Conclusion

The moral vision—cosmopolitan thriving and its particular self—and the moral sources of global citizenship education are elements of a long historical process of abstracting individuals from group affiliations and traditions. This serves to equalize individuals as individuals, and indeed great strides towards liberty and equality for all have been made in recent centuries. But along the way, the process begins to erode the particularity—national, cultural, ethnic, and religious traditions (real or imagined)—that makes diversity what it is. What we’re left with, by and large, are unencumbered selves patterned after Western Enlightenment liberalism, a blend of expressive Romanticism and utilitarian self-interest. This creates significant limits that fall short in the complex and diverse world that faces us. Governments, economies, industries, cultures, religions, families, relationships, and identities become more complicated and multifarious in the global age, not less. Cosmopolitans must be constituted selves (Bellah et al 1985: 152–153) who understand the various and sometimes competing traditions, communities, narratives that give them their social identity. Yet the dominant forms of global citizenship education, because of a very understandable allergy to boundaries, implicitly undermine the communities, traditions, and narratives that source the constituted self. These communities have boundaries that mark their particularity— practices, rituals, obligations, commitments—and these may be necessary, not evil. Particularity may make Western liberals nervous, but it may be just what is required for true global citizens.