Peter van Olst

73 Fragmentation and Subjectification 1 these group influences motivate people to live peacefully in the broader world. Socialisation only becomes a problem when it undermines subjectification as a person’s free response to the needs of others, the whole of society and the world. In a community-based society, there is room for cultural group influences, provided they do not prevent the peaceful coexistence of different groups and their peaceful collaboration for the common good. In my view, the concept of subjectification includes both personal freedom and the (educational) ideal of the person using that freedom to reach out and connect to others. This idealistic element of subjectification fits and completes the conceptual scheme presented earlier (at the end of 1.2) with an extra column concerning how to respond to the fragmentation problem: Conceptual scheme of fragmentation… … and subjectification Level Structure Threat Outcome Response Macro: world Ordered framework Disintegration Alienation Communicating frameworks Meso: society Peaceful coexistence Atomisation Detachment Healing civic allegiance(s) Micro: person Relational flourishing Alienation Atomisation (Re)connecting persons 1.3 ANSWERS FROM CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY In the introduction to this dissertation, I stated the desire to look for an approach to citizenship formation that is both theological and holistic. As a consequence, in the first two sections of this chapter, culminating in the conceptual scheme presented above, I analysed the challenges of personal and societal fragmentation with regard to such an approach. Given the need for subjectification on each of the three indicated levels (macro, meso and micro) as a correction, an integrating and, therefore, holistic approach emerged in a natural way from the statement of the problem. However, up to this point, the approach that fits the layered problem of fragmentation was only holistic in the sense that it calls for the recovery of horizontal relationships. In the introduction, I argued the necessity of the theological angle, referring to the vertical relationship with God as the Creator, with faith as the deepest motivation and with the deliberate inclusion of the spiritual dimension. This third section searches for theological notions or elements that correspond to the subjectifying responses involving (re)connecting persons (on the micro-level), healing civic allegiances (on the meso-level) and communicating frameworks (on the macro-level).

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