Brett Bowden

The Perils of Global Citizenship

The notion of global citizenship has been with us since around 450 BC when Socrates claimed that his country of origin was ‘the world’. About 100 years later Diogenes the Cynic made a similar declaration as a ‘citizen of the world’. These sentiments were echoed in the second century AD when Marcus Aurelius issued his famous declaration, ‘my city and country so far as I am Antonius is Rome; but so far as I am a man, it is the world’. More recently, in response to an article by Richard Rorty extolling the virtues of ‘national pride’ and ‘a sense of shared national unity’, Martha Nussbaum has likewise declared herself to be a ‘citizen of the world’. Despite this long history of claims to global or world citizenship, it is argued here that the notion is not only problematic but also undesirable.

Global Standards of Market Civilization

With the evolution of the modern states system there have existed “standards of civilization” to which states must measure up to and conform if they are to fully participate as legitimate and sovereign members of international society The capacity for a high level of social cooperation and self-government of any given society including economic governance, has long represented a hallmark of “civilization” (Bowden, 2004a). Historically a society required organizational capacity to enter into and uphold mutually binding contracts under the law of nations, the principle of reciprocity being a key demand of relations among the society of states. And though the idea of “uncivilized” societies is at odds with recent trends toward political correctness, today terms such as “good governance” imply a similar logic whereby states and societies are required to conform to contemporary global standards of civilization. At the same time, as in the past, the workings of markets continue to be thought of as having a civilizing effect on society; both internally amongst its members and in external relations with other societies. The latter, that is, the arena of international external relations is a particularly significant concern in an era of elevated globalization and ever-increasing economic and financial interdependence. But as Norbert Elias has observed, “if the reduction of mutual physical danger or increased pacification is considered a decisive criterion for determining the degree of civilization, then humankind can be said to have reached a higher level of civilization within domestic affairs than on the international plane.” For at the global “level

Nationalism and cosmopolitanism: irreconcilable differences or possible bedfellows?*

Sparked by the recent reinvigoration of the long-running debate over the competing ideological merits of nationalism and cosmopolitanism by leading Western philosophers, this article presents an argument as to how these two adversarial projects might be reconciled. In a review of both ideological perspectives, it is argued that neither paradigm is adequate in its own right, and that both contain potential dangers. However, both nationalism and cosmopolitanism entail important complementary aspects that are essential in bringing about a more stable and innocuous synthesis of the two projects.

The Ideal of Civilisation: Its origins and socio-political character

There has been a revival in the use of the terms ‘civilisation’ and ‘civilisations’ to describe and explain events in the social sciences and humanities, nowhere more so than in politics and international affairs. This revival has seen the terms interpreted and applied in a variety of manners and different contexts. In too many cases this endeavour has been less than effective because of an oversimplification of what the terms mean and what they have historically represented. In part in response to this revival but also in part as an explanatory tool itself, this article gives a comprehensive overview of the Enlightenment origins and meanings of the term civilisation(s). A central concern is the oft‐neglected normative component of the ideal of civilisation and the implications it carries.

Civil society, the state, and the limits to global civil society

Just as domestic civil society is widely regarded as serving the greater common good of a national democratic political community, global civil society is also promoted as a vehicle through which a host of humanitys ills may be remedied. This article argues that the pinning of such high hopes on global civil society is mistaken, for its proponents have failed to recognise that global civil society is insufficiently analogous to domestic civil society for it to be a similarly positive force. At the national level, civil society functions in a balanced interdependence with the state. At the global level there is no equivalent of the state to provide the necessary scrutiny and regulation that at the national level prevents constituents of domestic civil society from committing injustices.

The Thin Ice of Civilization

It is widely accepted that as time passes, the more we progress as both a species and as individual human beings; the more we progress, the more civilized we become individually and collectively; the more civilized we become, the further we are removed from the vestiges of savagery and barbarism. But is this really the case? It is also generally accepted that civilization is a good thing, both in terms of a process and as a destination. The markers and trappings of civilization—social organization, urbanization, competent government, the rule of law, the arts, material well-being, and so on—are seen as desirable and much preferred to the absence thereof. But what is the cost of this progress? And is civilization sustainable? Some years ago it was also suggested that there is a direct relationship between civilization (both the process and the state of being) and the proliferation of increasingly lethal armed conflict. This article takes a closer look at these troubling issues in light of the current state of affairs of our world and wonders whether it might not be time to rethink and reframe what is meant by civilization.

The River of Inter-civilisational Relations: the ebb and flow of peoples, ideas and innovations

Abstract As a tool for understanding the world in which we live the study of the history of political thought is stunted because of a preoccupation with the Western canon as the history of political thought to the exclusion of other histories and traditions. This ongoing exclusion is itself facilitated by a deeply entrenched select reading of the Western canon; a reading that overlooks a tendency within the canon to not just ignore but suppress and dismiss the value of other accounts of history and traditions of thought. An opening of the Western mind to these assumed to be alien traditions of social, legal and political thought reveals that, in the global market place of ideas, these purportedly competing and non-compatible traditions of thought might in fact have considerably more in common than what sets them apart: thus opening the way for an authentic inter-civilisational dialogue that focuses more on co-operation and less on clashes.

To Rethink Standards of Civilisation, Start with the End

Many people recognise that there is a need to distinguish between states in the international system, such as on the basis of legitimacy. For much of the system’s history the means of drawing such distinctions have been standards of civilisation. For some, the need to divide and separate is unavoidable; others are more critical of standards of civilisation because of the consequences that come with exclusion or the pressure to conform. On both sides it is often downplayed that standards of civilisation are, by and large, a means to an end. If we want to rethink the way standards of civilisation work and mitigate some of their more unsavoury consequences, then we need to rethink the end they are designed to achieve, which is best captured in Kant’s title ‘Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View’.

‘Poisons Disguised with Honey’: European Expansion and the Sacred Trust of Civilization

For many centuries now, those considering themselves civilized have carried out numerous atrocities—from abductions to dispossession to massacres—against those thought to be less civilized, all in the name of civilization. This has particularly been the case in the last 500 years when Europeans came into contact with indigenous peoples in their voyages of discovery and subsequent settlement. One of the justifications for these offences was often couched in terms of the self-appointed duty of “civilized” Europeans to bring the blessings of civilization to the “savage” and “barbarian” hordes, also called the “white mans burden” or the “burden of civilization.” Many nations took up this sacred trust of civilization and the challenge of bringing enlightenment and salvation to the uncivilized peoples of the world, during which the latter were either subjugated or perished. In this article I trace the intellectual heritage of the sacred trust and note its inherent contradictions, ranging from debates between Sepúlveda and Las Casas over Spains rights of conquest in the New World to the musings of key Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Hegel, Kant, and J. S. Mill. As some of its advocates acknowledge the sacred trust and concomitant civilizing missions were inevitably and invariably violent and went against the very idea of civilization. And as Las Casas deftly highlighted, much of the reasoning underpinning the sacred trust was in the form of “poisons disguised with honey.”

Civilization and War

Contents: Preface 1. Introduction 2. Civilization and Peace 3. Civilization and War 4. Civilization and Savagery 5. Civilization, War and Terror 6. Us and Them at War 7. Civilizations at War? Notes Bibliography Index