Professor Simon Tormey: Transcript
What is global citizenship and what’s at stake in the term? The term global citizenship for me reminds me of a quote by a very famous German philosopher called Hannah Arendt, who was asked what she thought about a global state, and she said, “I’ve no problems with a global state, as long as there remains a space in the world where you can escape from the global police.”
And, when I hear the term ‘global citizenship’, I can’t help thinking about Hannah Arendt’s remark in these terms – that citizenship brings obligations, duties, a particular horizon of expectations which you are expected to fulfil, perform.
And, when you talk about global citizenship, that means there are global expectations, obligations, duties, which are going to be backed by something, backed by some force, backed by some penalty, backed by some sort of policing which will enable those things to be enforced.
So, to me, global citizenship at one level is a question of whether we are in favour of a global state, the global enforcement of a particular set of obligations and duties. That’s one level, and I think that a lot of political theorists think about global citizenship in those kinds of terms – about obligation, duty, enforcement of a particular kind of morality or ethics. And I think what’s quite interesting is that, in a much softer voice, you hear calls for a different kind of global citizenship which doesn’t have what I would call a ‘state-ist’ character: in other words which isn’t about a hierarchical relationship between those who issue commands, those who are the representatives of our best interests, those who represent the universal, if you like, and which tell us (the little people) what it is that we should be doing.
There is another way of thinking about global citizenship, and I think that’s what we call a ‘post-state’ notion. And it’s really what I would also call a kind of fluid, questioning, critical notion of citizenship: which is that, instead of thinking of ourselves as being highly bounded creatures – bounded by nation states, by borders, by identity, by being English or Brazilian or French – the idea of global citizenship in a sense is a way of escaping those very fixed kind of identities. So that one can say, “I’m not just English” or, “I’m not just from Nottingham”, “I’m not just subject to the obligations and duties that that set of identities imposes upon me; I’m also connected, inter-connected, I’m transnational; I’m part of a much larger entity and part of a much larger set of problems about environmental degradation, global poverty, global powerlessness, being subject to forces which are beyond our control”.
And it seems to me one can think of global citizenship, therefore, as a very kind of highly critical way of undermining something which is much more concrete – being a national citizen, a citizen of the EU. By appealing to the globe you can say, “I’m more than just the sum of the identities that I carry in front of me; I’m not just a passport-holder of the UK or France or wherever it happens to be, but I also have a sense of being a part of a cosmos, being part of a much larger set of problems, much larger groups of people. But my sense of being part of that is that I need to know more about it, that I’m curious about it, that I want to enter into a dialogue with those other people.”
So that this ‘post-state’ concept of global citizenship seems to me to require a particular bearing towards other people which is that, “I don’t know best, I don’t know how it is that this global citizenship or this global state is going to operate. And, more than that, I’m hostile to the idea that someone should know how it operates”.
So we have two contrasting ideas, it seems to me. One is of a sense of global citizenship which is of the philosophers, of the UN, probably of lots of clever people in the White House, who want to impose a particular vision. They’ll want to do that through a global state, requiring the rest of us to go along with those things. They want to impose for our good, for our universal benefit, if you like. That’s a very - what I call a - vertical set of relationships.
And then, on the other hand, there is what I would call a ‘post-state’ citizenship, a ‘post-state’ global citizenship, which is a horizontal relationship between people who are aware of the boundedness of themselves and – but – of their desire to explore, to invent, to create with other people, and in particular in connection with the huge problems that confront us. So I would call that a very kind of minor view; it’s minor because you don’t hear it being expressed very often. But some of the more interesting developments in current contemporary politics have that flavour to them.
The World Social Forum is, I think – potentially at least – a kind of forum for a horizontal global citizenship. Whereas the UN would be an example of vertical global citizenship: on the one side nation states, elite representatives; on the other side – people, citizens, ordinary students, young people in particular, who feel that there is more to life than simply representing and being represented; but there’s also an interaction and participation, a feeling of others.
So, for me, this is a very big fault line… ummm… liberals, conservatives, socialists, Marxists on one side; those people who are not quite certain about what it is they want but are happy because that uncertainty offers the possibility of a dialogue with other people on the other. And that, to me, is one of the most important fault lines in global politics.
Be interesting to see how it works out.