Global civil society, world citizenship and education

Publication date: Thursday 02 June 2005

The assignment to act like a world citizen has a long history, within as well as outside humanism. However, recent developments ask for a new interpretation of this concept, as well as a broad international orientation. After all, we now face an unprecedented global interrelationship between economies and political, social and cultural systems.

A radical turn in consciousness is needed for us to really grasp how drastic the changes taking place throughout the world during the past twenty years have been. We no longer can take the nation state as our starting point for our interpretation of international developments. This relationship between national and international levels must be turned round. Only when we adopt a global perspective, we will be able to understand what’s happening to the world and how, as a result of this, both the local community and the nation state itself are subject to radical change.

One of the issues in this book is that these global transformations can evoke increasing feelings of uncertainty and insecurity, which in turn lay the foundation of the call for patriotism and nationalism. But in our time (national) citizenship and world citizenship cannot be opposites; they presuppose one another and represent two sides of the same identity.

This book, based on an issue of the Journal for Humanistics, is a joint initiative of Hivos and the University for Humanistics’ Kosmopolis Institute.