So, how do you prove your global citizenship?

Haven’t been writing here for ages, because I haven’t had anything worth writing in the spirit of this blog. So I’ve got a little something, so here goes.

Here in Singapore, we’re almost inured to the rhetoric and discourse of globalization. It’s become a cliche to talk about globalization, and often you don’t hear it being talked about in a meaningful way. Furthermore, it’s seldom talked about with respect to global citizenship. Both of them are vague concepts used as slogans in promoting something. What does it mean to recycle as a global citizen? What does globalization mean for me as a person?

What do they have in common?

Now that I’ve complained about the g-word, I’ll try to answer the problem I’ve presented in a meaningful way. One often used reason to justify the existence of international and intergovernmental organisations is that some problems we face as a global whole require global action. No one nation or state can act alone in preventing problems such as climate change (given that it is a problem), if not preservation of the environment, epidemic control, economic coordination, weapons proliferation and so on.

Therefore, I see globalization as a form of world-wide coordination. One society might not coordinate the same way as another society in a different place, but by-and-large they’ve matched patterns of interaction and living. So one might say that television is a form of globalization because it coordinates the activity of entertainment to be, well, centred at the television. You might also say that television programming is globalised, because then it coordinates the kind of entertainment and information individuals possess. Different peoples might watch television, receive television, and interpret television programmes in different ways, but by and large the television becomes a new part of life.

Therefore anything that is coordinating actions and habits of people (and their organizations) at a larger-than-state level is globalization. The spread of things such as language, technology, food, and ideas across borders is globalization. This also means that globalization inherently is culturally destructive. Coordination erodes and chips away at monolithic cultures. Think about how Japanese sword-making technology is now almost lost because of technologically superior weaponry. Some cultural activities that can adapt into the new context will survive. But any culture who has any sense of identity that perseveres throughout time will suffer from a philosophical problem of trying to justify that it still is what it was prior to globalization.

Okay, so I’ve tackled globalization. Thus, I can justly claim that global citizenship is really world-wide socio-political coordination. That’s a mouthful. What I mean to say, is that global citizenship begins when people coordinate their political actions that affect their sociology at a global level (as opposed to the national level).

Take for instance, the World Social Forum. I got the link from Facebook. (I have friends that post a lot of links to Facebook, most not at all, but at one level, you partially get into the mind of the person.) Here I quote from their about page.

The World Social Forum is an open meeting place where social movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organizations opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, for formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action. Since the first world encounter in 2001, it has taken the form of a permanent world process seeking and building alternatives to neo-liberal policies. This definition is in its Charter of Principles, the WSF’s guiding document.

And here’s a chart:

When I see this, I hear a popping sound for every drop I see.

I’ve seen this kind of chart a good number of times on the internet before, but its significance has never hit me. What this one does is that it measures geographically the actions that have been committed for the WSF cause. They call it the “Action Map”. But this is what coordination is, isn’t it? The website reveals information about what is being done towards realising the values they’ve set out to embody, and each actor who is committed can shape his or her actions with respect to what’s being done world-wide, tap into a global trend, and call on for international help. While their actions are local, their coordination is global.

But what I’ve noticed is that the local region has nearly nothing with respect to the World Social Forum. Singapore and Malaysia doesn’t have a single node. There one pitiful one at Indonesia and another at Thailand, and there are plenty of people acting in Europe and South America. What gives?

I can think of several reasons why it’s not happening here:

• Singaporeans/Malaysians in general don’t partake of the same values that are embraced at the WSF. (Selection thesis: people have heard of it, but disagree)
• Singaporeans/Malaysians in general don’t partake of action at a global level. (Apathy argument: people agree and have heard, but think it is not their role to act)
• Singaporeans/Malaysians in general do have the same values but don’t have the connections towards the WSF. (Non-inclusive argument: the method used spread of these ideas have not included the region, but in principle people do have sympathies for the cause).

If we can ascertain which of these reasons are true, then I think we can broadly say that we’ve figured out what globalization and global citizenship means to us as an individual. But probably that’s for another post.

(By the way, there’s an anti-globalization protest at the World Bank being proposed at the WSF. Of course, that definition of globalization is nothing like this one, so they’re really protesting against something else.)