66 Chapter 1 we find our best selves. We’ve been on a long journey through some of the history of the idea of the citizen, and what a story it is. It evokes an idea of what it is to live together, and the sometimes meandering path that idea has taken as it finds its way to us, today. (p. 90) The macro-level of the world adds another level to this quotation, extending the paradox of citizenship. Worldwide developments in the natural and social worlds drive the need for new civic allegiances that come on top of the old ones. Thus, more layers are added to the concept of citizenship. While thinking about citizenship started in the time of Plato and Aristotle with regard to the Greek polis, it later developed into the citizenship of the premodern empire and—after the Middle Ages—gradually into the citizenship of the modern nation-state. During each of these phases, citizenship received a new signification, albeit without completely losing the older one(s). Nowadays, we see the concept of global citizenship coming into existence, as a fruit of globalisation, with its cosmopolitan citizen, who also belongs to local, national and, probably, international communities. More than ever, this brings about the need to peacefully and collaboratively combine these different and sometimes competing allegiances, which is another task not so thoughtfully attributed to schools and education. It is interesting how Kumar (2010) praised the citizenship narrative of the premodern empire over the citizenship narrative of the modern nation-state, which was, generally speaking, a smaller and more homogeneous entity. Its sense of community and belonging was built on a nationalistic narrative. Kumar (2010) contradicted the idea that the narrative of the modern nationstate suits the actual questions regarding citizenship in a modern, super-diverse and fragmented society better than the empire narrative. He considered it to be the other way round: ‘Empires, as large-scale and long-lasting multi-ethnic and multicultural experiments, may have much to teach us in the current historical phase of globalization and increasingly heterogeneous societies’ (Kumar, 2010, p. 119). It is exactly this lesson that Dronkers (2012) applied in his case study of Dutch citizens and their religious diversity, stating that they currently find themselves ‘embedded in a complex network of competing and often conflicting allegiances and identifications’ (p. 1). As Cantle stated (2013): Globalization will ensure that the world—and almost every country—will become more multicultural. That is to say: each country will find that its population is increasingly made up of more people from many different cultures, nationalities, faiths and ethnic backgrounds and become ‘superdiverse’. (p. 69)
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw