Global Civil Citizen

Acting as global citizens

By:

Macalalad, Christine Joie A.

Saez, Kurt Murphy

Course Objectives:

This study aims to understand the meaning of global civil society, to know the effect of
having the governmental and non -governmental groups in the society, to know the connection of
global civil society to globalization and to know its effect to our economic, politics, and society.

Table of Contents:

I. Introduction
II. Etymologies
III. History
IV. Global Civil Society
V. Campaigning for human rights: Cosmopolitan Principles and International law
VI. Women’s right and transnational solidarity
VII. Transnational action for aid and development
VIII. Green activists and world citizenship
IX. Consumers as global citizens?
X. Conclusion
 I. Introduction:

In the enlightenment the world citizen was typically an intellectual, who travelled widely,
met and correspond with intellectual in many countries, and advanced cosmopolitan views.
Global Civil society is the "aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that
manifest interests and will of citizens." Civil society includes the family and the private sphere,
referred to as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business.

II. Etymologies

Global is relating to the whole world. Society considered as a community of citizens

linked by common interests and collective activity. Civil society is sometimes referred to as
the civil sector, a term that is used to differentiate it from other sectors that comprise a
functioning society. (Study.com) The term civil society goes back to Aristotle's phrase koinōnía
politikḗ (κοινωνία πολιτική), occurring in his Politics, where it refers to a ‘political community’,
commensurate with the Greek city-state(polis) characterized by a shared set of norms and ethos,
in which free citizens on an equal footing lived under the rule of law. (Wikipedia.org)

III. History

From a historical perspective, the actual meaning of the concept of civil society has
changed twice from its original, classical form. The first change occurred after the French
Revolution, the second during the fall of communism in Europe.(Wikipedia.org)
IV. Global Civil Society

- Typically refers to non- government group suck as amnesty international, green peace
and international labor organization as well as less formal network of activists and
citizen.
- The international PEN issues protest n behalf of banned and presented author, and
international meetings of psychiatrists took up the issue of the abuse of psychiatry to
silence dissenters in the former Soviet Union.

V. Campaigning for human rights: Cosmopolitan Principles and International law

Cosmopolitanism
-is the ideology that all human being to a single community based in a
shared morality.
- belief in universal equality and human rights is a basic tenet of
cosmopolitanism. Transnational organization supporting human rights are often cited
in discussion of both global society and global citizenship.

VI. Women’s right and transnational solidarity

-There are numerous transnational networks and organizations campaigning on

issues affecting woman, and their numbers and influence have grown as a result of the
new wave of feminism in the 1970’s.

A few feminists were included in the national delegations to the 1945 conference to
create the UN in San Francisco:

 International Council of Women and International

 International alliance of women
  International Federation of Business and Professional Women
 International confederation of midwives and engaged.

VII. Transnational action for aid and development

-Giving material aid to people in distress in other parts of the world has roots in
nineteenth-century philanthropy.
-During the Second World War the unofficial American commission for Relief in
Belgium worked with groups from other neutral countries to distribute food in German-
occupied areas with the agreement of both sides. After the war the Society of Friends
provided famine relief in the new Soviet Union.

1970’s
-the aid community had already recognized that one source of the poverty
was the fact that the terms of trade benefited the industrial goods of the west over the
primary products of the developing countries.
1990’s
-the WTO had become the symbol of the negative power of globalization,
of a global economy dominated by multinational corporations with more resource that
many small states and able to ensure the richest and most powerful states especially the
USA acted on behalf of corporate interests.

VIII. Green activists and world citizenship

-groups that campaign for a better environment can be seen as

quintessential expression of global civil society and world citizenship

Reasons why this is so:

 1st – that environmental issues naturally tend to cross state boundaries:
polluted rivers often flow through several countries; acid rain generated in one
country destroys forests in another: climate change is truly global in its effects.

2nd – the 1970’s green campaigns have tended to grow in numbers and had
a significant impact on international law and institutions.

3rd – there are many western groups protesting on a wide range of

environmental issues both nationally and internationally, green concerns are to
simply a response to western affluence.

IX. Consumers as global citizens?

-even for those who are not full-time workers or volunteers why go
overseas, taking part in campaigns often involves spending a good deal of
time in political lobbying, protests or fund-raising activities.
1999’s
-is forced many supermarket chains and some food manufacturing
companies to alter their policy on stocking GM foods, and put giant
multinationals like Monsanto onto the defensive.
X. Conclusion
We have noted a tendency towards convergence of transnational campaigns
on rights, development and the environment, and awareness of the relation
between these and preventing destructive conflicts. In the light of discussion so
far, is it possible to determine how far activists in and supporters of transnational
campaigns can be seen as global citizens. Other important factors are, as we have
seen, the extension of international law and the role of international
institutions .these creates a new legal and political framework for individual
activity and also place constraints upon government of states. The present global
also impinges seriously on human rights and the position of women. In part this is
because it erodes any social and economic rights. It is indeed an irony that anti-
slavery International, with its roots in the anti-slavery campaigns of the nineteenth
century, is still active today.