Some thoughts on Global Citizenship

1. Introduction

Due to the New Age (as many also refer to), which is highly stigmatized by the later technological developments that, on the other hand, influence, affect and determine the progress and functioning of the communication processes around the world and most notoriously the structure of media industries, new clusters of identities have been forming and interesting processes of expansion have been happening all around the world. As the world turns global, many talk, the, of the so labelled world, global or even cosmopolitan new phenomena, one which has been the centre of much discussion and debate - the notion of global/cosmopolitan citizenship. 

In the next paragraphs, then, I will focus on the points, which I consider to be the key icons that must be underlined and highlighted in order to fully understand the contours of Global Citizenry.

2. What is Citizenship?

In the past few decades, the world has witnessed a major and fundamental trend within the western nation states towards the formation of new claims for rights, inclusion, belonging and recognition. Causes and struggles like the Zapatistas’ and the Chechen’s have already reached and, sometimes, even dominated public debates all over the world.

All of these rights, causes and struggles many say are believed to consolidate and materialize what the ideal of citizenship is about. As Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner argue:

“… from ancient Greek and Roman peasants and plebeians to Italian artisans and French workers, articulating rights as claims to recognition has always invoked the ideal of citizenship”.

                                              (Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner, 2002: 1)

Today, the concept of citizenship has been the focus of much concern and debate. Many authors broach and discuss the new environments, conditions and contours under which the citizenship sphere has to cope, adapt and live without weaken and, eventually, loosing its ideal propositions and purposes.

As an attempt to define citizenship, Saskia Sassen simply described it as “the legal relationship between the individual and the polity” (Sassen, 2002: 278).

Due to the new economic, social and cultural changes, the ways and means by which citizenship rights, claims and obligations are claimed have definitively changed. The late technological developments in media industries have transformed and, indeed, reinvented what many refer as being a crucial body in a truly democratic society – The Public Sphere –, where the practice of citizenry itself takes place. The original public sphere owned by the people is now re-located and re-used by the media realm.

As a result of a serious of developments, changes and trends, then, new conceptions of citizenship that challenges its modern variant, have been forming and consolidating. The most recent and fundamental trend has been the consolidation of the notion of Cosmopolitan Citizenship.

By modern citizenship is meant the whole of rights and obligations within the nation state which are allocated to individuals under the authority of the nation state itself. Such realm of modern citizenship rights that exist within the nation-state typically include three dimensions, contents: civil citizenship, political citizenship and social citizenship.

The civil dimension of citizenship is “… composed of the rights necessary for individual freedom – liberty of the person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, the right to own property, and to conclude valid contracts” (T.H. Marshall, 1950).

By political citizenship is meant “… the right to participate in an exercise of political power, as a member of a body invested with political authority or as an elector of such a body” (T.H. Marshall, 1950).

Finally, social citizenship comprises “the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share in the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in society” (T.H. Marshall, 1950).

Besides these three basic dimensions of the modern citizenship concept, some authors talk about a fourth dimension of citizenship – Cultural Citizenship. In Isin and Wood’s words, “cultural citizenship is not only about rights to produce and consume symbolic goods and services but also an intervention in this identity work”.  

Apart from civil, political, social and cultural citizenship, there has been, presently, much discussion about whether we are entering a new Era, a new Age for citizenship. Many say that, currently, we are witnessing the formation of some sort of post-national citizenship awareness, where the role of the nation state is no longer the central one. Due to today’s shrinking of spaces and opening of nation’s frontiers, many argue that current citizenship goes beyond nation itself. In other words, it crosses boundaries and reaches sites never reached before. They say, then, we are entering an inevitable formation of they call a cosmopolitan or world citizenship.

3. The emergence of a Cosmopolitan/Global Citizenship idea

Many writers that the idea of a global or a world citizenship is, basically, then, a mere result of the late developments of the present globalised world.

Contrary to what many some say that citizenship properly so-called exists only within bounded political communities – nations states, others argue we are certainly heading towards (if not already living in) a gradual formation and consolidation of a new variant of citizenship, which is characterised by new contours. Isin and Wood argue that:

“The new transnational political spaces are not as ‘contained’ by modern nation-states as grantors of rights and imposers of obligations. Rather, new rights and obligations are emerging across borders. The rise of multinational corporations that produce commodities across boundaries, the flow of capital and labour across nations, the rise of organizations that operate beyond the reach of the state, new international regimes of governance, and the global flow of ideas, images and symbols are examples of rising political spaces that pressure the boundaries of the state and its institutions… There is a degree of cultural interpenetration, hybridity and fluidity across different localities around the globe”. (E. Isin and P. Wood, 2002: 91)

The notion of a cosmopolitan citizenship can first be traced back in Ancient Greece in the fourth century BC. Diogenes, a cynic philosopher, use to call himself at the time a “citizen of the world”.

More recently, and most particularly since the second world war, global social movements have resurrected the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship with the objective of defending and promoting a stronger sense of collective and individual responsibility for the world as a whole, as well as supporting the development of effective global institutions for tackling global poverty and inequality, environmental degradation and the violation of human rights.

The main purpose of a cosmopolitan citizenship idea is to strive to revive the ancient Stoic ideal that individuals should have the perfect notion of belonging to two communities or “spheres”: their particular cities/states and humanity.

In Andrew Linklater’s perception, “cosmopolitan citizenship is regarded as key theme in the continuing search for universal rights and obligations which bind all peoples together in a just world order” (Linklater, 2002: 317).  

Others, like Kant, regard cosmopolitan citizenship, I would say, in a more limited way. He argues that “the impossibility of autarchy and the undesirability of world government is the reason for promoting cosmopolitan citizenship”. In his conception, the main role of cosmopolitan/world citizenship “is to ensure that the sense of moral community is not confined to co-nationals but embraces the species as whole. The all idea is conceptualised “to preserve a sense of universal morality in a world of separate, sovereign states which are strongly inclined to put their individual interests ahead of the welfare of humanity” (Linklater, 2002: 321).  

The concept has been used by many as an attempt to instigate more powerful responsibilities in individuals for other societies and for the planet. The so-spoken idea of global environmental citizenship has been, through out the years, a great example of that.

In Arendt’s words, the concept “has been a central theme in efforts to strengthen and disseminate a belief in personal responsibility” for what de calls “the aspects of public life that fall within our reach” (Arendt, 1973: 66).

Other authors, like Zolo, have an interesting and quite distinctive own view of what the all idea of cosmopolitan citizenship is about. Zolo argues that, “in various parts of the Third World, references to humanitarian intervention conjure up images of the reinstatement of Western imperialism, and cosmopolitan citizenship is likely to be regarded as a possible vehicle for the promotion of Western interests” (Zolo, 1997: xiv). In the author’s perception, just as various forms of ethical universalism have been criticised because they reflect particular cultural references so are appeals to cosmopolitan citizenship bound to raise the suspicion that Western cultural preferences or prejudices will be imposed on others.

From all the inherent different accounts and points of views that the discussion around cosmopolitan/world/global citizenship rises, I, definitely, include myself among those who endorse the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship. In other words, like many others, I strongly think that the idea of cosmopolitan/world citizenship should be employed to defend the Stoic conception of belonging to a bounded political community and a wider moral community which includes all humankind. The idea should also be used in instigating “practical efforts to create stronger transnational moral solidarities and global political institutions authorised to protect human interests” (Linklater, 2002: 323).

The discussion about global citizenship often is around two dimensions or conceptions. The first one, stresses the need for compassion for non-nationals, personal responsibility for the environment and action to create more cosmopolitan forms of political community. The second conception discusses the development of a system of universal human rights, in other words, it believes that the “human race can gradually be brought closer to a constitution establishing world citizenship through the evolution of cosmopolitan law which enshrines such rights” (Kant quoted in Booth/Williams, 1996: 91).

Basically, then, what the second approach to global citizenship claims is that individuals are members of international society and subjects of international law in their own right. In this field, crucial progresses and achievements have been attained in the realm of cosmopolitan/global rights. Such developments include the Nuremberg Conventions, which give military personnel the right as well as the duty to disobey superior orders to commit crimes against humanity, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the 1984 Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Social and Political Rights.

In Kant’s perception, the emergence and growth of world or cosmopolitan citizenship has been so consistent and persistent along the years that “a violation of human rights in any one part of the world will be felt everywhere in an enlightened age” (Kant, 1970: 216).

A third approach to cosmopolitan citizenship has also often been used along Time. Many defenders of cosmopolitan citizenship have been participating in and supporting international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace with the objective to promote and establish respect for cosmopolitan principles in a world of states. Also, there has been an increasingly prominent trend towards many actively being involved or supportive of efforts to democratise global politics. Events like the participation of INGOs in United Nations conferences, and the parallel conferences on the environment and on women, which took place at Rio de Janeiro and Beijing, are the main indicators of this general latter trend.

In Habermas conception, due to today’s main global tendencies, the emergency of what he calls cosmopolitan democracy seems to be absolutely crucial. In his words, “… the idea of popular sovereignty is doomed to decay into a mere chimera if it remains locked in the historical form of the self-asserting sovereign nation-state” (Habermas, 1994: 165). In other words, in the author’s view, the importance and relevance of national democracy has been affected and progressively diminished by the process of economic globalisation which, on the other hand, has been placing national societies at the mercy of external social and economic forces which citizens seem to be incapable and powerless to control.

Still in the field of the notion of cosmopolitan democracy, Linklater stresses, and I definitively agree with him, the importance of another slope of the all idea of cosmopolitan citizenship. In his words then, “individuals have a moral right to be consulted about any decisions which may affect or harm them wherever these decisions may be made. The argument is that all human beings should have this right irrespective of their citizenship or nationality which, for the purposes of this argument, have no more importance than their age, class, gender, religion or sexuality” (Linklater, 2002: 327).

The notion of cosmopolitan/global citizenship has been the centre of much discussion, provoking uncertainties along the years either to its supporters, either to its most hash critics. Like debates around other concepts, the tensions generated by the confrontation of such different arguments and accounts indicates that cosmopolitan/global is, in reality, a highly contested concept.

On one hand, its supporters stress that its main role is to persuade national citizens that they have fundamental moral responsibilities to outsiders which must not be sacrificed for the sake of national interests. They indicate two main facts which they argue proves the emergency, expansion and growth of cosmopolitan/global citizenship: firstly, the universal human rights culture is deemed to be evidence of the emerging law of world citizens; secondly, the increasingly global role of INGOs and the efforts to promote the democratisation of the world politics have stimulated the consolidation of the importance of cosmopolitan/global citizenship.

On the other hand, its critics insist in stressing that cosmopolitan/global citizenship is impossible in the absence of a world state which grants citizens rights of representation and participation in politics.

4. The mutation of citizenship

• What role do Media Industries extol?

Despite all different points of view about the role of citizenship in these new contours of the world we all live in, it is clearly becoming evident that, today, far from being unitary, the institution of citizenship is far more complex and has multiple dimensions, only some of which might be inextricably linked to the national state.

Another author, Sassen, suggests that there might be two major factors, partly interconnected, that are the basis, the reason for such transformations. To quote his words:

“One is the change in the position and institutional features of national states since the 1980s due to several forms and processes of globalisation. These range from economic privatisation and deregulation to the increased prominence of the international human rights regime. The second is the emergence of multiple actors, agents, groups and communities partly strengthened by these transformations in the state and increasingly unwilling to automatically identify with a nation as represented by the state” (Sassen, 2002: 277)

Other writers (and I include myself among those) point out what they consider to be another extremely important factor which is the basis and the central cause for the emergency, spreading and expansion of cosmopolitan/global citizenship and cosmopolitan/global identities, that is the technological progress and development of Media Industries.

Today, with the development of new technologies, media industries have dramatically changed. Such technological changes in the media industry have definitely   helped to transmit, divulge and spread new realities, concepts and ideas. One event occurring in one side of the world may immediately be acknowledged, seen and even witnessed on the other side of the world, thanks to the crucial role of the Radio, Television, Satellites, Newspapers and more recently Internet.

Thus, media industries have a fundamental, crucial and unique role in divulging and promoting cosmopolitan/global identities and cosmopolitan awareness. The defence and promotion of the so-called global interests such as a stronger sense of collective and individual responsibility for the world as a whole, as well as supporting the development of effective global institutions for tackling global poverty and inequality, environmental degradation and the violation of human rights are highly dependent on the role of a crucial body – Media Industries.

As Sassen refers, “the growth of the Internet and linked technologies has facilitated and often enabled the formation of cross-border networks among individuals and groups with shared interests that maybe highly specialised, as in professional networks, or involved particularised political projects, as in human rights and environmental struggles” (Sassen, 2002: 277). These changes, in Sassen’s perception, have instigated, engendered and strengthened alternative notions and concepts of community of membership – notions of what he calls global/cosmopolitan identities.

Sassen also argues that these new tendencies, orientations, experiences and formations of citizenship may not be new. Rather, in some cases, such tendencies may well be the mere result of long gestations or features that were there since the beginning of the formation of citizenship as a national institution, but are only now evident due to current global changes and developments.

• Towards a Post-National?

Some writers extol important contributions and accounts for the discussion of new orientations of citizenship. Soysal, Jacobson, Isin and Feldblum, for example, talk about what they call post-national forms of citizenship, that is the emergence of locations and sites for citizenship outside the confines of the national state.

Notions such as reinvigorated cosmopolitanism (Turner, 2000; Nussbaum, 1994), proliferation of transnationalisms (Basch et al., 1994; M. Smith and Guarnizo, 1998; R. Smith, 1997) have also represented crucial sources and contributions for notions of post-national citizenship.

Bosniak, on the other hand, suggests that the experiences and practices associated with citizenship do, in variable degrees, have locations that exceed the boundaries of the territorial nation-state.

All the authors that talk about a post-national citizenship mainly stress and emphasise the following idea: whether it is the organization of formal practices, or the experience of collective identities and solidarities, the nation-state is not the exclusive location, site for their enactment. Although the nation-state represents the most important location, the transformations in its exclusivity suggest that a new important dynamic is possibly currently happening.

5. Conclusion

Some writers are sceptial about the prospects for the global citizenship based on nothing stronger than personal altruism. Some point to the political instability which globalization has wrought, while others draw attention to the growth of the new international class of highly-skilled professionals who may live and work where they like and who need concern themselves with their fellow human beings no more than they choose.

In my view, then, generally speaking, the global-citizenship idea has much to say about human rights but little to say about how these rights are to be supported and enforced.

Apart from major weaknesses and omissions, it's indisputable that the construction of a consistent and strong rooted global cosmopolitan citizenship idea is, today, highly dependent on the performance of a crucial body - media industries -, which play (or, at least, is expected to play) the role of divulging, promoting and disseminating the development of cosmopolitan identities.

In a world where the Information and Communication Technologies' Revolution is affecting the industry of the media, the spreading of global events worldwide has become more intense and constant than ever before. Te acknowledgement of global events by virtually every people means that a strong sense of belonging to a wider community, which is contoured by its own duties, rights and laws, is progressively being settled into people's minds.

Thus, all around the world, individuals are fast noticing that, in reality, they are members of an international society, a vaster global society and subjects of international law in their own right, rather than just limiting and restricting their sense of community and actions to their local/regional boundaries.