CHAPTER 9: From Monsoons to Katrina: The Civic Implications of Cosmopolitanism

In an era of increased globalization, we are undoubtedly becoming more interconnected culturally, politically, and economically. Flows of people, ideas, and commodities have simultaneously intensified relationships between people, and increased diversity within individual countries. The blurring of national boundaries challenges traditional notions of citizenship, and thus the traditional educational aim of citizenship building. These changes obligate us as educators to reconsider our civic mission, and reexamine what we believe the role and function of civic education should be.

It has been widely acknowledged that our future generations must be equipped with the skills, knowledge, and perspectives to function in this diversifying society. International and global education (IGE) is a social movement that has answered the call to attempt to “globalize American education” (Anderson, 1990, p. 13). At its core, “global education promotes not only knowledge and awareness of other places and people, but also the ability to view events from a variety of perspectives other than one’s own” (Sutton & Hutton, 2001, p. 2). This conception resonates with Martha Nussbaum’s assertion that the development of empathy is an essential component of both a liberal education and the cultivation of humanity. Nussbaum (1997) writes in Cultivating Humanity that “as a world citizen our primary loyalty is to human beings the world over, having the ability to see themselves as human beings bound to all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern” (p. 9). What is the role of education in promoting such sentiment? How can we foster the dispositions, values, and conceptions of citizenship necessary to flourish in a global world?