to create rights nd obligations. Rights and obligations as they arose at the formation of nation-states (e. g. the right to vote and obligation to serve in time of war) are at the verge of being expanded. So new concepts that accord certain human rights which arose in the 20th century are increasingly being universalized across nations and governments. This is the result of many factors, including the normal Declaration of Human Rights by the joined Nations in 1948, the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust and growing sentiments towards legitimizing marginalized peoples (e. . pre-industrialized peoples found in the jungles of brazil nut and Borneo). Couple this with growing awareness of our species impact on the environment, and there is the rising feeling that citizen rights may extend to include the right to dignity and self-determin ation. If national citizenship does not foster these new rights, then global citizenship seems more complaisant to them. One cannot overestimate the importance of the rise of human rights discourse within the radar of public opinion. What are the rights and obligations of human beings trapped in conflicts?Or, incarcerated as part of ethnic cleansing? Equally striking, are the pre-industrialized tribes newly observed by scientists living in the depths of dense jungle? Leary (1999), Heater (1999) and Babcock (1994) tend to equate these rights with the rise of global citizenship as normative associations, indicating a national citizenship model that is more closed and a global citizenship one that is more flexible and inclusive. If true, this places a strain in the relationship between national and global citizenship.Boli (1998) tends to see this strain as mutually beneficial, whereas Leary (1999) and McNeely (1998) regard the good luck between the two systems as merely evolutionar y rather than combative. manage much of social change, changing scopes of modern citizenship tend to be played out in both large and minute spheres. Habermas (1994) tends to place global citizenship in a larger, social context, arguing that nation-states can be central engines of citizenship but culture can also be a virile spurt.He regards the formation of the European citizen as a kind of natural epiphany of governmental conglomeration within the forces of globalization, only remotely alluding to the corporate conglomeration that has been both the recipient and cause of worldwide economic expansion. Others, including Iyer (2000) see globalization and global citizens as direct descendents of global standardization, which he notes, for instance, in the growing homogeneity of airports. Standardization and modernity have worked together for the past few centuries.Ellul (1964), Mumford (1963) and other scholars attack this as a form of oppression, in the same vena that Barber (1996) saw the proliferation of carbon-copy fast-food chains around the globe. Why not a set of basic citizen rights followed the world over? 5. Global citizenship may be the indirect result of Pax Americana. The 20th century, as well as the 21st, may be a time dominated by the United States. Americas domination of the WTO, IMF, World Bank and other global institutions creates feelings of imperialism among lesser nations.Cross national cooperation to counter American dominance may result in more global citizens. If economic, environmental, political and social factors push towards more global citizenry, we must also within this camp consider the ramifications of the post cold war world, or realpolitik. Modifying Marshalls metaphor, we may posit if global citizenship is not a response to the changing factors and response against American domination? In the corporate world, conglomeration leads to larger and larger companies who merge to effectively work against other mega corporations. The evolution of the UnitedStates of Europe (in theory if not in practice) is in a similar vein a chemical reaction to the dominating power of the U. S. Other regional alliances may yet emerge. in spite of appearance such trans-national ties may emerge greater acceptance of one anothers citizens, emulating the European model which Habermas, Bellamy (2000), and others so favor. These alliances may provide the bureaucratic backbone to make global citizenry about more than just lifestyles or personal politics. This development would also change the definition of national citizenry global citizens may come to favor their status over those who have no such designation.Worse, there may emerge two tracks of citizenship national and global, with the latter being more prestigious. Along with greater insularism between rich and poor, educated and not, there would also be those relegated to living out their entire lives in one land, compared to those who freely travel to many. The darker aspec ts of this are not hard to miss. Clarkes (1996) contention that citizenship tends to be more pocket than inclusive would be borne out. Rather than McNeelys (1998) flexible citizenship, or Prestons (1997) multiple loyalty model, we get two separate tracks of citizenship that respond to prestige, wealth and power.Global citizens may be so favored that nations fight to attract them to their land, similar to todays fight for corporate sites. Conclusion To concretize what appears an unformed concept global citizenship presents dangers, not least of which is the tendency towards speculation. Spending some time at an airport, especially one of the many airline commonplace flyer lounges, reveals that global citizens exist and are a growing number. inside my own Greek immigrant community in Seattle, for example, there are several Greeks who split the year living between Greece and the U.S. I am hard pressed to call them either Greeks or Americans, since they do not fit neatly into eithe r category (not that most ever do). Higher living standards than ever before in civilizations history allow these dualities to exist. Increasingly, we put them into the camp of global citizenship. Capitalism, and the consumeristic child it has spawned, is particularly good at offering choices, and global citizenship may simply be another vista of this tendency, or what Bennett (unpublished, 2001) and other allude to as lifestyle politics.Any discussion on global citizenship thus must take into account the changing political climate of a globalized world. Scholars have already noted the emerging power struggle between corporations and global activists who increasingly see the nexus of de facto brass taking place more and more within the corporate world (and as mediated by communication technologies like the Internet) and not in the halls of representative government. Hence, the tendency on the part of activists to promote rallies and events like the protests at WTO, as more effectiv e means of citizen participation and democratic accountability.The rise of security concerns as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11 have curiously both grown the importance of national states as well fostered more internationalism. U. S. President George W. Bush who during his election had difficulty remembering the name calling of heads of states has suddenly transformed into an internationalist with deep concerns for the affairs of other states. While this may be a temporary event with political overtones, the events of 9/11 suggest that the world has become more international than ever before.Whether global citizenship will follow in its wake is problematical. It is simply too early to tell. The role that global citizenship plays in this changing political landscape is a murky one. Yet the fact that there is a growing body of global citizens and their influence is increasingly felt on the worlds political stage indicates the need to observe and study these individua ls in earnest. The attempt to begin developing a definition of global citizenship is a small step towards understanding their presence and influence better. iA case can be made to add academics, sports and artists in categories, but I diffident away from this since their overall numbers tend to be small, if not limited. The world it seems can only support so many traveling artists and sport stars, and so a ceiling may be placed on their populations. Also, some concern is raised here regarding other globalists, such as those working for the UN, for example, but again, I tend to shy away from their categorisation since their numbers can never expand beyond a limited population (given the resources of the organization, etc. . But with Falks categories, in theory, their numbers are limitless and therefore more tenable to categorize. Bibliography Babcock, Rainer, Transnational Citizenship (1994 Edward Elgar, Aldershot, England) Bauman, Zygmunt, Intimations of Postmodernity (1992 Routled ge, London) Bellamy, Richard, Citizenship beyond the nation state the case of Europe, from Political Theory in Transition, edited by Noel OSullivan (2000 Routledge, London) Bennett, W.Lance, News the Politics of Illusion (1996 Longman, New York) Bennett, W. Lance, Consumerism and Global Citizenship lifestyle Politics, Permanent Campaigns, and internationalist Regimes of Democratic Accountability. 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