Global citizenship: How does it work?

June 14, 2011 - Although charity comes from a good heart and is sometimes necessary, it does not build global solidarity nor citizenship. On the contrary, it often rather increases feelings of ‘we’ versus ‘them’ according to sociology professor Kate Nash.

On tuesday morning, June 21st, Professor of Sociology, Kate Nash, will engage in a debate with Dutch NGOs on their vision for achieving global citizenship and what role they see for themselves.Do NGO’s realise what implicit vision lies behind their lobbying strategies?The focus is on the role Dutch civil society organizations actually play in creating global solidarity/citizenship and ensuring the implementation of human rights in practice. Kate Nash is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she is also co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy; and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University.

Solidarity is more than a feeling of 'we'

In her work Nash explores the possibilities for global solidarity based on human rights and justice rather than simply on charity. Solidarity in this sense entails not only a feeling of ‘we’ but also a sense that we belong together in a community of fate, including the South: what happens in the South directly matters to us. This requires a feeling of solidarity that existed in Europe after WWII, only this time on a global scale. Nash argues that if global solidarity is to be possible at all, it will have to be built from the bottom up.

Thinking together, learning together
After a discussion on the participants’ own experiences, an expert on the Dutch EEN campaign, will explain EEN’s experiences with the notion of global citizenship. The session will end with a discussion on how to implement new ideas in our daily practices. This brainstorm session is part of a series organised by PARTOS and PSO in cooperation with Society for International Development Netherlands Chapter (SID NL) and NCDO. These sessions are organized in order to influence the agenda of scientists and to make known recent insights of academics to NGOpractitioners.

More sessions
In December 2010 a session in this framework with David Booth (ODI) took place. Participants to this session are most welcome to also attend Kate Nash’s lecture "We are the world? Global Citizenship and its limits", that will take place on Monday evening June 20, 18.00 at the VU University in Amsterdam. This will be the 9th lecture in the SID-NL Global Values’ Series

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