Citizenship, Education and Social Conflict

Israeli Political Education in Global Perspective

Hanan A. Alexander, Halleli Pinson, Yossi Yonah, Hanan A. Alexander, Halleli Pinson, Yossi Yonah

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136910272
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

This volume provides new perspectives into the challenges of citizenship education in the age of globalization and in the context of multicultural and conflict-ridden societies.It calls on us to rethink the accepted liberal and national discourses that have long dominated the conceptualization and practice of citizenship and citizenship education in light of social conflict, globalization, terrorism, and the spread of an extreme form of capitalism. The contributors of the volume identify the main challenges to the role of citizenship education in the context of globalization, conflicts and the changes to the institution of citizenship they entail and critically examine the ways in which schools and education systems currently address – and may be able toimprove – the role of citizenship education in conflict-ridden and multicultural contexts.

Part I
Conflict Theories in Citizenship Education

1
The Emergence of Citizenship as a Political Problem in an Era of Globalization ¹

Seyla Benhabib

INTRODUCTION

The issue of education in multicultural societies is vital, with particularly great political significance in Israel: crucial negotiations have been undertaken since 2004 by the Israeli and Palestinian authorities, which may affect the shape of the country, and the Middle East as a whole, in the twenty-first century. Israel’s borders may be finalized, and the state of emergency that has reigned in Israel-Palestine for the last sixty years may end.

During the finalization of borders, many painful decisions will be made. Historically, any end to long-lasting conflicts among peoples and the determination by internationally recognized accords of boundaries in the land have meant population exchanges and resettlements. I am thinking of the Greek-Turkish War of 1921–1923 in this region and the Israeli War of Independence of 1948—what the Palestinians call “Nakba”—the catastrophe, among many others. In the course of such finalization, many individuals and families will find themselves on the wrong side of the border—families will be torn apart; people will end up with different identity papers; homes and land will be lost; memories will be extinguished; and ways of life will be disrupted. Such has been the logic of the territorially organized and sovereign states of the West, the Westphalian model, named after the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which ended the religious wars in Europe.

The Westphalian model of state sovereignty, which is the coin of the realm in the international world, presupposes that there is a single sovereign authority with ultimate jurisdiction over a clearly demarcated territory. Space, which is also the site of lived memories, becomes territorialized, wrenching some out of their homes while giving others the protection of a new jurisdiction. Despite the considerable human losses inflicted by this model, as well as its considerable historical successes, we do not at the present seem to have another paradigm for organizing interstate relations in the global civil society (Krasner 1999; Sassen 1996).

I want to argue, however, that the Westphalian model today is in deep crisis: the “black box” of state sovereignty has been pierced open, not only by globalization, but by the human rights revolution since 1948. I first want to document this by looking at transformations in the institution of citizenship.

The account I present is based on Western European developments, although it is my contention that similar trends exist all over the world now—there is an increasing uncoupling between territoriality, citizenship, and jurisdiction. Although these developments may seem very much removed from the current condition in Israel-Palestine, where the West-phalian model has hardly been established, the question is whether it needs to be, and whether other configurations of citizenship and sovereignty, more compatible with ethnic, national, and religious plurality in the region, are not also possible. A democracy is a polity of all of its members. National citizenship is the principal category which has, so far, regulated such membership, but it may not be the only one that should do so.

CITIZENSHIP IN WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT

The concept of citizenship is one of the cornerstones of Western political thought. In Greek thought, the terms politeia, politike, and politikon are derived from the same root, namely polis—the city-state. Their Latin cognates are civitas, from which “citoyenne” and “citizen” are derived. In German, we encounter both the terms Burgh, meaning fortress or town, and the derivation of Burgher, as in Staatsburger.² In Turkish, the word for citizen, Vatandas, derives from the term Vatan (which may be Arabic in origin) and which means “homeland.”

This brief etymology serves to remind us that citizenship means, first and foremost, membership in a bounded community. What such membership entails is itself dependent upon the nature of the political community. As Aristotle noted, one who is a citizen in a democracy is not the same as one who is a citizen in an aristocracy. In a democracy, all can vote, without qualifications of descent and property. In an aristocracy, only some can do so. Throughout the history of the West, citizenship has excluded certain groups of individuals, whether they be women, nonpropertied and laboring males, or members of non-Christian and nonwhite peoples. They have been excluded from citizenship on the grounds that they did not possess the necessary attributes of citizenship, which were often understood in conventional terms, such as lack of property or income. More often, though, these people were viewed, much more essentially, as lacking the requisite capacities of intellect and emotion necessary for the exercise of citizenship.

With the advent of political modernity through the American and French revolutions, citizenship was extended in scope to ever larger numbers of human beings. It also was enriched through the expansion of the rights and entitlements that accrued to this status. However, modern citizenship still means membership in a bounded political community, whether a nation-state, a multinational state, or a commonwealth structure. The political regime of territorially bounded sovereignty, exercised through formal-rational administrative procedures and dependent upon the democratic will of a more or less culturally homogeneous group of people, can only function by defining, circumscribing, and controlling citizenship. Ideal-typically, the citizen is the individual who has membership rights to reside within a territory, who is subject to the state’s administrative jurisdiction, and who is also, at least in principle, a member of the democratic sovereign, in whose name laws are issued and administration is exercised. Following Max Weber, we may say that this unity of residency, administrative subjection, democratic participation, and cultural membership constitutes the “ideal typical” model of citizenship in the modern nation-state of the West (Weber 1978, 901–26). The influence of this model, whether or not it adequately corresponds to local conditions, extends far beyond the West. Modernizing nations in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, which entered the process of state formation at later points than their Western European counterparts, copied this model wherever they came into existence, as well.

Determining how globalization affects modern citizenship involves several questions. What is the status of citizenship today, in a world of increasingly deterritorialized politics? How is citizenship being reconfigured under contemporary conditions? How have globalization and the weakening of the functions of the state in controlling its economy, culture, and boundaries against the forces of globalization affected the theory and practice of citizenship? How has globalization contributed to the reconfiguration of multiculturalism? Which are the most salient conflicts around cultural identities?

GLOBALIZATION AND NEW FORMS OF POLITICAL CONFLICT

Perhaps recalling Vaclav Havel’s words regarding globalization can give us some insight as to these questions:

This civilization is immensely fresh, young, new and fragile … In essence, this new, single epidermis of world civilization merely covers or conceals the immense variety of cultures, of peoples, of religious worlds, of historical traditions and historically formed attitudes, all of which in a sense live ‘beneath’ it. (Havel 1995)

The spread of globalization is accompanied by new forms of resistance and struggle, along with demands for “the right to worship … ancient Gods and obey ancient divine injunctions.” The new global civilization has to understand itself “as a multicultural and multipolar one” (Havel 1995).

As Havel notes, our contemporary condition is marked by the emergence of new forms of identity politics around the globe. Such identity politics, driven by the particularities of nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, “race,” and language, are particularly widespread in certain domains. First, they arise at the thresholds and borders of new nation-states, which are emerging out of the disintegration of regional regimes, such as the former Soviet Union, and in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Second, they appear in Africa, where the nation-state, a fragile institution with roots barely half a century old, is crumbling in Rwanda, the Congo, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast. Third, in the Middle East, where as a result of the Gulf and the Iraq wars, and the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nation-state boundaries, which were haphazardly drawn by the occupying powers at the end of the First World War after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, seem more problematic than ever. Fourth, the new identity politics appear in failed states like Afghanistan, where prior to US intervention, an armed group, such as the Taliban, could take over state power, while leaving some areas of the country to the authority of warlords. Compared to these kinds of identity politics, which emerge as a result of institutional factors affecting the capacities of states to control their territories, the most prevalent form of identity politics in Western democracies since the late 1960s have been struggles for multicultural inclusion, and in some cases, diversification of citizenship concepts. The worldwide women’s movements, gay and lesbian movements, the Quebecois aspirations in Canada, the Basque separatist movement in Spain, and ethnic pride movements in the US are some of the best-known forms of such “struggles for recognition,” to use Charles Taylor’s famous term (Taylor 1992). In short, reflecting a social dynamic that we have barely begun to comprehend, globalization has proceeded alongside sociocultural disintegration, the resurgence of various separatisms, and international terrorism.

One consequence of these dynamics upon the institution of citizenship has been a development that I will characterize as “the disaggregation of citizenship.” Ideally, citizenship implies that unity of residency, administrative subjection, democratic participation, and cultural membership all adhere together. What we see today is that the unity of residency, administrative subjection, cultural identity, and democratic participation, in short the modernist and unitary conception of citizenship, is deeply challenged. Nationality and residency status in the country of one’s nationality are uncoupled, in that increasing numbers of individuals reside in countries of which they are not nationals. Furthermore, residency is accompanied by entitlement to extensive social rights; in some cases, even political participation rights are granted on the basis of residency.

These developments are taking place within the context created by the rise of an international human rights regime, by which I mean a set of interrelated and overlapping global and regional regimes that encompass human rights treaties as well as customary international law or international soft law.³ Examples include: the UN treaty bodies under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The establishment of the European Union has been accompanied by a Charter of Fundamental Rights and by the formation of a European Court of Justice. The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which encompasses states that are not EU members as well, permits the claims of citizens of adhering states to be heard by a European Court of Human Rights. Parallel developments can be seen on the American continent through the establishment of the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Whereas these treaties are binding on signatory states alone, they have set into motion certain developments within global civil society at large. In the words of Anne-Marie Slaughter,

International law today is undergoing profound changes that will make it far more effective than it has been in the past. By definition international law is a body of rules that regulates relations among states, not individuals. Yet over the course of the 21st century, it will increasingly confer rights and responsibilities directly on individuals. (Slaughter 2003: 42–3)

This background sets the stage for a close analysis of this disaggregation effect.

DISAGGREGATION OF CITIZENSHIP: THE CASE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

The view that citizenship is a status that confers upon one entitlements and benefits, as well as obligations, derives from T. H. Marshall (Marshall 1950). Marshall’s catalogue of civil, political, and social rights is based upon the cumulative logic of struggles for expanding democracy in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. “Civil rights” arise with the birth of the absolutist state, and in their earliest and most basic form, they entail the rights to the protection of life, liberty, and property; the right to freedom of conscience; and certain associational rights, like those of commerce and marriage. “Political rights,” in the narrow sense, refer to the rights of self-determination, to hold and run for office, and to establish political and nonpolitical associations, including a free press and free institutions of science and culture. “Social rights” are last in Marshall’s catalogue. They were achieved historically through the struggles of the workers’, women’s, and other social movements of the last two centuries. Social rights entail the right to form trade unions and other professional and trade associations, health care rights, unemployment compensation, old-age pensions, child care, housing, and educational subsidies. These social rights vary widely across countries and depend on the social class compromises prevalent in any given welfare-state democracy. Their inclusion in any internationally agreed-upon catalogue of universal human rights—beyond the mere right to employment and a decent standard of living—is a bone of contention among different countries with different economic outlooks.

The disaggregation effect is most advanced in today’s world in the contemporary European Union, in which the rights of citizens of the twenty-seven member countries of the EU are sharply delineated from those of third-country nationals, within a patchwork of local, national, and supranational rights regimes. The unitary model, which combined continuous residency upon a given territory with a shared national identity, the enjoyment of political rights, and subjection to a common administrative jurisdiction, is coming apart. One can have one set of rights, but not another. One can have political rights, such as local and EU-level participation and voting rights, without being a national, as is the case for EU nationals residing in countries other than those of their birth. More comm...