GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION

CONTEXTS OF EDUCATION

Series Editors:

Michael A. Peters
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Scope:

Contexts of Education is a new series of handbooks that embraces both a creative

approach to educational issues focused on context and a new publishing credo.

All educational concepts and issues have a home and belong to a context. This is
the starting premise for this new series. One of the big intellectual breakthroughs
of post-war science and philosophy was to emphasise the theory-ladenness of
observations and facts − facts and observations cannot be established independent
of a theoretical context. In other words, facts and observations are radically
context-dependent. We cannot just see what we like or choose to see. In the same
way, scholars argue that concepts and constructs also are relative to a context,
whether this be a theory, schema, framework, perspective or network of beliefs.
Background knowledge always intrudes; it is there, difficult to articulate, tacit and
operates to shape and help form our perceptions. This is the central driving insight
of a generation of thinkers from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper to Thomas
Kuhn and Jürgen Habermas. Increasingly, in social philosophy, hermeneutics, and
literary criticism textualism has given way to contextualism, paving the way for
the introduction of the notions of ‘frameworks’, ‘paradigms’ and ‘networks’ −
concepts that emphasize a new ecology of thought.

This new series is predicated upon this insight and movement. It emphasises the
importance of context in the establishment of educational facts and observations
and the framing of educational hypotheses and theories. It also emphasises the
relation between text and context, the discursive and the institution, the local and
the global. Accordingly, it emphasizes the significance of contexts at all levels of
inquiry: scientific contexts; theoretical contexts; political, social and economic
contexts; local and global contexts; contexts for learning and teaching; and,
cultural and interdisciplinary contexts.

Contexts of Education, as handbooks, are conceived as reference texts that also can
serve as texts.
Global Citizenship Education
Philosophy, Theory and Pedagogy

Edited by

Michael A. Peters
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Alan Britton
University of Glasgow, UK

and

Harry Blee
University of Glasgow, UK

SENSE PUBLISHERS
ROTTERDAM / TAIPEI
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ISBN 978-90-8790-373-2 (paperback)

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword ix

Preface and Acknowledgements xi

Notes on Contributors xiii

Introduction: Many Faces of Global Civil Society: Possible Futures

for Global Citizenship 1
Michael A. Peters, Alan Britton and Harry Blee

PHILOSOPHY

1. Two Meanings of Global Citizenship: Modern and Diverse 15

James Tully

2. The Discourse of Global Citizenship 41

Walter Humes

3. Between Empires: Rethinking Identity and Citizenship in the Context

of Globalisation 53
Michael A. Peters

4. Cosmopolitan Justice: Education and Global Citizenship 71

Penny Enslin and Mary Tjiattas

5. Revisioning Ideas of Citizenry: The Female State and the Construction

of Citizenship 87
Christine Forde

6. Diasporic Philosophy, Homelessness, and Counter-Education in Context:

The Israeli-Palestinian Example 103
Ilan Gur-Ze’ev

7. Conflicting Imaginaries: Global Citizenship Education in Canada as a

Site of Contestation 115
George Richardson

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

8. Cosmopolitanism, the Citizen and Processes of Abjection: The

Double Gestures of Pedagogy 133
Thomas S. Popkewitz

9. The Peculiar Place of Enlightenment Ideals in the Governance Concept

of Citizenship and Democracy 153
Robert Shaw

THEORY

10. Cosmopolitanism: With or Without Patriotism? 169

Marianna Papastephanou

11. Citizenship, Education and the Claims of Religious Literacy 187

James C. Conroy and Robert A. Davis

12. Cosmopolitanism and Citizenship Education 203

Leonard J. Waks

13. Dialogues across the Pond: Freire and Greene on the Citizenship
Challenge in the Republic of Ireland 221
Timothy Murphy

14. A ‘Community of Communities’? Racism, Ethnicity and Education

in Post-Devolution Scotland 231
Bruce Carrington and Ian Menter

15. MacIntyre’s Theory of Virtues: An Ethics-for-Citizenship Education? 245

Klas Roth

16. Globalisation, the Third Way and Education Post 9/11: Building
Democratic Citizenship 261
Mark Olssen

17. Revolutions within: Self-government and Self-esteem 283

Barbara Cruikshank

18. Challenging the Dominant Neo-Liberal Discourse: From Human

Capital Learning to Education for Civic Engagement 299
Emery J. Hyslop-Margison and Alan M. Sears

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PEDAGOGY

19. Citizenship Education and Diversity: Implications for Teacher

Education 317
James A. Banks

20. Immigrants and Religious Conflict: Insider Accounts of Italian,

Lithuanian and Polish Catholics in Scotland 333
Stephen J. McKinney

21. The World Citizen Travels with a Different View 351

Doret de Ruyter and Ben Spiecker

22. Robert Owen and the Development of Good Citizenship in 19th

Century New Lanark: Enlightened Reform or Social Control? 365
Francis J. O’Hagan

23. A Social Justice Approach to Education for Active Citizenship: An

International Perspective 381
Julia Preece

24. Citizenship and Its Discontents: Educating for Political and Economic
Development in Sub-Saharan Africa 395
Ali A. Abdi

25. Democratic Citizenship, Philosophy of Islamic Education and

Madrassah Schooling in South Africa 409
Yusef Waghid

26. The Emergence of the Child-as-Citizen in Canada 421

Yvonne M. Hébert

27. Education Implies Citizenship: Developing a Global Dimension in

Dutch Education 445
Hans Hooghoff

28. Global Citizens, Local Linguists: How Migrant Children Explore

Cultural Identity through Vernacular Texts 459
Evelyn Arizpe and James McGonigal

29. Antiracism Education for Global Citizenship 477

George Dei

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

30. Between Europe and Africa: Against Regionalism in Citizenship

Education 491
Penny Enslin

31. The Decline of Democratic Politics in ‘Knowledge Societies’ and the

Initiatives for Citizenship Education 503
Stavros Moutsios

32. Global Citizenship: From Theory to Practice, Unlocking Hearts and

Minds 519
Muna Golmohamad

viii
 FOREWORD

The University of Glasgow was established in 1451, and is the fourth oldest
University in the UK. It has long been prominent as a crucible of ideas with a
global impact, boasting alumni of such calibre as Adam Smith and Lord Kelvin, six
Nobel Laureates, as well as many prominent UK and Scottish politicians, both
historic and contemporary. The modern University of Glasgow is increasingly
international in both its outlook and its population, and students, staff and alumni
are making increasingly significant and positive contributions to the lives of people
both at home and abroad.
It is in the context of these longstanding traditions of intellectual rigour,
internationalisation, and service to others that I am delighted to commend this
collection of contributions on the subject of Global Citizenship Education. The
book has its origins in large part in the work of the Education for Global
Citizenship Unit (EGCU), located within the Faculty of Education at the University
of Glasgow. Academic staff from the Unit and wider Faculty are responsible for no
less than 10 chapters of this edition. In addition, much of the editing work was
conducted by the Director and Deputy Director of this innovative Unit, alongside a
former Professor of Education in the Faculty. The University’s strong tradition of
international collaboration is also in evidence across the collection given the array
of contributors from beyond the UK.
One of the Unit’s core objectives over recent years, with the support of the UK
Department for International Development (DFID), has been to enhance
development awareness among teachers at all stages of their careers. A key means
to promote this awareness is through research and the dissemination of fresh
thinking relating to global issues and the corresponding role of education. The Unit
has acted as a catalyst in this regard, bringing together a genuinely international
spectrum of views on the interrelationships between globalisation, citizenship,
identity and education. These relationships are often contested and sometimes
controversial, however the University recognises and supports the importance of
such debate and deliberation, and of the need to open and maintain dialogue
between the different perspectives.
This collection makes a valuable and original contribution to this debate by
presenting a set of challenges to policymakers, researchers, curriculum planners
and teachers across the world. The different chapters combine contemporary
critique with a view of the future often imbued with a palpable sense of urgency;
these key global issues require to be addressed in all of our schools and by all
educators (including Universities such as Glasgow). The truly global reach of the
different chapters and contributors lends weight to the breadth of analysis, and
reflects the value of international collaboration around themes such as these.

ix
FOREWORD

On behalf of the University of Glasgow I wish to congratulate the Editors and

all contributors to this collection, and I hope that it achieves the international
impact that it merits.

Sir Muir Russell

Principal and Vice-Chancellor
University of Glasgow

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 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Bringing together a collection of this scale has been a long haul and its concept and
shape has changed over time. Its genesis is certainly in the Education for Global
Citizenship Unit (EGCU) at the University of Glasgow. I was invited by Harry
Blee to contribute a seminar or two to the EGCU’s programme, supported by the
United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) and aimed at
teachers, teacher educators and teachers in training. At that point I thought that
global citizenship was a contradiction in terms and that citizenship was a
characteristic that could be ascribed only by the nation-state to its members
bounded by a territory and a set of laws. In the same period in 2001 I was trying to
write material on terrorism in relation to questions of education and globalisation
that became the collection Education, Globalization and the State in the Age of
Terrorism (2004). Indeed, the chapter I contributed to the collection ‘War as
Globalization: The “Education” of the Iraqi People’ I first gave as a seminar in the
EGCU series in 2003.
It is fair to say that the Unit and its activities had a profound influence on me;
forcing me to rethink the notion of global citizenship and as a result leading to a
sea-change in my ideas. I no longer thought about citizenship purely in terms of the
nation-state, and I came to believe that the promise of global civil society depended
upon an active global citizenship education programme. This would not be a
‘shallow’ syllabus that considered notions of ‘citizen’, ‘citizenship’, ‘nation’,
‘state’ etc. and their reconfiguration within the context of globalisation but instead,
and more importantly, raised awareness and embarked on a political education of
many issues facing the world community; adopting an action-orientation and
intelligent advocacy toward issues of poverty, war, hunger, inequality, the spread
of disease, ecological disasters, and, in particular, the exploitation and abuse of
children. In short, I received a political reorientation in the company of colleagues
in the Faculty of Education at the University of Glasgow and through dialogue and
discussion with colleagues, teachers and students. I now no longer think of global
citizenship as an oxymoronic term but rather think of it as a component of the
imaginary of global civil society, and a natural complement to global studies in
education that has the aim not just of human rights education but rather an active
political agenda and the greater sensitisation toward global cultural exchange and
questions of internationalisation.
Remarkably, today it is the case that people interconnected by any means but
especially critical mass communication through the facility of the Internet and the
World Wide Web now constitute a threshold for the emergence of a myriad of
global civil spaces that already comprise a densely woven global civil society
(albeit still in its infancy). The prospect of greater North/South dialogue and joint
education projects based around the concept of global citizenship holds the best of
the Enlightenment promises – education for all, greater scientific and pedagogical

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

conversation and communication, the spread of freedom through access to

knowledge and information, and political action in the face of social injustice.
In respect of my five years in the then newly created Faculty of Education at the
University of Glasgow and the Education for Global Citizenship Unit I wish to
personally record my thanks to some colleagues in Scotland: Harry Blee, Bob
Davis, Jim Conroy, Cathy Fagan, Robert Docherty, John Dakers, Christine Forde,
Alan Britton, Frank O’Hagan, and many others.
My co-editors Harry Blee and Alan Britton also wish to acknowledge and thank
some of the individuals and groups associated with the Education for Global
Citizenship Unit at the University of Glasgow. First and foremost, they would like
to thank Jacqueline Doogan and Jacqueline Jackson who have provided
outstanding administrative and organisational support and expertise throughout the
lifetime of the Unit and its associated projects and programmes. Both have also
played pivotal roles in the organisation of this book, processing and formatting the
various chapters and maintaining a close eye on deadlines. Faculty colleagues
Stephen McKinney and Frank O’Hagan kindly assisted with document checking
and proof-reading, and Jon Lewin from the SCRE Centre provided further
immensely valuable support in this regard. However responsibility for any errors
within the text lies with the Editors.
Harry and Alan would also like to acknowledge the role of the International
Development Education Association in Scotland (IDEAS), an umbrella
organisation of NGOs with an interest in global and development issues, which
was a key partner in the first three years of the DFID-funded project, and provided
an external perspective that enhanced greatly the philosophy, scope and impact of
this work. Alan would also like to thank Karen and Catriona for inspiration.
While most of the chapters in this book are original, several are adapted from
previously published material, and the editors are grateful for the permissions
granted to facilitate this:
James A Banks’ chapter appeared originally as an article in the Journal of
Teacher Education, January/February, 2001, 52(1), 5−16. Barbara Cruikshank’s
chapter originated as ‘Revolutions within: Self-government and self-esteem,’
Economy and Society, 22:3 (August 1993): 327−344. Michael A Peters’ chapter
appeared in P. Hayden & C. el-Ojeili (Eds.), Confronting globalization: Humanity,
justice and the renewal of politics. New York: Palgrave, 2006. The chapter by
Penny Enslin and Mary Tjiattas, ‘Cosmopolitan justice: Education and global
citizenship’, originally appeared in Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political
Theory, 104, 2004, and is republished by kind permission of Berghahn Books.

Michael A. Peters
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, September 4, 2007

Harry Blee & Alan Britton

University of Glasgow, September 5, 2007

xii
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Ali A. Abdi is Professor of Education and International Development in the

Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta. He is
President of Comparative and International Education Society of Canada (CIESC)
(2007-2009), and Co-Director, Global Education Network (University of Alberta),
He is the author of Culture, education and development in South Africa: Historical
and contemporary perspectives (2002); co-author (with Ratna Ghosh) of Education
and the politics of difference (2004); and co-editor of Issues in Africa education:
sociological perspectives (2005); African education and globalization: Critical
perspectives (2006), and Educating for human rights and global citizenship
(forthcoming from SUNY Press).

Evelyn Arizpe has lectured in children’s literature at the Universities of Cambridge

and Glasgow, and published widely on UK, Central American and European
writing for children. She has particular interests in how teachers can engage them
in visual literacy through their responses to picture books, and is currently
developing a cross-cultural project involving schools in England, Scotland, Spain
and Australia.

James A. Banks is the Kerry and Linda Killinger Professor of Diversity Studies
and Director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of
Washington, Seattle. Professor Banks has pursued questions related to education,
racial inequality, and social justice in more than 100 journal articles and 20 books.
His books include Teaching strategies for ethnic studies (8th edition), Educating
citizens in a multicultural society (2nd edition), Diversity and citizenship education:
Global perspectives, and Race, culture, and education: The selected works of
James A. Banks. He is the editor of the Handbook of research on multicultural
education (2nd edition), and the forthcoming Routledge international companion to
multicultural education.

Professor Bruce Carrington took up his present post as Professor and Head of the
Department of Educational Studies at the University of Glasgow in August 2006.
Prior to this, he was Deputy Head of the School of Education, Communication and
Language Sciences at Newcastle University, where he held a Personal Chair in
Education. He has an enduring interest in issues relating to ethnicity, gender and
education and has published widely in this area. His most recent research in
English primary schools, with Christine Skelton, Becky Francis, Merryn
Hutchings, Barbara Reid and Ian Hall, examines the influence of the teacher’s
gender on the academic motivation and engagement of 7 to 8 year olds.

Professor Conroy currently holds the position of Professor and Dean of the Faculty
of Education, University of Glasgow. He has served on the boards of a number of
national and international education and academic bodies. He is currently Adjunct

xiii
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Professor at Fordham University, USA, and has held visiting positions in various
universities. Professor Conroy has a long-standing interest in children’s welfare,
philosophy and cultural change, moral education, citizenship and liberal democracy
as well as the place of religion in late industrial politics. He has conducted
research and development work in these areas as well as in that of child protection.

Barbara Cruikshank is Associate Professor of political theory at the University of

Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of The will to empower: Democratic
citizens and other subjects, as well as essays on Machiavelli, Tocqueville, Cultural
Politics, among others. She is currently at work on a book titled Neopolitics on
changes and adaptations of what counts as politics.

Robert A. Davis is Head of Department of Religious Education at the University of

Glasgow. He has taught, written and broadcast widely on religion, literature,
music, folklore, education and childhood studies. He has edited two volumes in
the Carcanet Collected Works of Robert Graves and is currently engaged on a new
intellectual biography of the radical educationalist Robert Owen, for Continuum
Press. He has held visiting posts in Dublin, Helsinki and Malmo.

Doret De Ruyter is Professor in Philosophy and History of Education in the

Department of Theory and Research in Education at the Faculty of Psychology and
Education at the VU University. Before her return to the VU, she worked at the
University of Glasgow in the Faculty of Education. Her main research interests are
ideals in education, human flourishing and happiness, children’s rights and parental
duties.

Penny Enslin is a Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the

University of Glasgow. She teaches philosophy of education and her research
interests lie in the area of political philosophy and education. She has published
widely on citizenship and democracy education, gender and the education of girls,
higher education, peace education, nationalism, and liberalism.

Christine Forde is a Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education at Glasgow

University. She teaches in the areas of school leadership, professional learning and
reflection and has been part of the national development programme for the
Scottish Qualification for Headship, a national preparatory programme for aspiring
headteachers in Scotland. Her research interests are firstly in the area of
professional learning and development and she has written a number of books and
articles in this area including a recently co-authored book Professional
development, reflection and enquiry (Forde, McMahon, McPhee and Patrick,
2006). She also has an interest in gender, education and utopian thinking, having
recently completing a book Feminism and education: Educating for the good
society (2007) for Sense Publishers and an edited collection Tackling gender
inequality raising pupil achievement (2007, Edinburgh UP).

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 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Muna Golmohamad is a doctoral student at the Institute of Education, University of

London. She has had a long standing interest in Education and Philosophy of
Education, both personally and professionally. Initially trained as a teacher of
English and Drama in Secondary Education in England and later became a Visiting
Lecturer on the BA programme for Education Studies, at Roehampton University,
London. She is also a visiting lecturer at the College for International Citizenship
in Birmingham, England, where she has helped to develop and implement a
programme of study for Citizenship and Education. She has also presented in
numerous international conferences and seminars recently publishing ‘World
citizenship, identity and the notion of an integrated self’, in Studies in Philosophy
and Education, Volume 23, Numbers 2-3:131-148. Broadly speaking, her doctoral
thesis is concerned with a philosophical examination of the notion of World/Global
Citizenship, the dynamics of relationships fostered and some possible implications
for Education.

Ilan Gur-Ze’ev is a Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Haifa. His

work has been translated into Polish, Flemish, English, Portuguese, Arabic and the
Serbian language. Gur-Ze’ev is a philosopher in the critical tradition whose work
attempts to offer a philosophical alternative beyond the modern-postmodern
struggle. Among his recent books is Beyond the modern-postmodern struggle in
education: Toward counter-education and enduring improvisation (2007, Sense).

Yvonne Hébert is Professor at Faculty of Education, University of Calgary. She is

most interested in cultural issues and minority studies in education, dealing with
youth, identity, democracy, diversity, values, policy and educational reform. Her
current research projects focus on youth’s negotiation of difference and democracy,
a comparative study in three Canadian cities; conceptions of children and youth;
and the impact of educational reform on teaching practices, school culture and
achievement.

Hans Hooghoff is Head of the Department for Cross Curricular Topics at the
National Institute for Curriculum Development in the Netherlands (SLO). Hans has
considerable experience of educational development and civic education on an
international stage. His own education is in law and sociology; he taught law and
political science in schools of advanced study in the Netherlands before moving
into the field of educational development. As well as being responsible for a
variety of major national development programmes in Holland, Hans has held a
number of international positions. He has been Chair of the International Assembly
of the National Council for Social Studies, USA (1996-1998); Visiting Professor at
the University of Nagoya, School of Education, Japan (1997-1998); Programme
co-ordinator, board member, and chief executive officer of CIDREE, the
Consortium of Institutions for Development and Research in Education in Europe
(1989-2004); Adviser to the Education Department of Western Cape, South Africa,
a role he continues to perform.

xv
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Walter Humes is Research Professor in Education and Associate Dean in the

School of Education, University of Paisley, Scotland. He has previously held
Professorships at the Universities of Strathclyde and Aberdeen. His publications
include work on educational policy, teacher education, history of education and
educational leadership. He is co-editor (with T.G.K. Bryce) of Scottish education,
a 1000-page volume that covers all aspects of the Scottish educational system,
from pre-school to higher education and lifelong learning.

Emery J. Hyslop-Margison is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair

nominee in the Faculty of Education at the University of New Brunswick,
Fredericton, Canada. He has held a Canada Research Chair at Concordia
University in Montreal and was past Director of the Institute for Democratic
Learning in Career Education. He has published extensively on how current neo-
liberal policies threaten democratic learning.

James McGonigal is Professor of English in Education in the University of

Glasgow. He has published on classroom interaction, teacher formation, literacy
and knowledge about language, as well as on modernist poetry and cultural
identity. He edits the SCROLL series (Scottish Cultural Review of Language and
Literature) for Rodopi, and his poetry has won awards in Scotland and Ireland.

Stephen J. McKinney is Lecturer in Religious Education in the University of

Glasgow. His research interests are immigrants and religious identity, faith schools
and Catholic schools, and he has published on all of these topics. He is a member
of the Education for Global Citizenship Unit in the University of Glasgow.

Ian Menter is Professor of Teacher Education, University of Glasgow. He is an

experienced teacher, manager and researcher in education policy and teacher
development. He started teaching in urban primary schools in Bristol in 1975. He
moved into teacher education in 1984 at the College of St Paul and St Mary in
Cheltenham. His research career started there but developed significantly during
his nine years at the University of the West of England in Bristol. From 1996 until
2001 he was Head of the School of Education at the University of North London.
He has recently completed research into aspects of teachers’ work in England,
funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Since moving to Scotland in
2001, he has been looking at some Anglo-Scottish comparisons of teachers’ work
and initial teacher education and has been commissioned by the Scottish Executive
Education Department to undertake two national projects. He is President of the
Scottish Educational Research Association. Publications include co-authorship of
Work and identity in the primary school (1997, Open University Press) and
Convergence or divergence? Initial teacher education in Scotland and England
(2006, Dunedin Academic Press) and also co-editorship of The crisis in teacher
supply (2002, Trentham Books).

xvi
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Stavros Moutsios is an Associate Professor in International Comparative Education

Policy at the Danish School of Education (DPU), University of Aarhus,
Department of Sociology of Education. He completed his PhD in Comparative
Education at the Institute of Education-University of London, and before joining
the DPU, he was a lecturer at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His
recent research interests focus on transnational forms of policy making in
education.

Timothy Murphy is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Excellence in

Learning &Teaching at the National University of Ireland Galway, where he has
previously worked for the Open Learning Centre and as a lecturer in Education. He
holds a Doctorate in Education from Teachers’ College (Columbia University) in
New York. He has strong interests (and publications) in civic education, as well as
academic staff development.

Francis J. O’Hagan is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of

Glasgow. His research interests include: History, Education, Religion, Social
Studies, Global Citizenship and Music. He has published articles on Teacher
Education, History and Religion and a book on the work of the Religious
Congregations in Glasgow during the period 1847-1918.

Mark Olssen is Professor of Political Theory and Education Policy in the

Department of Political, International and Policy Studies, University of Surrey. His
most recent book is Michel Foucault: Materialism and education, Paradigm Press,
Boulder and London, published in May 2006. Also published recently, in 2004, a
book with John Codd and Anne-Marie O’Neill of Massey University in New
Zealand titled Education policy: Globalisation, citizenship, democracy (Sage,
London); an edited volume Culture and learning: Access and opportunity in the
classroom (IAP Press, New York); with Michael Peters and Colin Lankshear,
Critical theory and the human condition: Founders and praxis, and from Rowman
and Littlefield, New York, Futures of critical theory: Dreams of difference, also
with Michael Peters and Colin Lankshear. He has published extensively in leading
academic journals in Britain, America and in Australasia.

Dr Marianna Papastephanou has studied and researched in Cardiff, Wales and

Berlin, Germany and taught at Cardiff University. She is currently teaching at the
University of Cyprus, Department of Education, as an Assistant Professor in
Philosophy of Education. She is the editor of K.O. Apel: From a transcendental-
semiotic point of view (1998, Manchester University Press) and author of numerous
articles on the Frankfurt school, political philosophy, postmodernism, and
education from a continental-philosophical point of view.

Michael A. Peters is Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign (US) and the University of Glasgow (UK). He won a first in
Philosophy and completed a PhD in the philosophy of education, focusing on

xvii
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Ludwig Wittgenstein, at the University of Auckland (NZ) where he was appointed

to a personal chair in 2000 and held a joint position between Auckland and
Glasgow. He writes at the intersection of fields in philosophy, education, policy
and politics, with a strong interest in theories of postmodernity, knowledge and
economy, and implications for education. He has written over 40 books and some
300 articles and chapters, including most recently Showing and doing: Wittgenstein
as pedagogical philosopher (2007, Paradigm) (with Nick Burbules and Paul
Smeyers), Truth and subjectivity: Foucault, education and the culture of self
(2007, Peter Lang), Why Foucault? New directions in educational research (2007,
Peter Lang), Building knowledge cultures: Educational and development in the age
of knowledge capitalism (2006, Rowman & Littlefield), all with Tina (A.C.)
Besley, and Knowledge economy, development and the future of the university
(2007, Sense).

Thomas S. Popkewitz, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies

the systems of reason that govern educational reforms and research in teaching,
curriculum, and teacher education. His most recent book, Cosmopolitanism and
the age of reform (Routledge) explores contemporary reforms in teaching, teacher
education and the sciences of education as practices that generate principles of
exclusion and inclusion. Currently, he is working collaboratively with colleagues
in Europe, Latin America, and North America on a historical volume concerned
with comparative visions in the development of schooling in the long 19th Century.

Julia Preece is Professor of Adult Education in the National University of Lesotho,

Southern Africa. Prior to this she managed a research centre at the University of
Glasgow, following four years in the University of Botswana. She has also worked
in the Universities of Lancaster and Surrey. Before entering higher education Julia
spent approximately 15 years in community development work in the inner city
areas of Birmingham. She has published extensively on issues to do with lifelong
learning, citizenship, gender and social exclusion. Recent publications include:
two co-authored books: Perceptions of citizenship responsibility amongst
Botswana youth (Lentswe La Lesedi) and Research methods for adult educators in
Africa (Pearson Education) as well as a co-edited book Adult education and
poverty reduction (Lentswe La Lesedi).

George Richardson is Associate Professor and Associate Dean (International

initiatives) in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education. His research
interests include the role of education in national identity formation, citizenship
education, multicultural and international education and action research. He is the
editor of the journal Canadian Social Studies. Among his publications, he is author
of The death of the good Canadian: Teachers national identities and the social
studies curriculum (2002, Peter Lang) and co-editor (with Dr David Blades) of
Troubling the canon of citizenship education (2006, Peter Lang).

xviii
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Klas Roth is Associate Professor at Stockholm Institute of Education, Sweden. He

is the author/editor of six books, one special issue in Studies in Philosophy and
Education – ‘Communication, identity and learning in an age of globalization’,
edited together with Staffan Selander (in press), and many journal articles and
chapters. His most recent books include Education in the era of globalization
(2007), edited together with Ilan Gur-Ze’ev, and Changing notions of citizenship
education in contemporary nation-states (2007), edited together with Nicholas C.
Burbules.

Alan Sears is Professor of Social Studies Education and a member of the

Citizenship Education Research and Development Group at the University of New
Brunswick in Canada. Dr. Sears has written extensively about social education in
general and citizenship education in particular and is co-editor of the recent book,
Challenges and prospects in Canadian social studies as well as co-author of Neo-
liberalism, globalization and human capital learning: Reclaiming education for
democratic citizenship. He has directed several national research projects on
citizenship education in Canada and is currently principal investigator on a
programme of work designed to map how children and young people understand
key ideas related to citizenship.

George J. Sefa Dei is Professor, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies

(SESE), Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.
Between 1994 and 1999 he served as the First Director of the Centre for Integrative
Anti-Racism Studies, OISE/UT. He is Ghanaian by birth. He has published
extensively on issues of African Development, Minority Education, Indigenous
Knowledges, Afrocentricity, and Anti-Colonial Thought. His books include:
Indigenous knowledge in global contexts: Multiple readings of our world, edited
with Budd Hall and D. Goldin Rosenberg (2000, University of Toronto Press);
Playing the race card: White power and privilege (2004, Peter Lang), co-authored
with Leeno and Nisha Karumanchery; Schooling and education in Africa: The case
of Ghana (2004, Africa World Press); Critical issues in anti-racist research
methodologies (2005, Peter Lang), co-edited with Gurpreet Singh Johal; Anti-
colonialism and education: The politics of resistance, co-edited with Arlo Kempf
(2006, Sense); Schooling and difference in Africa: Democratic challenges in
contemporary context, co-authored with Alireza Asgharzadeh, Sharon Eblaghie-
Bahador, and Riyad Shahjahan (2006, University of Toronto Press). His latest sole-
authored book is Racists beware (2007, Sense). In July 2007, Professor Dei was
enstooled as a Chief in Ghana under the stool name, Nana Sefa Atweneboah,
Adumakwaahene of Asokore, Koforidua, in the New Juaben Traditional Area.
Professor Dei has received numerous international awards and recognition for his
academic and professional excellence, as well as community service. He has been
invited on the lecture circuits in North America, Europe and Africa.

Robert Shaw is a Senior Lecturer in business analysis and ethics at the Open
Polytechnic of New Zealand. He is also an elected member of the Porirua City

xix
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Council (NZ). His research relates to governance, business decision-making, and

local government. At present Robert is a PhD student at the University of
Auckland where his thesis is about Heidegger and Kant.

Ben Spiecker is Emeritus Professor in Philosophy and History of Education at the

VU University. He has held a chair in the Department of Philosophy and History of
Education at the Faculty of Psychology and Education for almost 30 years. His
main research interests are moral education, civic education and sex education.

Mary Tjiattas is an Honorary Research Assistant in the Department of Philosophy

at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her main academic interests
are in moral psychology, and social and political philosophy.

James Tully is the Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Law, Philosophy

and Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. He
specialises in contemporary political theory and its history. His recent work
includes: Another kind of Europe? CRISPP (2006), ‘The imperialism of modern
constitutional democracy’, in The paradox of constitutionalism, ed. Loughlin and
Walker (2007), and Public philosophy in a new key (forthcoming 2008).

Yusef Waghid is Professor of Philosophy of Education and Dean of the Faculty of

Education at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His research focuses on
democratic citizenship education and he has published in many international peer
reviewed journals.

Leonard J. Waks is Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership and Policy

Studies at Temple University. He received his PhD in philosophy from the
University of Wisconsin in 1968 and has taught at Purdue, Stanford, Penn State
and Temple. His research concentrates on the educational arrangements of global
network society. Waks is the author of over one hundred scholarly articles and
book chapters, and of the book Technology’s school (1995, JAI).

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 MICHAEL A. PETERS, HARRY BLEE AND ALAN BRITTON

INTRODUCTION
Many Faces of Global Civil Society: Possible Futures for
Global Citizenship

The underlying political concepts of the notion of citizenship struck during the
Enlightenment are in disarray as though they have melted under the constant sun of
the combined and sometimes contradictory processes of globalisation, localisation
and regionalisation. This collection of over thirty chapters brings together an
international field of contributors who examine these concepts and processes in a
fresh light, and provide a variety of perspectives and prescriptions that deserve to
have a significant impact on national and transnational educational policy critique
and policy making.
From Canada to South Africa, from Scotland to the Middle East, from Sweden
to New Zealand, from the Netherlands to the United States; the contributions are
both geographically and ideologically diverse. This is a reflection of the genuinely
global current interest in issues of citizenship and globalisation, and how these can
be addressed through education. Certain contributors locate the roots of some of
these issues in 19th Century industrial and scholastic processes, or in the
experiences of migrant communities in the Old and the New World, or arising from
the impact of such migration on indigenous peoples. Fresh inspiration and insight
is thus gained from historic contextualisation, while other chapters are resolutely
contemporary, drawing on recent and ongoing political events and processes. A
number of contested issues are addressed, including racism, migration,
colonialisation, terrorism, neoliberalism, and citizenship itself. The recent
resurgence in interest in the interplay between religion, religiosity and citizenship
is also reflected in several chapters. While some chapters focus exclusively on the
analysis of particular national or regional contexts, others make the case for a
citizenship education that is truly global in its scope and organisation.
This introductory chapter provides an overview of some of the core concepts
that will emerge and recur elsewhere in this collection. The editors begin by
describing the way in which citizenship was framed by some of the key
Enlightenment figures, and highlight some of the reasons that this
conceptualisation has appeared less stable and resilient in recent times.
Contemporary notions of cosmopolitanism and citizenship are compared and
contrasted with their antecedents. Issues of international cooperation and conflict
are considered, as well as some of the institutional and constitutional responses.
The European Union is highlighted in particular, as it represents a complex

M.A. Peters, A. Britton and H. Blee (Eds.), Global Citizenship Education: Philosophy, Theory and
Pedagogy, 1-13.
© 2008 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
MICHAEL A. PETERS, HARRY BLEE AND ALAN BRITTON

multinational laboratory for core ideas relating to the current and future status of
the individual citizen, the nation state, civil society and the globalised knowledge
economy (issues that are explored in a vast array of different contexts elsewhere in
the collection). The editors conclude by pressing the case for effective and
meaningful global citizenship education as a contribution towards the search for an
elusive yet essential conception of global civic society.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT VIEW OF CITIZENSHIP

Traditionally, the concept of citizenship had a home in the bounded nation-state

and referred to rights, privileges and responsibilities ascribed to people born or
migrated to a territory with clear boundaries. In the history of political philosophy,
for Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau the social contract is the means by which order
and civil society is maintained: we agree to a social contract thereby gaining civil
rights in return for subjecting ourselves to the law. Hobbes was the first of the
moderns to articulate this conception in his Leviathan (1651) where he famously
founded his theory on a hypothetical State of Nature where each of us would have
natural and unlimited freedoms but there was an endless ‘war of all against all’.
Hobbes’ theory is the basis for an account of legitimate government or sovereignty.
Only by entering into a social contract does man, who for Hobbes has a basically
egoistic and self-interested nature, subscribe to a society where war can be avoided
and the peace maintained. John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, especially
the second treatise, outlines his justification for civil government.
Rousseau developed a different theory that sought to provide an account of
popular sovereignty as both indivisible and unalienable. His The Social Contract or
Principles of Political Right (1762) famously begins ‘Man is born free; and
everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still
remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know.
What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer’. The
Enlightenment philosophers argued that people became citizens by giving their
consent to a legal and binding agreement concerning their rights and freedoms.
This social contract was made in the name of the common good and collective
security and people gave their consent it is argued because of enlightened self-
interest based on the supposition that they have something to gain through the
imposition of order and the rule of law. The actual political arrangements of course
varied considerably from state to state as did the legal and philosophical
justifications yet nothing can disguise the palpable state of affairs that the transition
to civil society through the exercise of choice constitutes a social agreement which
involves a moral commitment to a set of values and ethical norms that legislate and
work for all members of a single moral community.
To talk of a single moral community is also immediately to invoke Kant and his
account of cosmopolitanism, and to talk of cosmopolitanism is immediately to
invoke a globally-oriented institution that aims at the cultivation of global citizens.
Indeed, the root stock of the word first used in 1614 to mean ‘citizen of the world’
derives from the Greek kosmopolites (kosmos ‘world’, polites, meaning ‘citizen’,

2
 INTRODUCTION

and polis meaning ‘city’) ‘Cosmopolitanism’ with a first recorded use in 1828
registers the idea that there is a single moral community based on the idea of
freedom and thus in the early twenty-first century is also seen as a major
theoretical buttress to the concept of universal human rights that transcend all
national, cultural and State boundaries.
While the Greeks had a concept of ‘cosmopolitanism’ that issued from the
Sophists against the form of political culture advocated by Plato and Aristotle
which was wedded to the city and its citizens, and later took a Stoic form that was
popular with early Christianity, its modern form emerged with the Enlightenment
and was associated first with Erasmus’ humanism and with the development of
natural law doctrine. Pauline Kleingeld (2006) argues:
The historical context of the philosophical resurgence of cosmopolitanism
during the Enlightenment is made up of many factors: The increasing rise of
capitalism and world-wide trade and its theoretical reflections; the reality of
ever expanding empires whose reach extended across the globe; the voyages
around the world and the anthropological so-called ‘discoveries’ facilitated
through these; the renewed interest in Hellenistic philosophy; and the
emergence of a notion of human rights and a philosophical focus on human
reason (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmopolitanism/).
She goes on to document the way in which the impulse of cosmopolitanism was
strongest in the late eighteenth century both feeding and growing out of the 1789
declaration of human rights. While Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Addison,
Hume and Jefferson all saw themselves as cosmopolitans, it was Kant who
defended and popularised the idea that human beings belong to a single moral
community sharing the characteristics of freedom, equality and autonomy that
grounded the concept and legitimacy of law. Philosophical cosmopolitanism
therefore had a parallel in political cosmopolitanism based on a concept of law that
applied to all States.
Thus, famously, Kant in Perpetual Peace (1795) argues for a concept of moral
cosmopolitanism based on universal law to which States would consent even
though he rejected a strong notion of world government in favour of a loose
federation. In Section II of Perpetual Peace he adumbrates the principles − ‘three
definitive articles’ − that are required to establish peace (against the natural state of
war) beginning with the republican civic constitution, a federation of free States,
and the law of world citizenship is said to be limited to conditions of ‘universal
hospitality’ where ‘Hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an
enemy when he arrives in the land of another.’
Besides moral and political (or legal) cosmopolitanism there is also a form of
economic cosmopolitanism associated with the work of Adam Smith who sought to
diminish the role of politics in the economic realm. Said to date from Quesnay the
notion of economic cosmopolitanism was promoted strongly in the twentieth
century by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and taken up in a particular form
of neo-liberalism that now characterises the World Trade Organization.

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MICHAEL A. PETERS, HARRY BLEE AND ALAN BRITTON

In contemporary discourse cosmopolitanism is often referred to under the term

globalisation and includes economic (neoliberal) cosmopolitanism, political
cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan law, based on moral universalism. For all three
accounts as Thomas Pogge notes, there is, first, an assumption of individualism −
the unit of analysis is the individual rather than the State or some other entity;
second, the assumption of universality. Thomas Pogge (2002: 169) writes,
Three elements are shared by all cosmopolitan positions. First, individualism:
the ultimate units of concern are human beings, or persons. … Second,
universality: the status of ultimate unit of concern attaches to every living
being equally …. Third, generality: this special status has global force.
We can therefore distinguish three forms of contemporary cosmopolitanism:
Kantian moral cosmopolitanism represented by the discourse of human rights and,
perhaps, institutionally by the United Nations; Kantian political cosmopolitanism
represented by the likes of Habermas, Rawls, Beitz, Pogge; cosmopolitan
democracy, argued for by Held; and economic cosmopolitanism currently best
exemplified by a form of neo-liberal ‘free-trade’. The first might also be further
extended by certain cosmopolitan institutions such as the International Criminal
Court that seeks to develop a concept of the individual in international law that is
not absolutely subject to the State.
It is clear from the preamble provided thus far that considerations of
cosmopolitanism and the notion of global citizenship are nothing new, having
exercised a broad range of political, economic and social thinkers over a long
period in time. However it is the Editors’ view that the particular perspectives
gathered in this collection are most timely because these concerns have been
thrown into sharper and more urgent relief by a number of recent events,
movements and processes. In the next section, we highlight certain contemporary
political and economic movements, notably the ongoing enlargement and
‘deepening’ of the European Union (EU), the EU’s relationship with the United
States, and the interface between globalisation and terrorism, that we argue require
a response from educators across the globe.

EUROPE’S MORAL AND POLITICAL VISION OF GLOBALISATION

The Laeken Declaration on the Future of the European Union pictured the Union
standing at a crossroads − ‘a defining moment of its existence’ − on the one hand it
was about to expand to bring in ten new Member States and, on the other, it faced
two democratic challenges, one internal, the other external. The first concerns the
challenge of developing a set of European institutions for the citizens of Europe, of
creating a closer and more transparent relationship between the Union and its
citizens − in short, better democratic governance and an assault on the ‘democratic
deficit’. The second concerns Europe’s new role in a globalised world. As the
Declaration expresses this new imperative:

4
 INTRODUCTION

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, it looked briefly as though we would
for a long while be living in a stable world order, free from conflict, founded
upon human rights … The eleventh of September has brought about a rude
awakening. The opposing forces have not gone away: religious fanaticism,
ethnic nationalism, racism and terrorism are on the increase, and regional
conflicts, poverty and underdevelopment still provide a constant seedbed for
them.

What is Europe’s new role in this changed world? Does Europe not, now that
it is finally unified, have a leading role to play in a new world order, that of a
power able both to play a stabilising role worldwide and to point the way
ahead for many countries and peoples? … Now that the Cold War is over and
we are living in a globalised, yet also highly fragmented world, Europe needs
to shoulder its responsibilities in the governance of globalisation.
By ‘the governance of globalisation’ the Declaration means ‘to set globalisation
within a moral framework … to anchor it in solidarity and sustainable develop-
ment.’ The Laeken Declaration indicates that, in part, is was drafted in response to
public calls for a greater EU role in justice and security − not only action against
cross-border crime, control of immigration and reception of asylum seekers but
also action in the field of employment, combating poverty and social exclusion,
and promoting greater economic and social cohesion. Clearly, there is a strong role
for the Union to promote and coordinate action in all transnational issues as well as
tackling broader and more sensitive issues in a common approach to foreign
affairs, security and defence.
At the same time the Declaration makes clear that the Future of Europe must
respond to calls for better and more transparent, more efficient government to be
enhanced through a better division and definition of competence between the
Union and Member States. In particular, greater clarification is required of
exclusive (Union) competence, competence by Member States and that which is
shared. These questions and the reorganisation of competence are crucial for issues
of foreign policy and defence. They also go to the heart of fears of a super state and
the encroachment upon exclusive areas of competence by states. In addition, the
declaration raised questions about the Union’s instruments and the democratic
legitimacy and transparency of the Union’s institutions, particularly the
Commission, the Parliament and the Council. The Declaration ends on a note
concerning the proposed Constitution for European citizens and the reorganisation
of the four Treaties on which the Union is based.

MULTIPLE CITIZENSHIP: EUROPE’S FAILED CONSTITUTION

Our Constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a

minority but of the whole people. Thucydides II, 37 (Opening quotation of
the draft constitution)

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MICHAEL A. PETERS, HARRY BLEE AND ALAN BRITTON

The draft constitution already amended and revised by 105-member forum even if
it failed the ratification process nonetheless represents an astonishing achievement.
In one sense it is the attempted realisation of a dream of a unified Europe first
raised by Winston Churchill in 1946. European Union has come into existence
through a deliberative process of progressive change toward the constitutional ideal
enabled by a series of treaties beginning with the establishment of a coal and steel
community in 1958.
The failed draft constitution comprising of four parts − its definition, objectives
and institutions, its fundamental rights and citizenship, its competencies and
actions, its policies and functioning of the Union − is the culmination of historical
process that asserts a moral and political vision, now carried forward by means of a
treaty. For that reason it is worthy of examination as a prototype of what is to
come, what is inevitable in some form or other. The Preamble begins by stressing
the significance of its humanist inheritance embodied in its early Greek and Roman
origins, its (Christian) ‘spiritual impulse,’ and the philosophy of the Enlightenment
centred on the human person and his or her inviolable and inalienable rights:
Conscious that Europe is a continent that has brought forth civilisation; that
its inhabitants, arriving in successive waves since the first ages of mankind,
have gradually developed the values underlying humanism: equality of
person, freedom respect for reason
It continues by emphasising that a reunited Europe intends to continue along ‘this
path of civilisation, progress and prosperity’ − a path characterised by concern for
all its inhabitants, for the value of openness to culture and learning, for the
deepening of democratic public life, and for ‘peace, justice and solidarity.’
The governance of globalisation and the cultural mandate for Europe’s role is
seen to derive from its humanistic legacy and the extent to which the constitution
embodies Europe’s humanistic legacy can be judged by the centrality of the
Charter of Fundamental Rights. It is noteworthy that education and citizens’ rights
− and their interdependency − are prominent in the Charter of the EU, which
contains in Article 14, ‘Rights to education’ specified in three related clauses:
• Everyone has the right to education and to have access to vocational and
continuing training.
• This right includes the possibility to receive free compulsory education.
• The freedom to found educational establishments with due respect for
democratic principles and the rights of parents to ensure the education and
teaching of their children in conformity with their religious, philosophical
and pedagogical convictions shall be respected, in accordance with the
national laws governing the exercise of such freedom and right.
It could be argued that the notion of citizenship education might contain both the
passive neoliberal State versions often defined in terms of consumer sovereignty
(in line with neoliberal welfare consumer regimes) and the more progressive social
democratic EU version. Certainly there is a pressing need in the UK for a notion of
citizenship education that is more sensitive to EU institutions (the Parliament,
Council, Commission, and Court of Justice) and fundamental rights.

6
 INTRODUCTION

THE LEARNING CITIZEN IN EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY

It is now some years since the Lisbon European Council set the ‘bold and
ambitious’ ten-year goal of making the EU the most dynamic, competitive,
sustainable knowledge-based economy in the world. Crucial to this policy rhetoric
is a series of recent related concepts that cluster around the old dualisms between
economy and society, knowledge and information-knowledge economy/knowledge
society; and the learning economy/learning society. Yet it is clear that policy areas
overlap and that indeed that there is a radical interpenetration of social and
economic policy. Perhaps, the fundamental understanding for policy makers in the
‘post-modern condition’ is the way the old dualisms obfuscate a conceptual
appreciation of the imperatives of structural reform. Attention in the European
Council has recently focused on three areas: active labour market reforms;
liberalisation of financial markets; and increased investment in knowledge to
ensure future competitiveness and jobs. Of course, these three policy areas are
related and overlap somewhat. The Council is looking to overcome existing
barriers to flexible labour markets by encouraging multi-lingualism, the
development of appropriate ICT skills, provision of better child care and rewards
for those who work longer. Its approach to financial liberalisation is focused in part
on providing the right regulatory environment, while there is also a strong impetus
to roll out fast broadband telecom networks and to step up support for research,
innovation, education and training.
A staff paper (European Report Jan 16, 2002) suggested that the EU lags behind
on lifelong learning and that the transition to the knowledge-based economy must
be speeded up. In other words, spending on education needs to be strengthened.
The argument is made that the European ability to produce, diffuse and use
knowledge effectively relies heavily on its capacity to produce highly educated
people for its firms to be engaged in a continuing process of innovation. Yet the
paper notes that lifelong learning is still not a reality for most citizens. Average
public spending on education in the European Union as a percentage of GDP
remained unchanged at 5% between 1999 and 2000 and overall level of public and
private spending on research and development is still too low. The paper complains
that the EU is suffering a competitive disadvantage because EU businesses,
governments and citizens have not yet embraced new technologies, the Internet and
electronic commerce as readily as in the United States. There is some empirical
evidence to support this view for while up-take of ICTs is increasing it has not yet
been reflected in productivity gains or the reshaping of business practices.
In the Lisbon Council the transition to the knowledge-based economy has been
taken up in a range of related research project designed to investigate and enhance
Europe’s case. A number of these projects are focused on the notion of ‘the
learning citizen’, a concept that is a happy combination of words with considerable
normative and illocutionary force directly at the building a European democracy
where learning is advanced as a fundamental human right. Exactly how this right
ought to be construed is not straightforward because both underlying concepts of
‘learning’ and ‘citizen’ are contestable and require active interpretation.

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MICHAEL A. PETERS, HARRY BLEE AND ALAN BRITTON

US VS EU CONSTITUTION

It is useful and important to compare the ethos of EU Constitution with that of the
US Constitution (and their current interpretations) even although the Philadelphia
Convention was produced two centuries ago. Both the EU Constitution and the
Laeken Declaration offer a different perspective to the US Constitution and foreign
policy outlook. Where the latter is based on negative rights the former is based on a
conception of positive rights. The difference could not be more marked. American
constitutional rights were originally designed to protect Americans from
infringements upon their life, liberty and property. The language of the
Constitution carefully limits the powers of the government and the division of
powers between governments and the general rights of the governed. By contrast,
the EU Constitution is based upon positive rights with reference to ‘social justice,’
‘solidarity,’ ‘equal opportunity,’ ‘equality between the sexes’ and ‘cultural
diversity.’ Further, it claims to desire ‘sustainable development,’ ‘mutual respect
between peoples,’ and the eradication of poverty, with accordingly less emphasis
on property rights and free enterprise. At the broader level, this difference signals
not only different constitutional outlooks but also diverging political cultures: a
neoliberal US favouring corporate America, a ‘defensive modernism,’ and the
doctrine of ‘pre-emptive strike’ and ‘regime change’ versus a social democratic
model focused on ‘social justice’ and ‘solidarity,’ and committed to governance of
globalisation within a moral framework.
The Global Citizenship agenda might begin to tackle some questions of
comparative analysis and also entertain the question in international law of the
emergence since the second world war of the geopolitic concepts of ‘war crimes’,
‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘crimes against the peace’ (see e.g., Peters, 2004).

DECONSTRUCTING THE WEST?

The concept of ‘the West’ has served important political purposes both historically
and in the present foreign policy context. On the one hand it has been a cultural and
philosophical unity achieved through an active historical projection back to the
origins of Western civilisation, at least to the classical Greeks, while on the other, it
has been used as a modernist category, politically speaking, to harness the
resources of Enlightenment Europe as a basis for giving assurances about the
future of liberal democratic societies and the American way of life. The concept
was an implicit but key one assumed in an influential analysis of new world order
by Samuel Huntington (2002), who in his The Clash of Civilizations predicted a
non-ideological world determined increasingly by the clash among the major
civilisations. In Huntington’s analysis ‘the West’ functions as an unquestioned and
foundational unity yet the concept and its sense of cultural and historical unity has
recently been questioned not only in terms of its historical fabrication but also in
terms of its future continuance. Martin Bernal (1991, 2001), for instance,
controversially in Black Athena and in a set of responses to his critics, questions
the historical foundations of ‘the West’ demonstrating how the concept is a recent

8
 INTRODUCTION

fiction constructed out of the Aryan myth propagated by nineteenth-century

historiography. Even more recently, accounts of the so-called ‘new world order’
have emphasized either the dominance of an American hegemonic Empire (Hardt
and Negri, 2000) or an emerging EU post-modern state system (Cooper, 2001).
These accounts offer competing and influential conceptions of the ‘new
imperialism’ based on different visions of world government and proto-world
institutions. They give very different accounts of questions of international
security, world order and the evolving world system of states.
Most recently, and under the impact of a set of events tied to the experience of
the war prosecuted against Iraq, Robert Kagan (2003) has questioned whether
Europeans and Americans still share a common view of the world and charts the
divergence of these two perspectives on the question of power – its efficacy,
morality and desirability. Robert Kagan is senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, and a columnist for the Washington Post. He
served in the US State Department from 1984 to 1988. A neo-conservative himself,
Kagan has written on the US foreign policy in Nicaragua and edited a collection
with William Kristol on present dangers facing American foreign policy and
defence. Of Passion and Power is an expansion of an essay that original appeared
in Policy Review. Kagan’s thesis can be summed up briefly in his own words:
Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is
moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and
transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical
paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Immanuel Kant’s
‘perpetual peace’. Meanwhile, the United States remains mired in history,
exercising power in an anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws
and rules are unreliable, and where true security and the defence and
promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military
might (p. 3).
He suggests that this state of affairs is not simply the product of the Bush
presidency or an administration dominated by neo-conservatives but rather that the
differences are long-lived and likely to endure. Europe and American no longer
share a common ‘strategic culture’. As he depicts the differences, ‘Americans
generally see the world divided between good and evil, between friends and
enemies …’ They favour coercion over persuasion, ‘seek finality in international
affairs’ (p. 4), tending towards unilateralism. They are less inclined to act through
the United Nations or other international institutions and more sceptical of
international law. By contrast, Europeans ‘see a more complex picture’. They are
both more tolerant of failure and more patient, preferring peaceful solutions,
‘negotiation, diplomacy, and persuasion to coercion’ (p. 5).
Global Citizenship needs to be critically self-aware that all the traditional
assumptions governing our situated world-views ought to be continually open to
change, sometimes quite radically and unexpectedly, as when the Berlin Wall came
down or the Soviet system collapsed. By contrast we seem to be confronted with
ample evidence of the predicted future dominance of the world system by China

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MICHAEL A. PETERS, HARRY BLEE AND ALAN BRITTON

and India, yet a coherent educational response to this future probability has barely
begun to emerge.

EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP IN THE AGE OF TERRORISM

In global citizenship education we might investigate the following assertions: that

war and globalisation go hand in hand; that contemporary globalisation is a form of
war (and war may be a form of globalisation); that militarisation and war are
integral parts of the neo-liberal agenda; and that there are inextricable links
between the US military-industrial complex, the free market, and world order. We
might also encourage the investigation of these claims within the context of the war
in Iraq and provide some background to questions concerning a civilizational
analysis of globalisation that contextualises the US National Security Strategy and
the neo-conservative influence in the White House. Is there a role for education in
understanding the relationship between war and globalisation? Educationally
speaking, we would argue that we need to understand this specific event – the war
against Iraq – in terms of an emerging global politics.
The geopolitical consequences of empire, of past administrative division and
colonial policies, are always hard to predict and even harder to deal with.
‘Blowback’ is also a reality that must be contemplated as an inevitable
accompaniment to contemporary political decisions that involve regime change.
Arguably, the extremist Islamic terrorist attacks on civil society in the West have
their origin not only in the formation of extremist Islamic terrorist networks in the
last twenty years, but also perhaps more profoundly in British and U.S.
intervention and ongoing struggle for control of oil stakes in the Middle East,
notably Iraq and Saudi Arabia, dating back at least to the 1920s. If Samuel
Huntington is to be believed this is representative of an even greater historical
legacy of Christian-Islamic relations now centuries old.
The growth of global civil society is linked to the history of colonialism and
imperialism and yet there is something still of great importance about the
cosmopolitan sentiments offered by the Enlightenment thinkers that led first to the
League of Nations and, then, the United Nations, UNESCO and other institutional
defenders of the concept of fundamental human rights. While this is a contested
history and one imbricated in the recent history of colonialism and post-
colonialism it is also a history of the growth and development of liberal democracy
as the world's most rapidly growing and dominant form of government. The
problem is that at the level beyond the individual state there is little in the way of
structures and templates for world governance to which individual citizens have
access or redress. There are only those organisations set up at Bretton Woods that
provided the architecture for the West during the Cold War. Since the rapid
decolonisation that took place before and after WWII we have seen the
development of a number of newly independent states, many of which gained
nominal political independence but continued the colonial economic legacy of
exploitation and control.

10
 INTRODUCTION

Today we have passed into an era that is best symbolised by the significance of
regional trading blocs and attempts at regional governance with the huge growth
also of NGOs and other global agencies that transcend national boundaries. On the
one hand, there is the economic organisation of the truly stateless multi- and
transnational corporation, now sometimes referred to as the ‘globally integrated
enterprise’, and, on the other, the development of regional forms of governance
like the EU that through twin processes of integration and enlargement, is creating
a ‘new Europe’ based on an alternative vision of globalisation to the hegemonic
power and world dominance of a sole superpower. There are signs that the
prospects for EU regional governance, despite the recent setback to the ratification
process of the constitution, will not only continue to mature but will also be
emulated by other regions such as East Asia. This is not to argue that politics
necessarily follows economics.
With the dominance of a sole world superpower there have been criticisms of
both the UN and Bretton Woods institutions such as the WTO and the World Bank
as being essentially Ameri-centric, reflecting American interests and open to
American manipulation. The United Nations stands in need of reform, especially
given the rise of Asian states like China and India but also the remarkable growth
of Japanese economy and economic power. The question of reform is difficult as is
the notion of one vote per country especially given the huge differences in
population between, say, China or India or Indonesia and small island states like
Samoa or Fiji. Some talk of a new era of ‘Continental politics’.
Further, since the end of the Cold War, oil politics and the rise of militant Islam
or Islamism has seemingly taken over as the new territorial paradigm in
international politics with forms of Muslim international solidarity across national
borders and in terms of anti-American and anti-Israeli radical movements, as well
as new regional groups both within and outside the Middle East. The identification
of radical Islam as essentially terrorist and George Bush’s ‘war against terror’ has
initiated a new era of international politics that has greatly damaged relations
between the West and the Muslim world and apparently mitigated against the
enhancement of prospects for both the growth of international security of
movement and global civil society. The war in Iraq has also introduced splits in the
Western alliance and encouraged a new level of American aggression with the
neoconservative intention of acting alone, with or without its allies, and with or
without UN approval.
Global citizenship education realistically must be set against these contemporary
realities. As a form of education it must actively engage with these very issues. In
one sense global citizenship education also offers the prospect of extending both
the ideologies of human rights and multiculturalism, perhaps, post-colonialism, in a
critical and informed way. One thing is sure, as the essays presented in this book
demonstrate so clearly, there can be no one dominant notion of global citizenship
education as notions of ‘global’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘education’ are all contested and
open to further argument and revision. Global citizenship education does not name
the moment of global citizenship or even its emergence so much as the hope of a
form of order where the rights of the individual and of groups, irrespective of race,

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MICHAEL A. PETERS, HARRY BLEE AND ALAN BRITTON

gender, ethnicity or creed, are observed by all governments and become the basis
of participation in new global spaces that we might be tempted to call global civil
society. Indeed this very conception of cosmopolitanism or something close to it
has recently been doing the rounds in legal philosophy by scholars such as David
Held (2003) and Norberto Bobbio who argue that given globalization and its
uncontrollable economic processes the world requires a new form of cosmopolitan
democracy that justifies a set of centralized institutions representing world citizens
in facing economic and political problems that escape the control of the nation
state, together with new administrative structures and legal rights called
‘cosmopolitan rights’. Whether one agrees with this conception of cosmopolitan
democracy or not it certainly provides a platform for education and for the
discussion and debate surrounding a long standing idea in political theory that has
quite staggering implications for the design and conduct of education in an age of
globalization.

ORGANISATION OF THIS BOOK

The book is designed to contribute to an integrated understanding of the

philosophy, theory and pedagogy of Global Citizenship Education. A number of
chapters provide critical definitional and analytical foundations; these examine the
different and contested interpretations of what is meant by such terms as ‘global
citizenship’, ‘globalisation’, ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘citizenship education’. Other
contributions seek to situate these concepts within educational processes and
philosophical lineages, as well as examining the rationale for a global educational
project based on these ideas. This collection also brings together a range of
national and geographical case studies that demonstrate and critically interrogate
some of the policy and curriculum structures that have been deployed to develop
education for global citizenship in a large number of contexts. It is the Editors’
hope that wherever the reader is based, s/he will be able to draw on the breadth of
ideas and perspectives here in ways that can inform, challenge and inspire.

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