ABSTRACT
The different meanings attributed to ‘global citizenship education’ depend on contextually situated assumptions about globalisation, citizenship and education that prompt questions about boundaries, flows, power relations, belonging, rights, responsibilities, otherness, interdependence, as well as social reproduction and/or contestation. Where is one speaking from as a ‘global citizen’, or a ‘global educator’? When conceptualised through the Western canon (e.g., through Rawls and Dower) in mainstream literature, the threats and opportunities to Nation States that emerge with the rise of internationalisation and cosmopolitanism acquire particular importance and it is questions of normative identity formation and governance that are highlighted. However, globalisation, citizenship and education can also be conceptualised beyond the allegedly natural confines of Nation building and organising. One of the proponents of such conceptualisations is Bengali theorist Gayatri C. Spivak who proposes a conceptualisation of global membership around the concept of ‘planetary subjectship’.
