Opinion

Are You a 'Global Citizen'?

Really? What does that mean?

By Michael Byers, 5 Oct 2005, TheTyee.ca

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[Editor's note: Michael Byers, author of War Law: Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict and professor of international law at the University of British Columbia, delivered this talk on campus earlier this week.]

The term "global citizenship" is being used with increased frequency, especially in Canada. In 2004, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation organized a roundtable on the promotion of an "active global citizenship". In a recent issue of Canadian Geographic, Pico Iyer wrote: "Canada has become the spiritual home, you could say, of the very notion of an extended, emancipating global citizenship." Here in Vancouver, Martha Piper emphasizes: "As a major research-intensive public university, UBC has a responsibility to provide educational and research programs of the highest intellectual quality that will contribute to educating global citizens."

But what does global citizenship mean? If there's one thing that millennia of philosophy and literature have taught us, it's that words-and our choice of words-matter. Words provoke and shape social, political and economic change. Words are complex, contingent and open to multiple meanings. And what better place to question, explore and debate words-and the ideas expressed through them-than at a university, an institution of higher learning, a cathedral of ideas built on an ever-growing, ever-shifting foundation of words? Today, I want to seize on the opportunity provided by Martha Piper in her invocation of global citizenship at UBC, to open the term up to argument, in the marketplace of ideas.

Millions without nations

Let's begin by asking what citizenship means. My Canadian citizenship gives me the right to reside, vote, express my opinion, associate with others, travel freely within and leave and enter this country. It does not give me the right to reside, vote, express my opinion or associate with others outside this country; indeed, it does not give me the right to enter any other country. If such a thing as global citizenship exists, it clearly doesn't amount to the rights of national citizenship, transposed to the planetary level. There is no world government, since the UN is little more than a collection of member-states, many of them non-democratic. And there are many parts of this world where the local inhabitants have no right to reside, vote, express opinions, associate or travel, not even as part of a national citizenship.

Stateless persons provide the clearest demonstration of the absence of citizenship rights at the international level. Statelessness can arise in several ways. For example, a child with foreign parents might be born in a country that accords citizenship solely on the basis of parentage, and his or her parents' country of origin might accord citizenship solely on the basis of birth taking place on its soil. Or, to take another example, five years ago I acted as an expert witness in a case involving a man, born in Montreal, who in the early 1970s had surrendered his Canadian citizenship to become a US citizen. Decades later, the US government discovered that he had lied in his application for US citizenship. They stripped him of his citizenship and tried to deport him back to Canada. The Government of Canada refused to let him in, on the basis that he was no longer a Canadian. He later died-of old age-under the detention of the US immigration service.

There are tens of millions of stateless persons in the world today. They have no right to reside, vote, express opinions, associate or travel anywhere at all. Their lack of national citizenship, and their consequential, desperate need for governmental assistance and accountability, makes them the most obvious candidates for global citizenship. Yet they languish, many for their entire lives, in the very worst of the third word's shanty towns and refugee camps, without work, education, medical care-without any legal rights or protections at all.

Acts of citizenship

Citizenship could also be understood as being different from-or additional to-the ability to assert legal rights against institutions of power and governance. It might mean something as simple as engaging in the multiple spheres of community within which every individual lives. From this perspective, merely attending this lecture is an act of citizenship, and all the more so if you ask a challenging question at the end. And engagement in community could imply a certain concern for others, an awareness of our human commonality. And so, volunteering at a soup kitchen in the Downtown Eastside could be an act of citizenship, as could a donation to tsunami relief. In some sense, such acts of citizenship might exist on a broad spectrum, from Au Sung Su Chi's choice-to spend her life under house arrest in Rangoon rather than concede her peoples' claim to democracy-to your choice of saying "thank you" to the next bus driver or janitor you see.

And from at least one "communitarian" perspective, citizenship is as much about obligations as it is about rights, for example the obligation to pay taxes, to serve in the military, to obey laws and respect authority. The move to supplement the discourse of human rights with the language of obligations achieved prominence during the 1990s, with leadership from a mix of political figures including Helmut Kohl, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Today, curiously, one finds it in the mission statement of UBC, which states that students "will acknowledge their obligations as global citizens". The mission statement makes no mentioning of rights. Nor does it recognize that the acknowledgment of at least some obligations might-perhaps should be-a matter of individual choice. Arguably, it seeks to turn citizens into subjects.

So, what could the word global mean? I hold a research chair in global politics, and it was always my assumption that global means planetary, the entire world. But I'm certainly biased about this, since the politics that I study involve interactions between and amongst nation states, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, transnational corporations and even terrorist groups, quite literally around the world. But global could mean something much more local, even personal. Global could mean spherical, well-rounded, so that describing someone as global would mean that they were widely-read, holistic in their appreciation of the world around them, and therefore understanding of the situations and perspectives of others. Global could even mean adaptable, like a travel plug for a hairdryer or electric razor. In this sense, a person who was global could readily fit into various positions, locations, even countries and cultures.

Small, fickle world

Things become even more complex when we join citizenship and global together. Those who invoke the term global citizenship could be thinking of very different things, or combinations of different things. They could be thinking about people who are well read, generally aware, engaged in their communities and concerned and caring for others, the kinds of people that universities have always claimed to produce through the provision of a good "liberal arts" education. This would seem to be the approach originally taken by Martha Piper, to quote from her Killam Lecture in 2002:

[E]ach of us dwells, in effect, in two communities-the local community of our birth and the broader community of human argument and aspiration.

It is the values inherent in these two communities coming together within an individual that I believe constitutes global citizenship. In other words, we need not give up our special affiliations and identities … but we do need to work to make all human beings part of our community of dialogue and concern …

But it's just as likely that those who invoke the term "global citizenship" are thinking about the growth of exchanges and interdependencies-including shared economic, environmental and security vulnerabilities-among the political entities and peoples of Planet Earth. As the result of low-cost airfares, the Internet, the hegemony of the English language and the rise of the transnational corporation, we're increasingly sharing social, cultural, identity-forming experiences. David Beckham is no longer British, Nicole Kidman is no longer Australian, McDonalds and Microsoft are no longer American. The searing memory of the collapse of the twin towers is common to us all.

Collective responsibility

It's even possible that those who invoke the term global citizenship-and many of those who hear the term invoked-are thinking about some sense of collective responsibility that unites the peoples of this planet. Such thinking is certainly manifested, sometimes quite powerfully: in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001; in the first few weeks following the tsunami of December 26, 2004, and in the buildup to the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland, this past July.

But it's also true that such manifestations are episodic, as dependent on the fickle attention of the "global" media as on any genuine, sustained core of common concern. While western governments obsess about the threat of global terrorism, the concentration of carbon dioxide in our global atmosphere is rapidly approaching 375 parts per million-almost 35 percent higher than pre-industrial levels. And such a dramatic change in the atmosphere-the thin, fragile, life-giving envelope of this planet-is leading inexorably to changed rainfall patterns, extreme weather events and rising sea levels that will imperil hundreds of millions of innocent people, especially in the developing world.

But how many of us actually consider the inevitable impact of climate change on our daily lives, and the cumulative impact of our daily lives on climate change? How many of us drove a car to work or school today? How many of us fly regularly on business or vacation without giving a second thought to the acutely deleterious impact that burning jet-fuel at altitude has on the atmosphere and, with time, the devastating effects it will have on the billions of people who already live at or below sea level, from New Orleans to Tavulu, from Bangladesh to Richmond, BC?

Isn't it ironic that our country, in which the term "global citizenship" has become most prevalent, is also the country that produces more carbon dioxide, per capita, than all but a handful of other nation states?

Rescue fads

Earlier this year, while billions of dollars were being raised for tsunami relief, food shortages in Niger took 2.5 million people to the brink of starvation, with pleas from the United Nations being almost totally ignored. Without denigrating the importance of tsunami relief, it was for a few brief weeks the latest fad. And fads come and go. Six months after the tsunami, the US government had paid out only 43 percent of the money it pledged, as compared to Japan (100%) and the European Union (95%). Canada was worse than the US at 37 percent; Australia (with the second largest pledge) was even worse at less than 20 percent. Millions of people still need assistance because of the tidal wave, but the fact of the matter is that they're yesterday's story. And sometimes stories don't even become stories, or at least not in time. In Malawi today, 5 million people are facing the prospect of starvation. In August, the United Nations appealed for $88 million in emergency aid for them; as of last month, not one penny had been received.

In Darfur, hundreds of thousands of people have been terrorized by their own national government and its mounted militia, the Janjaweed. Canada's response has been to send money to the African Union, an organization that has said it will only intervene with the full consent and cooperation of the very same government that is responsible for the atrocities. And the atrocities continue: last week, more than thirty people were murdered in a camp, monitored by African Union peacekeepers, to which they'd fled in search of safety. Sudanese government aircraft participated in the assault.

In Zimbabwe, the average life expectancy is just 34 years, as a result of both HIV/AIDS and extraordinarily bad government. Yet Robert Mugabe, the tyrant who's turned one of Africa's most bountiful countries into a failed state, remains firmly in power. In May, he launched a slum-clearance programme know as Operation Murambatsvina-Shona for "drive out trash"-that destroyed the homes of 700,000 already impoverished people, many of them children. Yet nobody, anywhere, is even talking about the possibility of using military force to achieve regime change.

How many of you have contacted your Member of Parliament about these crises? It's not difficult. Here in Vancouver Quadra, your MP is Stephen Owen. The number at his constituency office is (604) 664-9220. You might want to call him after this lecture and ask him to explain the difference between Kosovo (where Canada participated in a humanitarian intervention in 1999) and Darfur, or between Kosovo and Zimbabwe. You might even ask him about the purpose of this country's $14 billion annual military budget.

Profiting from global misery

In Burma, an eight-year long government campaign against minority ethnic groups has destroyed nearly 3000 villages and forced hundreds of thousands of people into internment camps where they are raped, tortured and forced to work as slaves-yes, slaves. Burma might seem like another planet to you but it's a profitable source of revenue for Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines, thanks to a joint venture that Ivanhoe has with the Burmese military junta. But don't blame the directors and shareholders of Ivanhoe Mines, who are acting entirely within the law. Blame yourselves, as citizens of this country and residents of this province, for doing nothing to prevent our democratically constituted laws from permitting such corporate behaviour. I wonder what the people of Burma would say if they heard that we were gathered here, in Vancouver, talking about global citizenship?

Some of you might think I'm over-dramatizing the situation, and that our governments have made real progress towards implementing a form of global citizenship on our behalf. You might point to developments in international human rights and international criminal law, or to the related concepts of "human security" and a "responsibility to protect".

As one of the lawyers who worked for the coalition of human rights organizations in the Pinochet Case seven years ago, I'm not one to denigrate those developments. But I'm acutely conscious that we've a long way to go. Amnesty International estimates that some 140 national governments are involved in torture. After the tragedies of Abu Ghraib Prison, Bagram Airbase, Guantanamo Bay and Canada's own Maher Arar, we know that the governments of the United States and Canada belong on that list. Two of the worst perpetrators of genocide in Bosnia-Herzogovina-Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic-remain at large 12 years after the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The International Criminal Court, created in 1998, has yet to issue even one indictment, let alone hear a case. And two weeks ago in New York, the UN General Assembly endorsed a version of the responsibility to protect that is so tightly constrained that it precludes humanitarian interventions when the Security Council is unable or unwilling to act-which, if you recall the Kosovo intervention, was precisely why a previous Canadian government sought to develop the concept in the first place.

And even if we've made some progress on some rights, how much good are those rights to the one billion people who live on less than one dollar per day, or the almost three billion people who live on less than two dollars per day? Most of us will spend more today on coffee than half of humanity has to spend on food, accommodation, fuel for cooking and heating, health care and education combined. Are those who invoke global citizenship proposing a radical system of economic redistribution that would eliminate global poverty? And if not, why not?

Ruthless citizens?

In fact, the situation on the global citizenship front is even worse than I've described so far. For not only have we failed to live up to what some of us might consider a benevolent vision of global citizenship, we might also be ignoring a potentially dark side to the term. For instance, it's entirely possible that some of those who invoke the term global citizenship are thinking of the ruthlessly capitalist economic system that now dominates the planet, where goods, capital and services move seamlessly across borders, where corporations have abdicated any fidelity to individual nation-states, where workers are abandoned whenever it makes cold economic sense to outsource their jobs overseas, and where a small but growing cadre of multi-national lawyers, accountants and executives stride boldly from business-class lounge to business-class lounge, equipped with the Economist Magazine, a Blackberry, and an LLM or MBA from an American, British or even a Canadian university such as UBC.

The world's largest transnational corporations are now more powerful than all but a handful of nation-states, and even those states-think of George W. Bush's relationship with Exxon and Halliburton-are heavily influenced by powerful corporations. Believe it or not, some of these corporations have explicitly branded themselves as "global citizens". Now, how many of you have read or seen Joel Bakan's The Corporation? Is this what you want global citizenship to be?

Three weeks ago, I hosted a symposium on the "meanings of global citizenship" with the support of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation. At that symposium, Eunice Sahle, a Kenyan-born Canadian who teaches at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, argued that those who invoke global citizenship tend not to address the deep power structures that constrain any potential for change on the part of those who would claim greater influence for civil society, for concepts of redistributive justice, for the voices and interests of those who live in our world's least developed states.

What we need to talk about

If we're going to have a serious discussion of global citizenship, we need to be talk frankly about the "Washington Consensus" that permeates the hugely influential policies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the G-7 group of the most powerful industrialized states.

We need to talk about TRIPS-the WTO agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights-and agricultural tariffs and subsidies, and conditionality, and the appallingly low levels of overseas development assistance. And in that context, isn't it ironic that Canada, the country in which global citizenship is most often invoked, is the country most frequently derided for failing to exercise leadership on the 0.7 percent of GDP target for overseas development assistance, a target pioneered by one of our great former prime ministers, Lester B. Pearson?

If we're going to talk about global citizenship, let's talk frankly about how and where power vests and is wielded in today's world, about our own country's complicity in the global power game, and about the hypocrisies and hollowness of less rigorous or more benevolent conceptions of global citizenship, whether at UBC or elsewhere.

Bush's world, and Point Grey

At the same symposium, Barbara Arneil, a political scientist from UBC, suggested that the term global citizenship could even be invoked deliberately and specifically in support of George W. Bush's foreign policy. The U.S. president, after all, professes to be seeking "democracy and freedom" for all, to be bringing at least some of the rights enjoyed by American citizens-to vote in national elections, to worship, to buy and sell-to all the people of this planet. As Arneil explains, the "aspiration to liberal empire" has, as one of its central features, a "civilizing mission"-a mission expressed by Bush in the following words in November 2003: "[T]he United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. … The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country."

Of course, it's easy to criticize George W. Bush. But, in doing so, we have to be careful not to become arrogant ourselves. David Ley, a geographer here at UBC, has pointed out that those who invoke global citizenship risk isolation and hubris, since they typically do so from a position of class privilege-such as the gentrified older neighborhoods of Manhattan, North London, Sydney, and yes, Dunbar and Point Grey.

I wrote this speech in a coffee shop on West 10th that is frequented by white 30-something moms pushing $500 baby-joggers, most of who undoubtedly think of themselves as progressive, cosmopolitan and environmentally-friendly, but who probably wouldn't dream of taking their babies for a stroll through the Downtown Eastside, or the slums of San Paulo, or even forgoing the annual mid-winter vacation in Honolulu or Acapulco. As Radhika Desai of the University of Victoria has observed, the parochialism and paternalism associated with many invocations of global citizenship is the same parochialism and paternalism that was linked to imperialism and colonialism.

'Take back Global Citizenship'

James Tully, a world-renowned philosopher, also at the University of Victoria, has made the important point-to which I alluded earlier-that one can conceive of democracy in narrow or broad terms. And of course, democracy exists on a spectrum, from merely voting once every four or five years to playing an active, daily role in the political and social communities in which we live. Global citizens, whatever they are, can't be content to remain within the narrow, formal constraints of a voting democracy, since democracy of this kind simply doesn't exist on the global level. Whatever global citizens are, they must be engage in other manners and forms of democracy, to be activists of some kind.

It is in this context-of a potentially broad and active conception of global citizenship-that I wish to speak now to the many young and hopefully still idealistic people in this room. The term global citizenship is not only complex and contingent; it's also relatively new and therefore still open to appropriation. So here's what I think you should do. Just as women have decided to "take back the night", you should decide to "take back global citizenship", to make it what you want it to be, rather than what Martha Piper, George W. Bush, or some corporate advertising guru might wish to make it. Now, I can't presume to speak for you, but here's one possible definition that might possibly appeal:

Global citizenship empowers individual human beings to participate in decisions concerning their lives, including the political, economic, social, cultural and environmental conditions in which they live. It includes the right to vote, to express opinions and associate with others, and to enjoy a decent and dignified quality of life. It is expressed through engagement in the various communities of which the individual is a part, at the local, national and global level. And it includes the right to challenge authority and existing power structures-to think, argue and act-with the intent of changing the world.

Deciding whether you like this definition, and deciding how it should be improved, will require an honest and rigorous conversation, a debate, a straight-up intellectual contestation of the kind that could and should be occurring in this university, a contestation that you can make happen, in your classrooms, in the pub, on the Internet, on the steps and in the corridors of political and economic power. All you have to do is care about words and ideas, and the impact they're having on your world, and want to turn that caring into committed engagement and action. Global citizenship is a powerful term because those who invoke it do so to provoke and justify action. And understanding the power of words, and your own ability to appropriate and give them new meaning, is a first step towards acquiring power yourself.

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of War Law: Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict (Douglas & McIntyre, 2005). [Tyee]

37 Comments:

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  • rockyvoids

    6 years ago

    Comments on "Are You a 'Global Citizen'?"

    Words, indeed. Global Citizenship, Global Warming, Global Village, Global Policeman.

    Aah, --- Global Sheriff? -- George W. Bush.

    Oh boy, are we in trouble.

  • BC Mary

    6 years ago

    Michael Byers, thank you! what a profound statement of the issues we face. If only you had gone a step farther ...

    Ronald B. Wright has shown us the ultimate test for the global citizen. He says* that we know the reason why 4 previous civilizations flourished then self-destructed within 1,000 years ... and we (the 5th) are the first to know how to prevent it.

    What it requires, however, is global citizenship and a way of (a) informing the populace and (b) enacting their decision (or not) to do what's necessary to save ourselves.

    I broached the subject with a man, reading a book, one day. He replied (without a hint of irony) that it was a question we must ask God to take care of. Then he walked out, when Right then, my heart sank at the thought of activating a sense of personal responsibility in the hearts of all people.

    Michael Byers, could you please talk a bit more, about this?

    * A Short History of Progress by Ronald B. Wright.

  • BC Mary

    6 years ago

    something got deleted. sentence should read:

    care of. Then he walked out, when I yelped "But God has already had 4 opportunities to save civilizations!" Right then, my heart sank at the thought of activating ...

  • shizu00

    6 years ago

    Thank you, Mr. Byers, for your interesting article. I respectfully submit my flawed and humble response to contribute my opinion to the discussion.

    Unfortunately, I believe you talk of revolution, though perhaps not of the “peasants carrying torches and pitchforks to storm the castle gates” sort. I say unfortunate because the term "revolution" has become such a darling phrase of Madison Avenue (much like "global citizen") that it is invoked to sell sneakers or computers and effectively drained of any emotional power. And it seems to me that you speak of important things, a conceptual revolution where the term “global citizen” has true meaning in a political, economic and ideologic context.

    But revolution in this day and age seems very difficult to pull off. There are too many competing interests, too many bells and whistles to distract and confuse, too many opportunities to dilute any concerted focus of individuals with an intent for change. And I freely admit I am as guilty as any other -- there is too much to do so I do nothing at all, I am not a member of Greenpeace or Amnesty International, and live quite contentedly very close to whichever West 10th coffee shop you wrote your thought-provoking talk.

    The difficulty I see is that we are in an instant-gratification society, and change, be it revolutionary or ever-so-slight, comes over great time, energy and pain. It comes with focused and deliberate manoeuvring, gaining proponents with a shared vision and commitment.

    Another difficulty I see is the apparent systemic disenfranchisement that individuals embrace. I know I vote for what seems the “lesser of evils” rather than in the best candidate for the responsibility of stewarding my constitutional rights and social interests. Governance has become a career rather than a contribution, where politics have taken over from public service.

    You state we need to “take back global citizenship” and I am unsure how to do so. Being is acting, and there are no structures within which to act. Shall the “Global Citizen Party" be formed to build political change? Shall the "Global Citizen Corporation" be formed to create economic change? Shall the "Church of the Global Citizen" be formed for ideologic change? Or all of them, or some as-yet-unknowable organizational structure incorporating them all? Or should the question of definition be left for debate in academia, thus avoiding the problem of action altogether?

    Thank you again for the interesting article.

  • Maxwell

    6 years ago

    Off the top of my befuddled head - leave it all to natural evolution. Be patient. It will happen some future millenium from now.

  • KWD

    6 years ago

    Global citizenship isn’t something that is invoked; each of us enters this world with our global citizenship intact (in every sense of the word). Unfortunately, we are coerced (some would say by design) into spending the rest of our lives relinquishing that birthright. By the time we leave our teens we (with the exception of a small group of insightful folks, most of whom can be found in various penal and mental institutes) have given it away, without question or hesitation, and without any sense of remorse, to the corporation and the state.

    Michael Byers, when delivering his talk at the UBC campus, presumably to various cohorts of intellectuals, was talking those who have lost all vestige of global citizenship. They have both completely acquiesced and accepted their place as citizens of the corporation and the state, or they are eager to do so.

  • scylla

    6 years ago

    ShizuOO, you've already witnessed a revolution, the collapse of Soviet Russia when hundreds of civilians armed only with flowers faced down armed police and troops. It was then replayed in several other countries in the USSR.

    The Russian's inspiration came from thirty years prior to that, the passive, non-violent anti-war demonstrations which faced down armed police and troops, bringing an end to the VietNam War - until then an undreamed-of opposition to the State. It had taken heart from M L King's successful Civil Rights demonstrations and marches, which also faced down armed police and troops.

    They in turn had in turn learned from Ghandi's use of Passive Resistance in unseating the British Raj, 1920-49. He had developed the idea from Christ's words and the writings of Tolstoy and Thoreau.

    Despite the fact that the 60s were the template for the civil unrest that saw the dissolution of the hated USSR, the Fascist American media which pays lip service to the "power of the People" has succeeded in having newer generations of Americans believe the 60s were only a time of "sex and drugs".

    The lesson we are NOT to learn is that we live in a world that functions almost entirely on paper. If the legions of ordinary people who keep this system functioning were simply not to show up for work, as they did in Russia, the system would collapse overnight, and no amount of weaponry could fix it.

    In this modern age, ShizuOO, guns are no longer necessary.

  • Fiat lux

    6 years ago

    I agree with your analysis, scylla...... the only way to go is peaceful, passive resistance. I'm a great admirer of Gandhi and, having seen and survived war, I don't want to see any violence even for so called good reasons.

    I also agree with much of what Byers says, but unfortunatley, he gets lost in his own rhetoric, without offering practical solutions. Not surprising from lawyer, but unfortunately, the world runs on papers, documents, facts and figures.

    My wife has lived in 5 countries and had, or still has (?) 4 citizenships, I in 4 countries with 3 citizenships. We lived under every known political ideology and have also been stateless refugees for 8 years of our lives. My mother was gangraped by Soviet troops in Budapest, my grandparents died from the effects of starvation under Soviet occupation. I fought against the Soviets with arms, underground and in writing for 45 years. So, we have seen more than most people can even imagine, but at the same time, we've also spent most of our lives in search for practical solutions, hoping to live to see a better world .

    We're extremely happy with our Canadian citizenships and wouldn't change them for anything, or any other. We're also very happy and comfortable, healthy and productive, probably more than we would be in any other country.

    At the same time, having been through the mill, having survived starvation, persecution, seen the ultimate filth of history, we're deeply concerned about global happenings. This is why I'm spending hours every day reading and writing on economics and politics, when I could do far more enjoyable work.

    Being a practical person, I would like to know what Byers is really talking about, apart from nice words and flowery phrases? I left the academic world after 7 years at Cambridge, as I couldn't stand the hot air any longer, and became a treadesman, exactly for this reason.

    We know exactly what and how it should be done, what economic principles and ecological protection we need to save the world and the 25 million killed every year by the present neoclassical market economy forced us, but how do we get the ball rolling ?

    To start with, how do we clean up the university economics departments teaching neoclassical economics. Including at UBC and SFU et al ? Does Byers have any ideas ?

    Until then, in spite of his long winded article, Byers still doesn't say anything practical. Which is a pity, because there's much worthwhile material there, once it is sorted out and reduced to reasonable proportions, with practical solutions.

    Ed Deak, Big Lake.

  • skeptikool

    6 years ago

    Quote:
    Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
    That wants it down.     Robert Frost

    When no borders exist, we may will global citizens.

  • skeptikool

    6 years ago

    Quote:
    Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
    That wants it down.     Robert Frost

    When no borders exist, we will have global citizens

  • Fiat lux

    6 years ago

    Yes, the global citizens of a globalized corporate dictatorship. Democracy can only exist from the ground up and that means local decision making, not orders from far away.

    There's already major trouble with EU citizenships, where the decision making powers have been taken away from localities and nations and handed over to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, who seem to be going wild with their powers and there's nothing to stop them.

    It doesn't work, except through the force of arms, or economic blackmail. We have strong fences with our neigbours and repair them when they break and are the best of friends, always ready to help each other. Without fences we'd be fighting.

    I believe in strong local decision making powers and full cooperation with others. National citizenship in democratic societies doesn't have to mean attacking and colonizing each other.

    Ed Deak, Big Lake.

  • shizu00

    6 years ago

    I apologize if my comments seem like a call to arms in a flare of trumpets. That was not my intent at all, and I categorically denounce the use of violence as an instrument for change. I agree with scylla that revolution closer to the original use of the word, rather than to describe a new cleaning product or self-help book, has and remains a part of our recent history, and does not require guns to be effective. And thank goodness for that.

    My use of the term revolution is meant to illustrate my opinion of the magnitude of Mr. Byers request: to put the term “global citizen” into a common context, one to be understood and applied in real terms by all.

    I admit I like to think of myself as a “global citizen”, in that I wish no harm on any other and hope everyone everywhere can live their lives with dignity and contentedness. Yet though the world as it stands now is not like this for all, do I do anything to invoke change? I am the passive non-violent global citizen, trusting in the government and the corporations and the ideologies to do the right thing, to save us and nurture us and tell the world that we are all good global citizens.

    In this context, the revolution I spoke of is the personal one, the one within. I am wondering if passive non-violent revolution is being used against us. Am I being told what I want to hear so that I remain more worried about whether Nick and Jessica are going to get back together than whether the logistics of feeding the people of Niger are in place? I am wondering if an active non-violent revolution is the new path. I am wondering if change to the system must come from within the system itself, whatever that may be.

    But this is why I believe “global citizen” will remain as diluted of meaning as “revolution” has become. In my opinion: It is easier to find ten-thousand individuals willing to demonstrate in the streets (and be ignored) than to find one individual who will enter the political arena without thinking of the retirement package. It is easier to find a million people to write a letter to an oppressive leader (to be ignored) than to find one corporation that will look beyond the next executive performance bonus. It is easier to find a billion people to sit back passively in trust of the organizational structures around them doing the right thing (and being fed what they want to hear) than to find one person who stands up and says, “I am a global citizen,” and knows what that means, how it applies to everyone else, and how to change the world to make it so in real terms.

    Thank you, Fiat lux, for kindly sharing your history and perspective. I share your desire for reasonable proportions and practical solutions, and wish the article by Mr. Byers offered more of both.

    All that aside, I suppose the question before us is whether or not the definition of "global citizen", as defined in the article by Mr. Byers, is valid and suitable to our individual perspectives of what a "global citizen" should be. What to do about it is another question.

  • scylla

    6 years ago

    Yes, fiat lux, the answer is to be found in local control, as EF Schumacher noted in Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered.(1973)

    Gro Marlem Brundtland repeated the message in Our Common Future, a 1987 UN Report widely referred to today as the Brundtland Report.

    The idea is that if local areas become self-sufficient, they're freed from the economic shackles and the cyclic downturns visited upon ordinary people by multinational corporations.

    We see this put into place through such plans as the 100 mile Diet just reported on TYEE, Barter associations on Van Is, Downtown Eastside groups,Co-ops, Woodlot Associations and Community Forests in the Imterior, and so on.

    We are not above the need for such actions - in thinking such programmes are just for use in Third World countries. The very same things which preferentially favour economic elites in those countries are operating full tilt here too, and you don't have to be a raving radical to recognise them.

  • scylla

    6 years ago

    Sorry s/b Gro Harlem Brundtland.

  • Fiat lux

    6 years ago

    I have both of Schumacher's books from way back and they were, along with an interview I've read with Herman Daly in the Mother Earth News about 25 years ago, that started me off in economics in 1982. By '85 I realized that neoclassical economics were a huge con job that can lead only to increasing disasters and could possibly destroy the human race.

    What I find amazing, although not surprising, after over 60 years of reading and experiencing history, that people, some with high education, can still believe that neoclassical market capitalism can work ? Are they all criminals, or just plain stupid, in face of the daily, brutal evidence all round us ?

    Ed Deak.

  • shizu00

    6 years ago

    I am going to avail myself of greater minds to satisfy my curiosity.

    What are the alternatives to our current "neoclassical market capitalism"?

  • skeptikool

    6 years ago

    Fiat lux,

    Quote:
    We have strong fences with our neigbours and repair them when they break and are the best of friends, always ready to help each other. Without fences we'd be fighting.

    If you mean your neighbours at Big Lake, that's one thing, perhaps involving livestock, dogs etc., but if you mean our U.S. neighbour, they may not be shooting yet but the bloody horse-traders have certainly declared economic war - and do you honestly believe that some of those massive border tie-ups are not, at times, contrived according to the dispute of the day?

    See what will happen at borders if we really butt heads over the marijuana issue.

  • Fiat lux

    6 years ago

    Reply to both above......

    We had a reasonably good economic system at work under the Keynesian theory with corporations making good profits, small business thriving in a very great variety and their employees also benefiting. It wasn't perfect, but it could have been updated for everybody's benefit.

    Why do we have the "neoclassical market economy system" ? The quickest and easiest way to find answers is to go to google and type in " Trilateral Commission", "Bilderberger Conferences", "World Economic Forum", "David Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages", "Neoclassical Economic Theory".

    Also, if anybody's adventurous enough, go to a library and take out Adam Smith's "An Inquiry Into The Nature And Causes Of the Wealth Of Nations", known as the "Wealth of Nations" then look up in the index "Invisible hand" and "Self interest", both in the same short paragraph, then find Milton and Rose Friedman's "Free to Choose" and look up how they've distorted Smith's words and concepts.

    This is enough for a starter and it shows the arguments for both sides. In any case, I no longer believe in any ideology based economic theory and have been examining the possibilities of a strictly energy efficiency based system for many years. As a matter of fact, I just received a copy of a paper in the mail by a Danish professor working on the same principle. I also still hold the 1991 copyright on the only scientifically correct defintion of economic efficiency.

    On the subject of fences, we had a good system of national fences before the free trade mania, also instigated by the neoclassical market theory, with most products already tariff free, but enough tariffs to safeguard our own industries. Globalization is a crimial act for world control by multinational corporations.

    Ed Deak, Big Lake.

  • skeptikool

    6 years ago

    For the sake of argument and, of course, discussion, I feel it would be a most valuable exercise if all nations were to reduce and even eliminate all global trade excepting that which would initially be extremely harmful to developing nations.

    Is Canada incapable of designing and producing it own cars? $50,000-vehicles from Germany, for instance, do nothing for the insurance costs that we all share.

    Much trade is frivolous and does nothing for the environment.

    When the U.S. strengthened its sanctions against Cuba, and the USSR was less able to assist that nation, Cuba found strengths and resourcefullness that it didn,t know it had.

    Less global trade should make us no less global citizens. Tourism should thrive as ever - and might even become more affordable.

  • Fiat lux

    6 years ago

    Quite correct, skepti, I've been an advocate of self sufficiency from the individual to the national levels forever. We've practiced and are are still practicing it in our own lives with excellent, very rewarding results. And the costs are minimal. The difference is that when other people were wasting their money on expensive junk and holidays, we were buying land and tools virtually penny by penny. Now we're sitting pretty and very happy. The same can apply at the regional and national levels, especially in Canada, the richest country on Earth.

    Ed Deak.

  • scylla

    6 years ago

    Yes, Skep, Cuba is a good example for me too. Despite the unrelenting efforts of the US to destroy Cuba's economics, it has toughed it out and wound up with a citizenry which enjoys standards in health care, education, infant death, crime, and on and on, which far surpass those of the US.

    Of course it also lags far behind in consumer goods :-), and has also been accused of a lack of political freedoms, which I put down to the result of a constant seige by US media and CIA operatives bent upon "destabilisation".

    But I doubt that if Cubans were fully aware of the inferior status for people of colour in the US, of their preponderance in the jails, and of the draconian drug laws and the Patriot Act which severely limit freedoms, again particularly for coloured people, no amount of propaganda would cause them to change their minds.

  • gaulois

    6 years ago

    Before taking back "global citizenship", we should take back our medias, academias and democracies. Think globally, act locally, they said.

    Problem however is that the majority refers "bread&games" and that is what our medias, academias and democraties cater to. What a puzzle!

  • ROBBINS Sce Research

    6 years ago

    October 9, 2005 ROBBINS Sce

    October 9, 2005

    ROBBINS Sce Research (1998)
    “A history of accuracy”
    robbinssceresearch.com

    For immediate Release

    Highlights
    · Republican support down 10%; Democratic support up marginally.
    · Slight majority of Americans still support war in Iraq.

    Question #1-For which of the following political parties did you vote in the last U.S. Presidential election November 2004? Republicans-49%; Democrats-47%; Other-04%

    Question #2-Which political party are you presently supporting? Republicans-44%; Democrats-46%; Other/Undecided-10%

    Question #3-In your opinion what is the appropriate timetable to see the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq? U.S. armed forces should get out of Iraq immediately-44%; U.S. forces should get out of Iraq when it is the proper time to do so-46%; Undecided-10%

    Question #4-U.S. President Bush has said all along that before getting out of Iraq, it was necessary to establish the proper infrastructure in that country including developing Iraq’s own security, the Rule of Law etc. In light of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and in particular the chaos and anarchy which followed, can you now understand why it is so important to ensure proper elements of good government are established in Iraq? Yes-47%; No-48%; Undecided-05%

    Commentary-The Republican Party is down 10% since the last United States federal general election. By contrast, Democratic Party popularity is down by only 2%.

    Although the number of respondents who are of the opinion that U.S. forces should get out of Iraq (immediately) has increased significantly, a slight majority of respondents are not prepared to give up the fight in Iraq just yet.

    Respondents are split on our last question, which presents a ‘parallel experience rationale’ for maintaining armed forces in Iraq.

    Insight-Despite the comments from anti-Bush advocates U.S. citizens are not accepting the theory that the problems with Katrina should be absolutely linked with the circumstances involving Iraq. However those that do support this theory are among those respondents who want the U.S. out of Iraq ‘immediately’.

    Given this, it can be reasonably hypothesized that the horrific damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and the anarchy, which followed, has played a role in galvanizing a base of support against the war in Iraq, to the extent that AT A MINIMUM U.S. citizens are getting sick of all the destruction and bad news. (War is never the bearer of any good news until it is announced the war is over).

    A random digit dialing throughout the continental United States, Hawaii and Alaska of 1,344 U.S. respondents between September 10th 2005 and October 1st, 2005. This poll features a margin of error of 2.2%, 19 times out of 20 @97% competency. An independent 3rd party paid for the data collection associated with this poll. ROBBINS is not connected to any mainstream news agency.

    Glen P. Robbins

    (604) 942-3757
    -30-

  • scylla

    6 years ago

    RE bread and "circuses", the clue there Gaulois, as Farley Mowat reported re a conversation with himself and a Soviet bureaucrat, is found in the neocon control of the media.

    In Russia, he was told, all the news is controlled by the gov't, with an unmistakeable signature showing in every word, a la Pravda.

    In the US, the gov't perspective is carefully woven into all entertainment, such as the perennial "boot camp" movies/TV shows aimed at the kids, replete with military-supplied free clips of armament.

    Quote:
    "In order to appeal to the instincts and fundamental notions of the public, the public relations counsel must create news around his ideas. He must isolate ideas and develop them into events so they can be more readily understood and so they may claim attention as news." Edward Bernays, PR expert

  • 1world

    6 years ago

    For those looking for practical action:

    The suggestion to call Stephen Owen's office is a good one. Power to make many changes rests in the hands of politicians. While our record is certainly not perfect, Canada has a proud history of principled support for the UN and the rule of law, but there are also deep pressures on us to ally and integrate ourselves with those who believe the world should be run by the guys with the biggest and best weapons systems. Someone has to resist that trend.

    Quote:
    Don't expect politicians, even good ones, to do your job for you. Politicians are like weather vanes. Our job is to make the wind blow.

    Secondly, beyond elections, another way to influence politicians is to become involved in civil society organizations that have the ability to lobby government. There are thousands to choose from, and a few examples of such organizations are Amnesty International, Project Ploughshares, the United Nations Association, and the World Federalist Movement. These 'global citizen' organizations keep politicians on their toes and do their best to challenge the deep power structures to which Prof. Byers refers.

    The Vancouver Branch of the World Federalist Movement – Canada (http://www.vcn.bc.ca/wfcvb/)meets the 3rd Thursday of every month at the Unitarian Church on Oak St at 49th Ave. Come out, hear some excellent speakers, and get involved in promoting our agenda of building global community and international law. The Movement has lobbyists in Ottawa, in Washington, and at the United Nations. Our program includes supporting international arms control treaties, backing better UN Peace Operations and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, ensuring Canadian compliance with our climate control obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, contributing to the effective functioning of the new International Criminal Court, and democratizing global governance.

    Quote:
    Our job is to gather the kindling wood until such time as a spark sets it off.

  • jbmurray

    6 years ago

    I was a participant in the symposium that Michael organized, and came with a pretty open mind about the notion of a "global citizenship," but left with a rather more negative view, which I rather briefly wrote up here.

    At the very least a "global citizenship" means nothing until the concept of "national citizenship" is repudiated. One movement struggling against the hurdles and obstacles that such citizenship presents is the European Sans Papiers movement.

    More generally, if national citizenship continues even while global citizenship is asserted, then the latter will necessarily be either a second class citizenship (for refugees, the stateless, the undocumented, even simply those from weak states who face more barriers than do citizens from strong states such as Canada), or it will be simply another feather in the cap for people whose rights and sense of security derive from their sense of national belonging.

    It's worth noting, too, that UBC's mission statement calls for the university to produce "exceptional global citizens." So already, it would seem, the way in which the concept is envisaged suggests that all are equal, but some rather more equal than others.

  • jbmurray

    6 years ago

    Apologies about the fact that the html encoding in my previous comment didn't work. But these are the two sites I linked to:

    http://posthegemony.blogspot.com/2005/09/citizenship-global.html
    (my thoughts on global citizenship)
    http://pajol.eu.org/
    (the Sans Papiers movement)

  • scylla

    6 years ago

    Re: http://pajol.eu.org/ Now, if I could only read Italian or French......

  • jbmurray

    6 years ago

    scylla, I'd have thought that if global citizenship means anything, it implies exposing ourselves to the Babelic confusion of languages that are out there (and of course also around here).

    But http://www.bok.net/pajol/index.en.html is a Sans Papiers website that has pages in all of the following languages: français / english / espagnol / portugais / deutsch / italiano / wolof / soninké / bamanankan / Esperanto / nederlands.

  • scylla

    6 years ago

    RE the blog you recommended, jbmurray, it's good to see some academics are aware. I thought Gaulois defined the issue rather well:

    Quote:
    Before taking back "global citizenship", we should take back our medias, academias and democracies. Think globally, act locally, they said.

    Problem however is that the majority refers "bread&games" and that is what our medias, academias and democraties cater to. What a puzzle!

  • Fiat lux

    6 years ago

    Since the beginning of history ruling classes always held the control of information in their hands, mostly through the control of religions and they've used this control to disempower and collectivize people and economies to divert the benefits into their own pockets.

    The Net is the first time in history, when they've lost such control and are now desperately trying to regain it. They haven't missed the fact that they've lost the MAI in 1997 and their first real step to world control through the NET.

    Therefore, the first and most important task against globalized economic control by these powers is to keep the Net free and growing for the free spreading and dissemination of information. With a free Net, the rest of their media control will fade out, because they can fool many, but not all forever. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

  • jaspersky

    6 years ago

    A number of the voices writing here are eloquently lamenting the various actions and inactions of governments and corporations.

    It's a safe bet that none of us runs a government or a major corporation, and it's clear that successfully lobbying senior executives in mega-scale organizations is difficult.

    A better question, in my view, is what could you do, or I do, or we do, without waiting for permission or action from any third party?

    If we set ourselves the task of putting some real practical meaning behind a phrase like "exercizing global citizenship", what practical meaning could we undertake?

    For example, we lament the fact that, as Prof. Byers says, nearly three billion people live on less than a toonie a day, and that tens of millions are stateless, and so on. Well, what if we donated to an existing organization to improve a few specific individuals' lives by doubling their daily income? Or better still, what if we organized our own such effort -- that makes it more 'real' and satisfying? Is there any way to activate some outreach that helps such people gain some of the perks we're accustomed to -- for example, the ability to borrow money from banks to start businesses? Is there room for more entities like Grameen Bank? Would it take more than a few thousand donated dollars to start one in some remote spot in Central America, Africa or southeast Asia?

    Are those posting comments willing to ante up more than eloquent rhetoric?

  • peefer

    6 years ago

    Aye, an' that's the rub, aint it? Action, not just words, is required.

  • Steve P

    6 years ago

    Re: alternative economics

    Here is a link to the Canadian Association for Ecological Economics. This is what the UBC community planning schools is pushing as an alternative to neoclassical economics. It is post-Schumacher, post-Daly, economics.

    http://www.cansee.org/

  • BC Mary

    6 years ago

    To ante up $$s to cure a problem is so much like the problem itself ... really, isn't it?

    What we need, I think, is a concept of how to put the brakes on, so that Planet Earth has a chance to recover.

    We're already eating, burning, wasting more of the earth's resources than Nature can replace.

    That's the problem.

  • BC Mary

    6 years ago

    My copy of Arboretum America, a Philosophy of the Forest has just arrived.

    "Now, as a scientist, I have my own dream," writes the author, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, "that a moratorium be put on the cutting of what is left of the global forests and that ordinary people with an acorn and a shovel begin the long road back to nature."

    So ... that's the answer to our problem. Too easy?

  • Just me

    6 years ago

    This thread, this conversation, is one answer to the problem Byers has illuminated. There are calls above for reflection and action on a number of fronts, all worthy, and each of us with our talents and resources can choose which of these to engage. There is no need to cynically dismiss that we don't get instant results.

    But I hope this conversation is not just taking place here online. Inasmuch as the Internet is the opiate of the intellectual, I believe we are well advised from time to time to shut off the computer and go talk to the neighbours.

    Sitting here, I am a consumer. Out there, I can be a citizen.

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