67 Fragmentation and Subjectification 1 These descriptions give rise to the question of how to do it. How to make people, who are disoriented and disengaged due to fragmentation, connect, prompting them to practice citizenship not only at a local but also a national, international and global level? The contribution of the fragmentation thesis to addressing this question is that the answer must not do justice to only one level of fragmentation and so strengthen fragmentation on another level. This is what renders the whole discourse of active citizenship and social cohesion on the national, societal level worthy of profound critique. Such critique is most sharply uttered by Banks (2008), who distinguished between liberal assimilationist views and universal views of citizenship. Both views tend to be highly individualistic and leave practically no room for fundamental differences among identity groups, for the rights of smaller social groups or for group influences over the individual person. To educate and practice the liberal assimilationist view of universal citizenship, therefore, has destructive outcomes for communities that could motivate and inform what Banks (2008) termed ‘transformative citizenship’ (4): In the liberal assimilationist view, the rights of the individual are paramount, and group identities and rights are inconsistent with and inimical to the rights of the individual (…) This conception maintains that identity groups promote group rights over the rights of the individual and that the individual must be freed of primordial and ethnic attachments to have free choice and options in a modernized democratic society (…) A universal conception of citizenship within a stratified society results in the treatment of some groups as secondclass citizens because group rights are not recognized and the principle of equal treatment is strictly applied. (p. 131) Global and national citizenship go hand in hand in Banks’ (2008) proposal for transformative citizenship education that ‘helps students to develop reflective cultural, national, regional, and global identifications and to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote social justice in communities, nations, and the world’ (p. 137). This vision shows a clear susceptibility to the layered problem of fragmentation causing deep divides between people’s conceptions of the world, life, meaning and, ultimately, individuals. It does not impose a 4 Banks (2008) distinguished four levels of citizenship: the legal citizen, the minimal citizen, the active citizen and the transformative citizen. The first has rights and obligations but does not participate in the political system. The second votes, while the third moves beyond voting to actualise existing laws and conventions. The transformative citizen, however, takes action to actualise values and moral principles beyond those of conventional authority.
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