The limits of openness: a comment on Alastair Davidson and Michael Arnold.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Cooper, Simon
• Date: 22 December 1999

The processes of globalization have clearly challenged the existence of both the nation-state and the university in their traditional forms. If the founding assumptions behind these quintessentially modern institutions have been rendered problematic from within the institutions themselves, in the last few decades external pressures--the rapid increase in flows of information and capital--have also undermined their traditional status and function. If this has been met with some enthusiasm, in so far as both the nation-state and the university were structured around processes of exclusion, there remain anxieties about what will occupy their place. The partial break-up of the structures that supported these institutions has led to greater openness and flexibility, but this comes at a cost. The recent protests at Seattle and Davos show the degree to which people are concerned about the relatively unchecked forces of global capital and the potential of such forces to overcome local or national resistance, while anyone who has attended a university within the past decade is all too aware of the degree to which education, at the same time as it has been extended to greater numbers, has been co-opted within a market paradigm. What then are the conditions under which we ought to welcome this new openness, the breaking down of national, cultural and informational barriers? How ought we to deal with the contradictions which arise from the break-up of the structures and institutions of modernity? Two recent articles in Arena Journal attempt to engage with these questions. Alhough discussing different subjects--Alastair Davidson argues for the advantages of global forms of citizenship, Michael Arnold gives us the cautionary tale of the virtualization of university life--both articles respond to these broader questions. (1)

Alastair Davidson makes a strong case for the loose sense of collectivity made possible via global citizenship in contrast to other forms of belonging associated with the nation or with communities based in place. He argues that the categories of belonging must necessarily change in a context where global markets and mobile populations reduce the political and cultural hold of the nation-state. The weakening of nation-based forms of association provides an opportunity for developing a more democratic model of citizenship, more democratic precisely because it is able to transcend the cultural baggage bound up with loyalty to the nation, in short, the cultural hierarchies and marginalization of minorities that underwrite forms of nation-based citizenship. Thus global citizenship is both a pragmatic response to actual changes in the world--it has 'already emerged' (2)--but also an objective to be pursued because of its capacity to grant a more democratic form of life based around multiculturalism and the rights of the individual.

It comes as no surprise that Davidson sees the Internet as one of the key means for achieving democracy within this more expanded setting. While he would wish to be clearly distinguished from some of the more naive, uncritical techno-enthusiasts, the idea that more equitable modes of life are possible precisely through the shedding of attachments and identities based around place means that he shares with them a common sensibility. His advocacy of global citizenship, is, in fact a kind of 'virtual citizenship', in the sense that the subjects formed and social relations carried out in the context of this new openness resemble the networked communities made possible through technologically extended modes of association. It is a mixture of techno-enthusiasm passed through the filter of realpolitik. Whether one uses the Internet or not, the result in today's context is the same: highly mobile subjects with no attachment to place, forming loose and fleeting connections with others. (3) By contrast, Arnold offers a different version of the possibilities that arise out of this more abstract mode of interchange. In many ways the dangers he finds in the virtual university--fragmentation, hyper-individualization, commodification--can be read as the flip-side of Davidson's stress on autonomy, openness and individual rights. Arnold's dystopian scenario can in some senses be used as a caution against the relatively uncritical embrace of global citizenship offered by Davidson. To say uncritical is not meant to deny the sophistication of Davidson's analysis. On the contrary, he is sensitive to the extent to which this emerging model of citizenship is a site of 'struggle and contestation'. Nevertheless, I want to suggest that in his enthusiasm for global forms of citizenship, he does not sufficiently interrogate the social and cultural structures that underpin this model.

Concentrating on the Australian experience, but with an eye to the conditions of citizenship under nation-states generally, Davidson argues that citizenship has been largely based on forms of exclusion by the majority, in Australia, the denial of rights to indigenous peoples and minority cultures. While there has been an extension of rights to ethnic minorities in the period of official multiculturalism, Davidson argues that the exclusion of minority rights remains a structural problem for the majority can 'democratically' exclude the extension of rights to ethnic others. Davidson argues that an open form of citizenship which would more fully extend rights to minorities is extremely difficult within the ambit of the nation-state. This is in large part due to the deeply embedded cultural assumptions which lie behind nation-based citizenship. Hence Davidson claims 'a corner-stone of nation-state based citizenship is the notion that the nation, having paid for its well-being, owns it and can exclude others'. (4) Even the most successful nation-states, such as France and the United States, are unlikely to extend multicultural rights any further along the model of the open republic as their very success means that they remain indifferent to external criticism, their democracies enshrined in the documents of their founders which 'constrain democratic revision of the document by new majorities'. (5) The successful nation-states, notwithstanding attempts from within to create policies more orientated towards the reality of multicultural populations, remain inadequate to cope with the reality and pressures of globalization. Ultimately for Davidson:

No matter how advanced rights are (even multicultural rights), once defined in national terms they become inadequate by themselves to cope with the development of globalization, unless something further is added. (6) The problem with the 'open republic' for Davidson is simply that it is not open enough. However the advent of globalization provides new opportunities to 'add something further'. Globalization provides a historic opportunity to transcend the modern boundaries of national belonging and thus allow for a different type of citizenship. This new form of citizenship has several characteristics--it is post-national, open-ended, and multicultural. It is also active, created through forging future bonds rather than passively being shaped through a connection to history. Davidson's model of global citizenship locates the concept of individual agency at its core. Larger structures function to grant and sustain individual rights...