Abstract
This paper calls into questions some assumptions about citizenship which are more or less taken for granted in academic, political and social contexts. Such assumptions include: That there is a clearly defined conceptual link between citizenship and the identity of citizens. That conceptions of citizenship – and, therefore, of citizenship education – inevitably vary from one cultural context to another; That the values underpinning citizenship are public or objective; and That the concept of citizenship has moral or ethical connotations which justify the inclusion of citizenship (or civics) education in school curricula; I argue that with respect to individuals, matters of identity are not directly tied to citizenship or to any other “collectivist” conception. Instead, these identity conditions are grounded in the actual concept of person, and are best construed in relational terms.
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Notes
The search engine: Education Research Complete reports that in the period 2001–2010, the number of journal articles with titles containing “citizenship” was 1194, up from 234 a decade earlier. The corresponding figures for the term “civic” were 813 and 166. The search engine ERIC reports somewhat more modest figures, but also shows a sharp increase.
The key verbs in (2), viz. “believes” and “think” generate semantically opaque referential contexts because their apparent objects – including phlogiston, in this case – are not their actual objects. I can imagine eating a chocolate cake which weighs 100 kg, but I cannot actually eat it because I cannot eat things that do not exist.
I leave aside the question of whether these claims actually make sense! The third example, famously proclaimed by John F. Kennedy in January, 1961, reflects a noble sentiment which might better be expressed as “Ask not what your country can do for you personally; ask what we can do together”. I endorse the value of “the common good”, as long as this term refers to the goods held in common by individuals, rather than the goods allegedly held by some collective which exists in abstraction from individuals.
“In some ways, terrorism is an outgrowth of collectivism taken to its extreme. For collectivist-oriented individuals, the group (e.g., family, nation, religion) takes precedence over the individual,… The terrorist becomes fused with the group he represents, so much so that he is willing to sacrifice his own life to advance the group’s agenda and purposes.” Schwartz 2005: 304.
Hall goes on to posit identification as an ongoing “construction, a process never completed”. I prefer to characterize this project in terms of a shifting or evolving set of identifications and differences but – for reasons which I have tried to make clear – my actual continuing identity is not in question. Hall, in a review of Postmodernist perspectives on persons – specifically, on the challenge of bridging our social and psychological conceptions of the self – remarks on the influence of Paul Hirst’s critique, which is essentially a charge of question-begging (Hall 1996, p. 7): the construction of the self within and through discourse assumes that the self is already constituted as subject. My argument, based primarily on semantic considerations, is along similar lines.
See also Hall 1996, where he reiterates his rejection of any kind of essentialist conception of identity. The view that I am defending could be described as essentialist in the sense that being a human person is the essential property that allows us to track individual persons through space and time.
Martha Nussbaum (1996, p. 5) notes that “at bottom, nationalism and ethnocentric particularism are not alien to one another – but akin”. Nussbaum 1996: 5. One writer who appreciates the distinction between citizenship – as it applies to persons – and national identity is Jűrgen Habermas who points out that freedom in the name of national independence is quite different from the freedom enjoyed (or not) by citizens within a nation: “Citizenship was never conceptually tied to national identity.” (Habermas 1994: 23).
It would be interesting to recreate the less personal interaction among the teenagers, to see if the sense of inter-connectedness established in the personal context might raise the level of the dialogue. Dialogue is a deeply inter-and intra- personal endeavour which is actually part of the process of personal development; however, as this study reveals, dialogue is unlikely even to begin in the absence of any sense of treating the other as a person.
Where Cheng et al. view the relational construction of personhood as challenging the notion of personal identity, I see them as entirely consistent. Cheng et al. 2006, p. 4.
Buber 1971.
The relational conception I am defending places the person at the center of the “Who am I?” debate, thereby distinguishing it from the universalist view called “Cosmopolitanism”, as espoused by Nussbaum and others (Nussbaum et al. 1996). As sympathetic critics have pointed out, Nussbaum’s case against nationalism and patriotism can be restated without recourse to any such universalist commitments. For example, Putnam, replying to Nussbaum, says: “That someone is a fellow being [person], a fellow passenger to the grave, has moral weight for me; ‘citizen of the world does not’.” (Nussbaum et al. 1996, p. 95). I agree also with Gutman, who points out that such phrases as “the community of human beings in the entire world” and “citizens of the world” reflect “another parochial form of nationalism, albeit on a global scale.” (Nussbaum et al. 1996, p. 70). I view the more contemporary term “global citizenship” in the same light.
This commitment is somewhat blurred with the growth of private and home schooling. Such non-public institutions often impose or reflect moral viewpoints that are at odds with those advocated by the state. See Sen 2006: 117. But then, they are also representative of those “large groupings” toward which I am somewhat sceptical.
McLaughlin 1992 sees (1), (2) and (3) in terms of a continuum, ranging from “minimal” to “maximal” conceptions of citizenship. He criticizes British Government policy of the day – and, one can imagine, of today as well – for working with and promoting a muddled conception of citizenship, one whose educational implications in terms of such components as morality and critical thinking are quite unclear.
Not all values “act as justifications for activity”, but we can agree that ethical ones do.
I agree with Kiwan who questions the link between citizenship and values on the grounds that “Human rights are rights of an individual, underpinned by common values for all human beings [read: human persons], rather than rights inherently based on or derived from being a member of a political community or nation-state.” Kiwan 2008: 55.
Many philosophers have been critical of both classical dualism and empiricism. See, for example, Wittgenstein’s argument against the idea of a “private language”, Wittgenstein 1968: §§243 ff. My thinking here follows P. F. Strawson, in his celebrated account of the concept of person as primitive with respect to, and preempting any conceptual gap between, mind and body. Strawson 1959: Ch. 3. I note also that Donald Davidson pursued a line of reasoning about agency and truth that culminated in his rejection of subjectivity as an ontological category.
Habermas may plausibly be interpreted along similar lines. In focusing attention on the role of citizens (of whatever nation) as contributing to an “intersubjectively shared praxis”, he looked forward to a “European Community” which respects democratic and other citizen-related rights, unencumbered by historical national boundaries. His idea of “deliberative democracy” is akin to that of the “community of inquiry”, in so far as the latter can be imagined at a broad social level. Habermas 1994, pp. 24 ff.
See Kiwan 2008 for a comprehensive review of citizenship education in the UK, where this topic has been much debated over the past twenty years. The tensions wrought by cultural and other large-scale divisions are often exacerbated by the tabloid media. Headlines like “Are they British or Muslim?” referring to the young men behind the London subway bombings, assume that a person cannot be both or, at least, that even if he is both, one must take priority over the other. This is an example of Sen’s Fallacy of Singular Affiliation. Further, I suggest that while such questions appear to reflect a concern for individual identity, they actually are grounded in a concern for the identity of the collective(s) in question. The real issue behind the “British or Muslim” question above is not the interests or identities of British citizens or Muslims; rather, it is the interests and identity of Britain or Islam as national and religious institutions, respectively.
I reject what I call the “heirloom” view of values, according to which values are precious, fragile objects handed down from generation to generation, with a stern admonition not to examine them too carefully lest they fall apart. Such an ossified, inert conception of values is both popular in the public mind and worthless in educational terms.
The community of inquiry is one type of community of practice (Wenger 1998), but as a normative or prescriptive construct, it guarantees that the practice in question is worthwhile and not destructive or toxic. The CoI has been most fully developed in the literature and practice of Philosophy for Children. See Lipman 2003,, Lipman et al. 1980, Splitter 2007, 2009. For an insightful historical discussion of this concept, see Seixas 1993.
This normative ideal is crucial. Without it, pluralistic and multi-cultural societies face irresolvable difficulties in accommodating moral and cultural traditions which are simply incompatible – either with one another or with the prevailing state or government framework. Teaching children to think for themselves will amount to little if it is not part of the culture of every educational institution. A similar point is made, in no uncertain terms, by Sen, in his critique of governments and societies that encourage the formation of narrowly-sectarian school communities in the name of cultural pluralism (2006, p. 117). Sen is critical of the agendas of such communities, which are likely to be inimical to open, structured inquiry and the skills and dispositions associated with it. Although he does not refer specifically to classroom dynamics, he emphasizes the importance of teaching children how to reason and make good choices, decisions and judgments. The better option is right before our eyes – at least for those living in large urban centers: it is the institution of public schooling which, inevitably, brings together just the kinds of diversity that are needed for genuine inquiry. With a multitude of nations, cultures, religions and other categories right there in the classroom, teachers have a wonderful opportunity to apply the principle that we find out who we truly are through being one among others.
Leung and Yuen 2009 cite a study in which students at a Hong Kong secondary school were encouraged to negotiate many issues, including their own style of school uniform, within a context in which such actions as “Changing natural colour of the hair” were simply ruled as unacceptable!
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Paper originally presented at International Conference on ‘Governance and Citizenship in Asia: Paradigms and Practices,’18–19 March 2011 Hong Kong. revised September 2011.
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Splitter, L.J. Asking Some Hard Questions About Citizenship, Morality and Identity. Public Organiz Rev 12, 255–275 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-012-0183-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-012-0183-x