The Impact of Globalisation on the Concepts of Citizenship and Identity - Essay Example

Citizenship and Identity in the Context of Globalization Introduction The literature on contemporary citizenship and identity overflows with concepts and descriptions of confusion, disorder, radical change, and continuous development. Hence, societies are weakening and collapsing; their internal foundations are becoming fragmented and integrated into the chaos of globalization. The borders of cultures and societies are being trespassed by enormous, interweaving movement of information, visions, and ideas, their once impenetrability lost for eternity. Communities, when endowed with profound meanings and strong solidarity, will become globalized, removed from shared and familiar places. Far and wide the once-independent entities in the global assortment of cultures are pouring out, joining together, losing their uniqueness. Everyone, it appears, is being thrown into an existence of permanent mobility, regardless if of the real, imagination, or both. During this time of confusion, two important concepts take the limelight: citizenship and identity. This paper analyzes the contemporary status of citizenship and identity using the arguments of Thomas Marshall (e.g. Citizenship and Social Class), Benedict Anderson (e.g. Imagined Communities), and Jean Jacques Rousseau (e.g. The Social Contract). The discussion includes real-life examples to emphasize the arguments. Particularly, this paper tries to determine if there is a displacement of citizenship and identity in an increasingly globalized world. And so, in order to explain the arguments more fully, a discussion of the similarities and differences between citizenship and identity is included. Similarities and Differences between Citizenship and Identity There are similarities and differences between notions of citizenship and identity that create considerable difficulties in dealing with both. Citizenship, with regard to differences, is more of a notion of distinction than identity. It is stated in legal and juridical standards that lay out the rights of the members of a nation (Joseph 2004). Several scholars like Kennedy and Danks (2001), support a notion of citizenship more inclusive than a legal and juridical distinction but these claims do not alter the essential fact that in the end citizenship permits or prohibits social, political, and civil duties and rights in a nation. These supports for deep or active citizenship are interested in broadening the extent of citizenship yet they nonetheless presume that the distinction of citizenship is already present (Kennedy & Danks 2001). Although identity does not require juridical and legal grounds, it may become the object of legal struggle and conflict. Even though identity building is a mechanism that sets out regardless of legal regulations and policies, it is usually pulled into the legal arena (Shafir 1998). This is one of its strong points. Identity is a notion that presumes a shared acceptance of the other; it is a relationship-focused notion. However, it is also a notion that accepts identification in a way that people distinguish properties or features in each other that are understood as alike or at least the same (O’Byrne 2003). These features, afterward, are applied as an indicator of individual standing and character. Identity is hence a notion not greatly of distinctiveness or status as of repetition and likeness. In contrast, a person is a unique collection of identities (O’Byrne 2003). Hence, the notion of identity here certainly raise a category that positions and situates a person within a social domain on account of his/her multiple identities. Hence, group identity creation is a process by which individuals distinguish in each other particular features that determine similarity and resemblance; this turns into a foundation of identification by which people vigorously create and recreate similar outlook (Joseph 2004). The relational and interactive process of identification is a continuous compromise of familiarizing, instilling, constructing, reconstructing, and reproducing these outlooks. Identity facilitates the successful creation of groups which at times but not automatically may result in claim demand for legal rights. Even though identity, just like citizenship, can become a notion of status or distinction, particularly a social class, it should instead be perceived as the foundation of identification claimed by groups ruled out from the range of citizenship (Joseph 2004). The similarity between identity and citizenship is that they are group demarcations. Citizenship delineates the members of a nation from another and members of a nation from those who are not. Identity delineates groups from each other. As group demarcations the dissimilarity between identity and citizenship is that, whereas the former bears cultural and social value, the latter holds legal importance (O’Byrne 2003). However, these ideas about the similarities and differences between citizenship and identity are only the surface of the issue. A more profound discussion of citizenship and identity, particularly with regard to globalization, is presented by three well-known social scientists: T. Marshall, Benedict Anderson, and Jean Jacques Rousseau. Citizenship, Identity, and Globalization T.H. Marshall’s Citizenship and Social Class is broadly known as the pioneering work of modern citizenship scholarship. Marshall expanded the definition of citizenship by adding the concept of social class. As argued by Marshall, there is a connection between class inequality and citizenship equality. Referring on Alfred Marshall’s Future of the Working Classes, he stated (Marshall & Bottomore 1992, 6): It postulates that there is a kind of basic human equality associated with the concept of full membership of a community—or, as I should say, of citizenship—which is not consistent with the inequalities which distinguish the various economic levels in the society. In other worlds, the inequality of the social class system may be acceptable provided the equality of citizenship is recognized. As described by Alfred Marshall, citizenship was a status manifesting an ability or qualification to be a member of a nation. Citizenship equality did not imply class equality. In contrast, citizenship may and did preserve inequality of class. Rather than viewing class and citizenship as divergent concepts, Marshall posed the issue of whether modern citizenship, or, in the contemporary period, globalized citizenship had turned into a state of class inequality. He inquired, “Is it still true that basic equality, when enriched in substance and embodied in the formal rights of citizenship, is consistent with the inequalities of social class? (Shafir 1998, 93)” This issue remains controversial: is citizenship a tradition that disguises different types of inequality such as rooted in ethnicity, racial affinity, and gender? Marshall provided a response to this issue by sketching the development of citizenship in conjunction with that of class. Marshall’s classification was made up of the social, political, and civil. Civil citizenship comprised freedoms of religion, ideas, speech, and rights to justice, contract, and property. Political citizenship involved the right to vote and take part in public affairs (Marshall & Bottomore 1992). Social citizenship composed of the right to welfare and security and to participate in the ‘social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society’ (Horton & Patapan 2004, 97). To sum it up, the sociological issue as to whether there is an innate disagreement between class and citizenship developed by Marshall has to be broadened. The sociological issue globalized communities confront nowadays is whether there is a clash between different types of identity and citizenship. How does citizenship transform or restructure regional, ethnic, national, gender, and sexual identities? Apparently, this issue is falls within the central issue of group rights and globalization. In contrast to T.H. Marshall, Benedict Anderson focused on the issue of national identity in his work Imagined Communities. As argued by Anderson (1999), nation-states have formed, not their ‘national citizenship’, as claimed by Marshall, but their national identities as a way of authorizing their existence and as a way of advancing the interests of political leaders. To strengthen his argument he defined ‘imagined community’ as a concept that is restricted by the idea of nation-state, and he concentrated his premise on the development and preservation of that identity (Anderson 1999). However, the ‘imagined community’ becomes not just a concept related to national identity and the nation-state at present but is broadened to include the notion of global identity and global community. Similar to Eric Hobsbawm and other scholars Anderson claims that nationalism, national identity, and nations are the outcomes of modernity. However, according to Horton and Patapan (2004), contrary to Anderson, Anthony Smith claims that although national identities are the outcome of modernity, it is probable to uncover cultural components that exist and thrive in contemporary societies, in spite of globalization. Marshall’s definition of citizenship is not essentially the identity individuals will be most eager to defend with their life. According to Anderson (1999), local and regional identities are the important ones, as do religious, ethnic, and social class identities. Because of their significance in identifying who individuals think they genuinely are, it would be logical to believe that identities were established in every instance on a very profound foundation, like entire collections of documents containing centuries of cultural or ethnic practice. This has often been the case with the much earlier organizational systems of dynastic kingdoms and religious societies, but contemporary systems like the nation are normally rooted in more superficial, usually wholly symbolic bases (Shafir 1998). Identities are not only an outcome of what their owners portray, but of how these portrayals are understood and accepted. As a team of social scientists have argued (Joseph 2004, 118): National identities are not essentially fixed or given but depend critically on the claims which people make in different contexts and at different times. The processes of identity rest not simply on the claims made but on how such claims are received, that is validated or rejected by significant others. Nevertheless, it is relevant to emphasize that, of all the assertions which individuals develop and learn about a national identity, nothing is more important or influential than the assertion that identity is actually predetermined and permanent (Joseph 2004), is given to individuals by birth and stays basically the same afterward. From the perspective of Anderson (1999), the error of a historical point of view lies in its inability to go beyond the myth that is entrenched within the identity at issue. Anderson, as well, should take some caution to shun a possible error of his own, by regarding this myth as a sheer misleading notion, and hence undeserving of systematic focus in its own terms. It is a cultural concept that absolutely cannot be detached from the national identity in general (Joseph 2004). This view is firmly supported by Jean Jacques Rousseau. According to T. Scott, “For Rousseau, a legitimate state must rest upon an effective cultural basis: a community of shared mores, customs, and opinions” (Williams & Kofman 1989, 174). Rousseau’s The Social Contract greatly contributed to the study of citizenship by adding the notion of ‘state’ in the discourse. Cultural community, together with other aspects like a crude material fairness is definitely among the underlying sociological factors without which, as thought by Rousseau (2004, 58-59), the state should certainly collapse because its authority will eventually be weakened by the actual distribution of what is rightly owned by everybody- state control- by a privileged few. However it should not be concluded that this community of collective standards is integral of state’s authority. A state is genuine if the population exercises autonomy through the assertion of their general willpower; however, for that to take place the people should be able to think together as citizens (Rousseau 2004, 41). The development and upholding of that identity to a level that is needed for it to prevail over the other identities of these citizens is piece of the task of the legislator and is preserved through public events (Williams & Kofman 1989). However, although it builds that identity, it does not comprise it, it is not a component of the value of what it is to be a citizen. Like Marshall, Rousseau (2004, 12) argues that in order to acquire and express the fundamental political and social bond between a state and a citizen, a social contract should be established. Only when this social contract is established can the individual fully realize his/her status as a citizen. The social contract theory represents an unspoken contract within a state concerning the duties and rights of the citizens and the state, or, a related agreement between individuals or between a group and its members (Rousseau 2004, 12-13). Similar to Marshall, Rousseau (2004, 12-13) explains that the relationship between social and civil rights is present to the extent that civil rights are the contractual foundation of social rights. In the absence of civil rights, social rights cannot be given. Discussion and Conclusions The belief that citizenship and identity exists in an incompatible connection with globalization is obviously possible. Citizenship rooted in the presence of a nation, group of people, entrenched in a geographically bordered nation-state identified by other nation-states and with laws and borders sustained, if needed, by force (Horton & Patapan 2004). Globalization, in contrast, is a trend. It has technological, socio-cultural, economic, and political domains, and denotes interrelatedness and integration across national borders within these domains. It is a trend of heightened interrelatedness, intensified movement of ideas, people, services, and products through conventional and new channels (Kennedy & Danks 2001). This trend has influenced the relationship between citizenship and national identity. Two features of globalization have repercussions for citizenship and national identity. First, a trademark of globalization is the presence of multinational and transnational firms that are invasions of national sovereignty. Second, the flow of people across national borders to find employment raises concerns of national identity, or membership in a nation, and of the privileges and rights that accompanies than membership (Horton & Patapan 2004). Although globalization is not an unfamiliar trend in the historical development of nation state, several features of its contemporary expression are new and generate distinctive strains and demands on citizenship, national identity, and sovereignty. Primarily, global transportation and communication become faster and quite cheap, making travel across the globe by products, services, ideas, capital, and people simpler and more extensive than ever before, heightening globalization. Also, information and communications technology enable movement of capital across the globe and enhance the interconnectedness of culture, ideas, and people to an extraordinary degree (Hortonn & Patapan 2004). The capacity of people to overlap different cultures for extended lengths of time has been improved enormously. And lastly, the domination of the United States through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank generates new instruments of control on nation sovereignties (O’Byrne 2003). Therefore, what we are witnessing today is a decisive loss of citizenship and national identity, a loss that has been predicted by earlier theoreticians, like Marshall, Anderson, and Rousseau. References Main Sources Anderson, B. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso, 1999. Marshall, T.H. & T. Bottomore. Citizenship and social class. Pluto Press, 1992. Rousseau, J.J. The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right. Kessinger Publishing, 2004. Supporting Sources Bertram, C. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Rousseau and the Social Contract. New York: Routledge, 2003. Horton, K. & H. Patapan. Globalization and Equality. London: Routledge, 2004. Joseph, J. Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Kennedy, P. & C. Danks. Globalization and National Identities: Crisis or Opportunity? New York: Palgrave, 2001. O’Byrne, D. The Dimensions of Global Citizenship: Political Identity beyond the Nation-State. London: Frank Cass, 2003. Shafir, G. The Citizenship Debates: A Reader. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Williams, C.H. & E. Kofman. Community Conflict, Partition and Nationalism. London: Routledge, 1989. Read More