**COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION: FRANCOPHONIES COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION: FRANCOPHONIES**

# **Global Citizenship Education**

**Modern Individualism under the Test of Cosmopolitanism**

**Sébastien Urbanski and Lucy Bell**

Spine <14 mm>

**Sébastien Urbanski and Lucy Bell**

**Global Citizenship Education**

**Global Citizenship Education**

**Sébastien Urbanski and Lucy Bell**

**Cosmopolitanism**

world.

Lyon, 2023).

**Modern Individualism under the Test of** 

Durkheim's holistic approach with critical republicanism.

the European Commission and the Pays de la Loire Region.

CAIEFR 1

ISSN 2949-8805

Cover illustration: iStock.com/Yakobchuk

ISBN 978-90-04-70115-1

Global citizenship education is an essential topic in an increasingly interconnected world. Indeed the need for inclusive and globally conscious education, embedded in cosmopolitanism, is recognised as a way to prepare individuals to navigate diverse cultures, address global challenges, and actively participate in a globalised

Being both scientifijic and political, these challenges require an interdisciplinary exploration of citizenship education, merging sociology, philosophy, as well as education and training sciences. To do this, *Global Citizenship Education: Modern Individualism under the Test of Cosmopolitanism* offfers a framework that integrates

The book is also rooted in the analysis of data collected through GlobalSense, a research project that focuses on preparing teachers to navigate the complexities of GCE within an international context. By presenting both a theoretical reflection and an analysis of an international training program within universities, this book can be of interest to academics, teacher trainers and (future) teachers themselves.

**Sébastien Urbanski**, Ph.D. (2012), Aix-Marseille University, is an associate professor at Nantes University. He has recently published a book on secularism and discrimination in school contexts, *Laïcité, discriminations, racisme: Les professionnels de l'éducation à l'épreuve* (with Françoise Lantheaume, Presses Universitaires de

**Lucy Bell**, Ph.D. (2019), Nantes University, is a postdoctoral researcher at Nantes University. She is the scientifijic coordinator of the GlobalSense research, funded by Global Citizenship Education

## **Comparative and International Education**

francophonies

*Series Editors*

Régis Malet (*Université de Bordeaux, France*) Allan Pitman (*University of Western Ontario, Canada*) Suzanne Majhanovich (*University of Western Ontario, Canada*)

Volume 1

The titles published in this series are listed at *brill.com/caiefr*

## **Global Citizenship Education**

*Modern Individualism under the Test of Cosmopolitanism*

*By*

Sébastien Urbanski and Lucy Bell

leiden | boston

This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license, which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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This publication is supported by the European Commission (Grant number 2021-1-FR01-KA220- HED-000027524) and the Pays de la Loire Region (Grant number CREN-NU-158661).

Cover illustration: iStock.com/Yakobchuk

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: "Brill". See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.

issn 2949-8805 isbn 978-90-04-70115-1 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-70116-8 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-70117-5 (e-book) doi 10.1163/9789004701175

Copyright 2024 by Sébastien Urbanski and Lucy Bell. Published by Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill bV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. Koninklijke Brill bV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

## **Contents**

### **Acknowledgements** ix

### **Introduction** 1


#### **PART 1**

*Global Citizenship at the Crossroads of Education Sciences, Sociology, and Political Philosophy*

#### **Introduction to Part 1** 19

### **Historical Roots and Conceptual Tensions of Global Citizenship** 21


### **Education and Training Sciences within Social Sciences** 45

	- Collective Entities 70
	- Plural Subjects and Feeling of Obligation 72
	- General Will and Individual Autonomy 74
	- Holism and (Global) Citizenship Education 79

#### **PART 2** *Global Citizenship Education: A Durkheimian Perspective*

#### **Introduction to Part 2** 85

#### **Science and Political Action** 87


#### **Global Citizenship: A Commitment in the Search of a Theory** 131


#### **The Educator State in the Context of Globalisation** 149

	- 1 The Liberal-Nominalist Motif: Become a Competent Global Citizen! 177
	- 2 Conservative Motif: Against Cosmopolitan Abstraction, Be One with the Nation! 182
	- 3 Questioning the Citizenship Framework 185
	- 4 A Republican Interventionism Limited to the Educational Sphere 190

**Conclusion** 206

**References** 211 **Index** 221

## **Acknowledgements**

We wish to start by thanking the members of the research GlobalSense – Developing Global Sensitivity in Student-Teachers, conducted by Nantes University with the help of four partner universities, located on three different continents.

We also want to highlight the support of the European Commission, the Pays de la Loire Region, and the International Relations Office at Nantes University (Direction Europe et International), which supported and accompanied the project and continue to provide it with new perspectives, notably within the EUniWell European University. Finally, we thank the editors of the Brill series *Comparative and International Education: Francophonies* for expressing their interest in our projects and engagements.

## **Introduction**

The republican ideal, as a way towards liberty and democracy, has been debated for centuries. Anchored in the Greek and Roman Antiquities, it was notably revived during the American and French Revolutions of the 18th century, with a far-reaching influence on many countries in the world. In parallel, the idea of teaching global citizenship is highly discussed. Its vagueness, idealism, and even incoherence are frequently criticised. However, its timeliness makes no doubt, provided it is operationalised in a genuine cosmopolitan, liberal, and democratic way.

In this context, one of the main goals for educational scholars is to find ways to sustain the umbrella notion of global citizenship, with the help of firm foundations in political philosophy and social sciences. This book offers an original path for this, linking sociological holism with philosophical republicanism. It is inspired by several attempts to establish a lively link between the sociologist Emile Durkheim and the republican philosopher Philip Pettit, currently practicing at Princeton University (Spitz, 2005; Guérard de Latour, 2014). We attempt to go further, keeping in constant touch with the field and the qualitative and quantitative surveys that put our concepts to the test. Indeed, the interdisciplinary junction between sociology, philosophy, and education and training sciences must, as far as possible, be realised in concrete acts, from conceptual and methodological angles as well as an institutional one.

Conducted in this spirit, our proposal unfolds the notion of citizenship, taking into account the growing differentiation of modern societies and the correlative deepening of moral individualism. To do so, we draw on the republican and holistic thinking of Durkheim, extended by Mauss, and enriched by Pettit's liberal republicanism (also called 'critical'). Though this is a topical gesture (Kaufmann, 2011), it would benefit from being operationalised through educational practices relating to citizenship. That is why, through the empirical study of teachers' activities and teacher-training devices, we explore a nagging, yet little addressed, paradox in comparative education, which lies at the heart of the links between holism as a principle of analysis, on the one hand, and citizenship, on the other.

Taking the theme of 'global citizenship', strongly promoted by UNESCO, this paradox can be summarised as follows. Placing the individual at the top of a hierarchy of values (human rights, autonomy, responsibility) can lead to seeing society itself as an aggregation of individuals. This is why sociology is riven by recurrent debates on the relevance of referring to collective entities: do the latter not run the risk of colliding with the ideal of individual freedom and for this 2 Introduction

reason, should a parsimonious, methodologically individualistic approach not be favoured? These are fundamental questions, which typically pit realists – who recognise the existence of collective thinking and acting entities – against nominalists, who claim that only individuals can think and act (Bouvier, 2019). If realism can lead to political conservatism, considering 'the nation', for example, as an unsurpassable collective entity, the fact remains that the nominalist approach can stand in the way of the cosmopolitan ideal when it leads to reasoning along the lines of (1) all individuals in the world are equal in terms of dignity, (2) therefore equality is a characteristic of individuals, (3) therefore citizenship must be conceivable on the basis of individuals, (4) therefore there is a properly global citizenship that brings individuals together.

To escape this fallacy underlying many studies on 'global citizenship education' (Banks, 2008), we need to reinvest sociological holism. On the one hand, the normative individual, the one who has no social ties other than those to which he has consented and from which he can always emancipate himself, can by definition only be global (Descombes, 2014). On the other hand, the individualist ideology is supported by particular societies, against a backdrop of differentiation between individuals as the division of social labour deepens. This was the intuition of Durkheim, a philosopher and professor of sociology and education science. It is being put to the test in concrete terms in the European GlobalSense project, for which we are responsible. One of the aims of this research and teacher-training project, conducted in five countries ( Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, USA), is to update the holism of the French School of Sociology, coupled with the critical republicanism initiated by Pettit on an international level (Pettit, 2016; Erez & Laborde, 2020).

While anchored in a republican political theory which is widely known – although very differently interpreted – in Francophone countries that are at the core of the present Brill series *Comparative and International Education: Francophonies*, the avenues explored in the book concern first and foremost the very notion of global citizenship. Highly emphasised in 2012 by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon during his Global Education First Initiative, it nevertheless remains torn between being an oxymoron or an umbrella slogan that can receive varied and sometimes contradictory meanings (Torres, 2017). Regarding Global citizenship as an oxymoron: what is the framework for global citizenship if the world itself is not a society? Unless a rather anarchic assemblage of nations in permanent competition, sometimes at war with each other, can be defined as a society? Marcel Mauss' answer was that there is no society beyond nations and from this, he deduced that cosmopolitanism was largely 'utopian', which is why he preferred to call himself an internationalist. This Maussian perspective seems to have lost none of its relevance (Lemieux, 2021).

Considering global citizenship as an umbrella slogan: what is the meaning of global citizenship if actors promote its education from neoliberal, Marxian, socialist, postcolonial or religious perspectives (Oxley & Morris, 2013)? It is crucial that we analyse these ambiguities, but it would be equally regrettable to abandon this slogan. Certainly, some philosophers intend to deconstruct it and argue that the expression 'global citizenship' should be abandoned altogether (Miller, 2012). Yet we firmly disagree with this position, in the wake of the French anthropologist (and Durkheim's nephew) Marcel Mauss, according to whom the social scientist must be on the lookout for new movements in societies, in order to sketch out their theory (Mauss, 1968). From this perspective, the multi-faceted success of the 'global citizenship' slogan is indicative of a new social and educational aspiration in our morally individualistic societies.

Global citizenship education is therefore neither a well-formed concept, nor an educational ideal that can be hastily defended without a risk of sliding into utopia (to use Mauss' expression). However, it is a slogan to which aspiring teachers are sensitive, sometimes annoyed by it, other times enthusiastic, often interested. It is this social phenomenon we wish to grasp: how does the deployment of an international pedagogy, in five countries, reveal the aspirations of members of morally individualistic societies, whose ideology – in the non-pejorative sense (Dumont, 1992) – increasingly disregards borders and differences in status between human persons, making them variously receptive to the slogan of global citizenship? This question arises from the GlobalSense protocol, and the book proposes to unfold it gradually, on theoretical, methodological, and empirical levels.

#### **1 Sociology, Philosophy, and Education and Training Sciences (ETS)**

As suggested above, the present work is based on a sociologist approach marked by philosophy, and framed by education and training sciences. The point is to show how citizenship education in an international perspective can be enlightened by an approach that is at the crossroads of these three academic fields. Philosophers have something to tell us about the concept of citizenship and the potential paradoxes it conceals, starting with its place of localised exercise, linked to a given territory (often national), while its meaning is generally presented as universal. Sociologists remind us that it is social contexts that allow citizenship to take shape: what indeed is the meaning of the latter, if it remains accompanied by a lived experience of discrimination, academic failure or lack of employment prospects? Education and training sciences remind us that citizenship requires the shaping of a certain knowledge, 4 Introduction

supported by educational institutions and dedicated subjects, as well as modes of participation in the community (in class and school).

These preliminary indications are, of course, simplistic and incomplete. Firstly, because the objects treated by each discipline are far more numerous than those outlined above. Secondly, because this description is marked by a school tropism, though it could be considered that citizenship education begins in the family environment and that it includes adult education throughout life, for instance in the workplace. Finally, the division between disciplines is not so tight in reality. Philosophers consider social contexts, sociologists conceptualise, and all are interested in education and training, which is, in many ways, consubstantial to citizenship.

In any event, the purpose of this introduction, which is deliberately narrow, is to highlight the main issues justifying the objectives of our method:


With this in mind, disciplinary separations will not be avoided in this work, neither will obstacles be ignored. We must ensure that we do not privilege one discipline over another, as researchers can do. Some sociologists for instance consider that their discipline goes beyond philosophy (Joly, 2018), whilst certain philosophers wonder why sociologists, under the pretext of restoring the complexity of the field, seem conceptually undemanding. These reciprocal accusations can be founded. However, they remain too expeditious, especially if we agree to recognise that "classical sociology is configured […] as an internal subversion of political philosophy", so that if there was indeed a 'sociological revolution' at the beginning of the 20th century, it was in no way in an external face-to-face with philosophy (Callegaro & Giry, 2018, p. 316).

To achieve this tri-disciplinary party, the issue is to converge disparate and, in some respects, incomplete attempts. In this case, after attempting to implement, in an international research project, the controversial and polyphonic notion of global citizenship education, we propose a holistic framing in sociology and neo-republican philosophy. The junction between these two currents has never really been established. Certainly, the philosopher Philip Pettit, sailing between Durkheim, Rawls and Habermas, has characterised himself as being both republican and holistic. Nevertheless, social science practitioners, or philosophers who are close to them, have often challenged the relevance of this holism (Descombes, 2014). Similarly, in his highly commented book *The Republican moment in France* (*Le moment républicain en France)*, the philosopher Jean-Fabien Spitz, in line with Philip Pettit, specified the links between the latter and Durkheim for example, by suggesting to analyse French republicanism of the early 20th century in the light of the neo-republican works that appeared more recently in the United States. However Spitz, a philosopher, remains confined here to the history of ideas.

Should we not go further? If we draw a link between Pettit and Durkheim, then we must develop a research protocol that is both holistic and critical republican, having in mind the objective of conducting empirical investigations. We therefore formulate the following question, which will animate the present work: how can one be Pettitian in sociology (even when Pettit is a philosopher) while being Durkheimian in philosophy? By asking this question and operating this crossing, we thus relaunch sociological questioning. This issue can only be addressed in an interdisciplinary setting, the one that education and training sciences provide.

#### **2 Holisms**

The difficulty is compounded by the fact that holism can mean at least two things. It can be ontological: in which case, we believe that collective entities (the state, the nation, thinking and acting groups) exist beyond the manifestations of their individual members. Holism can also be methodological, if in spite of believing that no collective entities exist we act as if they do, since individuals believe in them and adapt their behaviour accordingly (meaning that, in our analysis, we must assume their existence). Finally, and this is a point that complicates our endeavour, we can detect in the collective ideology of modern societies an ideal of moral individualism.

Indeed, the individuals who make up society are in many ways products of a collective history, those histories of the so-called 'modern' societies, in which the division of social work is important. This division sometimes gives rise to what Durkheim called organic solidarity; and other times to the pathologies of hyper-individualism – inequalities, withdrawal into self, and certain forms of suicide to use one of the classic works of sociology – when the division of social work is not sufficiently integrated and regulated. Ideology is therefore not understood here in a pejorative sense, but anthropologically (Dumont, 6 Introduction

1992): how was it formed? How did this aspect of the modern individualistic ideology, which enshrines, for instance, freedom of conscience as a concept and as a right, come about?

Without trying to account for all its historical threads, we must avoid the pitfall of losing sight of the holistic framework, collectively constituted, which enshrines the individualistic ideology of the modern. Let us take one example. Freedom of conscience, as a right, was formalised in a Christian framework that was in the process of being secularised. Moreover, a very important driver of freedom of conscience comes from Protestantism, which shares with Catholicism the idea of a faith-belief, and even of an inner faith, a 'faith-conscience'. However, Protestantism pushes this idea further, typically, in the name of the freedom to individually interpret biblical texts. It is also within Protestantism, according to Louis Dumont, that a capital surge of moral individualism takes place: by placing God out of the world, the individual has free rein in this world and the Church becomes conceivable as an association composed of individuals. We see to what extent individuals are the product of society, and even of particular societies, which are in increasingly close relationship with each other. This has crucial consequences in the field of global citizenship education.

#### **3 Collective Entities: Societies, Nations, States**

It is remarkable to see how religion and secularism are important themes in the work that renews republicanism, and therefore political liberalism. It is obvious in Laborde's work, but it was already so with Pettit's, and before that with Durkheim's. However, let us leave this aspect to move towards citizenship as such.

As mentioned above, one problem that seems crucial to tackle is the link between holism and republicanism, which we can here express in a slightly different way as the link between holism and citizenship. In our modern societies, citizenship is readily viewed in an individualistic way, in the moral sense: citizens are autonomous, they can make informed choices, decide to join a group and conversely, decide to leave it. The problem, in the intellectual sense of the term, is that these possibilities are offered to citizens in a societal framework, often that of the nation and furthermore only specific nations. However, once we have said that citizens are autonomous, we may be tempted to try to analytically reconstruct this societal framework (society) starting from individuals.

This, in a way, is what theories of social contract such as Hobbes' have tried to do. Individuals are thought of at the state of nature, leading authors to then analyse how they go on to build a society. Margaret Gilbert, the influential philosopher, tries something quite similar, claiming her work to be in line with Durkheim's and rereading it under an interactionist perspective (Gilbert, 2013). Nevertheless, like Hobbes, she only partially succeeds, though she has true sociological claims. At some point, she makes the mistake of thinking that it is possible to start from interactions between individuals, however complex they may be, to account for collective entities such as 'the nation'.

To avoid this error, we must move more resolutely towards a Durkheimian perspective, which postulates that, from a logical point of view, society exists before individuals. Society provides the collective ideology of individual autonomy (Callegaro & Marcucci, 2018). This can disturb or even shock us, since we might be reluctant to think a 'collective consciousness' exists, to speak like Durkheim. This is precisely because we strongly adhere to the idea that individuals are autonomous, so much so that we readily imagine society, or at least political society, as an aggregation of inter individual actions and decisions, which are then framed by the state.

There is in fact no contradiction in saying that, on the one hand, there is a collective consciousness holding us, which on the other hand, allows us to be autonomous. Indeed, the morally individualistic societies of which Durkheim speaks are not just any societies; they are differentiated societies in which a form of organic solidarity reigns: people support each other because they are both different and interdependent.

Once one admits this idea, sometimes overshadowed by certain liberal philosophies and nominalist sociologies (that is, who do not easily admit the existence of collective entities), we can spot the fallacy that runs through the political and academic slogan of global citizenship. For citizenship to be global, the world must be a society. Alternatively, we must try to build a citizenship starting from individuals, and incrementally expand it, with the help of states, until it is global. However, in a republican perspective coming from Pettit, and a holist perspective coming from Mauss, this is not possible. Citizens can only be free if they live in a free state and in a specific type of society, one where organic solidarity is integrated and regulated by the state.

#### **4 Comparative Education**

The interest of this approach is to open a field of investigation according to an innovative approach: to circumscribe an empirical object of investigation, which is citizenship education in an international, even 'global' perspective. Its field is teacher training, in five countries: Germany (Weingarten), 8 Introduction

Belgium (Brussels), France (Nantes), the United States (Philadelphia) and Israel (Jerusalem).

It is obviously impossible, in the context of a book, to restore the complexities that are inherent to the legal, professional and cultural frameworks of these five countries and the five training sites involved. The book will therefore have a more general aim, likely to serve investigations in other fields and to provoke a discussion about the multiple conceptions of global citizenship. This book centres on the contention, to be developed, that the Durkheimian perspective is essential, in comparative education, to understand the slogan of global citizenship education (GCE) and its place in teacher training. This place varies because the GCE slogan has two sides: one of them falls under our modern ideology (moral individualism); the other, under our indigenous or 'ordinary' way of apprehending society.

Here, sociology and philosophy intersect again. We are right to think, from a philosophical point of view, that global citizenship must be based on the individualistic ideal: it is indeed relevant to consider that human rights must not depend on any particular society, nation or civilisation. This idea is in the range of philosophy, joining humanism and cosmopolitanism. However, we are wrong if, from this philosophical position, we deduce that a 'worldwide society' can be created from individuals or states composed of individuals. Yet this mistake runs through part of the studies promoting global citizenship. In order to allow their individualistic bias, these studies must postulate that existing interstate regulations could lead to a global society. However, Durkheim and Mauss demonstrated that regulation is not enough to make a society. What is more, this mistake by the 'nominalist' promoters of global citizenship generates a conservative reaction from people who simply want to get rid of the term 'global citizenship', such as David Miller who claims it is absurd. From the specific point of view of an analytical philosopher such as him, the notion of global citizenship is somewhat like a squared circle, a logical impossibility. However, it is not sufficient to leave it at that. The idea of global citizenship must be given a practical content: practical for empirical surveys, as well as for training teachers in Education and Training Sciences (ETS).

In this sense, ETS go beyond philosophy. It allows the demonstration, in the perspective we defend, that it is crucial for teachers and their trainers to experience a division of labour more in line with what our moral individualism dictates, which tends quite naturally towards cosmopolitanism. In this sense, the European Commission's Erasmus+ actions, including the GlobalSense research, are interesting. They allow us to build courses on citizenship that are carried out by several countries, questioning new, international regulations in teacher training.

It is crucial though to be vigilant and avoid moralism. Moral individualism comes from the fact that people in our societies are different, and consequently, that the only thing they have in common is that they are human persons. The development of organic solidarity replaces mechanical solidarity, based on similarity, which is typical of traditional societies. In this Durkheimian perspective, injunctions to become tolerant and multicultural are of little help. The crucial issue is rather to think of a labour organisation, on our teacher-training sites, that is more in line with the ideological cosmopolitanism of the modern. This is why we will give here the framing of an object of empirical study, with an adapted methodology: questionnaires, interaction analyses, cross-interviews.

In the context of this work, not all results can be detailed and not all survey techniques will be presented, because the question above all is to frame the way in which ideals (liberalism, republicanism, democracy), an empirical investigation (teacher training in particular societies) and a society project (global citizenship) can be articulated and put into action. An institutional anchoring in education and training sciences makes it possible to take some distance, while benefiting from the help of philosophy and sociology as disciplines that are not only contributory, but also constitutive of ETS in the sense that they were part of their foundation. The figure of the philosopher and sociologist Emile Durkheim perfectly illustrates this point. Professor of education science at the Sorbonne in 1906, then of education science *and* sociology in 1913, Durkheim articulated the three disciplines and addressed, in education science, themes similar to those we wish to develop (Republic, secularism, nation, citizenship). Furthermore, as a sociologist, he provided a framework for thinking about the notions we propose to reinvest (individualism, beliefs, religion, collective entities).

Thus, this work can be read as a Durkheimian gesture, on three levels: the convergence of disciplines, the revision of sociological concepts, and the holistic perspective intimately linked to an educational project when it is conceived, within public education, as a way of involving students in an entity that transcends them (society, nation, world). Education and training sciences have an important contribution to make here, for though they need philosophy and sociology, the reciprocal is also true.

#### **5 Structure of the Book**

We shall now present the structure of this work, which comprises two main parts. The first part presents the interdisciplinary framing, while the second 10 Introduction

part, which is longer, develops a Durkheimian perspective on GCE and puts it to the test with help of empirical data.

Chapter 1 immediately enters into the tensions or even contradictions that are at the heart of the debates on GCE, by exploring the dual aim of the International Bureau of Education (IBE), in the interwar period, in connection with the League of Nations (which became the United Nations). A precursor of UNESCO, the IBE was first a technical bureau dedicated to education in 1925 before being fully integrated into UNESCO in 1969. This historical origin was already fraught with tensions. Indeed though the neutrality of Switzerland, where the IBE was established, was initially beneficial since peace could mean not taking sides, it proved to be complex at a time when it could be seen as a compromise, since it allowed relatively close relations with authoritarian or even totalitarian regimes (Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany). Nevertheless, the actors of this part of History were more or less aware of these problems that also refer to conceptual tensions, requiring the lens, in particular, of political philosophy as a lever for ETS.

Therefore, taking note of the differences between philosophy and ETS, we question in Chapter 2 the identity of the latter and their place in social sciences. ETS are a part of human and social sciences (HSS) because they face the same questions and challenges. Furthermore, ETS can accompany the transformation of educational action driven by a political concern, in the sense of a political philosophy. Ultimately, the question is to grasp how ETS, being external to sociology and philosophy, can question the relations between them and, while focusing on a particular object, contribute to this common movement within HSS of providing individuals with the conditions of their autonomy.

This brings us to propose a critical approach in comparative education. Comparing the French approach of ETS shows that it is more integrative than in Germany notably, or the UK. This integrative aspect however renders a distinction between ETS and contributory disciplines difficult. It requires the institutionalisation of ETS, defending them against criticism and giving them their own identity through epistemological reflection. ETS being made of a plurality of scientific disciplines, it is difficult to unify them. Whilst a *rapprochement* with older disciplines or rewarding professional fields might be tempting, the risk is to put ETS at the service of expertise activities rather than actual research activities.

Therefore we need to reconnect the field with its contributive disciplines in a reflective way. More specifically, articulating political philosophy with sociology ensures the avoidance of prescriptive considerations on questions approached here regarding secularism and religion, which are key issues in the development of political liberalism. More specifically, the view adopted in this book is one of critical republicanism, as an updated version of political liberalism. It is an interdisciplinary approach that aims to distinguish the political proposal inside Global citizenship education, and spell it out. In other words, we aim at making our relationship to values explicit, focusing on political liberalism as a core framework for global citizenship education. Its principles are discussed and we focus on the debate between liberalism and republicanism, which notably highlights the relationship between religion and secularism. The meaning of secular liberalism is to consider all religions equally. It is possible to consider religions as equal under the common criterion of liberal principles, for liberalism is just as compatible with Islam as with Christianity for instance. Political liberalism does not belong to a specific culture or religion. If religious people must translate their thoughts into a secular language in order to be understood by all (Rawls), this does not *ipso facto* mean they are treated worse than non-religious people.

Hence, following Philip Pettit, we assume a renewed republican approach as part of a larger liberal framework. Accordingly, religious phenomena should be approached through non-religious categories, with tools from law and political theory. These can help disaggregate religion into three components and lead to the frame that a religion that belongs in the public sphere must make intelligible epistemic propositions, non-encompassing conceptions of the good life, and non-divisive collective identities. This approach can be adapted to non- religious phenomena, i.e. disaggregation symmetrises religious and nonreligious phenomena. These elements form the framework of a relationship to values that we make explicit in favour of a transparent conception of political liberalism, inseparable, as we shall see, from the notion of global citizenship.

Chapter 3 focuses on the question of citizenship in social sciences. It relies on sociology of beliefs and social philosophy to question what social totality is, and distinguish what characterises collective decisions (one that people feel compelled to respect). The chapter references Margaret Gilbert's definition, on a political level, of society as a collective of members engaged by an act of will. Nevertheless, since there must be uses and social relations that pre-exist the establishment of this collective, the choice made in this book is to rely on Durkheim's holism: society makes people, not the other way round; furthermore, the modern society is mainly centred on the nation, though according to Durkheim it can have a cosmopolitan aspect. This frames the question of the empirical reality of global citizenship, with no territorial anchoring, common morals or government. Through an approach based on critical republicanism, the chapter delves into the relationship of individuals towards the nation-state.

Admittedly, critical republicanism is not quite holistic, since Pettit for instance believes individual freedom is derived from freedom as non-domination, 12 Introduction

making it a negative freedom, therefore a version of political liberalism. However, if political liberalism defines freedom as a natural, individual power that determines the role and limits of the state, critical republicanism derives freedom from a political status, itself framed by the state. Thus with this version of political liberalism, the notion of global citizenship can make sense; it consists in identifying universal human faculties, then deducing from them a universal society that would be global. However, with critical republicanism, the idea of global citizenship requires thinking more resolutely about the state.

In the second part of the book, which is longer that the first one, we present a Durkheimian approach on GCE. Durkheim's intuition was that since what modern societies have in common is that they are deeply affected by liberalism, then collective consciousness can be linked to social brain, for unity; and division of labour can be linked to organic solidarity, for pluralism. In this perspective, Chapter 4 presents GlobalSense, its challenges (such as those linked to the ambiguity of the umbrella notion that is GCE and how members of the team interpret it differently), and the pedagogical design of the training device. It delves into the importance Durkheim's theory gives to secondary social groups such as occupational groups, which must be organised on a national level, in order to integrate groups and individuals, the state being too far from them to do so. The secondary groups studied in this book are the professional groups of teacher-trainers and pre-service teachers, in a context of Europeanisation and globalisation of higher education and of international recommendations on citizenship education.

The GlobalSense project insists on the relevance of studying GCE at an international level, to compare the ways each state tends to address these 'global' themes in a culturally and politically specific perspective. Furthermore, the point of training pre-service teachers on this topic is to enable them to reflect on the complex relationships between a nation and the liberal principles that form the substance of the idea of citizenship. To avoid hyper-individualism, which according to Durkheim is one of the main pathologies of the division of social work, cosmopolitanism must not just be about individuals developing competences in sustainable development, global citizenship and well-being. Rather, 'educations towards' global citizenship gives a political meaning to knowledge and values. Therefore, the ultimate goal is not to make students understand what GCE is; but to restore political sense to educational work and encourage pre-service teachers to analyse the GCE slogan, its aims and values.

Ultimately, it is through these critical questions, potentially carried by pre-service teachers, that curriculum guidelines make it possible to consider the transition from a recommended curriculum to a real curriculum. Throughout Chapters 5 and 6 notably, we propose illustrations related to the five countries involved in the GlobalSense research. We focus in particular on the preliminary conceptions that the participating student-teachers (also alternatively called pre-service teachers throughout the book) have regarding GC and related topics (notably migrations), as well as on their perceptions of their participation in this international training device. We show how these perceptions seem to relate to their local and/or national context of training.

The aim of Chapter 5 is to develop a sociological theory regarding global citizenship. If being a citizen means taking part in the goals of a collective entity such as a nation and being obliged by its decisions, then what does citizenship become if one tries to broaden its scope (internationally) or even reformulate it (GCE)? Our answer is Durkheimian. It consists in stressing that a nonpathological division of labour deepens the autonomy of individuals, whose social aspirations are in turn likely to challenge the established order. This holistic line, considering that society is at the principle of deepening individualism, provides a guideline for thinking cosmopolitanism. Specifically, Chapter 5 underlines how critical republicanism considers patriotism as the first step to cosmopolitanism. This chapter explains that conservatism, which can sometimes be national-conservatism, is a reaction to liberal nominalism, the expression of a need to integrate and regulate the division of social work as a reaction to unbridled liberalism. The challenge is to draw an alternative, socialist response to the (neo)liberal and nominalist motif that values globalisation and blurred borders in the name of the principled autonomy of individuals.

For Durkheim, only the state1 can ensure a 'normality' by making society aware of itself and, consequently, of the new rules and standards that correspond to the irreversible deepening of the division of social work. Relying to some extent on the spirit of nationalist demands can help bring out the socialist third way. Therefore, the Durkheimian gesture suggested in this book is to articulate critical republicanism with the holistic perceptive and try to grasp the social aspirations emerging from the deepening division of social work, making it possible to raise awareness of its expression at the state level. This implies developing, in teacher training, new working methods at the service of a communication circuit between societies and states (Callegaro & Marcucci, 2018) that promote new professional rules.

Chapter 6 focuses on the role of states in adapting globalisation policies in education. In the GlobalSense (GS) project, all countries are from the global north, but official requirements, such as a framework for citizenship training, remain marked by a national level. If Durkheim was in favour of secondary groups, it is because they exercise, through their trade, what is an already social thinking. The state then mediates social thinking in a continuous communication process. In this spirit, GS has the goal of promoting the expression of new 14 Introduction

aspirations in the field of cosmopolitan patriotism of two professional groups, teacher-trainers and pre-service teachers, while taking into account the fact that they are marked by moral individualism. GS uses a sociological approach rooted in political philosophy to examine the concrete conditions that might allow these professionals to establish new constitutive rules in favour of citizenship education in an international perspective, whilst taking into account these secondary groups' national contexts, with each state then formalising the constitutive rules.

If the aims of education systems can converge under the effect of globalisation policies, this chapter wishes to consider how societies, as interpretive communities, react to these policies. This requires taking into account the reality of teacher training in the different countries, by not assuming the inevitability of globalisation processes and by emphasising the various ways in which actors interpret, appropriate and even circumvent ideas that circulate in a transnational way.

Chapter 7, centred on 'The progress of modernity', does not argue for or against GCE, but rather for the inclusion of prescriptions and recommendations on GCE, as well as their promoters, in the analysis led in GlobalSense. The point is to identify the political criteria that give substance to the vague notion of GCE, in order to prevent its co-optation by interests and ideologies. Based on the three typical motifs of modernity sketched by Mannheim (liberal-nominalist, conservative, and socialist), this chapter argues that the socialist one is better suited to analyse GCE, for its educational ambition is to ensure that every individual is able to study the practices of the groups in which he or she participates. For the socialist motif, people's profusion of identities is not a reaction to national citizenship, but a deepening of individualism specific to modern societies.

In fact, the higher the division of labour, the more people need to be recognised as individuals. Durkheim saw the deepening of the 'cult of the human person' as a matter of social totality via organic solidarity that was supposed to reconcile differentiation and interdependence. However, this 'cult of the person' must be acknowledged as being specific to modern societies. Furthermore, it requires the inclusion in a political community, *de facto* national, of citizens who have reflexive capacities. The chapter proceeds to compare how the secondary groups of teacher trainers and pre-service teachers in the different countries receive and analyse the GlobalSense protocol. This comparison is linked to the presence of the states (rules, administration, curriculum) in teacher training. The methodology puts the overall framework to the test on different levels (student-teachers' reactions, designing of lesson plans, international encounters, self-reflections, collective reflections) and paves the way for a renewed approach to GCE.

The conclusion underlines the potentialities of fruitful collaboration between philosophy and social sciences, in order to confront theoretical constructions with the complexities of social phenomena. This interdisciplinarity can help in the difficult task of studying stabilised political principles and their translation into real-life situations, whilst also offering a balance between collective entities and individual freedoms. This is crucial for the study of GCE in its historical complexities throughout the 20th century (International Bureau of Education, UNESCO), which are also conceptual complexities. Data analysis shows how pre-service teachers are sensitive to the concept of GC and aspire to be cosmopolitan. However, many of them are also conscious of the limits of GC, such as the fact that this concept is situated nationally and socially within societies that promote a collective individualistic ideology. Therefore, a conundrum arises from understanding that it is specifically the belonging to one's society that makes one receptive to the concept of globalised citizenship, which by definition overcomes national citizenship.

#### **Note**

<sup>1</sup> We choose to use lowercase letter here although some republican, but also Rawlsian liberal philosophers, prefer to write 'the State'.

## **PART 1**

*Global Citizenship at the Crossroads of Education Sciences, Sociology, and Political Philosophy*

∵

## **Introduction to Part 1**

A philosophy must criticise the individualistic illusion if it is to think of social life starting from the institution. However, it is in order to raise the question of the institution that it is necessary to introduce concepts such as 'tradition' and 'education'. Here we do not have a particular feature of certain societies nor an optional philosophical ideal, but rather a social necessity which affects any system based on the transmission of its institutions through the educational route, in other words, any human society: this system will have to *impose* on individuals a conception of the collective good, and this even in the case of an individualistic society whose definition of the common good would be the imperative to ensure the autonomy of each person.

Descombes (2013, p. 154)

*∵*

In this first part, we analyse the complexities of the multifaceted concept that is global citizenship, by using a threefold approach that sheds light on its historical foundations, theoretical frameworks, and contemporary implications. The stage for discussing Global Citizenship Education is set by exploring the historical tensions within the International Bureau of Education during the interwar period. This historical context prompts us to examine conceptual tensions through a philosophical perspective, thus giving a new impetus to education and training sciences.

Indeed, as long-term promoters of international education and of a form of global citizenship, the nascent Education and Training Sciences greatly contributed to the prefiguration of UNESCO. Certainly, at the beginning of the 20th century, their institutionalisation was not as developed as it is today. However, the great thinkers of education, Jean Piaget and John Dewey, were precursors of the ideals of UNESCO, which still have very current resonance through the promotion, increasingly affirmed and shared over time, of global citizenship education. Nevertheless, to go beyond the simple defence of a supposedly common ideal, we must dare to enter the debate around this vague notion by firmly reconnecting Education and Training Sciences to classical sociology and political philosophy. It is in fact on this condition that cosmopolitanism and its implementation can be discussed on solid foundations and therefore better shared.

This then brings us to exploring the identity of Education and Training Sciences within the realm of Human and Social Sciences. Through comparative analysis, we examine the challenges of maintaining the integrity of Education and Training Sciences amid evolving educational landscapes. Lastly, we investigate the essence of the concept of citizenship in social sciences, focusing on collective decisions and the empirical reality of global citizenship. By examining the interplay between critical republicanism and political liberalism, we seek to understand the dynamics of freedom, citizenship, and the role of the state.

## **Historical Roots and Conceptual Tensions of Global Citizenship**

This chapter would like to take seriously the hybrid aspect of GCE, between historical aspirations and conceptual tensions. As we will see in a brief synthesis of the International Bureau of Education's actions, as a matrix of educational internationalism (Hofstetter & Erhise, 2022), the two dimensions are not dissociable. Founded almost a century ago in 1925 in Geneva in line with the Rousseau Institute which later became part of the University of Geneva, the IBE symbolised a shared aspiration for peace.

Just like the League of Nations, also based in Geneva, tensions between internal actors as well as with the main external partners (governments, international organisations, teachers' unions) were sharp. Nevertheless, a common horizon of peace and global cooperation through education managed to emerge as seen today through the actions in favour of global citizenship of UNESCO, the UN and the European Commission (among others).

What was the object of these tensions? We will first explore them from a historical point of view, before studying whether they currently find a political expression. This is a difficult task, since defining the notion of global citizenship is problematic, as even UNESCO admits in its reports. Finally, we will propose, in order to help overcome this justified struggle, a framework of political philosophy that we will develop in the following chapters, empirically as well as operationally, through the GlobalSense research.

#### **1 The International Bureau of Education as a Matrix of Educational Cosmopolitanism**

Since its foundation, the IBE has wanted to spread the idea of international cooperation in education. Study trips were promoted, as well as meetings with international educators and trainers, and interschool correspondence via mail, at a time when email and online exchanges did not exist. But what strikes a historian is the startling contrast between "dithyrambic statements – part of a legitimation strategy – and the alarmist observations that punctuate the daily exchanges" within the IBE (Hofstetter, 2022, p. 101).

These tensions are not only related to the funding deficit of the institution, nor to the peculiar approach of some of the advocates of world peace, such as Adolphe Ferrière, who adopted a spiritualist approach, perceiving the world as an essential totality, or even a mystical approach under the sign of astrology, and was gradually discarded in favour of more scientific profiles such as Jean Piaget, director of the IBE for four decades (from 1929 to 1968). They are also linked to political or even geopolitical parameters, in times of structuring of an East-West axis whose two centres of gravity were the United States on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other. In this context, peace and neutrality are perceived by the Federation of Education Workers as a way for the IBE "to consciously or not deceive educators, to make them believe that one can, through neutrality, suppress class warfare and achieve social harmony" (Apletine, quoted in Christian et al.*,* 2022, p. 534).

This is why some members of the IBE were wary of being too closely associated with the League of Nations, and others wished to initiate bilateral meetings, without its relay, with foreign governments, stressing that cooperation in education does not indicate support for authoritarian regimes. Thus the IBE gradually became an intergovernmental body by binding itself first to countries where progressive education, the pedagogical spearhead of the IBE under the sign of activity, creativity and spontaneity of children and adolescents (which itself found a scientific counterpart in Piaget's psychology), was well established (Poland, Ecuador), then to countries whose governments were much less in tune with the liberal spirit, such as 1930s Germany. To solve this tension, the IBE valued a "strictly scientific universalist internationalism" but this was not enough to avoid discredit. When the world is torn between liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes, is universal cooperation at a global level truly possible?

Thus, in 1939, a fateful year, the delegates of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy used the IBE, of which they were members, as a platform to declare: "It is to the extent that each will base education on the genius of its people, that peoples will come to better understand and respect one another […], for without a sense of the nation there can be no true humanity" (cited by Hofstetter & Boss, 2022, p. 152). These sentences are not absurd in themselves, since philosophers who are now critical of GCE have similar positions (whose blind points we will be describe later), but one can guess, with the comfort of hindsight, the intention and true meaning of these words.

That being said, the IBE initiated here a fruitful practice of not thwarting any national educational movement. It is through the wealth of national experiences, the development of knowledge and national experience in each country, that the IBE believes it can coordinate and drive educational reforms around the world (Hofstetter & Boss, 2022, p. 149). Ultimately, we must accept dealing with national realities at the risk of falling into hegemonic, standardising and impoverishing goals – those that the current notion of GC is sometimes accused of conveying. Piaget, in a note about the relationship between the IBE (which he was leading) and the SDN, indicated that: "The IBE therefore does not aim to standardise education by means of conventions, but rather to strengthen the characteristics of each country's educational systems by disclosing them" (cited by Hofstetter & Boss, 2022, p. 152).

In this context, the notion of global citizenship education is developed with all its tensions and its contradictions but also, given the highly liberal and cosmopolitan inspiration of its promoters, its richness. On the one hand, the IBE's general secretary regretted, in retrospect, that the Bureau had not clearly objected to the Nazi occupation. Neutrality indeed backfired cruelly against the promoters of global citizenship education, and even the place of practice of the IBE, Switzerland, was called into question. The post-1945 period was incompatible with neutrality, making the IBE seem compromised. However, on the other hand, the ideals it carried did not weaken. The ideal of a democratic, humanitarian and non-belligerent education kept all its meaning at a time when large and relatively pushy nations, such as France, claimed to be on the side of victors and took advantage of this position to impose discriminatory norms, in the colonies for example, through what cannot be called an emancipatory education. In this, the obstinate but tireless internationalism of the IBE not only anticipated the future UNESCO, a United Nations' body dedicated to science, culture and education; as an intergovernmental centre for comparative education, it actually foreshadowed it, becoming one of its cardinal agencies in 1952 before fully integrating it in 1969 (Hofstetter & Schneuwly, 2022, p. 542).

The political and conceptual challenge was therefore significant: it was about strengthening the internationalist and pacifist spirit while rooting education in particular nations. It was also about claiming to lead a strictly scientific approach, despite the IBE having been formed by more or less scrupulous supporters of 'progressive education', which values the creativity of children, their spontaneity and curiosity (to serve their 'natural development'), while investing new generations with a redemptive mission for future humanity. Certainly, the figure of Piaget was useful to reconcile the scientific claims on human psychology with progressive pedagogical methods. The IBE's major comparative surveys also provided relatively objective documentation on national education systems. Nevertheless, "the IBE claim[ed] not to defend any pedagogical doctrine, but rather consider[ed] that these principles are attested by scientific investigations. Does science tend to be a guarantor of the convictions of the IBE partners?" (Hofstetter & Schneuwly, 2022, p. 552).

In fact, educational internationalism with psychological connotations can be "mystifying [and of] astounding naïveté" (Hofstetter & Schneuwly, 2022, p. 555), when nationalisms and major geopolitical divides are exacerbated. It is the case with the opposition between the proletarian internationalism of the 20th century and civilising cosmopolitanism or, more recently, between liberal democracies and the great emerging authoritarian nations, from Russia to Iran to China. These conflicts are made even thornier by the complex positions of states at the world level concerning the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, replaying to some extent the East-West opposition, or regarding the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Moreover, according to Hofstetter and Schneuwly, educational internationalism and its pedagogy generate highly popular theses and comfortable political cant. Who could be opposed to the generous idea that 'the future of humanity is at stake in education' or disagree with the fact that it would be good for 'youth to become aware of their civic responsibilities'? Essentially, educational internationalism is supported by a mental geography rooted in a hybrid synthesis of scientific data, geopolitics linked to the involved governments (in the IBE then UNESCO) and a reformist so-called progressive pedagogy around activity, creativity and cooperation between children at a class level, as a prelude to cooperation between humans on a global scale. As Piaget, who at the time was UNESCO's Acting Assistant Director-General, said:

it is only from a set of active methods, which puts at the forefront joint research (teamwork) and the social life of the students themselves (self-government) that the study of national and international attitudes as well as the difficulties of their coordination can take on concrete significance. […] international life is the forum, on a completely different scale, of the same conflicts of reciprocity and of the same incomprehension as any social life. […] as soon as a social life is organised among the pupils themselves, it becomes possible to extend it in the direction of international exchanges and even study groups dealing with international problems. (Piaget, 1949, pp. 50–51)

The terms are clearly set, but they are insufficient to circumscribe the international and scientific education that the IBE was calling for. The path traced by Piaget is to be taken again, tirelessly, and we propose to do it with other disciplines than his, those of which we are specialists: sociology, anthropology and philosophy, as stakeholders of ETS.

Before proceeding with this task, in the company notably of Durkheim, Mauss and Pettit, it is important to acknowledge these contradictions. UNESCO itself does so today, regarding the notion of global citizenship: "there are a number of ongoing tensions with the concepts of global citizenship and global citizenship education" (UNESCO, 2015, p. 10). By officially making global citizenship one of its main education goals for 2014–2021, UNESCO acknowledges, through its Assistant Director-General for Education, that there is no "consensus on the meaning of global citizenship and therefore what GCE should promote" (Tang, 2015, p. 5).

International organisations therefore tend to fall back on a common denominator, which has the merit of being unifying, yet remains unclear; and we know that vagueness is unable to resolve certain recurring tensions. GCE would thus be a framework fostering "the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes learners need for securing a world which is more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable". It would call for "a conceptual shift in that it recognises the relevance of education in understanding and resolving global issues in their social, political, cultural, economic and environmental dimensions", through values and skills that "facilitate international cooperation and promote social transformation", such as "communication skills and aptitudes for networking and interacting with people of different backgrounds, origins, cultures and perspectives" (UNESCO, 2015, p. 9). These elements are both mobilising and troubling.

Mobilising, because we perceive a continuity, coherent and cumulative, with the initiatives of the IBE as a matrix of educational internationalism. The horizon outlined today for GCE is thus firmly anchored in the history of the democratic nations as well as the intellectual and associative movements that gave rise, to a certain extent, to current international organisations: the League of Nations and the IBE, as precursors to the UN and UNESCO. In addition, the emphasis on communication skills and network building takes on a special meaning in GlobalSense since online (videoconferences) and face-to-face interactions (Erasmus+ student mobilities) are an important part of the project. However, the elements of definition mentioned above are also troubling because the question, essentially, is to promote an education whose advocates generally admit the indefinite nature. This raises a rather noticeable quandary, as we shall see, for the most nuanced promoters of GCE. There are at least two aspects to this quandary.

Firstly, it is not clear to what extent education systems need UNESCO to achieve the above objectives, if it is also noted that "GCE can be delivered as part of an existing course (such as civic education or citizenship education, social, environmental, geographical or cultural studies)". How do existing courses fail to meet the aforementioned GCE goals in terms of the values and behaviours learners need to ensure the emergence of a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, safe and sustainable world? That the expected results are not up to the stakes is one thing, and it will be easy to agree that the world should be fairer, more peaceful, etc.; nevertheless, the real added value of the notion of GCE to achieve these objectives is another. This once again, is fully admitted: "Some ways forward to resolve these tensions are suggested, whilst maintaining that challenges around theoretical elements of GCE should not undermine its practice" (UNESCO, 2015, p. 10). This justifies our work, in this book, to solve these theoretical problems, or at least take them seriously, for purposes of a larger 'practice', or appropriation.

Secondly, UNESCO remains the site of significant tensions, and the countries represented in GlobalSense partly illustrate this. The United States left UNESCO in 1984 to protest against the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), which aimed to regulate access to quality information in the world through different points, notably "Include communication as a fundamental right; [r]educe imbalances in the new structures of communication; [s]trengthen a global strategy for communication while respecting cultural identities and individual rights". Then, under the leadership of France and Canada, UNESCO worked on the defence of cultural diversity in the world, in order to respond to the risks of cultural standardisation related to globalisation. In 2005, the General Conference submitted for approval to the Member States a draft Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. It passed almost unanimously, "with only two states, the United States [who had rejoined in 2003] and Israel, voting against it" (Maurel, 2009, p. 137). These last two States are represented in GlobalSense but have no longer been a part of UNESCO since 2018, considering it too multilateral.

In fact, the added value of UNESCO lies less in its capacity to resolve societal debates (although this aspect is also important in view of the many researchers, consultants and political leaders mobilised in its fold) that in its contribution to make meetings between members of countries from the global north and global south happen. Indeed, the organisation can offer welcome financial assistance to "stimulate exchanges between the various countries of the world and encourage the sharing of knowledge in order to bridge the gap between developed and poor countries" (Maurel, 2009, p. 133). As for the GlobalSense research, funded mainly by the European Commission, it concerns only countries from the global north. Nonetheless, the stakes are just as high in terms of citizenship education. They concern, in pedagogical terms, decentralisation defined as a

gradual process of expanding the focus of learners from their local realities to include, connect them to, and provide them with a vision of other realities and possibilities. This concept sees the *local* vs. *global* as a continuum and is an effort to bridge the gap between the two. (UNESCO, 2015, p. 20)

This is a gradual shift: it means that the realities explored, although different, are marked by strong commonalities. In this case, the five countries of the consortium, located on three continents, are marked by a modern ideology, in the sense of the anthropologist Louis Dumont (1992). It is a moral individualism, which naturally tends towards a cosmopolitanism that requires a relative erasure, in collective consciousness, of differences in status and boundaries. As Durkheim saw, the cosmopolitanism inherent to the idea of global citizenship has been linked with the 'sacred' figure of the individual in the more or less harmonious development of 'organic solidarity' in societies marked by a strong division of social work. It is why in this book we will devote a prominent place to theoretical questions, trying to distinguish between what is, on the one hand, the mobilising slogan whose usefulness we do acknowledge, and on the other hand, the conceptual framework that the idea of global citizenship deserves.

In our view, this framework can only be established with a firm foothold in humanities and social sciences, particularly sociology, anthropology, social philosophy and political philosophy. These disciplines thus contribute fully to ETS. Let us illustrate this point with an example of a mobilising discourse that becomes, from a sociological point of view, the indicator of a social aspiration that must be analysed. Highlighting a UNESCO cardinal document on GCE, Chernor Bah, Chair of the Global Education First Initiative's (GEFI) Youth Advocacy Group, declared:

As a citizen you get your rights through a passport/national paper. As a global citizen, it is guaranteed not by a State but through your humanity. This means you are also responsible to the rest of humanity and not the State alone. (quoted in UNESCO, 2015, p. 14)

This passage is interesting for at least two reasons. Firstly, by giving humanity the ability to guarantee rights, it puts it on the same level as a political society, which is often framed by a state or federation of states. This is the cosmopolitan ideal of the modern, the one that our student-teachers in GlobalSense share to some extent and in multiple variations: humanity is not a society, yet it does confer rights.

Secondly, in the aforementioned discourse, which entity is supposed to be responsible for humanity? Surely it cannot be humanity itself, since there is no world state or world federation of states. Therefore, it is no longer a collective entity that is responsible for the rights conferred to the world citizen, but individuals: 'you', that is, the young people to whom Chernor Bah talks. Yet the status of this 'you' is ambiguous. It refers both to a collection of individuals who constitute 'humanity', and to a moral ideal, that of the autonomous modern individual. Yet the latter is a product of the history of 'liberal' societies, who were the instigators, for example, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. This text itself was based on the specific model of the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights of 1789, rooted in French history (there were also other multiple influences for the UDHR from Christian contexts in the process of becoming secularised).

The conceptual node that we must work on is therefore situated in the gap between the moral individual – the object of our collective ideals – and the empirical individual whom we are told would constitute, once aggregated with his fellow men, humanity and related rights. Indeed, as soon as these two plans are confused, the risk is to fall into an a-political conception of citizenship in which "the alter ego is still me, a self distant infinitely" (Descombes, 1996, p. 85). Hence, the fierce debates, the content of which must be restored, on the very notion of global citizenship, accused in turn of naive abstraction, neo- liberalism or inconsistency, in the continuity of the fruitful tensions in which the members of the IBE had been immersed since 1925. By working on these tensions and even contradictions, we place ourselves in the lineage of an educational internationalism to which we want to contribute in a new way.

#### **2 Avenues for Conceptual Solutions in the Philosophy of Education**

To demonstrate this, we will commence the general framing by drawing on the words of a philosopher, Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor at Columbia University. According to Kitcher, education is the most important business in the world, according to the title of his latest book, *The Main Enterprise of the World – Rethinking Education*. The author invites education scholars to clarify, refute or amend his own philosophical theses, which he admits to be very general. How can we, in this perspective, draw upon Education and training sciences?

In a first approach, ETS seem well equipped since they allow to question "the relationship between the development of knowledge (purpose of the field of research) and its social utility (purpose of the field of practice), each being linked to a society project (political purpose)" (Albero, 2019, p. 25). However, we still need to specify the possible articulation between these three poles, in connection with the research objects announced. To do this, we will emphasise that Kitcher's philosophical thought articulates a question of social sciences (holism), a question of politics (citizenship) and a question of social utility (education as the central mission of society). Kitcher indeed wrote:

We become who we are through a dialogue in which the growing person learns from and gives back to a broader social group […]. Moreover, understanding fulfillment through contribution to something larger (and more enduring) than the individual self helps connect the capacity for fulfillment to the capacity for citizenship […]. Education should be viewed as a central mission of society (if not the central mission) […]. My answer is to favor an educational program in which identification with the aspirations of fellow citizens is cultivated. Promoting solidarity should be an aim of education. This […] should not presuppose our ability to devise a system of education capable of producing citizens inclined to engage with any of their fellows, let alone cosmopolitans who reach out to all humanity. Rather it argues for orienting education toward expanding propensities for understanding and learning from others, seeing that expansion as compatible with a commitment to individual autonomy. (Kitcher, 2022, pp. 7, 75, 140)

Each of these sentences deserves discussion, but it will be enough, for now, to identify the contribution of each discipline to the issues raised, in order to give substance to an interdisciplinary and international research project:


Kitcher also examines the question of religion and secularism in a chapter entitled "A role for religion?". Indeed, if education must induce the feeling of belonging to something broader than the individual, then is there not a reason to make religions contribute to it, capable of representing communities around shared beliefs and rituals? Kitcher's answer is negative, although it admits exceptions. Only the so-called 'refined' religions have an educational utility, that is to say those which offer examples of morality (stories, parables, tales, poetry) as 'reminders' or 'tools', strictly illustrative, serving a social and moral discussion that can only be secular. This goes to show that ecumenism is not enough. Furthermore, these precise conditions require the enlightenment of political philosophy (Laborde, 2017).

The interdisciplinary investigation (social philosophy, political philosophy, sociology, education and training sciences), should allow, in the long term, to specify to what extent and under what conditions ETS constitute, on the subjects which occupy us, an original epistemic field and not just a chance meeting between several disciplines.

If the subjects treated and the disciplinary fields must be mutually rethought, it is because the academic disciplines are themselves affected by the evolutions of nation-states in a global context, insofar as they have been actors in their development and in the modern project of individual autonomy. This concerns philosophy, sociology (Callegaro & Marcucci, 2018) but also comparative education (Malet, 2011), to which our international perspective intends to contribute. These points are developed in the first part of this work.

In addition, a model of citizenship, historically built on the nation-state (initially in Europe), has spread through cultural and commercial exchanges but especially colonial enterprises, affecting the regions of the world in different manners, and the ways in which people belong to their political community. What are the consequences in terms of citizenship education? Is it only possible, if not desirable, to decouple citizenship from its national framework? What are the conditions for the development of a cosmopolitan citizenship, of which Durkheim saw the emergence as a modern ideal? These points are dealt with in the second part along with the findings of the GlobalSense research.

#### **3 Methodological Individualism and Moral Individualism**

To understand the complex links between individuals and society, mentioned as one of the most important conceptual tensions to be considered in the perspective of global citizenship education (UNESCO, 2015), we must clarify the terms by distinguishing methodological individualism and moral individualism, which will then allow us to address the related issue of holism. In sociology, individualism is often associated with a method: methodological individualism, which was popularised by James Coleman, followed by Raymond Boudon. It consists in assuming that people's actions are understandable and rational, so that the aim of sociology must be to reconstruct, if necessary by the method of ideal types, the sequences of reasoning leading to certain behaviours – such as how families choose a school – or certain beliefs, for example the differential diffusion of Christianity in the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages (Boudon, 2001).

The strength of this type of approach is, notably, that it seeks to explain a phenomenon in a minimum of hypotheses. With this approach, there is no need to assume that there are 'cultures', 'civilisations' or even a 'spirit of these times' to understand and explain most human behaviours in society. Even Max Weber's famous 'spirit of capitalism' is conceived by Coleman and Boudon as a simple metaphor that veils the transparency of Calvinist reasoning: if God is omnipotent, then he must be insensitive not only to offerings but also to any institution claiming to link (in this case according to the economy of sin and reward) the believer to the afterlife. He must also be insensitive to faith and love (as Luther believed) and it remains for the faithful, in absolute subjection to God, to only work for the glorification of the latter in the world and to seek in it the signs of his election, like enrichment that is valued as such. There is no 'spirit of capitalism' as such here, but an aggregation of rational individual behaviours, reconstructed in an ideal-typical way by the sociologist and forming in the long run what nominalists can call – therefore with quotation marks – the 'spirit' of capitalism (and it doesn't matter if this Weber thesis was disputed: what is at stake here is the method).

Nevertheless, this sociologist position, is not in fact solely methodological. Like Karl Popper before him, Raymond Boudon promoted moral individualism while claiming that it was essentially a matter of method. This shift is noticeable in France in the highly publicized *Sociological danger* (*Danger sociologique*), published in 2017. Its authors, Gérald Bronner and Étienne Géhin, criticise the ill-considered use of collective entities in social sciences by claiming that this explanatory mode risks drying up the belief in individual responsibility, morality and merit. In doing so, the authors refer to a set of moral principles – and not only methodological ones – around the value of individual autonomy, which, as a typical requirement of our modern societies, is fundamentally holistic (Dumont, 1992).

Thus, our individualistic principles form an ideology, without any derogatory connotation. Ideology, in the anthropological sense, is essentially the hierarchy of values of a society, knowing that a value of a higher level can, without contradiction, encompass its opposite. Thus in Genesis, the masculine encompasses the feminine, in the image of Eve born from the rib of Adam, himself created in the image of God. At the higher hierarchical level, Eve (a part) is inferior to Adam (the whole). One might point out that actually, a woman is equal to a man, and even sometimes superior to him; but it remains that in the aforementioned myth, if Woman is equal to Man, it is at a determined hierarchical level, in this case a lower one. In other words, the oppositions "woman > man" and "woman = man" are here hierarchically inferior to the opposition "woman < man". We can also refer to Bourdieu's ancient but famous study of the Kabyle house and the oppositions between high and low, above and below, public and private (etc.) that accompany the opposition – falsely symmetrical – between masculine and feminine (Bourdieu, 1970).

The difficulty we sometimes experience in grasping these points comes from the fact that under the effect of individualism, itself favoured by the division of social work, the moderns pay less and less attention to the hierarchy of values. This is why there are many debates on the equality according to the moderns. Does it imply 'recognition of differences', or rather their neglect, or their subordination in the name of the *de facto* superior modern value, that of egalitarian individualism?

In short, as moderns, the content of our collective ideology is individualistic (responsibility, autonomy, universal human rights), but we have difficulty perceiving it because this ideology, in the same gesture that enshrines the preeminent value of the individual, tends to deny the idea that this value comes from society as a whole. Moreover, by placing the individual at the top of our hierarchy of values, we may tend to consider society as an aggregation of individuals, even if they are united by a state as defined by artificialist theories (but symptomatic of individualistic ideology) of the social contract tearing humans away from the state of nature. It is precisely this anthropological reflexivity that Popper or Boudon lacked, and that many of their successors still lack, blinded by the confidence they have in the individualist (liberal) ideology. For finally, "why would the social life of a modern society be fully consistent with the representation it gives of itself in its ideology?" (Descombes, 2009, p. 48).

However, this field of 'liberal sociology', which sometimes overlaps with that of 'analytical sociology' (Bronner & Di Ioro, 2018), remains eminently interesting if we consider its moral side. The principle of parsimony allowed by methodological individualism has a political counterpart. In essence, it is quite wrong to think, at an ontological level, that collectives are created from individuals; and yet, at a political level, we must in part act as if this were the case.

In other words, the principle of analytical parsimony, which aims to reduce the number of beings necessary to explain a phenomenon and thus to eliminate the ontologically doubtful entities that are collective individuals, is the scientific counterpart of a true political 'obsession'. Even if such an obsession tends to confer […] a highly problematic individualistic bias on reflections concerning collective intentionality, the latter have the merit of relaunching the investigation into two questions that are essential for social sciences: the question of the ontology of collectives, that is, their mode of existence, as well as the question of the specifically political properties to which only certain collectives would be entitled to claim. (Kaufmann, 2010, p. 334)

This work will return to the notion of collective intentionality, but it will suffice for the moment to say that it is a type of 'micro-holism' with an individualistic basis; or, if we prefer, a 'parsimonious holism' that makes sure not to multiply the collective entities that can surreptitiously clash with our inseparably modern and individualistic (in the moral sense) ideals. This microholism, which can also be found in Simmel or Goffman's works, is exploited in particular by Margaret Gilbert and Philip Pettit, two social philosophers who intend to revisit, in their own ways, the holistic heritage of Durkheim.

As a version of political liberalism, critical republicanism is also caught between the parsimonious explanatory aim and the political concern of the moderns. This is highly noticeable in the work of Pettit, who is a social as well as a political philosopher (trying to make 'individualistic holism' and 'republicanism' converge). Indeed, a sociology of secularism, but also of the Republic and more broadly of political liberalism, must be parsimonious in the sense that it cannot assume, a-critically, the existence of many collective entities that would impose themselves on the individual: common belief, religious culture, community identity; phenomena that instituted religions display as prevailing over individual consciences. But to succeed with this wager, while avoiding the aforementioned pitfalls of nominalist sociology, we must remember Dumont's lesson by assuming the individualist ideology as it presents itself in our Western societies, in its egalitarian form. In doing so, we thus recognise that we are constantly confronted with two different figures: on the one hand, the empirical individual in charge of sociology; on the other hand, the moral individual in charge of political philosophy. Is this a mixing of *genres*? No, because the intersections between sociology and political philosophy are inevitable (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). The challenge is precisely to provide sufficient reflexivity to unravel their entanglements.

As such, a major French reference for thinking secularism, in an inseparably parsimonious and individualistic perspective, is Catherine Kintzler, very early discussed by Cécile Laborde (2001). Kintzler's perspective, inspired by Condorcet (philosopher, mathematician and president of the French revolutionary assembly in 1792), is indeed extremely parsimonious, recognising in principle only individuals, a pledge of their equal treatment, and going so far as to promote a 'principle of untying' at the foundation of political association. The author's concern is thus, unlike Régis Debray (2004), to think secularism radically detached from any religious model. Kintzler deployed a sharp critical lucidity to understand the pitfalls of a 'teaching of the religious fact' (*enseignement du fait religieux*) that would not be reflexive enough. The sociologist Jean-Paul Willaime himself became mired in these pitfalls, despite Baubérot's clarification who reproached him his closeness with Nicolas Sarkozy's position on secularism, which was too conciliatory towards religions as such (Baubérot, 2009).

Nonetheless, it is risky to favour Kintzler's parsimony inspired by Condorcet. Too radically and too abstractly individualistic, Kintzler is now more and more clearly espousing conservative views on the supposed dangers of 'wokism' or on the prohibition of the ostensible wearing of religious signs for parents accompanying students during school trips. As it happens, the pendulum effect between exacerbated individualism and conservative pseudo-holism had already been identified by Dumont. In addition, before that, Mauss and Fauconnet had indicated the danger, in Condorcet's work, of hypostasising a metaphysical individual serving a philosophy of history (at a stage before sociology) from which, moreover, certain personalities claiming to do sociology such as Herbert Spencer, did not escape (Mauss & Fauconnet, 1968, p. 19).

Fundamentally, if Kintzler's republican thought has the merit of raising well-circumscribed points of vigilance about the French public school, it nevertheless contains the defects of classical republicanism. It is also called 'official' republicanism, in the sense that several of its aspects are taken up in mainstream French political discourses and decisions, of which the prohibition of the ostensible wearing of religious signs is a particularly illustrative example (Laborde, 2008). The republican thinking of Philip Pettit, individualist and holist, or, if one prefers, parsimoniously holist, constitutes in this respect an exceedance. Certainly, Pettit's social philosophy is fragile (Urfalino, 2022), but what interests us is the way he questions the existence of groups in the Republic; in other words, we are interested in his political philosophy, taken over and refined by Laborde (2017).

Yet, to say this, is to still depend on philosophy. The latter is not an end in itself, but a means to revive sociological questioning. Sociology was not merely constituted in the wake of philosophy; however, when it wanted to empower itself as a science, it lost sight of certain ways of questioning the Republic, the nation and citizenship. These approaches were 'preserved' by philosophers, so that they guide social sciences on new issues, as modernity advances, by inviting them to take a reflexive and distanced look at the latter. The solution lies, in this case, via the philosophical detour, in the more direct reinvestment of the work of the French school of sociology (Durkheim, Mauss) and those who followed.

#### **4 The Social Totality in Practice**

These issues of distinguishing holism, individualism, liberalism and republicanism are crucial for mapping the "conceptual framework" (UNESCO, 2015, p. 10) that constitutes the dynamic notion of global citizenship education, which itself deserves "conceptual clarity" (Tang, 2015, p. 6). Education professionals, whatever their specific logic of actions, are to a large extent the guarantors of "a conception of the collective good […] in an individualistic society [whose] definition of the common good is the imperative of ensuring the autonomy of each person" (Descombes, 2013, p. 154).

In sociology, Boltanski and Thévenot's approach makes it possible to explore two aspects mentioned above. One aspect is the aspirations of individuals imbued with individualistic morality, as evidenced by the 'worlds' (civic, domestic, industrial, inspired, opinion, market) typified around Smith, Rousseau, Saint Augustine, etc. The other aspect is the modes of construction of what is common, based on individual interactions within situations where the hierarchy of beings in presence – and sometimes the definition of these situations – is played out, since people, with similar critical skills to sociologists', can question social reality on the basis of a 'world' or 'city' as a typified reserve of *topoi* prevalent in a given society (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006).

However, the crystallisation points mentioned above must still be brought into coherence in regard to the privileged field, namely the (public) school. It is indeed a very specific, regulating and integrative institution, whose congruence with the model of Boltanski and Thévenot can be questioned. It is on this level that their approach must be completed and amended by Durkheimian neoholism, but also the studies of Mauss on the nation and certain perspectives of political philosophy that attempt, to say it concisely, to connect the holistic and individualistic aspects of the ideology of the moderns. Thus, the expression liberal nationalism (Gustavsson & Miller, 2020), although discussed, at least clearly poses the terms of the problem. Indeed, liberal, egalitarian individualism, to which we all participate to some degree, including Human and social sciences researchers as part of their academic activity, relates to the idea of nation.

Is there not, however, a risk in developing such a burning theme as the nation in sociology? Certainly this discipline is marked by interactionism, pragmatism, methodological individualism, constructivism and Marxism, approaches that all tend to define human relationships as relatively disenfranchised of the national totalities that give them meaning (Karsenti & Lemieux, 2017). Therefore, is it not an outdated object, that Durkheim and Mauss worked on explicitly only because they lived in an era eminently marked by national phenomena, including the horror of the great wars?

It is more likely that the founders of sociology had sufficient reflexivity not to write only under the effect of the conjuncture. In fact, the nation is always implicitly present, to varying degrees, in sociological work. We have mentioned methodological individualism, sometimes confused with moral individualism, because its proponents do not dare to formulate clearly the terms of modern ideology, carried mainly by societies in the form of nations (Mauss, 1953/2013). Let us give another example, at the other end of the spectrum of sociological controversies, still in the form of a symptom: the metamorphosis of Pierre Bourdieu concerning the republican public school. After having undermined its foundations, denounced as 'cultural arbitrariness' associated with 'symbolic state violence', he turned around in the 1990s to defend the state – obviously national – and rehabilitate many aspects of the old order against neo-liberalism.

Sociology, however, was invested with a Herculean mission, properly embodied by Bourdieu's 'heroic' perspective. For, though the state was for him the ideal place to grasp the field of fields, it is (his) sociology that ultimately made it possible to objectify this field. Society as such then disappears behind the fields seized from the perspective of the state, as objectified by the sociologist's critical competence. Essentially, though Bourdieu in his last work did not fully admit his 'Durkheimism' (since it would have been incompatible with a critical sociology), the fact remains that he made the state "the embodiment of the collective" by remaining dependent of French republican history, embodied even in the very identity of the sociologist, "an official son of civil servants who feels that the social world in which he lived is ending" (Fabiani, 2016, pp. 216, 241).

That is why the publication of *On justification* (*De la justification*) in 1991, translated in English in 2006, is crucial. The work takes up suggestions made by Bourdieu himself, who explained that he wanted to think of fields by referring to the "plurality of worlds" consisting of "commonplaces, irreducible topics" that make the "plurality of logics corresponding to different worlds" (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 21). The author, however, did not lead this endeavour and it is Boltanski and Thévenot who fully give back to actors their critical skills and thus reintroduce, we believe, the idea of global society, the one that Durkheimians and Maussians holists scrutinise. For if Durkheim was a republican devoted to the state as a potential place of truth, free of any social peculiarities (he thought in particular that, as such, officials should not unionise), it is the idea of society that runs deeper into his work, from *The Division of Labour in Society* to *The Elementary Forms*, as well as that of Mauss with *The Gift* or *The Nation*.

If the pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot regenerates sociology by expanding perspectives beyond nostalgia for the state, we have nevertheless stopped in midstream. Certainly, Boltanski and Thévenot are aware of what is at stake, when they point to the need for international comparisons. Their typification of worlds indeed depends on a given social totality, as we see in the choice made by Boltanski and Thévenot of referring to authors who, all Western, are supposedly the depositaries of a vein of justification, in relative contrast to a preponderance of the domestic logic in Russia and the merchant logic in the United States of America (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2022). However, if this is the case, it means that a more advanced comparison, resolutely anthropological, would burst their model. Therefore, it becomes eventually necessary to make the 'whole' appear as totality, in other words, as the society which 'holds together' the principles of justice. This program, already perceived by Boltanski and Thévenot through the idea of 'historical sedimentation', must be extended. We propose to do so by assuming the socialist ideal, more precisely the critical republican ideal, while signalling towards cosmopolitanism (Erez & Laborde, 2020).

#### **5 Sociological Holism and Comparative Education**

Let us clarify the link between a socialist perspective and critical republicanism. According to Karsenti and Lemieux, the socialist ideal is indeed an ideology, but with a particular status, clear of the circular dynamics that oppose liberals and conservatives. The socialist ideal must indeed be understood, according to these authors, as a reaction to what is the conservative reaction. The latter being worried about the effects of a nominalist liberalism, which tends to grant existence, as in Margaret Thatcher's famous sentence of 1987,1 to individuals and families but not to society. It is here that a connection can be made with critical republicanism, that of Cécile Laborde in particular: it is socialist in the sense that it constitutes a reaction to the conservative reaction of Dominique Schnapper and Catherine Kintzler. Essentially, Laborde shares with these 'republican' authors a number of assumptions relating to the value of moral individualism in its egalitarian component. But, unlike Schnapper and Kintzler, she takes fully into account the progress of modernity, which means that the republican ideal, in France and beyond, should be adapted to these new conditions in order to remain faithful to itself.

#### **5.1** *Modernity*

We will often use the expression 'modernity' or 'modern societies' in this book. At times, the objective will be to assume the status of Human and social sciences as being part of a social process. At other times, the goal will be to describe the deepening of individualism in societies presenting a strong division of labour. In other parts, the point will be to limit 'debates of modernity' around the republic, post colonialism, and communities (Blitstein & Lemieux, 2018). Therefore, it is worth fixing the meaning of it now. Karsenti's proposal seems like a good starting point. Typically, being modern means paying

attention to the individuality of each epoch, as bearer of a beauty of its own, and [to attribute] the qualification of modern for that very attention, for its ability to extract value specific to the life form it observes, including when it observes itself. (Karsenti, 2013, p. 180)

Let us try nevertheless to be more specific. If the relationship to the present is essential, while providing the means to extract from any epoch the beauty that is its own, it is often by specifying a hierarchy, in the name of evolution for example. Though this can certainly lead to colonial violence, it is assumed that the moderns have gone through the earlier stages of civilisation, so that the latter, theoretically, also fully participate in humanity. This is the ambiguous but decisive humanism of the first social anthropologists.

That being said, seized with a very understandable concern for coherence with themselves, the moderns are at times inclined to consider that any hierarchy of this type must be proscribed. This is why there are debates on modernity, consisting in saying, for example, that the 1990 Declaration of Human Rights in Islam is equivalent in value2 to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter is based on a Christian model, first Protestant, then also Catholic: firstly in the context of weakening of the clergy under secular humanist pushes; secondly, on the borders of Europe, in the context of decolonisation, putting Catholic minorities at risk and requiring the defence of the rights of the individual as such.

This shows how necessary it is to cross disciplines, in order to grasp the essential component of secularism that freedom of conscience is. We cannot understand its place at the top of our hierarchy of values, as a notion and human right, without tracing the context of the implosion of the hearth of Latin Christianity. This specific location of emergence does not devalue the scope of freedom of conscience, since its place of incubation in a given space does not change the fact that everyone is "neither more nor less than an heir likely to adhere to it or to reject [it]", whatever the geographical location (Avon, 2020, p. 21). As it happens, this tension between place of incubation, actual aspirations of societies, and universalisation is fully supported in the sociology of Durkheim and Mauss.

For if Durkheim assumed the Christian lineage of moral education, this did not prevent him from introducing a severance marked by the process of division of social work. This process, affecting all societies with a high density of population, gives substance to social aspirations marked by the seal of individualism and which need to be taken over first by the state (as integrator and regulator), itself counterbalanced by collective forces, internal (secondary groups) and external (individuation of nation-states conducive to organic solidarity between them). This last step falls within an ideal of cosmopolitanism, assumed by Durkheim and Mauss, even if the latter preferred to call himself internationalist because he considered "the nation [as] the support of politics" and cosmopolitanism may, for this very reason, tend to "deny political responsibility and circumvent legal regulations" (Tarot, 2003, p. 68).

This is why the comparative dimension related to secondary teacher training, through the GlobalSense research program, funded by the European Commission (Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnerships in Higher Education) and the *Pays de la Loire* Region, led to deploy a resolutely Durkheimian sociology through Mauss and Dumont's anthropology – comparative science *par excellence*. The question, for example, is to gain a deep understanding of what distinguishes the French, German and Israeli national characters (Mauss, 1953/2013; Dumont, 1991; Karsenti, 2023). This need to understand also comes from interactions between researchers, within the GlobalSense consortium: we must constantly distinguish misunderstandings depending on their theoretical, political or disciplinary causes (I do not agree because you are a sociologist and I am a philosopher; or because you are a communitarian and I am a republican, etc.), from incomprehension due to national belonging. Indeed the words we use – citizenship, society, world, universalism, nation, republic, liberalism, individual – do not have the same meaning depending on the social totalities that give them meaning.

In fact, a generally equivalent vocabulary was created in theology, morality, philosophy, and not just in science and fine arts. Islam, Buddhism conveyed ideas with words throughout the East and the Far East, just like philosophy and Christianity, partly a heir to it. And not only words, but also formulas, common places; where many civilisations can meet and complement each other. […] Ideas are not only translatable, they are identical. There is no reason to suppose that with the considerable development of science, the arts, including politics and morals, and fine arts and reason, the fruit of human education and translation, this universal part of our mind does not result in a single language that finds equivalents everywhere, even in the details of the discourse. […] So that the heterogeneity of languages will be counterbalanced by this homogeneity of the rational part and that one can conceive – what it would have been difficult to conceive a hundred years ago – how a universal language will make possible the universal society and inversely. (Mauss, 1953/2013, p. 148)

Mauss, however, specifies the conditions for this possible future movement. They are not easily united since morality or fine arts make the constitution of a nation3 and the modern form of societies is the nation, so that there is no society beyond nations. This means that, whilst being members of different nations, we want to understand each other on these crucial scientific questions, or even universalise the "rational part" of our language, we must first assume our anchorage in these societies, as providers of meaning. In doing so, we come back to the essential principles of comparative education, at least when it is concerned with clarification, which is inseparably anthropological and linguistic: "It is not in a world free of language that one must seek a potentially universal word, for it is precisely culture that allows one to seek, beyond the constraints of one's own language, what is not reduced to it" (Malet, 2022, p. 446).

The author specifies that this often engages a holistic perspective. It takes into account, without reifying them, these tenacious realities that are nations, serving a scientific validity based less on term-to-term comparison than on the management of issues of comparability and epistemology specific to the comparative approach.

#### **5.2** *Societal Challenges*

To do this, we must also ask ourselves what sort of international cooperation is at stake. The GlobalSense research certainly overlaps what Mauss says about technical, civilisational, and linguistic borrowings between nations. Nevertheless, mentioning this is not enough. In this case, the consortium anchored in five countries aims to develop citizenship education. 'Education towards' (peace, sustainable development, interculturality, etc.) involves a multitude of scientific and political issues that require not only sociological, philosophical and anthropological reflexivity, but also educational reflexivity. Since if researchers are funded, it is in the name of societal challenges (Erasmus+, Horizon Europe) that are not always sufficiently problematised. This is a difficult point and it will be developed in the company of Mauss at first, then in reference to more current works in Education and training sciences.

In principle, sciences must contribute to meeting 'societal challenges', because they are themselves part of society, according to a model glimpsed by Durkheim and Mauss. The latter challenged both non-reflexive forms of political engagement in the name of science and apolitical entrenchment in the name of academic purity. This is why the theme worked on in GlobalSense, around global citizenship education, is neither an opportunity to defend a special cause, nor an opportunity to retreat into the academic arena in order to deconstruct ruthlessly a notion that is certainly, at first glance, akin to a square circle. What indeed is the framework of so-called 'global' citizenship if the world itself is not a society? Unless a rather anarchic assembling of nations in permanent competition, or even in latent and sometimes real war, can be assimilated to a society?

On the sociological level, Mauss considered that there is no reality, at a global or quasi-global level, that can be considered as an environment where national societies live, in the way individuals live in a 'social *milieu'* that is superior to them. Certainly, nations have an exterior environment, but the latter is not a *milieu* of different order, since it is the nations themselves that form it.

It is indeed an abstraction to believe that the internal policy of a nation is not largely conditioned by the outside, and vice versa. Only, and this remarkable, while societies live among other societies, […] their environment is of the same nature and order as them, (whereas) the other organisms, including human individualities, live in environments that are totally heterogeneous to them: either inferior to them, such as the physical environment, or superior as the social environment. A society that is already a *milieu* for the individuals who compose it, lives among other societies that are also *milieux*. (Mauss, 1953/2013, p. 123)

The author accuses 'utopians' of losing sight of this reality. He adds that of course, 'humanity' exists. However, the latter does not include societies: it is a 'set of environments', therefore a set of societies. Adopting this perspective, the fashionable slogan of global citizenship seems inconsistent, at least if one thinks that one must be in a society to be a citizen. To put it bluntly: if there is no global society, but only a set of environments called 'humanity', then there can be no global citizenship. Admittedly, it may be objected that Mauss had not yet witnessed federative processes such as the European Union, but the continuation of this book will show that this type of federation, establishing a *de facto* European citizenship, is rather a denial of the notion of global citizenship.

And yet, it is also possible to approach the problem from the other end. Let us return to what Mauss says about the new movements of societies of which the sociologist must be on the lookout in order to sketch a theory about them. It may be that the multifaceted success, as we shall see, of the slogan global citizenship is the indicator of a new social (and educational) aspiration of our morally individualistic societies. Thus, we will approach GCE from a sociological perspective: it is neither a well formed concept nor an educational ideal that could be defended hastily without compromising itself in utopia (to speak as Mauss). On the other hand, it is definitely a slogan to which pre- service teachers are sensitive, are sometimes annoyed by, other times enthusiastic about, and often express interest for it. This is the social phenomenon that we must grasp: how does the deployment of an international pedagogy on global citizenship reveal the aspirations of members of morally individualistic societies, whose ideology increasingly disregards borders and differences in status between human persons, making it *a priori* receptive, in different ways, to the slogan of global citizenship?

The return to Durkheim and Mauss makes it possible to ask again great scientific questions while avoiding "the most serious wrong", that of "staying in [one's] tower while leaving politics to the political theorists and the bureaucratic theorists" (Mauss, 1968, p. 74). Therefore, we seek to mobilise the strongest tools possible to avoid the following pitfall, identified by researchers in Education and training sciences:

Researchers in Humanities and social sciences (HSS) are part of a context of expertise or innovation in which they are confronted with pseudoresearch in the style of design office studies that are increasingly targeted, technical and/or utilitarian. In turn, the ability of HSS to understand and make sense of societal changes seems increasingly fragile, while broad systemic readings of processes and situations are less and less frequent. (Barthes & Lange, 2022a, p. 32)

'Educations towards' are at the heart of this issue. Indeed, a-disciplinary by nature, they have a strong ideological, even doctrinal, imprint; cognitive but also emotional, moral goals, sometimes presented as being 'connected to life', in some cases behavioural goals even, with the support of non-school actors, whose ideological perspective may be useful, but nevertheless deserves to be questioned. Social reality varies on this point, and sometimes the 'educations towards' integrate school disciplines, thus more or less solving the problem of the necessary link with constituted knowledge and disciplines that allow this approach. It remains that to draw an ideal-typical definition of 'education towards' is a way of limiting potential pitfalls and of defending their emancipatory goal "in front of those who proclaim themselves legitimate to speak about these issues (religions, political parties, associations, etc.), because they are precisely defined by values of commitment" (Barthes, 2017a, p. 29). Vigilance must be all the more important as universities are among the transmission belts of 'education towards' and their potentially ideological effects.

Universities occupy a special place in the organisation of 'education towards'. Indeed, they position themselves as an essential link in the transmission of international bodies [UNESCO, WHO, etc.] towards states and their educational systems. In this sense they are major instruments for transmitting political programmes and international values […] This grid [of networks generally organised by academics] presents itself in reality as a form of organisation that allows universities to pave the way for adapting a state's education system to international political programs. This is particularly true in 'education towards' as it is thematic and non-disciplinary. (Barthes, 2017b, pp. 568–569)

Hence the necessity to also take the GlobalSense project as an object of research, in order to breathe sufficient reflexivity into it. To this end, we turn to interdisciplinarity, for its ability to prevent a particular discipline from forging ahead towards the management of populations, under the pretext of generous slogans such as global citizenship education, a concept that certainly paves the way for international funding but nevertheless must be questioned.

#### **Notes**


3 In a non-legal sense. The constitution of a nation is made up of elements that cannot be borrowed by another nation. They are generally quite limited and Mauss specifies that everything else can be borrowed. Here is a Franco-German example: "On the French side, I am man by nature and French by accident […]; [on the German side], I am a man thanks to my being German […], and where the French were content to juxtapose nations as fragments of humanity, the Germans, recognising the individuality of each, were concerned with ordering the nations in humanity according to their value. […] Finally, beyond their immediate opposition, the universalism of some, the pan-Germanism of others have a similar function or place" (Dumont, 1991, pp. 150–151). The weight of history thus makes difficult direct conceptual borrowings (about the individual, universalism, cultures) even if the phenomena it carries can be similar: German suprematism and French colonialism. Similarly, on the level of moral individualism, which is a common point between these two societies, we can distinguish an 'introvert individualism' in Germany, marked by Protestantism, from an 'extrovert individualism' in France, marked by the Revolution.

## **Education and Training Sciences within Social Sciences**

#### **1 Sciences Reduced to Their Object?**

In order to understand fully the rich structuring of Education and training sciences (ETS), let us proceed here with an international comparison. In France, from the outside, they are sometimes confused with pedagogy. The success of well-known figures such as Philippe Meirieu has undoubtedly contributed to this image. On other occasions, ETS have been associated almost exclusively with teacher training or even disciplinary didactics, because of the strong presence of this sub-field in the French teacher training colleges. However, these shortcuts are reductive, for the structuring of ETS is much richer, in that it is based on more numerous disciplines, including sociology, psychology, history, economics and philosophy.

In Great Britain, education sciences have made a major institutional contribution to teacher training for professionalisation purposes. In Germany, an academic trend towards the development of didactics, in a different sense from the French one, has remained strongly linked to the teaching of hermeneutic, speculative philosophy, leaving little room for social sciences (Malet, 2021). The French ETS are more integrative. They do include didactics, which find their main institutional *raison d'être* in the preparation of teacher entrance examinations (didactics of mathematics, history, physics, etc.), however the choice was made to found, from 1967, full-fledged departments of educational sciences, strongly associated with the development of other human and social sciences.

This contributes to the strength of ETS in France, which are not reducible to their professionalising mission, but also generate an identity problem: what distinguishes them from their contributory disciplines, except their object (which they do not monopolise) and their propensity for interdisciplinarity (that they are not the only ones to develop)? The answers to these questions are variable, but they take into account three needs: institutionalising ETS, defending them against criticism, and giving them their own identity through epistemological reflection. This last mission is less successful, because it is the most difficult. Indeed

Can we define a science by an object as vague as that of education? […] It is the same with education as it is with language. […] Linguistics can only be constituted as an object of science by taking – on a set of phenomena – a given point of view (for example, that of the structure) – and by giving oneself a particular method (for example, the structural method). (Fabre & Lang, 2021, p. 36)

However, ETS do not have such a "particular method" or specific perspective outside of what the contributing disciplines can provide. Admittedly, original studies exist, as Claude Lessard points out by taking socio-didactic works as an example: "among others, Bautier and Rayou's research on learning inequalities and school misunderstandings is a fine example of a successful amalgam between sociology, didactics and teaching analysis" (Lessard, 2019, p. 204). Nevertheless, the author emphasises that this type of work remains infrequent, with most researches remaining attached to one or more disciplines, without systematically leading to an articulation that would sign, in a way, the trademark of ETS. This is not a problem in itself, but opens up a question that needs to be taken seriously, in order to extract its potential.

#### **2 A Field Reduced to Its Contributory Disciplines?**

Let us mention in this regard a neighbouring discipline, also constituted by its object: political science. Is its originality institutional, epistemological, or both? Its prestigious character (*grandes écoles*, etc.) makes it less vulnerable than ETS to accusations of not being a full-fledged science, endowed with its own epistemology. However, political science has also been ferociously criticised by some. Pierre Bourdieu considered it as an "official science", unable therefore to claim scientificity: "far from contributing to the objective science of the 'political' universe, it works on its own legitimation by taking over the division of the pre-constructed object" (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 87). In addition to its own definition, political science, just like ETS, benefited from a favourable institutional situation, illustrated by its state support in France in the second half of the 20th century. In this capacity, it has been used to train senior civil servants, just like ETS have contributed to the training of teachers and educational executives.

The parallel is therefore striking between ETS and political science. The two disciplines (or sets of disciplines) are clearly distinguished, externally, from those that come from a founding epistemological gesture, inseparable from institutional recognition. For instance Durkheim, wanting to separate sociology from psychology, studied suicide as a social phenomenon by isolating its strictly sociological aspects (variation in suicide rates), even though suicide seems like a typically individual gesture. To this end, the sociologist did not hesitate to use striking images, such as "suicide currents incarnating in individuals". The independence of sociology was at stake and the epistemological setting was set for decades within the discipline, which was largely structured around debates on the admissibility of such formulas.

#### **The Durkheimian Takeover under Debate**

To the extent that this work claims a Durkheimian approach in ETS, let us illustrate some ambiguities of the French founder of sociology. They are numerous but the most debated and, therefore, the most salient undoubtedly concern *Suicide*, published in 1897. In an answer entitled *Suicides*, published in 1975 with a preface by Raymond Aron, the sociologist Jean Baechler accused Durkheim of meaning that it is not individuals who commit suicide, but society that commits suicide through certain members. Charles-Henry Cuin admits that some of Durkheim's sentences are, at the very least, unfortunate, for example when he assimilated suicide currents to "electric currents" to legitimise their reality on the model of natural sciences (Cuin, 2018). However, Philippe Besnard replied to Baechler that suicide motifs are statistical regularities that can be explained without taking into account the intimate psychological motives of individuals.

The content of the dispute is that through this particular object of study, Durkheim wanted to go further by defining social facts as things, with their own existence, independent from its individual manifestations and exerting a constraint on the individual. This collectivist motif, deployed on several fronts without the necessary distinctions always being established (for example, why would constraint be the ultimate indicator of the existence of a social fact?), polarised the discussions and controversies that have structured French sociology from an epistemological point of view. They are also linked to Durkheim's difficulty in separating his roles as a sociologist, a citizen, a public intellectual and a teacher trainer. That being said, these tensions have also provided demarcations for social sciences, as disciplines where moral, political and scientific concerns constantly intersect (Déloye, 2018).

In the current context of plurality that constitutes ETS, which have not benefited from this sort of inseparably epistemological and institutional takeover, attempts at unification are difficult. Thus certain researchers in ETS might try an individual and strategic *rapprochement* with older disciplines (sociology, psychology, etc.), whereas others may try a one with

rewarding professional field(s) that, though it is scientifically substantiated, still runs the risk of becoming ancillary with expertise, advice and training activities that can take the lead over activities of documentary research, empirical investigation and theorisation. (Albero & Barthes, 2022, p. 236)

This book is based on the conviction that ETS can accompany the transformation of the educational action (praxeological dimension of ETS), driven by a political concern, not in the sense of an opinion but of a political philosophy. In order to do this, it is necessary to come back to sociology and reflect on it as a science that has precisely bared, since its inception, a concern of this order: that of providing individuals with the conditions of their autonomy. We just have to evoke how Durkheim envisaged organic solidarity, both as an explanatory principle and as a principle of individuation that, according to him, risked being hindered by unwanted forms of division of labour, anomic and constrained, in modern societies. This political concern to promote the autonomy of individuals could appear, at first glance, as an objective that is less scientific than marked by Durkheimian positivism (optimistic or even naive). Yet even a quick glance over the history of social sciences is enough to realise that this political concern is also present, in other forms, in Bourdieu's work destined to unveil mechanisms of domination, or in Boltanski and Thévenot's work, who in *On Justification* admit their liberal pluralism.

Ultimately, the question will not be so much whether ETS, because of their purpose or institutional configuration, have more or less of a political purpose than other areas; but rather to grasp how they contribute to this common movement within human and social sciences, although they focus on a particular object. Because, having "for a long time appealed to interdisciplinarity and to the indexing of research in human and social sciences on professional contexts and fields", ETS "foreshadow in some respects the future of disciplinary worlds, in a stronger relationship with each other, less marked by an ideal of fencing them off" (Malet, 2021, p. 86). Thus, ETS have the means to contribute, with their own resources but in a shared academic environment, to sociology and philosophy, among others.

#### **3 The Questioning of Three Disciplines**

The intention here is to approach ETS from two disciplines simultaneously, whilst also questioning how they are approached. This re-evaluation of reciprocal positions has been underway for a long time. Among the quantity of existing studies, three paths can be highlighted:


This leads to three general questions:


#### **3.1** *Comparative Education and Modernisation of Society*

And in comparative education, the same questions arise, such as the relationship to politics: "The project of founding a comparative science of education, from the very beginning of the field of study, can only be understood by putting into perspective the philosophical and political modernity program" (Malet, 2005, p. 169).

Comparative education indeed includes a program, accompanied by Durkheim among others, loaded with the belief in a correlation between scientific progress and social progress. In the second half of the 20th century, this made room for a pragmatic project oriented towards an ideal of pacifying international relations, so that one can identify, according to Malet, a comparative tradition in education that takes the political form of reformist liberalism. More recently, a critical approach has emerged: sometimes with postcolonial designs that consist in reversing the historical relations of domination between regions of the world; at other times, with more moderate designs inspired by the hermeneutic tradition. The latter consist in restoring the meaning of practices beyond flows of globalisation, often presented as inevitable by international organisations, themselves being politically involved in promoting certain orientations of comparative education.

The complexities of comparative education, therefore, cannot be severed from central currents of sociology: first marked by a scientist ideal, quite visible in Durkheim's work;2 then depending on a state request, more pragmatic when it came to democratising and modernising institutions, through studies on access rates to different levels of education, on school effect, etc. In short, ETS are an integral part of human and social sciences because they face the same types of questions and the same challenges. Embedded in social affairs, more or less dependent on a political power, they are conducted to develop a policy, as is the case in sociology. Their political aspect is more or less strong, depending on the objects investigated and the methods used; it is also more or less explicit, depending on the researches' level of reflexivity. However, ETS are an institutional anchor from which one can question, in a privileged way because it is external (therefore autonomous), the relations between sociology and philosophy.

On questions of citizenship, the explicit articulation between (normative) political philosophy and (descriptive) sociology ensures the avoidance of too many prescriptive considerations. Indeed political philosophy is not intended to be immediately prescriptive: it proposes a reflection on norms, their coherence, their assumptions, making it possible to explain criteria of thought that everyone can then accept or refuse, having a better understanding of them. In this spirit, a critical republican point of view is taken in this book, a 'preference' prone to being considered and exceeded, in the service of a research posture that is as clear and explicit as possible. Thus, it is necessary to involve the work of philosophers who have been trying, for decades, to demonstrate the conceptual and empirical coherence of critical republicanism: Philip Pettit, Cécile Laborde, among others.

#### **3.2** *Clarifying the Registers of Discourses in the Social Sciences*

In short, if the norms forming the framework of this book are just considered norms among others in pluralistic societies, their coherence must however be identified. This is a way of seeking a solution to the problem raised by Pierre Demeulenaere, according to which sociological works, although often rigorous in the treatment of data, remain little formalised in the articulation and hierarchy of their general statements, mixing descriptive proposals, explanatory proposals and normative positions.

We can consider that the task of social sciences is descriptive, explanatory and normative. The description merely describes what is, the explanation tries to account for why that is, and finally normative positions assess what exists and propose action plans. Admittedly, this third task is fundamentally problematic (yet not necessarily unacceptable) from the point of view of a scientific undertaking, we will not come back to it here. Suffice it to say that, in fact, most prestigious or modest social scientists do not hesitate to take all kinds of normative positions within the frame of their scientific work. A systematic reflection on the epistemological bases of this attitude remains to be undertaken. (Demeulenaere, 2012, p. 75)

In this context, one path consists in using Max Weber's advice, who invited researchers to explain their relationship to values, on which is based the choice of objects treated. For example, when one tries to study the link between 'freedom' and 'the French Revolution', it is because the question concerns one as a researcher belonging to a given society, at a given time where and when the value of political liberalism is posed, contested, debated. The question remains of whether this is sufficient to provide an analysis that is free of value judgments, which according to Weber must be 'suspended' by researchers. Yet this depends on the subject matter: it is easier to suspend judgment about a work of art, as Nathalie Heinich (2012) did by mobilising the sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot, than about the principle of non-discrimination for instance.

In other words, to decree the researcher's axiological neutrality is all the more difficult since the values at stake (on citizenship, secularism, nondiscrimination, freedom of conscience) are also actual legal and regulatory practices; while aesthetic values, for example, are not standardised in legal terms – at least in liberal countries – beyond state support for one artistic trend, considered more legitimate than another, or beyond landscape preservation regulation. Essentially, it is impossible to eliminate the axiological content of certain scientific categories, because "the mere fact of comparing, in a purely factual way, the functioning of a political regime to its displayed ideals is a value judgment" (Pranchère, 2021, p. 761).

In fact, it sometimes happens that the axiological framework underlying researches is implicitly conveyed through supposedly comparative analyses, presented as only descriptive. This is not a problem in itself, but it is worth explaining this axiological framework. Thus, we find anthropologists (Saba Mahmood) and philosophers (Judith Butler) who try a conceptual *rapprochement* – contrary to European liberal law – between the notions of race and religion, inviting us to rethink 'Judeo-Christian' sensibilities in order to respect Muslim 'wounded religious sensitivities'. This is a sophisticated way to update the 'blasphemy' argument (Urbanski, 2022a). The interdisciplinary work, between sociology and political philosophy, precisely makes it possible to better identify what, in this type of analysis, consists in an anthropological description on the one hand, objectively enlightening; and in a political proposal on the other. The latter should be spelt out as such, since it falls within what any citizen can legitimately criticise or refuse. In this case, a philosophically liberal approach – the one deployed here – is not consistent with Butler and Mahmood's argument on wounded religious sensibilities (March, 2011).

Max Weber gives us a hard time when he considers that "the recognition of empirical facts" and the "evaluative position of the scientist who exercises a judgment on facts" are "two sets of simply heterogeneous problems" that must "absolutely" be distinguished. This is why another, more pragmatic, of his advices to scholars, will retain our attention here: "to bring scrupulously […] to their own conscience and to that of the readers, what the standards of value are that are used to measure reality and those from which [scholars] derive their value judgment" (Weber, 1965, pp. 133, 416). Weber illustrated his epistemological position by commenting on the recruitment of an anarchist as an academic in a law school. Far from being an obstacle, the anarchist's relation to values provides a distance from the law, allowing for better scrutiny of its arbitrary character. Hence, there lies a potential gain of knowledge, compared to other perspectives oriented by different relations to values … as long as the anarchist manages not to impose his values in the analysis. The challenge in this book will be not to impose3 a close relationship to republican values in the analysis.

#### **4 Why Religion?**

As has been said, circumscribing republicanism, as a rethought version of political liberalism, requires taking stock of religion and secularism. It is necessary here to clearly explain the incompatibility of the republican approach with several syntheses on European secularism, in particular that of Jean-Paul Willaime (2015), which is nevertheless authoritative. Indeed, it seems wrong to say, as Willaime does, that Europe, especially in its relations with public schools, is 'secular'. There is no sufficiently broad meaning of this word to make it correspond to different empirical realities, unless the term is diluted to such an extent that it no longer has a precise meaning. Gwénaële Calvès considers the "secularism of recognition", glimpsed and praised by Willaime, as being a "premature diagnosis" (Calvès, 2022, p. 97). The emergence of a hypothetical 'European secularism' will depend less on an attempt to relax concepts so that they adapt to a contrasting reality, than on unpredictable political developments in each country considered.

In fact, the thesis of a European secularism is plausible if we select liberal and secularised countries, but is much less so if we seriously consider EU member countries such as Ireland, Poland, Greece, or even Italy and Germany. It is therefore worth shifting our focus, including towards the countries of Eastern Europe, insufficiently taken into account. This requires an enlightenment via political philosophy, because the hypothesis of a European secularism as a vague "secularism of recognition" – or even a "secularism of recognition and dialogue" as Willaime also defines it – becomes an opportunity for some sociologists to question the French secular model, considered too strict, in order to make way for a flexible model, legitimised today, among others, by the figure of Jürgen Habermas after his theological turning point. Of course, the French model of secularism is questionable and it will be criticised in this book. But that is not to say that the theological entryism favoured by certain intellectuals from Debray to Habermas to Willaime, should be a basis for this criticism. For as Pettit, Joppke and Laborde have underlined it, secular liberalism is universalisable.

#### **5 Symmetrising Religions**

In France, strongly marked by jihadist attacks, the question of secularism oscillates between conservative exploitation on the one hand, secularism being perceived as a bulwark against radicalism, and, on the other hand, dilution of religious radicalism under the pretext of highlighting other parameters, such as social deprivation. This second posture describes the 'nothing-to-seeism' (*rien-à-voirisme*), according to Jean Birnbaum's expression (2016), of some academics and politicians (including President Hollande) claiming that the jihadist attacks on European soil had nothing to do with religion, but that they were due to psychopaths, barbarians, victims of the economic crisis, the internet, etc. Thus, on January 11, 2015, after the triple attack in Montrouge, Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said, "I said in the clearest possible way – and we can never repeat it enough – that this has nothing to do with Islam; Islam is used as a pretext by these cheap heroes".4

#### **5.1** *Terror in the Name of Islam Is also Part of Islam*

This desire is commendable, consisting in not playing into the hands of rightwing extremists who, on the contrary, overexploit the link between these events and Islam for the purpose of stigmatising an entire population. On the other hand, how can we ignore the ideology guiding these acts, echoing the increasingly strict legislation of certain Muslim countries on blasphemy and the idea of an *Umma* as a political community beyond states? Violent extremism is unfortunately the current disease of Islam, writes John Tolan, and there is no other way out than to face it. Saying and repeating that Islam is fundamentally a 'religion of peace' which has nothing to do with religious fanaticism is not a solution. Nonetheless, let us say that "If we are to face the disease, we must also recognise the vital forces within Islam that are struggling to remedy it" (Tolan, 2022, p. 302). The recent knife attack in 2022 against Salman Rushdie and the reactions (scandalised or approving) of the various states to this event recall the reality of the doctrinal stakes, in Iran as in the Sunni world.

For if secular liberalism has a meaning, it is to be able to consider all religions equally. Let us therefore return, by broadening our perspective, to this eminently political idea that actions carried out in the name of a religion nevertheless have nothing to do with it. Can we say today that the reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion in the United States, in 2022, has 'nothing to do' with Catholic and evangelical Christianity? That authoritarian nationalisms raging in Central and Eastern Europe have nothing to do with Christianity, especially Catholic and Orthodox? Let us recall in this regard the reaction of Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov to the worldwide commented beheading of Samuel Paty. Keen to avoid upsetting 'orthodox religious sentiments', he declared: "It is unacceptable to insult the feelings of believers, and it is unacceptable to kill people. Both are absolutely unacceptable" (The Moscow Times, 2020). The assumed equivalence between a decapitation and a drawing has a religious meaning. Indeed, the Russian fundamentalist orthodox are allied in the 'fight against blasphemy' with the most radical Muslims, and the Kremlin underlines that a newspaper like Charlie Hebdo could not exist in Russia as a nation whose 'fundamental religion' is Christianity.

Certainly, many jihadist attacks require, on the part of the ones who commit the murderous act, a strong exculturation, to refer to the famous analysis of the *Holy ignorance* offered by Olivier Roy. In this strict sense, we are faced with a standardised religion, portable, that can be rapidly mobilised and allows quick conversions in very different places. In other words, a religion so exculturated that it has little in common with what we call or would like to call 'religion'. We can even go further in this direction, by considering that the Islamic State is a pure mafia, the religious device being intended only to camouflage the criminal organisation. Nevertheless, the murderous act requires a whole context of arguments (blasphemy, disbelief, attack on the person whose sensitivity is hurt, etc.) which, in turn, do not have 'nothing to do' with religion.

#### **5.2** *Islamophobia and Christophobia*

Beyond the question of terrorist attacks, and returning to the more 'daily' functioning of the courts in connection with the more or less liberal European laws, the recent ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) *Rabczewska v. Poland*, in September 2022, is particularly interesting in terms of symmetrising religions. The ruling condemns the Polish state's decision to punish a singer who claimed in a major newspaper that the Bible was written by a guy drunk on wine and smoking some kind of weed (*jakiś napruty winem i palący jakieś zioła*). But Austria was not convicted, in *E.S. v. Austria*, for punishing a woman who claimed, in a political reflection seminar, that Mohammed had practices that could be described as paedophile because, according to the *hadits*, his favorite wife was very young.

Although this differential between Christianity and Islam can be explained by the different contexts of enunciation (Christian majority in Poland, Muslim minority in Austria), a European judge, by virtue of his dissenting opinion, openly lamented that Europe was unjust because it would protect Islam from denigrating religious doctrines, but not Christianity, which he said should also be treated favourably (in the name of fairness …). The judge's arguments are fragile overall: they do not hide his ideological preference for Christianity. Nonetheless, he does identify important points. Is a newspaper with a large circulation (*Rabczewska v. Poland*) not more 'public' and more likely to have an impact on consciences than a political reflection seminar (*E.S. v. Austria*), which few people attended?

If violence in the name of a religion – whether physical or more symbolic in the form of intimidation and illiberal laws – often has something to do with that religion, it is simply because religion does not exist outside of what humans and human groups do. This is what makes symmetrising interesting: if people describe a drawing from Jyllands-Posten and Charlie Hebdo as 'Islamophobic' – knowing that this word often includes an accusation of immorality or even of a criminal offence – then it is enlightening to compare this accusation with that of 'Christophobia' in Poland. It is formulated by intellectuals and political leaders about relatively similar images, though the contexts and the characters drawn differ: Mohammed, Jesus, Mary. We can, then, grasp the limits of certain anthropological theories that focus almost exclusively on Islam in favour of postcolonial perspectives, and do not see the (illiberal) conservative exploitations of the theme of 'wounded religious sensibilities', a new line of attack by devotees against political liberalism since the accusation of 'blasphemy' has become archaic in societies based on human rights (Al-Azmeh, 2020). Poland being a site, in the heart of Europe, of Catholic political-religious radicality, studying it enriches our understanding of political liberalism, republicanism and secularism. These are all ideals that are said to be threatened, sometimes by Islam, other times by their own imperialist content (identitarian secularism, ethnocentric liberalism), but are rarely related to the so close clerical threat and its link with the far-right, in power in several European countries.

#### **6 Political Liberalism and Critical Republicanism**

Yet is it possible to consider religions as equal under a common criterion (liberal principles), while taking into account their differences? Some argue that liberalism is a 'western' invention, more adapted to Christianity than to other religions such as Islam (Asad, Brown, Butler, & Mahmood, 2013). However, authors who present themselves as 'liberals' discuss this judgment, such as Christian Joppke (2017), Cécile Laborde (2017), Andrew March (2019) and Aziz Al-Azmeh (2020). According to these authors, liberalism (and its republican variant) is susceptible of being adopted everywhere, provided it is sufficiently adapted by taking into account the contemporary mutations of religious expressions, ideals of individual autonomy, market processes, national attachments and international relations. It is a broad program, and the hope here is to at least clarify its issues.

Therefore, the question of religions, already crucial for John Rawls and Philip Pettit, cannot be avoided here. Indeed, if the Republic, a Durkheimian and Pettitian ideal, carries today the principle of secularism, which includes the right of freedom of conscience that itself took shape on a historical religious ground, then a question to ask is to what extent this or that form of secularism is in affinity with certain religions and not others. This is a question asked by anthropologists Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood, accompanied by Wendy Brown and Judith Butler (Asad, Brown, Butler, & Mahmood, 2013). Yet, these very influential authors tend to confuse social sciences and political theory.

Certainly, Asad and Mahmood shed light on empirical data and this is crucial for any reflection on republicanism and more generally political liberalism. Why do Muslims feel hurt by drawings from Jyllands-Posten or Charlie Hebdo? Among other things because they have a mimetic faith, consisting in holding their prophet Mohamed for a companion and a model of daily life. Comparing with wounded Polish Catholic sensibilities, this model of mimetic faith is illuminating: just as Muslims feel they are Mohamed's companions, so too do Polish Catholics feel they are companions of the Virgin Mary. They feel they live with her on a daily basis, and so when she is 'caricatured', they feel or say they feel pain as if they or a close family member were being attacked (Urbanski, 2022a).

Nonetheless, in terms of political theory, the post-colonial anthropology of Islam, that of Asad and Mahmood, is eminently questionable. Firstly, these authors do not take into account the political shaping of what is named in France the 'case of the caricatures' (*l'affaire des caricatures*) via embassies and international relays. Secondly, they confuse history and political theory. The fact that religions are not in affinity with European legislation on freedoms of conscience and of expression does not mean that we should adapt this legislation or the supposedly 'Judeo-Christian culture' that supports it. For if this were the case, it would be necessary to consider that the wounded Polish Catholic sensibilities, which function in a similar way to those of the Muslims highlighted by Asad and Mahmood, should also be considered. Do we truly want to associate ourselves with the denunciation of Western liberalism by the far right parties of Central Europe, who do so by using arguments similar to those that Asad and Mahmood invite us to take into account?

That being said, we must reflect on our use of the word 'religion' because of the rather particular history of freedom of conscience, as an essential element of political liberalism. Cécile Laborde's strategy of disintegration holds our attention here. It consists in taking note of the fact that religion should not enjoy a particular status in liberal societies: it should not benefit from privileges, but neither should it suffer from contempt. In this vision, it is not necessary for example that State and Church be separated, if the latter is not a source of division, is not accessible to reason, and not all-encompassing.

This strategy is secular and republican. Admittedly, it leads to a criticism of the prohibition in France of ostensibly wearing religious symbols in public schools. Nevertheless, Laborde recognises that the hijab, for example, is very often an instrument of domination of men over women. Because, on a more general level, this disintegration is methodological, for the purposes of legal judgments (and not ontological). Laborde, unlike the anthropologist Daniel Dubuisson for example, is against the argument of giving up the word 'religion', which though it is not easily definable, is nevertheless identifiable. The theory of disintegration is set out below because it allows us to draw a parallel with social sciences, which also tend to reduce religion to its particular components even when they call themselves holists. Durkheim thus considered that religion is the expression of social forces: in short, the believer feels a collective moral pressure that exceeds him. We see here how much sociological holism joins the neo-republican political philosophy.

#### **6.1** *Negative Freedom and Non-Domination*

The hybrid approach of Laborde and Joppke, in the sense that they are both liberal but refer to the republicanism of Philip Pettit, invites us to recall an important point: the boundaries between liberalism and republicanism are not watertight, including in France. Apart from its conservative manifestations (Dominique Schnapper, Pierre-André Taguieff), republicanism can be understood as a particular version of political liberalism (Spitz, 2005), and more broadly as a path among others to analyse negative freedom according to Isaiah Berlin: freedom *from* rather than freedom *to*.

While Berlin favoured freedom from interference, the Republican Philip Pettit, wary of the neo-liberal consequences of this type of definition, conceptualises the freedom not to be dominated, which is still a negative freedom. In this sense, the Pettitian approach is very different from the (French) communitarian versions of republicanism that value the 'community of citizens' as a positive freedom, by confusing it with a non-reflective culture of secularism.5

That being said, Pettitian republicanism is not fully liberal. Indeed, if we were to make a distinction between republicanism and liberalism, by typifying positions, we would say that liberals think that the antonym of freedom is interference, whereas critical republicans believe that the appropriate term is domination. However, this precisely only works if one typifies these positions. By softening the perspective, we note with Kymlicka that a 'liberal' such as Rawls considered the conditions necessary for self-respect as a 'primary good'; that is to say the conditions that provide a person with the firm conviction that their conception of property, their life project deserves to be implemented (Kymlicka, 1995).

The question therefore is about the conditions of non-domination, or even of recognition: every person needs other people and institutions to recognise that his or her life project deserves to be executed. For this reason, Pettit would say that this person must not be dominated; in other words, no arbitrary interference can be exercised, even in the future, on the formation of his or her life plans.

It remains to be seen whether certain life projects, though chosen with full knowledge of the facts and providing a sense of personal fullness, do not deserve to be executed as much as others. To what extent should the life project of a prestigious Harvard mathematician who decides to count all the blades of grass on an island for the rest of her life – instead of putting her talents to the benefit of the community – be seen as a primary good? Rawls offered this example, and it was widely discussed. Kitcher, for example, thinks that the grass counter's way of life is not an authentic primary good, because she does not direct it towards the community.

However, a liberal could retort that inviting an adult person, against their initial wish, to move towards the community would require a formal ranking of conceptions of well-being, which by definition are quite subjective, and that would run counter to the principle of non-interference. The crucial point is that these typical discussions do not suffice to draw a line between those who are liberal and those who are not. Kitcher is indeed a Liberal. Yet, just like Mill, Rawls and Dewey, he questions his own tradition.

Essentially, liberalism and critical republicanism come together in their criticism of positive freedom, which Isaiah Berlin was already dismissing as the freedom of the Ancients, in his influential *Two Concepts of Liberty* of 1958. On the contrary, the promotion of positive freedom is clear today in authors as different as


But the promotion of positive freedom is not necessarily religious. So-called republican thinking, in its secular version that, for instance, orders the prohibition of the wearing of ostensible religious symbols by parents accompanying school trips, also consists in promoting a positive (state) freedom, requiring these people prove their adherence to republican culture before they can contribute to public affairs (*res publica*). Thus, political liberalism's criteria do not apply to a particular religion or ideology. And this is crucial: liberal principles have certainly found a particularly successful elaboration in European and North American law, but they are nonetheless appropriable by everyone.

#### **6.2** *Universalisable Principles*

To say otherwise would be perilous. Indeed, this would amount to attributing to the inhabitants of a particular cultural area the responsibility of political principles. This is difficult, since the place of incubation of the latter in a given space does not change the fact that each one of us is "no more or less than an heir likely to join or reject them" regardless of geographical location (Avon, 2020, p. 21). Christianity was born in Palestine: was it reserved for the inhabitants of this region? Islam was born in Arabia: did it not find a place in the Maghreb, then Southern Asia? Certainly, liberalism is not a religion. However, like many of them, it formulates proposals for political organisation, which everyone can try to appropriate, defend, implement or reject. This is currently happening in Poland or Tunisia, for example, in a salient way.

The goal, of course, is not to minimise the geopolitical stakes that play a part in the more or less assured acceptance, depending on the regions of the world, of the principles of political liberalism. As Dominique Avon explains in his book *La liberté de conscience (The liberty of conscience)* published in 2020, the history of this idea and this right, diversely accepted among religions and different cultural areas, does not prevent us from grasping the power games between states, or the unequal economic flows. Nor is it a question of reducing the elements of social criticism, available outside religion, which foster a sense of illegitimacy of liberal nations: criticism of the responsibility of European states in the war in Palestine, Libya or Yemen; questioning of the link between the Gulf monarchies and the Western empire led by the United States.

Finally, when public school and citizenship education are at stake, conceptual antinomies between republicanism and liberalism fade somewhat. Indeed, though republican thinking is originally centred on the state, whereas liberalism is centred on the individual, the question becomes more complicated as soon as the state carries an educational mission: links appear between the liberal aim, which seeks to "place the lives of persons as much as possible in the private domain, to protect them from public interference", and the democratic aim that "concerns the public character of individuals […] and finds a strong expression in its desire for citizens to identify with the political community" (Levinson, 2002, p. 107). That is why school Republican secularism has a very special status:

If a secular regime of civic and inclusive equality presupposes a collective practice of public reason, this practice itself presupposes, to be effective, an education that trains individuals to its epistemic challenges. […] Here we find the reversal of the primacy of liberalism in the primacy of democracy: the liberal ideal introduced to the democratic ideal as to its logical consequence – but it turns out that democracy, or more precisely democratic socialisation, is itself the condition of existence of a liberal society. (Pranchère, 2023, p. 139)

The boundaries between liberalism and republicanism (but also socialism, as we will see) are therefore real but not watertight (Laden, 2006). By continuing to explore these interfaces, in an intellectual context where positions tend to stiffen, it is crucial to be clear without giving in to public postures that leave little room for nuance, which is an academic's duty:

On migration, Islam, populism and activism, French academics too often rely on feelings, thus feeding the less rational political horizons […]. Multiculturalist slogans, memorial claims of all sorts, the feeling that France's Muslims are persecuted: these phenomena cannot be associated in any way with the terrorist threat. The rejection of clericalism, which seeks to win back secularised Muslims, the rejection of competing memories, and the criticism of identitarism imposed on individuals: so many political positions present among democrats of all stripes and which do not fall under the '*lepenisation*' of minds. […] We do not expect academics to let loose, but on the contrary to behave. Those who sneer at the appeal to decency today should nonetheless understand that it is a protection against an ultra populism that bides its time without saying a word. […] Let us not offer it fuel. (Schaub, 2021, pp. 20–21)

#### **7 Disaggregating Religion**

Accordingly, when it comes to studying the specificity of phenomena commonly grouped under the label 'religion' which are of great importance to the liberal political tradition, the methodological challenge is to develop tools that allow one to not depend on a vague notion, rooted in a specific culture and developed by people (often in a position of religious authority) who have a vested interest in the existence of this category (Dubuisson, 2019). In order to do this, one must enter the field of law and political theory, which, in a liberal and/or republican regime, usually approach 'religion' through the use of non-religious categories (e.g., conceptions of the good life).

European law preferably captures religion through the notion of individual consciousness. From a strictly anthropological point of view, this posture could be seen as influenced by Christianity (Dumont, 1991), and one for which Islam, for example, would not be prepared because of a cultural distance (Asad, Brown, Butler, & Mahmood, 2013). Yet if we leave anthropology and enter the sphere of law, the following clarification is necessary:

The preference for a view of religious freedom that favours individual choice in matters of religion over more communal ideas of religion is the inevitable result of the fact that the European Convention on Human Rights is a text committed to the protection of liberal values and that signatory states are committed to being liberal societies that value liberal principles. (McCrea, 2018, p. 152)

The point is not to play liberal principles against religious currents that value orthopraxia, and are therefore less accustomed to the more Christian centrality of notions of conscience and individual choices. Rather, it is a matter of prioritising stakes, by taking into account the constraints of any large-scale society, such as those European nations that signed the European Convention on Human Rights.

#### **7.1** *Genealogism, Community, Society*

It is indeed at the junction between sociology, law, and political theory that the modalities of constitution and maintenance of groups are played out. For here, we are faced, as we said in the general introduction, with a problematic that is both ontological and political: if law informs modern ideology, sociology is a product of it. More precisely, it is the place of a nagging distinction between community and society, on two levels.

On a political level, community is often brandished by conservatives such as Romantic counter-revolutionaries, who see it as the remedy against the truly liberal disconnect. It is also claimed by nationalists such as French political parties invoking the homeland, who seek to counter neo-liberal deliberation and its new society, too anonymous and made of superficial links, guided only by an instrumental interest (Karsenti & Lemieux, 2017). Ontologically, the distinction between community and society is expressed a little differently. The societal bond is a posteriori: it unites beings only superficially and to the extent of their will; while the community bond is a priori: it does not belong to the will of its members, and it immerses them in a totality that shapes them through and through (Kaufmann, 2011).

The question then is what the respective places of community and society in modern times might be. In connection with the above, the following question must be asked: if the nation-states adhering to the European Convention on Human Rights thereby value a Christian conception of religion, is this a community sign that requires equalising the conditions of secular liberalism as other communities (in the sense of non-Christians) take up more and more space in Europe? This is what Asad, Brown, Butler and Mahmood (2013) suggest, insofar as they attribute the whole strength of their explanatory model to the genealogy of the notion and the right of freedom of conscience: this genealogy, according to them, is Protestant, meaning Western secularism would essentially be Protestant (they sometimes say: Judeo-Christian). The problem with this explanation is that it does not give legal instruments their real place in modern societies. To show this, it is necessary to take into account the specific dynamics of modernity and the related constraints in terms of social forms that occur there.

If one follows Durkheim, there is a logic that is proper to social forms: community is possible – and desirable – only in "small groups", in which "we can know each other intimately". As social aggregates become larger, society weighs less heavily on the individual who finds himself naturally 'emancipated': social integration is no longer based on 'status' or function, but on a 'contract'. The union and confusion of consciences, so "clumped that none can move independently from the others", make way for the contractual rationalisation of conducts and for the division of labour, both being synonymous not of similarity, but of complementarity. […] The tension between the sociological perspective on the difference between 'society' and 'community' favoured by Durkheim and the subjective perspective proposed by Weber is entirely relevant here. If, as Weber suggests, subjective postures are not determined by social forms, however, they are more or less adjusted to their morphology or geometry. To extend, through the category-based imagination, the topology of the circle specific to reciprocal links and mutual obligations onto the large floating society of anonymous transgresses the law of quantitative determination of a group. In doing so, it exposes itself to real errors of category, but also of geometry. (Kaufmann, 2023, pp. 72, 76)

This is where the social bond, of a community type, necessarily gives way to regulation and law. Not because of any arbitrary prevalence of the state, but simply because in a large society, one cannot have a communal experience with all its members: this type of experience must give way to category-based projections, on the model of the famous imagined communities (Benedict Anderson) that are nations. Certainly, the latter are still likely to descend into artificialism. Nonetheless, this is not a sufficient reason to reduce society's order, to that of the community: as Durkheim showed, modern societies evolve in their morphology and physiology far beyond the simple cultural genealogy staged by Asad, Brown, Butler and Mahmood (2013).

Therefore, it is by entering the sphere of political theory and of law as an impersonal third party, that the *genealogical* consequences of the postcolonial anthropology of Asad and Mahmood can be overcome. To do this, Cécile Laborde's proposal, consisting in disaggregating religion in relation to actual legal practices in different countries, seems fundamental. In order to assess the legitimate place of 'religion' in the public arena, Laborde proposes not to treat the phenomenon as existing in itself, but to divide it analytically into three components: epistemic propositions, conceptions of the good life, and collective identities. On this level, she somewhat joins the anthropology of Asad and Mahmood, since she shares with these authors the objective of decentring political liberalism from a particular religion, precisely by means of this disaggregation, which is interesting in that it can be applied to much broader social phenomena than what we call 'religion'.

Of course all liberals, including liberal-communitarians like Charles Taylor, want to approach religion from secular categories. Thus, the latter wants to see religion as a conviction, sometimes so strong that it requires reasonable accommodations (such as allowing the wearing of the kirpan, a sacred Sikh knife allowed in Canadian schools), just as a secular conviction could legitimately require accommodation (for example pacifism, which is incompatible with military service). Nonetheless, by taking into account the strength of beliefs, Taylor gives less consideration to ritual collective practices, for example.

Instead of the strength of beliefs, Laborde prefers to consider the way in which religion has emerged in a particular society. This way, one does not need to wonder whether it is important for Muslims to go to the mosque; it is enough to note that in European societies, the majority religion has taken a prominent place in the form of holidays dedicated to the practice of Mass (on Sundays); therefore, it is fair to take into account the ritual practice of going to the mosque on Fridays, although the (historically Christian) calendar is not calibrated for this. Accommodation in the workplace must also be taken into account: not so much because of a strength of beliefs (a field that political liberalism is not well equipped to judge), but because of a historical differential between majority and minority religions.

By not specifying a particular dimension of religion, but rather leaving three possibilities open (conceptions of the good life, epistemic propositions, collective identities), Laborde's republicanism does not depend on religious discourse: rather than posing a religion in itself, one studies its analytical dimensions. The genealogist pitfall of Asad and Mahmood is thus avoided and we have a road map to implement a significant political liberalism.

#### **7.2** *Liberalism and Public Arena*

Let us clarify further what 'liberalism' means, because it must not be confused with market liberalism or neo-liberal regimes. Unlike neo-liberalism, which tends to impose its functioning on social spaces that should be preserved from it, liberalism is an "art of separation", aiming to build "a world of walls", each of them "creating a new freedom" (Walzer, 1984, p. 315).

Affinities with the idea of secularism, historically associated with the idea of separation, both in France and in the United States, are important: the point is to separate spheres (how, remains to be seen). Parliament, public schools and the courts are therefore part of the public arena, but it is still necessary to distinguish the actors within these institutions. Public school teachers in France are subject to stricter rules than pupils: they cannot express their (ir)religious opinions, whereas the pupils can. In the same place, rules relating to the public arena (teachers) can coexist with rules relating to the public space (students as users). The political history of each state further complicates the problem, making it difficult to generalise. Yet it remains possible to identify some transversal criteria of (non)permissibility of religion in the public sphere. According to Laborde's disaggregated approach, religion should have no place in the public sphere if:


If one of these three criteria is verified, then the liberal state is entitled to set limits to 'religion', without venturing into theological abysses since the phenomenon is disintegrated. Conversely, if a 'religion' affirms epistemic propositions accessible to public reason, if it promotes conceptions of the good life that are non-encompassing and collective identities that do not generate division, then this 'religion' may have a place in the public arena. It is therefore understood as a culture, similar to a musical culture, and its study is mandatory, subsidised by the state through school education, without anyone complaining about the principle of it. Because valuing the music of Bach or Debussy, necessarily to the detriment of other works, is not in itself an attack on the impartiality of teaching, even though this choice is not neutral: the 'neutrality' of the state is therefore not a decisive criterion.

This point holds a central place in contemporary discussions in political theory, because devotees in all countries demand an increased state recognition of their religion, arguing that the state is not neutral when it subsidises certain sports, monuments, museums, culinary heritage (etc.) to the detriment of others. To answer that sort of argument, it must be broken down. Disaggregation does not offer ready-made answers, but it does provide guidelines to counter the genealogist objection described above, assimilating secularism to 'Judeo-Christianity', and more specifically to Protestantism.

#### **7.3** *Disaggregating Secular Ideologies Too*

Nevertheless, the major interest of the disaggregating analysis is that it is not limited to religions. Here Laborde engages a debate with Will Kymlicka. Are religions, once diluted in culture, *ipso facto* less likely to challenge the principles of political liberalism? Kymlicka moves in this direction, but Laborde's position is nuanced. Western-European far-right movements often value a culturalised Christianity, reduced to inheritance and tradition, expurgated from any proper religious reference (God, mysteries, etc.), but no less divisive with regard to immigrants, ethnic minorities or those who refuse to accept Christian cultural identity. This means that one of the three criteria mentioned above, in this case the last one, is not respected: it is not by bartering religion against culture that Christianity can be considered part of public reason.

The same goes for Dutch homo-nationalism, not particularly religious but that nonetheless stigmatises populations suspected of not being sufficiently acculturated to Christian-liberal frames, supposedly more gay-friendly. The example of a test of conformity to Dutch liberalism, between 2006 and 2008, intended for people wanting to acquire citizenship, is revealing. Though candidates from Canada, the United States or New Zealand did not need to pass it, nationals from other extra-European countries did: they were made to watch a video of same-sex people kissing in the street. The aim was to ensure that potential first-time citizens accepted this behaviour. While the attempt to enhance tolerance towards homosexuality is welcome, the fact remains that this should not be done through a public policy targeting specific populations. Indeed, native Dutch can also be homophobic, while remaining citizens (Laborde & Lægaard, 2020).

The method of disaggregation thus makes it possible to symmetrise religious and non-religious phenomena, all potentially vectors of the three aforementioned elements that political liberalism must qualify: epistemic propositions (non-accessible?), conceptions of the good life (comprehensive?), collective identities (divisive?). It is then possible to specify the dangers of homonationalism (e.g. Netherlands), religious nationalism (e.g. Poland), or French secularism expressed in the Chatel circular of 2012, which aims to prohibit accompanying adults on school trips from ostensible wearing of religious signs.6

Crucifixes displayed in the classrooms of public schools pose the same challenge as certain secular policies, such as the test of conformity to Dutch liberalism and the Chatel circular: all three gestures, be they religious or not, are divisive. Indeed, they send a public message that some students, accompanying parents or potential citizens have a higher status than others. The challenge is therefore not whether 'religion' in itself is insufficiently or too present in the public arena, but to identify its components – epistemic propositions, conceptions of the good life, identities – whose legitimacy in this arena must be judged according to the same criteria as their secular counterparts. Ultimately, if classical republicans marked by liberal thought, such as Catherine Kintzler, defend themselves against claims that they promote state atheism, and fight conservative secularism, the fact is that their tools for reflection are insufficient in the light of the republican tradition instigated, from an international point of view, by Philip Pettit, then developed by Cécile Laborde for liberalism and what she considers its condition: minimal secularism.

As ETS researchers, our main objective is not to provide a theory of the permissibility in the public arena of religion, or secularism or any system of beliefs. It consists in identifying tools, between philosophy and social sciences, which avoid the reification of these beliefs. Thus, through an interdisciplinary approach, we assume a renewed republican perspective to explore the relationship between culture and politics.

#### **Notes**


#### CHAPTER 3

## **The Question of Citizenship in Social Sciences**

This work's main objective of studying the relationship between culture and politics through an interdisciplinary approach of philosophy and sociology, but also ETS, is to consider citizenship education in an international perspective. This requires a clarifying of the following questions:


These questions do not all directly concern citizenship; rather they form a prerequisite for considering a series of other questions, both sociological (what mechanisms are at work) and philosophical:


By proceeding in this manner, we do not claim to be exhaustive. The academic literature on the subject of citizenship education is vast, and the offer made here is not to analyse all the productions in a given "domain", or more precisely around a given expression (global citizenship), in order to establish a state of the art. It seems more realistic to proceed by elementary bricks, starting from a circumscribed point in order to go, gradually, towards the horizon to be embraced. This is how the detour through philosophy invites us not to lose sight of some crucial and founding questions of Human and social sciences. These will be specified via a neo-Durkheimian path, in reference to the French School of Sociology that worked on all the themes at stake: religions, beliefs, *sui generis* collective entities, nations, republic, state, individualism, pluralism, education, citizenship.

After a detour through political philosophy, let us return to sociology and social philosophy, to consider bridges between them. Many studies in this field are driven by the desire to identify groups that think and act for themselves (Pettit, 2014), by going beyond the individualistic approach (Urfalino, 2022). Is it possible to capture entities such as 'the nation' or 'the state' by using these approaches, given the weight of these entities in shaping citizenship education, but also their ambiguous status when it comes to moving towards an education towards citizenship in an international or even global perspective?

#### **1 Collective Entities**

This all contributes to reflections that make it possible to grasp transversal phenomena. Among these, we will highlight *collective entities*, which can be nations, religions, or groups of teachers. All groups are not collective entities: some of them are groups of individuals gathered by their interests (groups of voters, pressure groups, social classes), others are series (people waiting at a bus stop), and others, in a Goffmanian perspective, oriented gatherings (at a party, around a meal).

The point of a reflection on collective entities is to investigate general will and citizenship. For to be a citizen is to participate in the decisions of a collective to which one belongs (nation, federation of nations, region, city) while recognising the legitimacy of the collective decisions that emanate from it. It is then necessary to overcome, no longer a sociological nominalism, but a disembodied political philosophy according to which a well thought procedure, based on minimal hypotheses about what unites the members, would be able to maintain a civic bond.

Advocates of deliberative democracy readily imagine deliberative situations where individuals have only their means of communication, a common language, for all fellow citizens. There is a form of political cosmopolitanism that cannot be taken for granted; it is difficult to imagine that the legitimacy of decisions does not relate, at least partially and in any way, to a given group or community (a club, a company, a Church, a university, a company, a city or a nation). For two reasons. Firstly, because decisions and collective decisions assume that their protagonists have much more in common, habits, practices, categories of thoughts. Secondly, because the same protagonists are supposed to pursue and re-elect the purposes of the collective entity on whose behalf they make this decision, regardless of that entity. The question which seems to me to guide the study of the collective decision is that which Jean-Jacques Rousseau asked in *The Social Contract*: how can we draw, from the expression of plurality of wills, that is to say from each member of the group, a declaration of the general will? (Urfalino, 2021, pp. 19–20)

These are two sides of the same coin. To explain as a sociologist *how* a collective entity works requires reinvesting philosophical problems around the modalities of the social contract and the general will, that is, the will of this properly collective entity which is not that of its aggregated members (*sui generis*). Symmetrically, imagining, as a philosopher, fictions to model collectives' decisions and provide criteria for their *legitimacy* (is it the general will, the voice of the people, of its rulers, of an aggregate majority?) can only be done if one turns to the concrete entities that make collective decisions possible.

An example can help capture the problem. Let us imagine a book club that has to decide which pizza will be eaten at the end of the next meeting dedicated to Proust. The group deliberates and the decision is made by a vote: to buy (and eat together) a chorizo pizza. Is this a collective decision? It seems so, because the members have decided something together and this decision obliges them. Yet appearances are misleading: it was, in fact, a matter of sharing individual preferences fairly. To better make this point, let us now imagine a club of gourmets who must decide what is the pizza of the month. The group deliberates and the decision is taken by a vote: the most deserving pizza, which will be promoted in order to preserve the nobility of this dish, is anchovy pizza. This is a collective decision because it is not made for individual members of the collective, but on behalf of the collective whose purpose it is to promote pizza. The fact that this collective is composed of individuals specialised in pizza is important, but not enough: indeed they could have, like the members of the book club, shared a pizza because they were hungry or wanted to share a moment of conviviality; but that is not the case here.

The collective decision is therefore ultimately the decision of the collective as such. That is why a decision of Parliament is generally a collective decision. While members may have an individual interest in making such a decision, they propose laws that often do not affect them alone or even affect them as individuals, just as the 'pizza of the month' choice might have a possible, but indirect, influence on the culinary habits of club members and their decisions regarding fair sharing. One of the reasons the question of collective entities is concealed in social sciences comes from the misleading equivalence established between different phenomena: fair sharing, collective decision, majority vote, collective decision as such, or of its members taken one by one.

#### **2 Plural Subjects and Feeling of Obligation**

Similarly, being a citizen means participating in the purposes of a collective entity that makes collective decisions every member is required to endorse as a citizen. The collective decision therefore contains a rather mysterious element that demands clarification: it *obliges* the members of the group that contributed to the decision, as well as the members of the broader entity on whose behalf the group expresses itself. This is a central theme in works aiming to renew holism, one situated in the wake of Durkheim, who had already pointed out that the characteristic of what is 'social' is to oblige individuals.

To move from a reflection on groups to a study on citizenship, we will proceed in stages from theories of collective intentionality to then point out their limits, including their individualistic bias. This will allow us to identify this potential bias in global citizenship considerations that tend to evade or simply ignore certain collective entities, usually seen as being the framework of citizenship. It is not that 'the world' replaces 'the nation' or 'society'. If that were the case, it would be too simple; and, for good reason, almost no global citizenship theorist is so naive. Yet, these collective entities are often thought of on the model of 'the world', that is to say as a collection of individuals; calling it a 'global society' or a 'global community' does not change that.

Let us start with collective intentionality: it is the ability for individuals to have intentions that can only be properly described in the first person plural. The philosopher Margaret Gilbert has explained this point in what is a now classic way in social philosophy and general sociology, but also in language sciences, sociology of social interaction, economics and psychology. Gilbert takes the paradigmatic example of two people walking together (as opposed to two people walking in the same direction). Maybe they had made an appointment, maybe they have freely started a conversation about the weather, maybe they do not know each other at all and one of them just asked for directions. Whatever the objective of this joint movement, the degree of acquaintanceship of the persons and the degree of explicitness of the possible shared objective, it remains that each person cannot press or slow the pace without warning the other person or without apologising, and the latter may be reciprocally justified in raising accusations. For example, Anna and Joseph are walking together and Joseph "suddenly stops walking and sits on a bench. Anna faults him for that and Joseph understands that Anna is in a position to fault him because of their joint intention" (Gilbert, 2003, p. 34).

The illustrative examples are numerous: walking, dancing, judgments on the quality of canteen meals, the collective feeling of being guilty even if one is not individually responsible (about Nazi Germany) or even political obligation in general (but we said in the introduction that Gilbert's attempt fails in this last point). Moreover, the model offers some flexibility with regard to the fields of investigation: far from postulating the existence of groups, Gilbert rather describes a process and specifies that 'plural subjects' can be tendentious, that is, individuals can act *as if* they exist, thus making them happen or on the contrary failing to do so.

For example, Jill might be offended by Jack's question, "Why don't we go for a walk?", although she would not mind […] "would you like to go for a ride?" and similar formulas. One explanation for this sensitivity lies in the fact that "we" was spontaneously interpreted as implying the existence of a plural subject […] whereas, according to the interlocutor, there is no plural subject. (Gilbert, 1999, p. 243)

The model thus makes it possible to examine the existence of asymmetrical power relations, when one of the parties can more easily revoke the (supposedly) joint commitment than the other, or, on the contrary, publicly state that a joint undertaking had been entered into, though the other party says not ( Bouvier, 2004). The approach is thus a way of reformulating, in a precise yet refined way, the more intuitive analyses of Durkheim, Weber and Simmel. This is how Gilbert comments on the famous Weberian example of the two cyclists avoiding each other; but while Weber judges that the attempt to avoid the other is a social action, Gilbert insists on the difference between being related to the behaviour of others, and a joint commitment. However, only the latter is social in the strict sense. This rejoins the Durkheimian intuition: 'walking together' implies Us having intentions that are not a sum of personal intentions; they are *sui generis.*1

Gilbert's approach is analytical. That being said, as we saw in the introduction, Gilbert enters *de facto* into the meanders of politics, on which Human and social sciences depend because they rely on the ideal of modernity which constituted them and still animates them. It is therefore necessary to distinguish two levels, descriptive and political.

1. On the descriptive level, the Gilbertian model, although 'holistic', remains too attached to the contractualist fiction of assembling wills: indeed, many collectives "cannot be the product of associative and contractual activities; not only do they precede the latter, but they are the ones who make them possible by assuring them from the outset a 'commonality' of principle" (Kaufmann, 2010, p. 344). In other words, if the association of walkers makes it possible to understand the difference between a sum of wills and a *sui generis* assembly of wills, it leaves in the shadow all pre-contractual practices, such as the constitutive rules of a social activity. Thus, to play chess, it is necessary to have rules prior to the joint commitment of the parties (Descombes, 2000). The same remark concerns money, which cannot be reduced to a social link between contractors, since it does not only contribute to the latter: it constitutes it (Searle, 1995). Yet one cannot buy one's own property (by paying oneself), or play chess against oneself: it would not really be a purchase or a game of chess. On the other hand, one can walk alone; and even walk alone while acting as if one was walking with somebody: is "walking together" not the paradigm of an *intersubjective* relationship, rather than strictly social (Descombes, 2014)?

2. On the political level, the Gilbertian theory does not generate the same type of difficulties. It is indeed specifically modern, in that it belongs to the liberal and nominalist matrix, in many respects constitutive of the nascent social sciences and political theory (Hobbes, Rousseau) which was its breeding ground: the plural subjects are thus thinkable from individual interactions. By representing society as founded on an assemblage of wills, it also joins an extremely powerful imagination during the French and American revolutions of the 18th century. If the model of the plural subject clashes with the case of collectives in Us on a large scale (of the 'our nation' type), it remains anchored to a fundamentally emancipatory ideal: individuals remain indeed the active subjects of the plural collective constituted.

#### **3 General Will and Individual Autonomy**

The political crux of the problem, in connection with citizenship as a relation to a society (nation-state for example), is that the logical Us from which the institutions originate differs from the empirical We who is the recipient. Weighted with its modern and liberal perspective, Gilbert's model perfectly reflects the logical Us. A collective such as a nation can indeed be apprehended logically so that one imagines members co-engaged by an act of will. This corresponds to a certain reality, the modernity of nations having effectively emancipated individuals from certain ties hindering their freedom. But beyond this logical Us, there remains the weight of uses and social relations pre-existing to the establishment of this Us.

#### **3.1** *Contributions and Limits of the Contractualist Analysis*

The problem arises in particular when the logical Us claims to have authority over individuals.

The Us of the community, whether it takes the empirical form of the nation-state, the royal majesty or the spokesmen of the Public, can declare war, sign a treaty, refuse trade agreements, defend a common ideal, etc. Submitted by definition to the authority of this Us, individuals do not have the cognitive and political means to oppose an alternative interpretation. (Kaufmann, 2002, p. 306)

In France, post-1789 revolutionaries wanted to give the community the power to determine its own institutions. Thus they deregulated the social totalities existing until then, in particular the royal power and its Us of majesty which gave way to the Us of society: "the linguistic and symbolic dispossession of the monarch is consecrated when the Us of civil society openly accede, especially in the lists of grievances of 1789, to the status of an enunciative subject" (Kaufmann, 2003, p. 103). This Us of society can be considered as a plural subject, in the sense that it refers to an "upward movement […] of 'collectivisation'" (Kaufmann, 2010, p. 359). Gilbertian contractualism (assembly of wills) can thus describe the realisation of the political project of revolutionary emancipation.

However, when the revolutionaries want to establish 'the soul of the Republic', the Us is not ascending, but descending. The emancipatory operation of dereifying collectives is abandoned, in favour of a realistic attitude towards republican institutions, considered at that time as "a given whose 'self- evidence' escapes individual, if not collective, action" (Kaufmann, 2003, p. 126). The soul of the Republic is then imposed on individuals in the form of a language (French), a civil religion of public salvation, and morals resulting from a policy that relies on the omnipotence of the law to make the people conform to its principles.

It is precisely the modalities of implementation of this artifice, consisting in making the logical Us and the empirical Us coincide, which complicate the objective of global citizenship, considered by some researchers and policy makers as the essential element of citizenship education from an international perspective. Indeed, discussions on this subject revolve around the question of whether citizenship without territorial anchoring, without common morals and without an associated government is possible, even as an ideal or ethical horizon, knowing that to date, no 'world government', 'world society' or 'world sovereignty' exist.

And yet, these discussions are inseparable from the representations, be they holistic or nominalist, that we have of society. The Durkheimian response was sometimes nuanced (from the point of view of the sociological method), sometimes cavalier (the collective consciousness of society that it was important to pass into the child's soul). It was centred on the nation, but we will see that it had a cosmopolitan aspect, waving towards the world. It is therefore necessary to resume the Durkheimian work from scratch, updating its whole approach not only on education, but also on the state, the Republic (*res publica*), division of labour and the growing pluralism of modern societies.

#### **3.2** *Collectives, Collective Decision and (Global) Citizenship*

In order to do this, we formulate a way of associating the analysis of collective entities with their political content. If, as has been said, the principle of analytical parsimony claimed by the approaches in terms of collective intentionality (Gilbert, Pettit) has a political counterpart, similarly, the holistic analysis of the collective decision outlined above has the political counterpart of identifying the purposes of the collective entities themselves and therefore specifying what founds the general will. This must be done without confusing it, on the one hand, with pre-intentional established practices, in which case one would fall back into conservative culturalism; and without reducing it, on the other hand, to majority decisions (such as votes), because society is not an aggregation of individual wills.

This is an important point for understanding citizenship. Why does one feel obliged to comply with national, regional, municipal decisions, or the decisions of the collective entities that make up one's professional world? Why does this feeling of obligation often persist even if one personally does not agree with these decisions? In addition, why may one believe these decisions are not legitimate, in the sense that they do not seem to correspond to the purposes of a given entity? As we can see, the problem is inextricably analytical and political.

If a majority vote is not enough for a collective decision to oblige us, it must however fit the purposes of the collective entity. To illustrate this, imagine an ETS department that brings together as many people trained in sociology as people trained in didactics. The recruitment of the next lecturer is crucial: will it be a didactician or a sociologist? The members of the department must write a job description, and each side will try to defend its field, leaving aside other issues such as the actual needs in teaching, the laboratory policy, the pool of candidates and the potential quality of the candidacies. Thus, the decision has little chance of corresponding to the specific purposes of the department. It will be a decision, probably made by a short majority that, despite appearances, will not be the decision of the collective entity, but that of the majority members within that entity.

Let us now use a documented example. The historian Ernst Kantorowicz, although non-communist, refused in the midst of McCarthyism to take an oath of non-allegiance to communism before his academic peers, at the risk of being given notice. He felt that the votes of his university's board of regents in favour of the oath of non-allegiance were too narrow, indicating that they did not match the university's purposes:

If the board of regents can become the arena of a "numerical balance of forces" between two groups bent on imposing or defeating the requirement of the oath, it is because the question of the oath involves the institution for which that board is supposed to make decisions. (Urfalino, 2021, p. 312)

The board of regents thus claims to make a collective decision, valid for any professor at the University of California, but Kantorowicz regards it as the decision of a clan. The majority does not have the legitimacy to affect the nature of what binds the majority and the minority (academic competence, professional ethics), in other words the *institution* to which they belong and for which they act together.

Thus, by combining philosophy and sociology, we can return to Durkheim's intuitions. In modern societies, the individual takes part in reaching objectives of collective entities. These purposes are not his own but he is entitled to assert them, as a member of these entities (cf. pizza of the month), or to refuse them if he considers that the procedure that defined them is not legitimate. If individuals are part of *sui generis* collective entities that define them in return, it is because the human person is capable of collective intentions. However, here it is not the liberal Us of Gilbert that is at stake, it is the 'structural holism' that places individuals within an institution: the teacher and the student, the tennis player and her opponent, etc., that can thus be represented by dyads (and not 'Gilbert pairs') in a complementarity relationship provided for by a rule.

The collective decision approach in question is relatively flexible, based on the rhetorical model of one or more speaker(s) facing an audience (Urfalino, 2022). The conditions for making a collective decision are therefore not as strict and unrealistic as in the dialogical model of Habermas' 'communicative rationality', conveying an idealised image of deliberative bodies. But what about nations, persistent frameworks of citizenship? Can we jump from the above models to the national scale? The task is not obvious, but it involves similar issues. Already Marcel Mauss, in writing *The Nation*, wanted to counter the liberal illusion, both in sociology and in political theory: he sought to "fill the national idea with a positive content to complete liberalism and prevent it from turning once again into its opposite" (Callegaro, 2014, p. 341).

This is why the republican thought, more precisely critical republicanism, in the wake of Pettit, remains essential. It allows for the reintroduction of a form of holism in order to think about the relationship of individuals to the nation-state, beyond the fiction that sees the state as the ultimate field objectified by sociologists (Bourdieu); or the more complex vision, a society as a reservoir of *topoi* that can be mobilised by individuals who rebuild its coherence in test situations thanks to their critical skills (Boltanski & Thévenot). It seems we must go further in the direction of social totality for a reason that lies, as suggested in the introduction, in the specificity of our object grasped in an international comparative perspective: the public school as a place of general education crystallising the highest value ideas of a society.

An important question remains: how is critical republicanism holistic? Admittedly it is not quite so. Philip Pettit has already drawn some criticism against him from Charles Larmore, according to whom critical republicanism is a version of negative freedom (which Pettit fully recognises) and therefore of political liberalism, which Pettit is less inclined to recognise since he wants to emphasise the originality of his approach. For our part, it seems that one can place Pettit quite clearly on the side of holists in the sense that he rejects the individualistic idea according to which humans have timeless faculties in determining the state's role and limits. Rather, he considers with Durkheim and Mauss that it is society, as the provider of a political status, which gives form to the individual. We are mentioning here, not Pettit's social philosophy, which is nominalist and therefore very different from that of Durkheim and Mauss, but rather his political and in this case holist philosophy because it derives individual liberty from freedom as non-domination within states, themselves not dominated. This is the junction between Durkheim, Mauss and Pettit.

Although the republican tradition, in its Roman sources, is just as attached to the independence of individuals as the liberal tradition is, the former does not think of individual freedom in the same terms as the latter. Liberals, like Locke or Kant, see freedom as a kind of natural power that both determines the role of the state (that of guaranteeing natural rights) and sets its limits (that of not encroaching on these inalienable rights). Conversely, as Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit have shown, the republican tradition, from Cicero to Rousseau, derives the freedom of the citizen not from a natural state, but from the political status that makes it possible. (Guérard de Latour, 2015, p. 77)

If political liberalism and republicanism converge on many points, the distinction between their respective ontologies will prove crucial to think of global citizenship, in the second part of the book. The coordinates of the problem are the following. If freedom is a natural, individual power that determines sense. It consists, in a way, in identifying the universal human faculties, then in seeking to deduce from them a universal, global society. However, if freedom derives from a political status, itself framed by the state, then the idea of global citizenship requires thinking more resolutely about the latter. The opinions of the GlobalSense international consortium are divided between these two different ontologies when it comes to thinking about citizenship education. Are they reconcilable?

#### **4 Holism and (Global) Citizenship Education**

The second part of the book will develop these points in relation to discourses (political, educational and academic) that promote 'global citizenship education' and claim to broaden the usual framework of the political community by addressing its members: teacher trainers, teachers, students, future citizens, researchers. The task is all the more complex because universities, whose organisation into disciplines can be quite easily relaxed to make room for 'education towards' (sustainable development, global sensitivity, etc.), are privileged recipients of this type of discourse and *a fortiori* so are the carriers of Erasmus+ projects (Barthes & Lange, 2022b).

In spite of a decidedly holistic approach, taking into account the encompassing aspect of the ideal citizen, let us point out that encompassing does not mean imposing. On this point, it is useful to return to Walzer's Liberal-Republican thinking: "There can be no society of free individuals without processes of socialisation and without a culture of individuality, without a political regime that comes to defend the whole and that citizens themselves would be willing to defend, if necessary" (Walzer, 2008, p. 17). The totality – here described as a society, a culture, a political regime – is therefore a resource for individuation, in the same way that the common higher principles of Boltanski and Thévenot satisfy a meta-principal, that of common humanity. That is why there is no 'ethnic city' in their model, which would be based on hierarchies of origin or race.

Let us take the measure of this gesture, which signs Walzer's influence (Thévenot, 1996). The authors deliberately exclude existing motifs of coordination on the grounds that they cannot claim legitimacy in our liberal societies. Their purpose is therefore proto-normative: it is not satisfied with a description of coordination between people, but wants to separate potentially legitimate principles from those that are not. In short, not all authorities are equal, hence the use of political philosophy. The use of classical texts in this field 80 Chapter 3

to model social 'worlds' (Saint-Augustin, Saint-Simon, Rousseau, Smith, etc.) marks the underlying cultural aspect. It is a western European thinking that people are supposed to master, in line with their 'critical skills'.

If Boltanski and Thévenot are not holists in the sense that they would have produced a true reflection on *sui generis* collective entities, they are indeed holists in the sense that they presuppose a shared cultural framework, although implicit, which goes beyond and gives form to the specific grammars of 'cities'. Being liberals as they recently admitted, they are keen to preserve a separation between different worlds (civic, domestic, industrial, inspired, opinion, market) while denouncing the illegitimate encroachment that one can exert on another, for example the merchant world on the civic world under a "undue transportation of magnitude". This sociological perspective is therefore pragmatic in the sense that it pays attention to how people, by justifying their action and challenging that of others, can navigate between different registers of greatness. Nevertheless, it remains anchored to a powerful postulate in political philosophy, which in turn helps to situate the endeavour:

The question of justice was strongly armed [in France] by a history of centralised state and institutional Catholicism, while the question of pluralism was confined to a few political devices of debate that had little to do with morality because of the absence of a culture of political liberalism. (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2022, p. 28)

This is how the authors justify their gesture politically, in the service of pluralism and liberalism. This meta-reflection is crucial. It serves as a reminder that sociology of justification is inevitably included in its own object: when sociology tries to account for the logics of justification, it is difficult for it not to register itself in such a process, because sociological knowledge must be publicly justified.

Liberalism thus understood, which is also our assumption (Lantheaume & Urbanski, 2023), is part of the 'ideology of the moderns', to speak like Dumont, which sociology cannot easily shake off. Sociology is indeed the product of this ideology, and even its potential expression when the actors themselves take up its results. In short, modern societies are deeply affected by liberalism and this is precisely what makes them united, under the auspices of what Walzer calls the *culture of individuality*. Durkheim had also glimpsed this in his attempts to link, on the one hand, 'collective consciousness' and 'social brain' (on the side of unity), and on the other hand 'division of labour' and 'organic solidarity' (on the side of individuality and pluralism). It is thus in a similar way that the liberal postulate of Boltanski and Thévenot informs what makes the principles of justification hold together: the social worlds are distinct, incommensurable, but legitimate *a priori*, while being put in equivalence and questioned by social actors.

Because of its deep connection with the individualistic ideology of the moderns, the holism in question is not causal, only structural, and not in the Marxian or Foucaulian sense, but in the sense of ordinary language specific to the grammar of a society. This is to say that the culture of individuality of which Walzer speaks is not to be understood as having a causal effect on individuality; nor is it to be understood as having an inverse causal effect in the sense that the culture carried by the social totality would crush authentic individuals (those who would somehow escape this culture).

The aforementioned complexities of individualism will be analysed, in the second part of the book, in studies and recommendations on global citizenship education. We will also scrutinise an individualistic bias, apprehended as an emanation of the 'liberal-nominalist' motif from which escape, in our opinion, both the (holist) social philosophy of Durkheim and the (republican) political philosophy of Pettit. Armed with these clarifications, how can we more closely approach the notion of citizenship in its relationship with institutions such as the public school? Where should we place, among the terms of the equation outlined, constantly invoked collective entities such as 'society', 'nation', or 'global society' or even 'global political community'? These questions will benefit from an updated Durkheimian perspective, inseparably neo-holist and neo-republican.

#### **Note**

1 The conciliation of the Weberian nominalist and Durkheimian holist views is done in Gilbert's work in a clever way. She shows that ordinary thinking is spontaneously Durkheimian, in the sense that people easily talk about groups that 'think' this or 'do' that; but Durkheim recommends breaking away from ordinary thinking (prenotions). Weber, on the other hand, recommends taking very seriously the concepts by which social life is lived, but given his insistence on technical concepts such as social action (cyclists *supra*), he has doubts about ordinary holistic thinking. Gilbert's approach therefore consists in saying that understanding ordinary holist thinking, if subjected to conceptual analysis, can be useful for scientific description, and not only for interpretation. In this context, Durkheimian holistic intuitions can provide a fulcrum; but as Weber argues, understanding ordinary concepts remains fundamental: to break with them in the Durkheimian way would be harmful. In this, Gilbert reconciles Weberian understanding with Durkheimian holism, in order to analyse, among other things, the ordinary first-person of the plural discourse, a potential indicator of collective intentionality in the form of plural subjects.

## **PART 2**

## *Global Citizenship Education: A Durkheimian Perspective*

∵

## **Introduction to Part 2**

That we cannot do without a homeland is what appears to me obvious: for we cannot live outside an organised society and the highest organised society that exists is the homeland. Therefore, in this sense, anti-patriotism has always seemed absurd to me. But there is another question with a less easy solution: it is knowing what kind of homeland we must want. Undoubtedly, we have obligations towards the already constituted homeland, of which we are a part in fact, from which we do not have the right to free ourselves. However, above this homeland, there is another that is being formed, that envelops our national homeland; it is the European homeland, or the human homeland. But to what extent should we want this homeland? […] There would be a theoretical solution to the problem; it is to imagine humanity itself organised as a society. Yet, is it necessary to say that such an idea, if not entirely unachievable, must be rejected in such an indeterminate future that there is really no need to consider it. […] Nevertheless, there is a way to reconcile these two feelings. It is that the national ideal merges with the human ideal; it is that particular states become themselves, each in their own strength, the organs by which this general ideal is realised.

Durkheim (1900–1908/2020, pp. 133, 241)

The first part of the book showed that the work between sociology and philosophy, in the service of ETS, requires a simultaneous analysis of ideals, norms deriving from them and analytical tools of social reality. However, a common objection comes to mind: should social sciences not simply describe and explain people's actions, as well as the subjective aspect of their representations, without being burdened with costly reflection on ideals?

*∵*

We do not believe so, for two main reasons. On the one hand, as we have seen, sociology does not escape normative judgments based on the ideals of the researcher, as a member of a given society (or even a political community). On the other hand, we make our own Durkheim's reflection according to which ideals are real objects, which can be analysed sociologically, though not soluble in the subjective judgment: "a value judgment expresses the relationship of a thing with an ideal. But the ideal is given just like the thing, albeit in a different manner" (Durkheim, 1924/2014, p. 98). Admittedly, the author is not always convincing, notably when he takes a step further by establishing a difference between the value judgments *actually* made by individuals, and those that fall under what values are *in principle*, in their objective aspect: "The gap is enormous between the way values are, in fact, estimated by the ordinary individual and this objective scale of human values on which, in principle, our judgments must be settled" (Durkheim, 1924/2014, p. 98). The pitfall here would be to attempt to persuade that the sociologist has access to this objective scale of human values.

Without going as far as this last Durkheimian claim, implicitly extended by Bourdieu, but strongly contested by Boltanski and Thévenot who anchor the debates on values at the centre of their analysis, we will continue on the path outlined in the first part, about collective entities in their inseparable sociological and political aspects. Furthermore, this way takes a particular meaning in ETS: far from being an arbitrary addition of academic disciplines, ETS explicitly articulate an aim of knowledge with a practical aim and a political ideal (Malet, 2021). All the more reason to revisit and update the position of Durkheim, professor of sociology and education science, who tried to articulate science and political action.

#### CHAPTER 4

## **Science and Political Action**

One of Durkheim's conceptual tools was to distinguish between normal and pathological. The formula may seem provocative to our contemporary ears. Normal was understood as synonymous of general: in this frame, crime and suicide are normal. On the other hand, an exceptionally high rate of selfish or anomic suicide would be pathological, as well as sudden variations in these rates. Thus, it becomes possible to develop courses of action.

Can the solution to this pathological situation [indicated by the rise of selfish and anomic suicide] that European societies are going through [at the beginning of the 20th century] come from the old institutions? Could these (state, religion and family) regain their socialising role? Durkheim's answer is negative. The loss of influence of the three institutions of the family, religion and state is due to their inadequacy to the new conditions of social life; they can no longer effectively play their socialising functions. In a modern society with organic solidarity, socialisation must be made through difference. But the state is too far from the special problems of particular groups to take action in this regard; religious society is no more adapted: its integrating power comes from the fact that it limits the free thought of the individual, which is perfectly contradictory with the movement of modern society; finally, family which is more and more often reduced to the conjugal group, of which we know the weak power of preservation in the matter of suicide, does not allow to hope for a solution. If these institutions can no longer fully play their socialising role in the society with an organic solidarity, we must resolutely turn to the creation of new social forms. (Steiner, 2018, p. 76)

Among these new social forms, the most salient is that of occupational groups organised on a national basis, likely to provide a moral discipline to the economic activity, which is subject to the pathologies of the division of labour. This course of action is certainly not directly related to the subject we are dealing with here (citizenship education) since it first constitutes a reaction to the deregulation of the economy, generating the amorality of social ties. However, it allows us to reflect on new ways of organising these professional groups that are teacher trainers and teachers in the making, in a context of international division of labour: Europeanisation and globalisation of higher education, international recommendations on citizenship education, and on social and civic skills. The Lifelong Learning Recommendation, 2006/962/EC, includes eight key competences, the sixth of which is described as follows: "Social and civic competences: the ability to participate effectively and constructively in social and professional life and to engage in active and democratic civic participation, especially in increasingly diverse societies".1

#### **1 Reasoning about the State**

The Durkheimian perspective also allows the combination of science and action, by taking into account the evolutions of the state. Indeed, according to Durkheim, if the state is part of the ancient order on which one cannot rely to prevent pathologies of the division of labour, it remains nevertheless a lever of liberation of the individual, in that it makes it possible to go beyond local particularisms while giving free rein to the development of specialised segments in society. In its new form implied by the division of labour, the state can become the place of clarification of the collective consciousness, like a 'social brain' envisaged, internally,2 as an organ of social thought. By penetrating 'the deep layers of society' and by giving individuals the means to make it more reflective via advice, assemblies and renewed communication processes, the state as a social brain avoids the pathologies of modernity by remaining attentive to new social aspirations, and thus facilitates the development of organic solidarity.

Biological metaphors are by definition limited, but illuminating. The more animals' bodies are differentiated, the more their brains are developed; the same is true of differentiated societies that require the active presence of the state as an integrating and regulating organ. This biological metaphor also makes it possible to distinguish on the one hand, state administrations, assimilated to the muscular system in charge of movements; and on the other hand, the state *per se*, in charge of deliberations.

The whole life of the state *per se* takes place not in external actions, in movements, but in deliberations, that is, in representations. The movements are others, it is administrations of all kinds that are responsible for it. We see the difference between them and the state; this difference is also the one that separates the muscular system from the central nervous system. The state is, rigorously speaking, the very organ of social thought. Under the present conditions, this thought is turned towards a practical and not speculative goal. The state, at least in general, does not think solely to think, to build systems of doctrines, but to direct collective conduct. Nevertheless, its essential function is to think. (Durkheim, 1900/2020, p. 106)

This means that the pluralism of societies requires – at first glance paradoxically – for the state to take an increasingly important place. For by managing to make the "collective psychic life" reflexive in "the whole extent of the social body", the social brain is animated by a principle of differentiation.

When the state thinks and decides, it should not be said that society thinks and decides through it, but that it thinks and decides for society. It is not a simple instrument of pipelines and concentrations. It is, in a certain sense, the organising centre of the subgroups themselves. (Durkheim, 1900/2020, p. 106)

Therefore, the state exists for society, not the other way round. By emphasising this point, sociology broadens political and legal thinking by re- inscribing freedom in History, including pre-modern (Callegaro, 2018). It is a question of thinking the essential distinction between state and society and their joint dynamics, without reducing the former to a broad administration or to a group of specialised officials (deputies, ministers, rectors, inspectors, etc.). For it is indeed the societal process of the division of labour, accompanied by the various reactions of the social body (anomia, selfishness, deepening of moral individualism, organic solidarity), that makes it possible to situate the place of the state.

Thus, against Habermas who inscribed individualistic morality in the letter of a European constitution, through his famous 'constitutional patriotism', the neo-Durkheimian approach anchors the cult of the person in the social aspirations resulting from the division of labour: that which, when properly integrated and regulated, generates new forms of solidarity. Habermas certainly joins Durkheim on the cosmopolitan idea, but the latter anchors it more firmly in the work that societies carry out on themselves. This point is useful to think about citizenship in an international perspective, between national prescriptions, promotion of national values, and aspirations of future teachers via an activity on international awareness, anchored in their practices during their training.

#### **2 Cosmopolitan Patriotism: The Political Purpose of ETS Enlightened by Durkheim**

The articulation between theoretical and empirical aspects can therefore be summarised as follows. As citizens, members of modern and differentiated societies, a large part of pre-service teachers have a diffuse awareness of the potential contradiction between, on the one hand, the ideal content of a citizenship potentially open to all and on the other hand, its real empirical manifestations as well as the national prescriptions articulated around relatively local values – values of the Republic in France, British values in Great Britain, Christian values in Poland, etc. (Urbanski, 2022b). This approach materialises a deliberate choice, by favouring the critical Durkheimian and Republican line. However, we will see that the concrete framing and the first results of the GlobalSense study suggest the empirical plausibility of these postulates.

What broad and precise framework could provide a clear conceptual toolbox with sufficiently fine methodological principles? The challenge is all the more crucial because collecting the material was the result of a compromise between teams from five different countries (Germany, Belgium, United States, France, Israel) whose vocabulary on citizenship is already highly differentiated, for reasons not only academic, but also political and cultural (see Section 3 below).

Exploiting the lines of convergence between a holistic sociology and a republican philosophy allows a revival of sociology through philosophy. The GlobalSense field, relating to citizenship from an international perspective, is a lever to meet this interdisciplinary challenge. In the quotation highlighted at the start of this second part, Durkheim considers cosmopolitan patriotism as a prerequisite for a projection towards the 'human homeland'. Let us now look at the other side of the coin. As things stand, citizen relates mainly to national patriotism. What is the link between the latter and cosmopolitan patriotism?

This [cosmopolitan] patriotism does not exclude, if need be, any national pride; the collective personality, or the individual personalities, cannot exist without having of themselves, of what they are, a certain feeling, and that feeling is always personal. As long as there are states, there will be social self-esteem, and nothing is more legitimate. But societies can put their self-esteem, not to be the greatest or the wealthiest, but to be the most just, the most organised, to have the best moral constitution. (Durkheim, 1900/2020, p. 133)

The emphasis on feelings, such as national pride, might put off the reader attracted to the cosmopolitan ideal. However, Durkheim does not say that pride would be necessary; he simply does not exclude it. Moreover, the sociologist's gesture has a philosophical scope that avoids two pitfalls. On the one hand, the Kantian pitfall that anchors morality in the individual and makes the state a means for the latter to flourish, resulting in an individualistic position producing a negative solidarity threatened by its own jurisdiction (Callegaro, 2018). On the other hand, Durkheim avoids the reactionary pitfall that, trying to formulate a pseudo-holist solution to the Kantian problem, seeks to reunite minds divided by the progress of division of labour by operating a confusion (mystical, romantic, etc.) between state and political society.

Durkheim thus joins the neo-republican thought that shows the limits of a disembodied cosmopolitanism without falling back onto nationalist essentialisation (Appiah, 2020). More specifically, the holistic sociology of Durkheim makes it possible to hold a "cosmopolitan patriotism as a civic ideal" (Erez & Laborde, 2020, p. 191) whose elements we will unfold.

The state is therefore primarily, for Durkheim, an organ of thought. As such, it requires the deployment of secondary groups, including professional groups comprising teachers and their trainers. For if the state inevitably exercises a collective force, the latter must be balanced by other forces, including in a confrontational way.

The collective force which is the state, in order to be liberating for the individual, itself needs counterweights; it must be contained by other collective forces, namely by these secondary groups. […] And it is from this conflict of social forces that individual freedoms are born. […] [Secondary groups] do not only serve to settle and administer interests within their jurisdiction. They have a more general role; they are one of the indispensable conditions of individual emancipation. (Durkheim, 1900/2020, p. 121)

#### **3 GlobalSense, Research and Training in Five Countries**

GlobalSense is a research focused on teacher training that allows the elaboration of an original scientific questioning, in the wake of the professor of philosophy *and* (republican) professor of sociology *and* professor of education science that was Emile Durkheim. Below are the first milestones of *GlobalSense – Developing Global Sensitivity among Student-Teachers*.

The investigation focuses on a field that is international in two aspects: on the one hand, because of the countries involved in the research; and on the other hand, because of the very notion that is worked on, namely global citizenship education.

#### **GlobalSense**

The consortium includes universities from Germany, Belgium, the United States, France and Israel. A description of the six workpackages is attached in the annex. In addition to the bearer (Sébastien Urbanski) and the scientific coordinator (Lucy Bell), the consortium members are: Aviv Cohen, Yifat Kolikant, Julia Resnik, Micah Sapir (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Claudia Bergmueller-Hauptmann, Gregor Lang-Wojtasik, Mirjam Hitzelberger (Weingarten University of Education), Emmanuelle Danblon, Lucie Donckier, Odile Gilon (Free University of Brussels), Tim Patterson, Joseph Eisman (Temple University in Philadelphia), Gaïd Andro, Céline Chauvigné, Pascal Guibert, Tanguy Philippe (Nantes University).

Why is it relevant to study GCE and train secondary school teachers? Let us start with relatively consensual remarks. Like every citizen, (future) teachers and their trainers apprehend issues that potentially have a global aspect: migration, climate change, religions, cultural plurality, terrorism, wars, etc. While liberal countries' curricular approaches on citizenship education show similarities (attachment to individual freedom, promotion of tolerance, etc.), each state tends to address these 'global' themes in a culturally and politically specific perspective. As a result, secondary school teachers and pre- service teachers are invited to follow recommendations that fit a relatively local (national) conception of the type of citizens students are expected to become.

The GlobalSense team acknowledges the complexity that stems from the composite nature of the notion of liberal citizenship itself. Indeed, though it is centred on principles claimed to be universal, it is nevertheless the product of national histories. It is specifically a question of exploring the mutual enshrinements of liberal citizenship and national belonging. Whilst doing so, we must consider that in an increasingly interconnected world, teachers should be able to reflect, in a very practical perspective, on the complex relationships between nation and liberal principles that form the substance of the idea of (possibly global) citizenship, framed increasingly by transnational legal and political regulatory structures.

The project has been to implement, over the course of three years, an interactive training system to enable future secondary school teachers to tackle the following issues:


within a given country, they can become controversial from a supranational (or even worldwide) point of view;


For each of these components, elements are put in italics in order to suggest the complexity of GCE, which is an umbrella-notion (Tarozzi & Torres, 2016, p. 3). In spite of differences of opinion among the consortium members regarding GCE, they do agree that an *in abstracto* reflection on these issues is insufficient. This is why interactions are organised online (via zooms), then in attendance through the Erasmus+ programme, allowing (mostly secondary) pre-service teachers to work together and reflect on common, or at least co-constructed, lesson plans on citizenship. It also gives teacher trainers the opportunity to consider more reflective ways of working, perhaps distancing themselves from the prescriptions and politico-cultural frameworks to which they are accustomed. The general training system is therefore unanimously approved and can be summarised as follows.

So far, 312 students have participated in the experiment, making it possible to gradually build up our corpus, composed in January 2024 of:


In this book, we concentrate on the analysis of prompts and self-reflections, which allows for a nuanced exploration of the pre-service teachers' experiences,

FIGURE 1 Pedagogical design of the GlobalSense training device (Source: GlobalSense) offering insights into the transformative impact of the GlobalSense program. This focused approach highlights the participants' reflections and contributes to the overall research findings.

As for the many differences between members of the consortium, though they sometimes constitute obstacles such as misunderstandings, they also constitute working resources. Indeed, since the GlobalSense project is specifically intended to bring out conceptual, political and educational tensions internationally, not rushing into predetermined definitions has been beneficial. Thereby, we are inspired by Pierre Rosanvallon's remarks on the link between conceptual analysis and political action. While some lament the lack of a belief in social progress, what we also lack today is a discussion on words. As such, the notion of global citizenship runs the double risk of being reduced to a slogan and a dissolving consensus, due to the avoidance of intellectual deepening of an idea (Rosanvallon, 2006).

In view of this intellectual deepening, here are some questions that cannot be avoided:


It is not about splitting hairs, but about generating possible answers. It can also be a case of finding that no answers are given because the questions, for certain members of the consortium, are considered irrelevant due to the country they belong to, their disciplinary anchoring, or their political presuppositions (in the broad sense of the term: liberalism, communitarianism, etc.) For though GlobalSense is a research that takes social phenomena as its object, it is no less positioned *in* society, just as any social science. Moreover, it claims to meet societal challenges and that is why the demand for reflexivity, via the internal criticism of the consortium, is crucial.

For instance, we saw in the first part of this book the importance of religion in the shaping of political liberalism, if only through the work of John Rawls. It is because liberalism, in many ways, is a solution to the religious wars that tore Europe apart and to the civil war between sects that was threatening the United States, before it was endowed with a constitution placing non-establishment among its superior principles (although they are questioned today). Yet the notion of GCE, as it is defended by many of its promoters, has an obvious liberal connotation: the principles it values are individual autonomy, tolerance towards others, non-discrimination, freedom of choice, etc. It is also clear that the nations and societies' conceptions of citizenship are influenced by the religions that were historically dominant. This is why GlobalSense, on the proposal of the Nantes team, wanted to make the participating student teachers work on religions and secularism.

However, during consortium research meetings, some partners expressed the opinion that they did not consider religion to be a global issue. Nonetheless, according to the Nantes team, article 18 of the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights, which specifically addresses this issue, has a global impact (so much so that alternative declarations have been elaborated, such as the Declaration of Human Rights in Islam), and states and NGO s refer to it to defend causes related to the freedom of citizens. These discussions were informative to understand how each team of researchers perceives the global character of certain topics. An agreement was finally reached between the five countries, but only quite late in the project.

Therefore, the first topic that the student teachers were asked to work on was migration. It was easier for the whole consortium to see it as a global issue, although some members of GlobalSense pointed out that there are many different national ways to promote or prohibit migration, so that we could finally ask ourselves whether there are themes that are more global than others. In fact, this probably depends not on the subjects themselves but on how they are problematised. That being said, it is possible to consider that migration is an important topic to approach in CGE, since it has logically been linked to the issue of borders, which have to be reconsidered in the perspective of a global citizenship.

The consortium includes a continuum between, on the one hand, those who think that the notion of GCE has already been demonstrated; and, on the other hand, those who wish to deploy a real exchange on this subject as a tool for international comparison. Where do these differences stem from? In addition to the obvious different political cultures in the five countries, we must take into account that the Weingarten and Jerusalem teams are far more integrated into the field of education sciences than the Nantes and Brussels' teams, the latter's approach being more rooted in the contributory disciplines: history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy. Consequently, the Belgian and the French pre-service teachers' tend to ask elementary questions – or naive questions depending on the point of view adopted – on the relevance of using the term citizenship, when there is to date no global political community, nor global society, except at the margin for certain specific rights and duties.

#### **4 Taking Criticisms against GCE into Account**

Though these elementary questions can be perceived as scholastic, the ambiguity, fragility, even the 'structural theoretical poverty' of the notion of GCE as recognised by major figures in education sciences means they must be addressed.

The tension between liberal and universal cosmopolitism […] created a fruitful debate about the implication of the global dimension in citizenship education. […] Discussions on cosmopolitanism and its critics, as well as its implications for education policies and practices […] represented a theoretical root for the conceptualization of the subsequent notion of GCE which some have noted has a structural theoretical poverty […] GCE is blamed for its *naïve* internationalism, aiming at pursuing a vague 'international awareness', if not even the expression of a disguised colonialism. Not surprisingly, some scholars have observed that it is unclear whether the very notion of 'global citizenship' is a metaphor, a paradox, or simply an oxymoron. (Tarozzi & Torres, 2016, pp. 9, 17)

This passage contains three crucial elements:


These difficult issues are a long-term collective undertaking. To this end, it is useful to provide an overview of recurring criticisms of the expression GCE. They may seem sharp, but the horizon of this enterprise is to *overcome* these criticisms. And this, for a very simple reason: if we adhere, to some extent, to cosmopolitanism, and perhaps also to the cosmopolitanism sketched by Durkheim and Pettit (the latter is commented below), then why deprive ourselves of a slogan which could, in this perspective, provide a point of support, even because of its popularity in some international academic and political networks, as well as international educational networks?

Let us start with fragilities.

1. Rather than 'citizenship', why is the notion of 'human rights' not used? Because defending a specific humanitarian right (right to flee a war, right not to be submerged under water due to climate change) does not equate to treating the recipients of this right as fellow citizens (but as similar persons), let alone grant them citizenship. It is certainly very important that educational approaches to global citizenship address the *de facto* central issue of migration and hospitality. Nevertheless, hospitality, for example, is very different from citizenship, and seems to require on the contrary some *absence* of fellow citizenship to be practised.


The implementation of effective, frank, sometimes tense but always warm communication within GlobalSense is therefore a condition of the project. The teacher trainers, who are also researchers, can make an international comparison of their frames of thought, views and practices. They do not hesitate to contradict certain stereotypes that emanate from external visions of their country, and this enables them in turn to better understand the background framing their national or local work practices. Consequently, we have been gradually testing and improving our international cooperation practices, in accordance with the European Commission's programme Key Action 2 – Cooperation Partnerships in Higher Education.

#### **5 Liberal Nationalism and (Liberal) Global Citizenship**

This endeavour is in close articulation with the status of collective entities, studied in the first part, because the problem is the one Mauss articulated: nations do not live in an environment superior to themselves despite utopians generally ignoring this point of view according to him. This is why an anthropological approach is ontologically incompatible with the idea of a world-society,3 whose existence many supporters of GCE affirm is either proven or in the making. They define a 'world-society' in a liberal-nominalist perspective, because their thinking tools lead them to describe society mainly as a set of individuals. When one concedes this liberal-nominalist gesture, it is then easy to consider that a world-society exists: it would suffice to conceive what an individual is (no doubt inspired by the way individuals exist in our country), before projecting this reality onto a global scale, taking care to add nation-states in the form of containers that hold and frame individuals. However, this type of error that confuses the individual-value and the empirical individual can be avoided by a rereading of Durkheim, Mauss and Dumont.

Does this mean that Mauss would not be cosmopolitan? The question is not relevant because, contrary to what some proponents of global citizenship education claim, cosmopolitanism (the ancient ideal) and global citizenship (the recent slogan) are *a priori* two different things. It is nevertheless worth unfolding the proper sociological reason of why Mauss preferred to call himself an internationalist, as we saw in the introduction.

A society is an individual, other societies are other individuals. Between them it is not possible – as long as they remain individualised – to constitute a higher individuality. This observation of fact and common sense is generally lost on utopians […]. If the formation of social groups larger than our great nations still falls entirely within the domain of an idea, and of an ideal, however, the importance and awareness of the relationship phenomena between nations and societies of all kinds have increased to unforeseen degrees. […] And therefore extremely numerous conditions are given for the practical solution to a practical problem to become, if not immediately possible, at least conceivable. (Mauss, 1953/2013, p. 120)

In other words, what is crucial is the awareness within nations of the phenomena of inter-social relations (that is, between societies). Moreover, it is not certain that the projection towards world citizenship will make it possible to carry out this gesture without reintroducing dubious confusions. Indeed, this projection risks making us believe that the ideal of world citizenship is an individual characteristic. This admittedly is not false: individuals can believe they are citizens of the world, and that all humans are called to be citizens of the world. However, this falls under the moral individualism of which Durkheim, clarified by Dumont, had described the societal emergence.

The risk is, therefore, as we saw in the introduction, to confuse the empirical individual and the moral individual (or value-individual to speak like Dumont). This second aspect can only be grasped in a holistic approach: indeed, it is *societies* that give substance to the idea of citizenship, including the idea of global citizenship, which is in tune with the individualistic ideology of the moderns as understood by Dumont. This can lead to the following reasoning:


We will see that this bottom line emerges in the nominal-liberalist motif in GCE, challenging the social totalities on the principle of the modern individualist ideology that, nevertheless, gives substance to the idea of GCE. That is why the purpose of this book is to give oneself the means to become better acquainted with "the modern system of ideas and values which we believe to know all about because it is in it that we think and live" (Dumont, 1991, p. 20).

Of course, it would be better for this to mobilise anthropological tools fully. This would have been possible if the GlobalSense consortium had included a country from the Global South. Since this is not the case, we shall confine ourselves here to reviewing the genesis of our liberal ideas, which liberal nationalists highlight: "Liberals take too little account of the process by which societies described today as robustly liberal have precisely become so" (Miller, 2020, p. 35). Liberalism and the national idea, far from being contradictory, call out for each other, giving meaning to the expression liberal nationalism.4 Moreover, it is *against* this idea combining nationality and citizenship that a neo-liberal conception, 'earned citizenship', arises, linked to merit and/or money (purchase of passports, etc.), making citizenship more conditional and increasingly linked to the *individual* attributes of people, apprehended from an atomistic perspective (Joppke, 2021).

What about the educational field? The valorisation of the national idea in Durkheim's work is known. But it is worth remembering that John Dewey's position, a typically liberal author, was quite close to Durkheim's, *modulo* school pedagogy, which is not the main object of this section.5 Describing nationalism as a mixture of good and evil, Dewey called for developing its positive aspects in the educational field (moral community, solidarity, inclusion) and for fighting, on the contrary, its illiberal aspects. Thus liberal nationalism, through public school education, could be the ally of internationalism.

We are now faced by the difficulty of developing the good aspect of nationalism without its evil side; of developing a nationalism which is the friend and not the foe of internationalism. Those concerned with education should withstand popular clamour for a nationalism based on hysterical excitement or mechanical drill, or a combination of the two. We must ask what a real nationalism, a real Americanism, is like. For unless we know our character and purpose we are not likely to be intelligent in our selection of the means to further them. […] To nationalize American education is to use education to promote our national idea – which is the idea of democracy. (Dewey, 1916, p. 203)

This captures the deeply interdisciplinary aspect of our approach. Anthropologists, historians and philosophers can remind sociologists that individualism as a value is the product of particular societies, often nations. If the value given to the individual is obvious, it is precisely because we live in the sort of society where this value has found the conditions for its elaboration, its implementation, its codification in law and its dissemination. The point is emphasised by Durkheim, but more so by Louis Dumont, whose anthropological perspective makes it possible to grasp the specificity of different societies, including ours,6 by avoiding the projection of a particular experience onto the world level. The Dumontian gesture also allows us to grasp the phenomenon of nationalism in a less polemic, less pejorative and more in-depth perspective.

Someone opposes nationalism to individualism, without explanation; undoubtedly, it must be understood that nationalism fits a group feeling that is opposed to 'individualist' sentiment. In reality, the nation in the precise, modern sense of the term, and nationalism – distinguished from simple patriotism – have historically been linked to individualism as a value. The nation is precisely the type of global society that corresponds to the reign of individualism as a value. Not only does it accompany it historically, but the interdependence between the two is necessary, so that one can say that the nation is the global society composed of people who consider themselves as individuals. (Dumont, 1991, pp. 21–22)

If we admit these points, then the consequences are crucial. They do not enable us to easily imagine a 'leap' towards global citizenship, favoured by organisations of quasi-global influence such as UNESCO. Thus, this book defends the relevance of a debate that consists in enriching the discussions on GCE by integrating a bi-disciplinary approach (sociology and philosophy) to serve ETS, as well as taking seriously the ethical and political, and therefore educational, perspectives of GCE supporters: "The call for GC [global citizenship], beyond the extension of the citizen's concept from the national to the global level, certainly has an ethical and political value and, by implication, educational significance" (Tarozzi & Torres, 2016, p. 11).

#### **6 GCE, a Horizon Compatible with Different Ethics**

GlobalSense research can therefore deal with several approaches at the political level; but more importantly, taking the variety of approaches seriously is what is most likely to meet the comparative challenge. Indeed, many authors insist that GCE is an ideal and a horizon. Yet, what are the ways to achieve it? They are probably multiple, since each country's realities on the ground and room for (educational, institutional) manoeuvre are narrow, which cannot fail to question the different versions, or even the merits, of the ideal in sight.

This is why supporters of GCE, aware of the notion's fragility, fall back on a defensive register to save their approach: "GCE is a key notion as a general horizon or as a psycho-social framework for collectiveness and world consciousness" (Tarozzi & Torres, 2016, p. 11). Nevertheless, at the same time, we feel that what is described as a general horizon needs to be delineated. Let us take the spatial metaphor literally. Lost in the desert, should one fix the horizon or rather the next dune? To what extent does the horizon provide me with a reference point? Since the horizon is distant, is it not better to consider a closer reference point, which could be identified by means of critical national-liberal or republican approaches (for instance), materialising steps towards the global level?

However, as mentioned above, some proponents of GCE are quite willing to accept sometimes virulent criticism against the very notion of GC – as being contradictory, vague, utopian, weak, misleading. To respond, they write:

GC does not provide any legal status. Lacking a 'legal bite' represents its weakest condition and is a sort of contradiction in terms. […] In our view, however, [GC] is an ethos, an educational *paideia*, a framing paradigm that embodies new meaning for education and its role in developing knowledge, values, attitudes for securing tolerance, diversity recognition, inclusion, justice and sustainability across the world and in local communities. As such, it requires an ethical status as much as formal membership which may impact legal frameworks. (Tarozzi & Torres, 2016, p. 14)

From a political philosophy point of view, the clarification is slightly disappointing: we learn that the notion of citizenship *actually* meant something else: ethos, framing paradigm, *paideia*. Nonetheless, if the objective is to influence legal frameworks, then we can better perceive the potential impact in terms of citizenship. However, even reworded in this way, the ideal remains somewhat intimidating. Are we able to promote, as the authors say, a "new meaning for education and its role throughout the world and in local communities", serving "knowledge, justice, inclusion, recognition of diversity, tolerance and sustainable development"? Are we able to do this by relying mainly on an educational ethos?

In our case, the five countries gathered in GlobalSense represent a small part of the world. Additionally, the central protocol, which consists in studying the ways in which pre-service teachers develop class sequences on citizenship, before discussing them with peers from other countries, does not clearly require registration under the GCE label. The reality is indeed pluri-*national* because the lesson plans must comply with national or local curriculum. Still, the fact is that as a slogan accompanying globalisation policies, GCE accommodates almost all political perspectives – multiculturalism, republicanism, Marxism, neo-liberalism, interreligious dialogue, etc.

These multiple tones of GCE are part of the broader framework of education policies at an international level, according to "an approach that is individualising, competitive and adaptive, as well as weakly societal" (Malet, 2023, p. 52), via the lexicon of global citizenship, well-being or sustainable development. These are captured not through the lens of the co-operative transnationalism of the 1970s, but under the influence of the current dominant movement of skills that qualify the employability of the individual or even their human capital. The result is "a tacit conception of quality, success and professional and personal realisation" (*idem*) which requires, in our view, a very Durkheimian vigilance, perceiving in the hyper-individualism one of the main pathologies of division of labour when the state is no longer able to fulfil its integrative and regulatory role. For if moral individualism is an asset to our modern societies, the "disintegration of holistic representation by individualism" (Dumont, 1991, p. 185) is a slippery slope.

#### **7 Giving a Political Meaning to the Knowledge and Values Involved in 'Educations Toward'**

It is possible to orient oneself in this complexity by returning to a model worked on in ETS at the service of the critical thinking of trainers, teachers and students. Firstly, it is important to take into account the more or less important gaps in any curriculum in its six dimensions. These are what is: prescribed, recommended, intermediate (textbooks for example), real (what is actually done in class), produced (what students learn) and, finally, possible, referring to the "principles of development of what could be justified by a reference system through exploratory and prospective research work" (Barthes, 2022, p. 599).

Since GlobalSense focuses on the pedagogical device, we will focus on the recommended curriculum, the intermediate curriculum and the possible curriculum. The real curriculum is therefore not taken into account (because the pre-service teachers will not be testing their productions in class) and the prescribed curriculum will only be taken into account for comparative purposes: for example by noting that GCE is part of the prescribed curriculum in Germany, but not in France where this education is recommended, at most (very implicitly).

However, we must accurately scrutinise the learning process of teachers in training. The focus will be placed on curriculum guidelines, making it possible to "move from a formal curriculum to a real curriculum by borrowing precise, chosen and conscious goals and values", knowing that these goals can take political, didactic, strategic and programmatic aspects (Barthes & Lange, 2022a, p. 43). The first two aspects are obvious to the GlobalSense team. Students (pre-service teachers) may view global citizenship as a very clear or very misleading notion, including for political reasons. It is also obvious that pre-service teachers, during their involvement in the international device, adopt various didactic approaches, depending on the country, previous training, etc. Nonetheless, the last two points, *strategic* and *programmatic*, are equally important and refer, for example, to how the pre-service teachers in France reconcile the GCE framework with the Moral and civic education framework. In this mobilisation of curriculum guidelines, the GCE slogan is important but it can just as well be a support, as it can be an object of criticism for pre-service teachers and/or their trainers, depending precisely on the purposes and values they adopt in their (future) professional practice.

The goal therefore is not to make pre-service teachers understand what global citizenship *a priori* stands for. Rather, if we contribute to the establishment of education towards global citizenship, this first requires that we agree on what 'education towards' is. However, far from being a way of getting teacher trainers, teachers and students to commit to a vision more or less preconceived by academics within international networks, education towards is, primarily, a means of restoring political sense to educational work. Universities, in particular, have considerable flexibility to welcome themes from the political or social sphere, whose values overwhelm knowledge. Therefore, the GlobalSense consortium, made up of universities, is also an object of study.

What can be done with knowledge over-determined by values imported from the political or social sphere, into disciplinary frameworks, in the recipient universities? […] The weakening of the legitimacy of knowledge in universities creates a space of opportunities in which variable political strategies are expressed that claim to replace, or at least complete and/ or reinforce this legitimacy. In any case, it makes it possible to evacuate questions, because it uses scientific knowledge as alibis, which serve to justify good practices that in reality depend on the choice of values […]. The central issue of the search for political meaning, when it comes to striving towards collective and informed ownership of public affairs (in this case, related to curriculum development) involves reflexivity and critical analysis of the meaning of situations rather than individual or collective standardisation. It is a question of fully restoring their function to ETS […] so that they can propose collective scientific practices rather than ones that are only managerial or engineering. To give political meaning supposes to link together, beyond curricular study, the elements in order to understand the interests (divergent or not) which animate the actors of curriculum development. (Barthes & Lange, 2022b, pp. 390–391)

In short, the critical skills of trainers and pre-service teachers should be given priority, even if this may call into question the validity, operability, timeliness or relevance of the slogan in question (GCE). The interest of curriculum guidelines is also to associate a teaching theme (GCE) with how it can unfold in terms of problematisation, comparison of sources, and validity of the content involved (Barthes, 2022). These tags also have a number of 'levels' for comparison purposes. Thus, the pre-service teacher can think at first that being a global citizen is quite an attractive notion (level 1, descriptive), will then try to define the notion, wondering where it comes from (level 2, identification of problems and sources), before questioning whether the sources illustrating this notion are coherent (level 3, sources discussed, deconstruction of demand), and assessing the debates that may arise around the cosmopolitan ideal (level 4, risks and prospective).

Ultimately, it is through these critical questions, potentially carried by pre-service teachers and oriented by conscious political, axiological, programmatic and didactic purposes, that curriculum guidelines make it possible to consider the transition from a recommended curriculum to a real curriculum. This is how we may grasp, on the sociological level, certain aspirations emanating from the social body. In this case, it is a group of pre-service teachers (some in primary but most in secondary), being trained in five different countries.

#### **8 Presentation of the Five Systems**

We have situated this work in the field and epistemology of comparative education research. It is based on contextually grounded comparisons: building on academic resources and data collected in the GlobalSense project, the following description centres on the three local (Baden-Württemberg in Germany, Wallonia-Brussels in Belgium and Pennsylvania in the USA) and two national (Israel and France) education and training systems in and for which the GlobalSense pre-service teachers are being trained.

Linking these systems to their political and social contexts, our objective is to enlighten the various contents of citizenship education curricula, as well as the way pre-service teachers are trained, before analysing the data we collected on their representations of GCE before and after taking part in exchanges with peers from the other participating countries, as well as the potential change in their pedagogical practices.

#### **8.1** *The German Education System*

8.1.1 Governance and Administrative Organisation

The German education system is organised at a federal level by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (*Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung*, BMBF). It operates under the framework of the German constitution, named the Basic Law (*Grundgesetz*). The BMBF plays a coordinating and supporting role in education matters. It provides funding for research projects and institutions and sets general educational policy.

The BMBF has seven departments, in addition to the central department that is responsible for administrative tasks:


In spite of the BMBF's responsibilities, a large part of educational policy in Germany is decided at the state level, strongly limiting the influence of the ministry in educational matters. Each of Germany's sixteen federal states has its own Ministry of Education or equivalent authority responsible for education policy and legislation within its jurisdiction. These state-level authorities determine many aspects of education, including curriculum, teacher qualifications, and school organisation.

Education systems, curricula and forms of schools therefore diverge. However, the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education of the Länder (*Kulturministerkonferenz* [KMK]) ensures the conformity or comparability of education and qualifications. According to the IEA,7 "In 2003, the Standing Conference established national educational standards (*Bildungsstandards*), which all 16 states have committed to implementing. These educational standards specify the curricular elements for core subjects and serve as binding objectives for all states". The respective Ministries of Education and Cultural Affairs in each state publish the curricula as compulsory for teachers, but they are formulated in a general way which allows teachers considerable freedom with regard to content, objectives, and teaching methods.

#### 8.1.2 Teacher Training and Employment

Because education is a state matter, each federal state has its own regulations and training concepts, for example regarding the choice and combinations of subjects. However, they all have in common that the teacher training course depends on the type of school chosen, and that each pre-service secondary teacher must study at least two subjects that they will teach later. On top of these, teacher training in Germany includes studying didactic methodology, having pedagogic courses and doing internships in schools. Depending on the state and the university, one can conclude one's studies with a bachelor's or master's degree, or a state examination. The first phase of studies always ends with an internship.

According to Eurydice, "Following successful completion of their preparatory service, newly-qualified teachers can apply for permanent employment at public-sector schools".8 Teachers are usually employed by the Ministry of Education for the state and, as civil servants, have a job for life after a certain period (*verbeamtet*). However, this practice depends on the state: in those that used to constitute what was East Germany, teachers are less often *beamter* and more often employees of the schools.

In GlobalSense, the pre-service teachers in Germany are studying at the Weingarten University of Teacher Education, in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Because the teacher training programs vary from one state to another, students at Weingarten plan to pursue their teaching career in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

According to the state government's website, the state's Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport is in charge of teacher training.9 The first step to become a teacher is obtaining a university degree, before taking part in a preparatory service (*Vorbereitungsdienst*) in order to acquire the pedagogical and subject-didactic knowledge and skills necessary for professional practice.10 The preparatory service concludes with a state examination organised by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport's Teacher examination office (*Landeslehrerprüfungsamt im Ministerium für Kultur, Jugend und Sport*).

The GlobalSense pre-service teachers studying in Weingarten University of Education are training to work in primary or secondary schools. During their teacher training course, all students complete educational content (educational science, psychology, sociology, basic questions of education, inclusion and speech training) as well as the two subjects German and mathematics (one of the subjects is in-depth). Pre-service secondary teachers also choose another elective subject (English, Protestant theology/religious education, Islamic theology/religious education, Catholic theology/religious education, Art, Music, Scientific and technical teaching, Social science teaching or Sports), that they will later teach.11

According to the University's website, for pre-service primary teachers "The bachelor's degree in primary school teaching prepares [students] optimally for a career in education dealing with children. The course is geared towards the requirements of education and upbringing for the age group of 5 to 12-year-old children, taking into account fundamental aspects of didactics at the primary level and initial lessons". For pre-service secondary teachers,

With the master's degree in secondary level 1 teaching and the traineeship, students can qualify to work as secondary level 1 teachers. The bachelor's and master's teacher training courses at the Weingarten University of Education are coordinated in such a way that they offer very good conditions for successful pedagogical training. […]. You will gain in-depth knowledge of educational sciences and research methods. Internships and the bachelor's thesis round off the course.12

Once pre-service teachers have completed their course, they may register on Online Teacher Baden-Württemberg (*Lehrer Online Baden-Württemberg*), "the internet platform for teachers in Baden-Württemberg with the job advertisement process and modules for hiring and transferring teachers".

 8.1.3 Civic and Citizenship Education in Germany According to the Federal state's Interior Ministry,

Since the Federal Republic of Germany was first founded, civic education has evolved into an independent task with two main objectives:


Civic education in Germany is non-partisan but not impartial; it is grounded in the values and interpretation of democracy found in […] the Basic Law.

#### According to F. Klaus Koopman,

Most civic education frameworks are based on a broad range of social, economic, and political content covering thematic strands like social relationships, the foundations of democracy, the political system of Germany, economics, the social structure of Germany, how to participate in public policy, the European Union, media, international relations, peace keeping, comparing political systems, environmental problems …

Students of all school types take civic education courses […] lasting 1 or 2 hours a week, starting at grade 5 or 7, depending on the state as well as on the type of school.

In spite of the wide diversity of civic education frameworks, subjects, contents […], there is a general consensus on the main goals of civic education at German schools: Primary goal is to help young people evolving into self-determined, autonomous and critical citizens in a humane and democratic society being able


These goals, of course, are normative constructions […]. There is reason enough to assume that the normative goals and concepts are not at all identical with classroom practice. (Koopman, 2004, p. 2)

8.1.4 GCE in the German Education System

In 2007, the Standing Conference of the German Ministers of Education and Culture (KMK) adopted the Curriculum Framework for Education for Sustainable Development. In June 2015, the KMK adopted a new edition of the Framework. According to then Minister of state Brunhild Kurth, in between the two editions, this Framework had

been implemented in many projects of the German federal states, partly supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). […] The Curriculum Framework shall continue to provide conceptual support to the education systems and to the federal states' development of curricula, to teacher training on all levels, to textbook authors and editors of school supplies.

The Framework is made of six chapters that deal with interconnected yet separate subjects:


Each state adapts the way it applies the curriculum. In the state of Baden-Württemberg, where the Weingarten pre-service teachers are studying, the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport has developed a "Guide for Democracy Education" (*Leitfaden Demokratiebildung*), which all schools have had to implement since September 2019.13

The aim of the guide is to offer teachers of all subjects and types of schools, from primary school to upper secondary level, reliable guidance for acquiring democracy-related skills in schools and lessons. The guide follows a comprehensive and holistic understanding of democracy education, and views it as a task and added value for everyone involved and all subjects in the school. In the four fields of action of the guide, the interrelationships between the subjects and the guide are presented as examples. This means that the guideline for democracy education does not replace educational plans, but supplements them and in this respect represents an in-depth look. This also applies to the guiding perspectives anchored in the educational plans of general schools, to which the guideline refers as an example. This also makes the added value of the guide clear: it offers an overarching, coherent concept for strengthening democracy education in schools and lessons, which schools and teachers can follow regardless of the type of school and the subjects taught. Extracurricular learning venues and collaborations are also taken into account.

For example, regarding the use of geography to approach democracy education, schools are asked to study historical conditionality of today's democracies: in order to do so, they are encouraged to review the possibilities of political participation and their formation in the different epochs of history (e.g. Greek *Poleis*, Roman Republic, Medieval cities, etc.).

The guide must be implemented in all public and private general education and vocational schools in Baden-Württemberg. Training courses, accompanying teaching materials, practical examples and information on possible cooperation partners are developed by the state to provide additional support for schools in implementing the guidelines.

#### **8.2** *The Belgium Education System*

 8.2.1 Governance and Administrative Organisation Belgium is a federal state

with two kinds of entities: communities, whose constituent element is culture and language, and regions whose determining element is territory. There are three communities, the French Community, the Flemish Community and the German Community. They are administratively divided over the territory into three regions: the Walloon Region, the Flemish Region and the Brussels Capital Region. Belgian federalism is based on two pillars, communities and regions, which cannot be superimposed. (de Bouttemont, 2004, p. 101)

The School Pact of November 1958 defines two major educational networks: the official network, whose organising power is a legal body governed by public law (one of the three communities, or a province or municipality); and the free network, whose organising power is a legal body governed by private law. The free network is roughly structured as a free confessional network (with a large Catholic majority) and a free non-confessional network (especially present in higher education). A third minority network exists: the private network, whose organising power is a legal body governed by private law, in this case parental authority. The child, in this case, is home-schooled, or sent to a private school chosen by the parents. The first two networks (official and free) are subsidised by the communities.

Each region (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels) has a Ministry of education, which organises all levels of education of the territory, subsidises schools regardless of the network they belong to (except the private or independent network which receives no subsidies), and sets a number of measures (the key competences to be mastered by students, enrolments, etc.). Finally, in Belgium, each school depends on an 'organising power': it is either the natural person, legal person or institution responsible for organising and managing the school.

8.2.2 Teacher Training and Employment

The reform of Initial Teacher Training (*Réforme de la Formation Initiale des Enseignants* [RFIE]) of September 2023 aims to strengthen teachers' professional practice and the acquisition of academic skills. This is why, from September 2023, students who begin teacher training (preschool, primary and lower secondary) commit to four years of study, including one year of master's degree.

To teach in sections 1, 2 and 3, teachers must train in a higher-education college, and obtain a bachelor and their first year of master's degree specialising in:


To teach in sections 4 or 5, with pupils from the fourth to the sixth year of secondary (aged 15 to 18 years old), teachers must have successfully completed graduate studies (at university, higher education college or college of arts), whatever the field, as well as a master's degree in a particular subject (ancient Greek and Latin, modern languages, biology, etc.). This master's degree must be followed by the Aggregation of upper secondary education (*Agrégation de l'enseignement secondaire supérieur* [AESS]).

More specifically, in the case of GlobalSense, pre-service teachers from Belgium who have taken part in the project are students at the Free University of Brussels, training to become English teachers (round 1) or philosophy teachers (rounds 2 and 3) in higher secondary education. Though some of them were not affected by the 2023 reform, having begun studying before it came into effect, they have all had to obtain a Master's degree, as well as the AESS.

Once they have the relevant titles, teachers can apply for a position at a specific school, a school board or organising body (responsible for the proper functioning of one or more schools), a school group or an education network (community education or subsidised official education for the official educational networks, and subsidised private education for the free educational network).

#### 8.2.3 Civic and Citizenship Education in Belgium

Each region's ministry of education is in charge of elaborating a curriculum in civic and citizenship education. Because the pre-service teachers taking part in the project are studying at the Free University of Brussels, to work with secondary students, we will be focusing here on the curriculum of the Wallonia-Brussels federation, which they are training to teach.

According to the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, secondary school students are taught a Philosophy and citizenship course that takes a philosophical approach to the issues and practice of citizenship. This weekly course, that lasts an hour, is based on philosophy, its practices (philosophical debate and discussion, philosophers' colloquia, reading texts, etc.) and its history, and takes into account the contributions of other disciplines, in particular humanities (*humanités*), social sciences and history of religions and secularism.

The objectives of the Philosophy and citizenship course are to train students in the various issues of citizenship and to bring them to:


Thus the point is not to train pupils in philosophy in and for itself, but to train them in a philosophical approach to citizenship issues and practices.

Citizenship can be defined positively from a legal and institutional point of view. This implies a certain number of rights: civil rights (freedoms and rights fundamental), political rights (right to vote, right of association, etc.), and socio-economic rights (social security, unemployment, etc.). It presupposes institutions, public and private: Parliament, courts and tribunals, trade unions, etc. It covers various practices: elections, demonstrations, etc. The Philosophy and citizenship course's mission is to teach students these characteristics of citizenship in Belgium. But it is not content to hear citizenship in this narrow, strictly legal and institutional sense. It is more deeply a question of forming a citizenship that is sensitive and open to the issues that question and constantly transform it: political (national and international), ethical and bioethical, socio-economic, societal, environmental, cultural issues, anthropological, etc.

In this sense, if the philosophical approach is at the centre of the learning in the Philosophy and citizenship course, it must be nourished by contributions from other disciplines, giving it an indispensable insight to the challenges of contemporary citizenship: above all humanities, political and social sciences, but also natural and applied sciences, and sciences of religions and secularism.

The Philosophy and citizenship course thus bases citizenship training on a strong and active conception of democracy: democracy refers less to an instituted regime than to the collective capacity of citizens to reflect on principles, modes of operation, and the forms of citizenship.

#### 8.2.4 GCE in Belgium

According to the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, GCE is founded on a series of texts, including Article 7 of the Development Cooperation Act of 19 March 2013 that states: "The Belgian Development Cooperation […] ensures that the Belgian citizen is made aware through information and education of the stakes, the problematic and the achievement of the objectives of development cooperation and international relations".

Following this, a cooperation agreement was signed in 2017 between the Federal state and the French Community for the framing of Global Citizenship Education. This convention aims to further promote and anchor education for global and inclusive citizenship in francophone schools and more specifically to:


of compulsory education in the field of education for global citizenship and solidarity in schools;

– evaluate policies and strategies for global citizenship and solidarity education and make recommendations.14

Enabel, the Belgian development agency, is in charge of coordinating and implementing the federal GCE program and SDG s, notably through the federal education program for global citizenship named Showing the colours (*Annoncer la couleur*). The program aims to anchor and strengthen global citizenship education in Belgian education. To this end, it offers strategic support to the education sector, strengthens teaching practices (including teacher training courses recognised by continuing training organisations) and positions itself as a centre of knowledge, innovation and expertise in GCE.

Other actors, private or public, specialised or not, also intervene in schools in education for global citizenship and solidarity: some non-profit organisations and private initiatives of international solidarity, institutional actors such as universities, the Royal Museum of Central Africa, etc.15

Thus, though the curricula do not specifically mention GCE or SDG s, students in Belgium are not only given the tools to approach the question of citizenship in a philosophical way, but also learn about global issues, thanks to the involvement of actors outside the education system.

#### **8.3** *The United States of America Education System*

 8.3.1 Governance and Administrative Organisation The American education system is highly decentralised.

[The] state involvement in education is a relatively recent phenomenon of the 20th century. Until then, local communities had nearly exclusive control on education and the action of legislators in most cases was limited to extending best practices to the more backward communities. (Viarengo, 2010, p. 5)

Public education thus involves shared responsibilities and a division of functions among the three levels of government (national, state and local levels). At the national level, the government oversees education issues through the Department of Education. Since the 1950s, the federal government has promoted equal educational opportunity, with the implementation of racial desegregation following the Supreme Court decision on *Brown v. Board of Education*. Its official mission being "to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access",16 the Department has been shaping academic standards and defining interventions in schools with persistently low performance since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Since the U.S. Constitution does not refer to federal responsibility for public education, according to the 10th amendment of the Constitution, the states have the main responsibility in matters of public education. Each of their governments has its own branch responsible for public education. In forty-eight states, these branches are overseen by boards of education appointed by the Governor or the public. State Boards set standards, approve the assessment system, set the accountability system and approve both school accreditation and teacher certification. The state superintendent supervises the implementation of the state policy.

Each state can grant authority over education to local units, such as school districts. There are approximately 15,000 school districts in the US, that each gave a school board. These boards have authority on the hiring of schools' local superintendent and principals, as well as on the supervision of study programs for districts and schools. The local school superintendent designs the district's educational program and supervises the operation of schools by the principals.

#### 8.3.2 Teacher Training and Employment

The hiring of teachers in the USA is the responsibility of the schools or the district. However, each state's education branch of government dictates the requirements individuals must meet to be selected as teachers. Furthermore, the national Department of education sets certain standards of qualification for teachers.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires that all teachers of core academic subjects (these include English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography) be 'highly qualified' as defined by law.

More specifically, teachers are supposed to obtain at least a bachelor's degree, as well as a teaching license from their state, plus demonstrate expertise in their field. To demonstrate subject knowledge, new elementary school teachers must pass a test for their teaching skills, as well as in the areas of elementary school curricula. New middle and high school teachers must demonstrate expertise in the subjects they teach, either by passing a specified academic subject test or by successfully completing an undergraduate major (or coursework equivalent to an undergraduate major), a graduate degree, or an advanced certification or credentialing.

A common path to a teacher's credential begins by applying to a four-year teacher education program at an accredited college or university. The typical teacher education program is structured so that the required credit hours to graduate are completed in 8 semesters. The first seven semesters are mainly composed of university courses, whereas during the eighth semester, credit hours are typically made up of teacher internship hours. All public school teachers must be licensed. Each state's department of education is responsible for granting public school teacher licenses.

Because certification requirements vary by state, subject and grade level, pre-service teachers are trained to work in a specific state: therefore preservice teachers from Temple University, Philadelphia, tend to become teachers in the state of Pennsylvania. In addition to a bachelor's degree, teachers in Pennsylvania must have completed a teacher education program that has both regional accreditation and accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). Having a minimum of 13 weeks of hands-on classroom experience is also required to become a teacher in Pennsylvania.

Furthermore, future Pennsylvania teachers must complete a variety of pedagogical, general skills, and subject-specific exams, such as the Pre-service Academic Performance Assessment (PAPA), Praxis Core exams, and any relevant Praxis subject exams, such as high school history for a person wishing to become a high school history teacher.

More specifically, in the case of GlobalSense (GS), some of the pre-service teachers from Temple University taking part in GS are undergraduates studying for their Bachelor of Science in Education in Secondary Education: Social Studies Education. This training will enable them to "Help high school students develop the global perspectives they need to be good citizens in the 21st century […] and teach students about the global community and how dynamic geopolitical forces impact communities and cultures around the world".17

Other pre-service teachers taking part in GS are graduates studying for their Master of Education in Secondary Education. With a Master's degree, the future teachers will work with grades seven to twelve, and "create an informed citizenry with respect for diversity in a democratic society. Focus on critical thinking about curriculum frameworks and materials; curriculum development grounded in teaching for understanding; and sensitivity around areas such as race relations, gender, war and peace, equality of economic and social opportunities, and global interdependence".18

On top of learning to apply literacy instructional methods for English language learners and to create classroom settings that accommodate special education needs, for instance, pre-service teachers must choose and complete the major coursework requirements in an area of specialisation (economics, geography and urban studies, history, political science or sociology). Pre-service teachers have many fieldwork assignments during their coursework, which ends with a whole semester of teaching experience in an area high school.

Furthermore, Temple University prepares the future teachers to successfully complete state certification exams, allowing them to apply for a Pennsylvania Instructional I Teaching Certificate. Public school teachers in the United States are employed by government entities at the state or local level, such as school districts or municipal school systems.

#### 8.3.3 Civic and Citizenship Education in the USA

The civics education curricula vary depending on the state. In a 2018 report on the state of civics education, Sarah Shapiro, a research assistant at the Centre for American Progress and Catherine Brown, who is the Centre's vice president for education policy, presented the state of high school civics education in the US A. They notably indicated that

State civics curricula are heavy on knowledge but light on building skills and agency for civic engagement. An examination of standards for civics and U.S. government courses found that 32 states and the District of Columbia provide instruction on American democracy and other systems of government, the history of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, an explanation of mechanisms for public participation, and instruction on state and local voting policies. However, no state has experiential learning or local problem-solving components in its civics requirements. (Shapiro & Brown, 2018, p. 4)

In Act 35 of 2018, the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania decided that, beginning with the 2020–2021 school year, each school entity:

Shall administer at least once to students during grades seven through twelve a locally developed assessment of United States history, government and civics that includes the nature, purpose, principles and structure of United States constitutional democracy, the principles, operations and documents of United States government and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Following Act 35, in July 2019, the Pennsylvania Department of education established a Civics program, based on three pillars: knowledge, skills and actions.

According to the program,19

The knowledge pillar underscores planned instruction to support student understanding of concepts of the Academic Standards. Assessment focuses on the four critical components of civics education:


The skills pillar seeks to have students engage in active civic participation: applying the knowledge gained in the first pillar. At the school level, students participate in student council/school governance, extracurricular activities, mock trials and similar simulation activities, service learning, and various clubs and organisations. Opportunities for civil discussions, discourse, and debate also provide opportunities to hone skills. Another important aspect of skills development is the need for tolerance and acceptance of others. Anti-bullying initiatives and programs such as Positive Schoolwide Behaviour Support (PBIS) are critical components in the schoolwide setting.

 [Regarding the actions pillar] Responsible and involved citizens take an active role through a myriad of actions and dispositions [such as Acceptance of diversity, Involvement in the community]. By incorporating all three pillars in a civics program, students acquire the knowledge behind the meaning of 'We the People'. They have an opportunity to operate as a citizen, experience citizenry and understand that the government of the United States is theirs. This encourages each generation to 'secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity'.

#### 8.3.4 GCE in the USA

However, GCE faces three main obstacles in the US: they are suspected of political bias, are based on different disciplinary areas, and linked to a vague concept. More specifically, Rapoport explains the US politics of trying to control what students are taught:

State legislatures that approve state standards, the principal curricular documents, or State Boards of Education that control textbook adoption, are elected political agencies that have levers to control curricular content. The remnants of the anti-globalist and isolationist tradition in American education can also be found in an opposition to including more non-US-centred content in many social studies or language arts curricula. (Rapoport, 2021, p. 115)

The author indicates that the second main obstacle for GCE is linked to its multidisciplinary aspect:

The result is the absence of a proper, adequate curriculum. […] This is where all inter-and multidisciplinary areas stumble. Most curricula in US schools are designed on a disciplinary basis. […] In this environment, interdisciplinary areas such as human rights education or citizenship education are not particularly welcome in any cluster, which, in turn, makes them unattractive for teacher education programmes. (Rapoport, 2021, p. 115)

Thirdly, Rapoport (2021) indicates that GCE faces a more normative challenge: global citizenship is criticised for the vagueness of the global citizenship concept.

Despite progress in the development of GCE and global education in general, many educators in the United States are still sceptical about global citizenship-related issues […]. The principal reasons for scepticism are the absence of a global government, the perception of citizenship as a predominantly nation-related phenomenon, lack of exposure to global education courses in teacher education, and a false perception of patriotism. (p. 116)

Here the author mentions two types of reasons that GC remains vague: the lack of a global institutional frame that could give weight to the concept and make it less abstract; the fact that US citizens, including teachers, might not be educated enough on the question of global issues or of patriotism. This listing of obstacles seems to present a vicious circle, where the lack of education on the concept of GC, due in part to politics, makes people suspicious of what they are ignorant of, and therefore they resist it.

In brief, it seems that the curriculum in Pennsylvania is largely centred on national citizenship and, though it might not focus as much as other states' curricula on knowledge, is still not particularly open to global issues.

#### **8.4** *The Israeli Education System*

#### 8.4.1 Governance and Administrative Organisation

The Ministry of Education is in charge of public education institutions in Israel. The education system is centralised, and the curriculum is standardised at a national level (Feniger, Shavit, & Caller, 2021). However, the system is divided into three tracks: public secular schools, public religious schools, independent orthodox schools.20 The Arab sector is included in public education but as a separate division (Resnik, 2001). Outside of these tracks, there are also independent schools, such as boarding schools and international schools.

These tracks exist from kindergarten through primary school. Parents have the right to choose, within their residential district, the type of educational institution they prefer for their children.

Since 1953, Israel's Public Education Act has confirmed the existence of separate education systems between the religious and secular, private and public sectors, but does not officially recognise the Arab-Palestinian education system. To this day, it functions as a separate, subordinate and often discriminated body within the public education system. Most Palestinian and Jewish Israeli students therefore pursue separate school courses until they enter university.

A 2001 report by the Human Rights Watch organisation, based on official statistics as well as on-site visits to twenty-six schools in the two systems and interviews with students, parents, teachers, administrators, and national education authorities, underlines the segregation in the Israeli education system.

Nearly one in four of Israel's 1.6 million schoolchildren are educated in a public school system wholly separate from the majority. The children in this parallel school system are Israeli citizens of Palestinian Arab origin. Their schools are a world apart in quality from the public schools serving Israel's majority Jewish population. Often overcrowded and understaffed, poorly built, badly maintained, or simply unavailable, schools for Palestinian Arab children offer fewer facilities and educational opportunities than are offered other Israeli children. […] The Israeli government operates two separate school systems, one for Jewish children and one for Palestinian Arab children. Discrimination against Palestinian Arab children colors every aspect of the two systems.21

This situation of segregation at the detriment of the Palestinian Arabs had been anticipated by Sami Khalil Mar'i in a 1985 essay (Mar'i, 1985).

#### 8.4.2 Teacher Training and Employment

According to IEA's TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Centre, Initial teacher education takes place in colleges of education and in schools of education at universities. Teacher education in college combines disciplinary and pedagogical content, typically in a four year program, and results in a bachelor's degree in education and a certificate to teach at the primary or lower secondary level. Since a policy was introduced in 2003, teachers are also required to complete an induction year (their first year of teaching) before they may obtain a teaching license. The teaching certificate program is not designed for one educational track or another; in other words, the same certificate is required to teach in public secular schools and public religious schools, Jewish schools or Arab schools.

According to the teacher trainers from HUJI that are members of GlobalSense, most of their Jewish pre-service teachers are training to work in public secular secondary schools, and most of the Arab pre-service teachers will go on to teach in public Arab schools. Some however do go on to teach in private Arab schools, particularly when they themselves are from East Jerusalem or the West Bank. Others still, go on to teach in Jewish state schools. Schools in Israel recruit their own teachers.

 8.4.3 Civic and Citizenship Education in Israel According to Heela Goren (2021),

> Israeli citizenship is a contested issue […]. Smooha […] asserts that Israel does not fall under the category of a Western liberal democracy, as it is often perceived or presents itself, but rather, it embodies a model of ethnic democracy, in which the major ethnic or religious group uses state structures and resources to maintain its own interests, sometimes at the expense of minority group rights. […] The tension between the Jewish and democratic definitions of the state is often raised in the public discourse and comprises a particularly potent issue, and competing notions and conceptions of citizenship have been shown by Cohen (2017, 2019) to create ambivalence in Israeli classrooms. (p. 82)

Goren underlines how the Israeli form of citizenship departs from the norm – rights and responsibilities or obligations that reflect a legal mutual bond between a state and its people – particularly with regard to its Arab-Palestinian citizens but also the Orthodox Jewish citizens, since both groups are exempt from military service. Furthermore, the author underscores that Israel diverges from other modern democratic states regarding the process of naturalisation, which is much easier for Jews due to the law of return; consequently, the notion of equality between Israeli citizens is challenged. She further explains that

these issues, of course, also shape the education system and specifically citizenship education in Israel. The state has a divided education system as previously mentioned – but a core curriculum that is uniform throughout the system. This means Arab-Palestinian (and other minority) pupils and Jewish pupils study the same citizenship curriculum in secondary school, a curriculum which is often criticised for focusing heavily on the Jewish narrative. (Goren, 2021, p. 82)

Therefore, rather than focusing the civics curriculum on universalistic principles, it has incrementally concentrated on the particularistic principles of Jewish nationalism.

Halleli Pinson confirms that Israel's civic education curricula, in contradiction to a global trend in the Global North, has been moving towards a neonationalistic religious discourse. It highlights Jewish aspects of Israel and the power of the government, over the focus on components of democracy such as civil and human rights, the status of the Arab minority, judicial oversight and equal rights (2020). Furthermore, regarding the fact that the curriculum mentions that the state of Israel recognises the right to live in the culture of one's choosing, the author specifies that this recognition constraints minorities' culture to a limited sphere:

At first glance, this explanation appears promising as the textbooks seem to relate to ideas that stand at the heart of liberal discussions on the meaning of culture rights. But whereas Kymlicka, for instance, refers to cultural rights in terms of the ability of minority groups to realise their culture both in the private and public spheres […], we can see that the textbook defines cultural rights as, first and foremost, the right of the majority group to shape the public sphere, where the protection of minorities rights is reserved to the possibility they are given to express such rights *locally.*  This distinction, between the majority and the minority collective rights, is actually a complete distortion of the notion of cultural rights, utilised here, in fact, to justify the exclusion of minorities from the public sphere. This quote should also be read in the context of Israel, whereas by and large (with the exception of several mixed cities) the Arab- Palestinians and Jewish citizens live in separated communities and attend separate schools. In other words, what the textbooks actually suggests is that the cultural expression of minorities would be kept within the boundaries of their own communities, and more specifically to Israel, that Palestinians may express their culture in Arab towns and villages but not in the public civic sphere. (Pinson, 2020, p. 31)

#### 8.4.4 GCE in Israel

In spite of a sectarian education system and more generally, the organisation of the country, Israel wishes to influence GCE. Goren explains that

As a whole, the Israeli education system is open to internationalisation, as can be seen through […] examples pertaining to higher education, its participation in projects led by the EU and other supranational organisations, and its widespread acceptance of international standardised testing through PISA and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). (Goren, 2021, p. 84)

The author goes on to nuance the importance of these involvements:

This same openness does not necessarily apply to GCE or even a looser sense of globalisation or internationalisation of the curriculum, particularly at the primary and secondary school levels. […] Yemini, Bar-Nissan, and Shavit (2014) showed that over the last 20 years, the global contents on the history matriculation exam have, in fact, been pushed aside in favour of more locally-focused issues. This too suggests that the Israeli education system applies a highly selective strategy as to which aspects of the system to internationalise and to what extent. […] Different constructs of GCE are developed under these national conditions in differently constituted local contexts. […] Israel's socio-political characteristics have oriented the education system inwards, neglecting the global sphere, and only providing pupils with abstract and scattered information about the world. As of yet, GCE is not an officially recognised component of the citizenship education curriculum administered by the Ministry of Education […] The current, right-wing government and the policies enacted by the past three Ministers of Education have clarified through funding and official documents that the education system is first and foremost concerned with the development of (Jewish) pupils' Jewish identities. (Goren, 2021, p. 85)

#### **8.5** *The French Education System*

#### 8.5.1 Governance and Administrative Organisation

Historically, the organisation of the French education system is centralised. From the early 1980s, the state embarked on a vast operation of decentralisation of powers which strengthened the weight of local authorities. Indeed, the decentralisation laws of 2 March 1982, 7 January 1983, 22 July 1983, and 25 January 1985 profoundly transformed the educational landscape, with the primary goal of making the system efficient by adapting it to the needs of each territory. The principle is therefore to give the representatives of the state in the regions and departments the leeway to better respond to local issues, by mobilising more easily the human and budgetary resources at their disposal, adapting the organisation of services under their authority and better coordinating the action of state services and operators present at the local level.

However, the state remains the guarantor of the functioning of the public service and of the coherence of education. As stipulated in the thirteenth paragraph of the preamble to the constitution of 1946, confirmed by the preamble to the constitution of the Fifth Republic, education cannot be totally decentralised: "the organisation of public and secular education at all levels of the state is obligatory". The definition and implementation of education policy is therefore the responsibility of the government. Within the government, the Minister of National Education and the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation are responsible for educational policy. They guarantee the organisation and content of teaching, the delivery of diplomas, recruitment and personnel management.

It is in the field of school planning that the sharing of competences is best reflected: at a local level, each department (*département*) and each region (*région*)22 draw up a provisional investment program that defines notably where a new school (departments are in charge of middle school and regions, of high schools) needs to be opened and how many students it needs to welcome. However, it is up to the regional prefect, responsible for implementing national and policies in the region, to make the final decision to create a college or high school. Finally, it is the decentralised representative of the Ministry of national education at a regional level (*rectorat*) who decides on the educational structure of the school, while the Ministry itself provides the necessary teachers for the school.

#### 8.5.2 Teacher Training and Employment

To become a statutory schoolteacher, college or high school teacher or senior education advisor (*conseiller principal d'éducation* [CPE]), it is imperative to have a bachelor's degree, then study at a teacher training college (*Institut national supérieur du professorat et de l'éducation*, Inspé) to obtain a master's degree.

The objective of the teacher training college is to provide a high-level theoretical background, but also to support the entry into the professional world of future teachers through: courses related to the discipline(s) of the future teacher; practice-oriented teaching; many internships in the first year of the Master's degree, followed by dual training in the second year; some courses shared with all other future education professionals; and a progressive specialisation.

The teacher training college offers a Master's in professions of teaching, education and training (*Master mention métiers de l'enseignement, de l'éducation et*  *de la formation,* MEEF). According to the Ministry of national education,23 this Master is a university training that mobilises teaching teams from different backgrounds. Primary and secondary teachers, researchers, teacher trainers, professionals in practice (inspectors, principals, etc.) are involved throughout the training course, to ensure a training in line with the reality of the profession.

In this Master's in professions of teaching, education and training, students can choose between four paths:


Throughout the Master's, some lessons are common to all students of the college. These lessons focus notably on the areas of secularism and the values of the Republic, professional gestures related to learning situations, appropriation of transversal educational issues and major societal issues, fight against all discrimination, child psychology, civil service law, sociology of school populations, diversity management, school guidance, learning processes, professional communication (voice, gestures, etc.), management of conflict and violence, etc. The point of all future actors of the educational community following common teachings is to favour a shared culture that enhances the cohesion of education teams on the ground, which is a key factor in student success.

To become civil servants in the public education sector, students must obtain their Master's degree, but also pass a specific examination, depending on whether they wish to work in primary or secondary education, become a senior education advisor or a pedagogical engineer. Once they have obtained their Master's degree and passed the examination, candidates must enter their application on a national platform. The Ministry of National Education and Youth then assigns teachers, senior education advisors and pedagogical engineers to schools on the whole national territory.

More specifically, in the case of Nantes students taking part in GS, half are training to become secondary school history and geography teachers; the other half are training to become senior education advisors. Once they finish their training and get the required titles, they will be assigned by the Ministry to schools that need staff, which can be potentially anywhere in France.

#### 8.5.3 Civic and Citizenship Education in France

Due to France's historical, social and political contexts, ever since the Third Republic (1870–1940), citizenship education has been closely linked to a political regime (the Republic) and to the country's territory. The issue therefore in France is not so much for students to become free citizens, but French republican citizens. Among the different national policies that frame this process, there is notably the ministerial circular of 20 June 2016 on the 'Citizen journey'. The aim is for students to be trained to become citizens in their school, by all members of the pedagogical and educational staff. The citizen journey contributes to the transmission of the values and principles of the Republic by addressing the major fields of citizenship education such as: secularism, the fight against all forms of discrimination, the prevention and fight against racism and anti-Semitism, environmental education and sustainable development … In fact, this training is mostly done during Moral and civic education classes, by history & geography teachers (Douniès, 2018).

Article L121-4-1 of the French Education code stipulates that

As part of its mission of citizenship education, the public service of education prepares students to live in society and become responsible and free citizens, aware of the principles and rules that underpin democracy. The lessons mentioned in article L. 312-15 and the actions undertaken within the framework of the committee provided for in article L. 421-8 are part of this mission.

The lessons mentioned by article L.312-15 are as follows:

In addition to the teachings contributing to the objectives defined in article L. 131-1-1,24 moral and civic education aims in particular to encourage students to become responsible and free citizens, to form a critical sense and to adopt a thoughtful behaviour, including their use of the internet and online public communication services. This education includes, at all stages of schooling, training in the values of the Republic, the knowledge and respect of the rights of the child enshrined in law or in an international commitment, and the understanding of the concrete situations that undermine it. It provides information on the role of nongovernmental organisations working for the protection of children.

According to the Ministry of education's official bulletin of July 2018, the curricula for moral and civic education in middle school – which is the level that most of the pre-service students from Nantes will be working with – follows three aims. These are: Respecting others, Acquiring and sharing the values of the Republic, Building a civic culture. The specific curriculum for each grade builds on the previous grade's curriculum. For instance, regarding respect for others, in the equivalent of seventh grade (*cinquième*), "Notably in their use of digital technology, [students] apprehend the notions of personal and legal identities". The following year, students focus "on the question of law and its relationship to ethics. The notions of rights and duties for an individual in relation to the other".25

Though the curricula focus mostly on training French republican citizens, and do not explicitly mention GCE, in certain places they do pertain to global issues.

#### 8.5.4 GCE in France

Citizenship education is very much centred on the French state and nation. However, certain parts of the curricula open up to the outside world. Regarding the aim of teaching students to respect others, the ninth grade curriculum references the necessity for students to understand that all human beings have equal dignity: "Civic morality taught at school is closely related to the principles and values of the republican and democratic citizenship. It is based on the awareness of the dignity and integrity of the human person". In the ninth grade, "In connection with the history program and reinvesting the work done in seventh and eighth grade on respect, tolerance and individual and legal responsibility, students work on antisemitism, racism and xenophobia".

When it comes to acquiring and sharing the values of the Republic, in the eighth grade (*quatrième*), "In connection with the history program, students identify the different stages that led to the construction of [the French] democratic state that is part of a democratic European Union".

Concerning the aim of building a civic culture, seventh grade students are to be made aware "of individual and collective responsibility [that] can work in fruitful links with curricula of geography and life and earth sciences on the theme of development and sustainable development. Discussions and debates are an opportunity to confront arguments and understand ecological issues".

Only a few points of the curricula encourage students to think outside of the nation and the state. However, the values of the Republic (freedom, equality, fraternity, secularism (*liberté, égalité, fraternité, laïcité*)), based on article 1 of the 1789 Declaration of human and citizen rights, claim to be universal. In fact, article 1 of the Universal declaration of human and citizen rights is inspired by the former. Therefore, though the Moral and civic education curricula are centred on French citizenship, the values they convey invite the Nation's citizens to reflect on, and feel concerned by global issues.

*…*

Across these five different systems, certain similarities and differences appear: for instance the Israeli and French education and training systems are far more centralised than the other three. Furthermore, regarding the main aims of the civic and citizenship education curricula, it seems that they all include a level of knowledge students must learn, to be articulated with the ability to analyse information and think for oneself. By encouraging critical analysis and thinking in civic education, these curricula all align, to different extents, with principles found in political liberalism.

Might these similarities indicate a tendency towards the forming of global citizens? The moderns are increasingly reticent to the idea of associating the status of citizen to a particular nation, which the GCE slogan expresses in its own way. It incites international cooperation that involves, as initiated in GlobalSense, an international division of labour in the field of citizenship education, which is why we find Durkheim's work in particular especially useful.

Before further exploring the differences and similarities between the five countries in terms of the governance and organisation of their education and teacher training systems, as well as their curricula, we wish to underline two main points. Firstly, regarding the level of centralisation, the French and Israeli systems are centralised as opposed to the Belgian, German and US, which are decentralised systems. In terms of the countries' civic and citizenship education curricula, they all contain instructions aimed at students acquiring knowledge and learning to articulate it with skills and/or actions, in order to "realise [their] cultural rights" in Israel, have "an opportunity to operate as a citizen" in the US state of Pennsylvania, and "participate reflectively and democratically in public policy processes" in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Concerning the extent to which the five countries' curricula include goals to educate students on global issues – despite the fact that most do not so much as mention the terms Global Citizenship Education – we can note that these vary from very little inclination towards the global level (Israel, US) to an explicit influence of GCE objectives as notably specified by the UN (Germany).

#### **Notes**

1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM:c11090


## **Global Citizenship**

 *A Commitment in the Search of a Theory*

The point of this approach is to continue mobilising a sociology that is at once classical, yet flexible and evolutionary enough to study educational phenomena sometimes labelled 'postmodern'. This anchoring in classical sociology avoids two pitfalls.

The first is to embrace GCE in an uncritical way, claiming citizenship to be already global, or that citizenship education can be projected onto the world, though this would require bypassing national realities in terms of education policies, institutional realities and professional constraints. The second pitfall consists on the contrary in rejecting GCE in a dogmatic way by saying, contrary to a cosmopolitan Durkheimian perspective, that forms of social belonging do not evolve and that citizenship therefore is irremediably linked to its national anchorage. Debates on global citizenship education are *de facto* situated between these two poles. While some education scientists are explicitly in favour of GCE (Banks, 2008; Torres, 2017), others approach the notion with great distance (Matthews & Sidhu, 2005; Oxley & Morris, 2013) or even challenge it (Mannion, Biesta, Priestley, & Ross, 2011; Papastephanou, 2018).

Discussions on GCE are too rich to be summarised here. Nonetheless, the tools developed so far make it possible to solve part of the problem, serving an inextricably linked sociological and philosophical approach in ETS. If being a citizen means taking part in the goals of a collective entity (nation, etc.) and being obliged by its decisions (cf. Chapter 3), then what does citizenship become if one tries to broaden its scope (internationally) or even reformulate it (GCE)? The answer will depend on the ability to identify (references to) a collective entity such as the 'global political community', to specify its status in certain enunciations (logical, ontological, ideal), and to define its place in the ideology of modern societies – those whose collective representations promote individualism.

#### **1 Being a Citizen, Belonging to a Society**

However, to fully associate reflection on collective entities with a reflection on citizenship, it is necessary to specify the former's nature. Belonging to a nation as a citizen is not the same as belonging to a university, an ETS department or a gourmet club. A major difference lies in the ability to leave the collective entity: this is easier for a member of the gourmet club than for a citizen. Can I be a member of a collective entity if I do not respect its rules of procedure? Probably, but maybe not for very long. However, as a citizen, disobeying the laws is not a direct reason for exclusion: deprivation of citizenship by a state only happens for very specific reasons. One can be excluded from a particular social life in the case of imprisonment, but prisoners, in general, remain citizens. Even the death penalty in the United States does not deprive the person of their American citizenship (this is only the case if it can be assumed that the criminal act was carried out with the intention of renouncing it).

There are too many other possible examples and it is not necessary to reflect comprehensively on the subject; let us rather indicate that researchers of the holist current, notably Descombes, have worked on the tools to ask these questions. In what sense can one say that the Sorbonne is the same today as the Sorbonne of the 13th century, even though it disappeared in the meantime? How about Poland, that has disappeared three times in recent history? The point is not to provide a definitive answer, but rather to guide our reflection on the nation as a collective entity. The question is both important and difficult, see Gilbert's aborted attempts (Chapter 3). One of the difficulties is related to the need to feel obliged by collective decisions: where, for instance, can we situate the eminently citizen phenomena of conscientious objection and civil disobedience? This touches on the paradox of political liberalism in its contractarian form, which derives from Hobbes and Locke: that of dissolving individuals' consciences in the private arena, just as it is claimed they must be respected in order to expand political freedom.

However, in the modern era we regularly see refusals to obey laws that cannot be equated with simple private opinions: protests against the US war in Vietnam, campaign for civil rights in South Africa, mobilisations against climate change including blockades and sabotages, etc. How then can the idea of civil disobedience be reconciled with that of collective obligation? This paradox is actually not as great as it seems: one can have a sense of obligation towards collective decisions whilst contributing collectively, through disobedience, to a reorientation of the purposes of the collective entity. Here is the crucial point: if one can practice civil disobedience, it is because one does it on behalf of the collective entity, even if one acts alone. Indeed, contrary to some appearances, conscientious objection leading to civil disobedience is not fully individual: "the conscience that protests perceives itself as tied to other members of a community by virtue of a collective moral responsibility" (Saada & Antaki, 2018, p. 27).

Here lies the ambiguity of conscientious objection: invoking the sacred domain of conscience, it can destroy the conditions of equality between citizens made possible by law (and the associated mutual obligations) just as well as it can accomplish higher and fairer purposes. The refusal by conscientious objection to administer an abortion as a doctor, or to marry a same-sex couple as a mayor, has little to do with civil disobedience, because the professions exercised have been defined collectively, via liberal laws. However, to alert on the radical spying practices of the United States can be considered civil disobedience. At least this is how Edward Snowden managed to justify his behaviour by taking into account the superior ends of his own nation.

Thus, to say that citizenship is a matter of collective obligation to a political society does not amount to denying the content of disobedient individual conscience since it is asserted in the service of higher collective ends. This is how Durkheim goes beyond the theories of the social contract. The nonpathological division of labour (integrated and regulated by the state) deepens the autonomy of individuals, whose social aspirations are in turn always likely to challenge the established order, in particular the rules and norms laid down in relation to a previous stage of the division of labour. This holistic line, considering that society in its morphology and physiology is at the principle of deepening individualism, provides a guideline for analysing cosmopolitanism.

Republican cosmopolitanism emphasises that the feeling of belonging to a modern political society is a condition of cosmopolitanism, and this feeling is none other than patriotism. Certainly, by not being a patriot one benefits from a feeling of detachment that is undoubtedly liberating – one can claim to be a full citizen of the world for example – but also does not invite one to correct the mistakes of the nation to which one belongs. Indeed, we might then consider the attachment to one's country as a simple individual preference. This is the difference between a Frenchman and a Francophile: the second cannot, as such, contribute to the cosmopolitan order. This is why the Republican cosmopolitan, on the other hand, does not say "my country right or wrong", but rather "my country, if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right" (Erez & Laborde, 2020, p. 197).

Nor is it necessary, to preserve the sacred idea of individual consciousness (cf. Durkheim), to dilute citizenship in ethics. On the contrary, the notion of citizenship must be taken seriously, because it appears that defensive loopholes – declaring that citizenship in fact is only a question of ethics, perspective or commitment – have their limits, which are due to the fact that our modern ideology conveys a principle of radical equality. Therefore, it does not say that humans must be generous, or ethical, or tolerant, or sympathetic to each other. What individualist ideology suggests is that all humans are truly equal and should therefore be considered as such, at least legally. This is an ideal, but it is nevertheless the logic of moral individualism, transpiring in land egalitarianism, in social contract theories that are artificial, varied and ambiguous; and yet that make sense to us, if only in the structuring of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, this "triumph of the Individual […] that would exert a powerful action, in truth irresistible, throughout the nineteenth century and up to the present day" (Dumont, 1991, p. 120).

#### **2 Global Citizenship as a Type of Citizenship**

What happens if one seeks to grasp global citizenship without defining it in terms of ethics but only by involving the law, in order to understand the radical meaning of global citizenship as a component of the ideology of the modern? To answer this question, we invoke four examples: the Conference of the Parties (COP), which meets under the auspices of the UN Climate Change Agency; the status of NGO s; the International Criminal Court (ICC); finally, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).


existence of NGO s depends on the states, which alone are empowered to give them a legal identity. The question becomes more complicated when states have signed international conventions guaranteeing freedom of association; but this does not change the nature of the question. Thus, the European Convention on the Recognition of the Legal Personality of NGO s establishes that "the legal personality and capacity of an NGO as acquired in the Party [that is, the state] in which it has its registered office shall be automatically recognised in the other Parties".3 Therefore, the anchoring is at a state level. It may be objected that NGO s can be interlocutors of global bodies such as the UN. Examples include Oxfam, Amnesty International, Rockefeller Foundation, Qatar Charity, the Christian Embassy for Campus Crusade for Christ … The commitment of individuals within these organisations is therefore global. However, they are not thus attributed a status of world citizen: individuals remain citizens of their own state (unless they are stateless). So is it global citizenship, or global mobilisation?


from wearing a *hijab* (in a Swiss canton), while allowing crucifixes on classroom walls (in Italy). This is not to highlight the inconsistency of European judgments (McCrea, 2018), but to recall the powerful national anchorages of a European political community gathered, through interstate treaties, around common principles.

Given these examples, how can a global citizenship be imagined without a corresponding political society? The question can once more be avoided, if one argues that rather than being about citizenship, it is about an ethical an educational ideal that can eventually lead to changes in the law. The fact remains that aiming for an ideal, especially if it is distant, requires taking into account what fits it (or not) and the conditions that can make it happen.

#### **3 The Multiple Paths of Cosmopolitanism**

The majority of GlobalSense members remain convinced of the relevance of the concept of global citizenship, including in official educational requirements. These are particularly present in Germany, driven as they are by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (hence the ambiguity of this educational slogan carried by an economic ministry). However, other GlobalSense members remain sceptical and want to discuss this concept. Thus, rather than bend researchers and teacher trainers from all five countries to a prescription that does not necessarily make sense to them, the goal is to find a common vocabulary and common ground.

One possible compromise is to dilute or relax the notion of citizenship, admitting that though global citizenship does not exist, our project is about giving pre-service teachers a global outlook. This is an invitation for teacher trainers to deal with local issues with a broad approach and through the study of directly global issues such as rising waters, economic inequalities between continents, world hunger or prospects of perpetual peace. Though this is an attractive path, it tends to render the term of global citizenship useless, since it is enough to use the notion of global outlook and global issues.

Several colleagues of the GlobalSense consortium reply that the expressions 'global outlook' and 'global sensitivity' may be conducive to neoliberal exploitations, while the word 'citizenship' suggests political mobilisation, in favour of protecting migrants' rights, or to fight climate change, for example. The concern is commendable, but is it sufficient to justify the use of the word 'citizenship'? In any case, the fact that global citizenship is already being taken up by neoliberalism is documented (Mannion, Biesta, Priestley & Ross, 2011). Therefore, what can replacing one word with another achieve? Rather, by promoting the global outlook, are we not *de facto* in the field of ethics or social and civic skills, even though they are broadened to the extent that they claim to exceed, in terms of curriculum content, the national framework?

The point here is not to answer these questions – it seems more fruitful to keep them open so that each national team can make them its own – but to affirm that if we really wish to move towards an ideal, then we might as well identify the limits of the notion we idealise. This requires a (meta) theoretical reflection: "GCE is an intervention in search of a theory. […] I believe what we need now is a meta-theory" (Torres & Bosio, 2020, p. 107).

#### **4 Teachers, Citizenship, the State**

In order to establish this theory, it is useful to revisit Durkheim's work. We must however overcome certain ambiguities, which Durkheim had not clarified but undoubtedly perceived, as evidenced by his hesitations about the state.

On the one hand, he maintained that "collective activity is always too complex to be expressed by the one and only organ that is the state" (Durkheim, 1893/1996, p. 32). On the other hand, he maintained the need for "an equal force greater than all the others", embodied by the state, which was certainly to be counterbalanced by secondary groups, but nevertheless led to a radical requirement of probity of civil servants to "contain [secondary groups and] prevent their excesses" (Durkheim, 1905/2020, p. 175). Thus, Durkheim denied civil servants the right to unionise (a right granted later, in 1925), "neglecting the multiple dysfunctions of the state as an institution that occur under the Third Republic", and revealing, ultimately, a "quasi-contradiction, in the work of Durkheim, between the role attributed to the division of labour and that for which the state is responsible" (Birnbaum, 2018, pp. 219, 224).

Thus appears the GCE slogan's worth: it consists in opening a plural field of studies to treat this quasi-contradiction. To do this, we must take into account on the one hand, the contemporary phenomenon of "trend dissociation between citizenship and nationality"; and, on the other hand, the deep will of individuals to "be the first actors of a citizenship outside of the state's control" (Déloye, 2018, p. 257). Having not fully been a contemporary of these developments, Durkheim had an essentially statutory conception of citizenship. However, a more recent definition, in terms of 'acts of citizenship', values people's concern to 'co-produce' their citizenship. Thus, it is not so much a question of possessing it, as it is of exercising it. This is how the many vocabulary shifts identified above are illuminated. Indeed, if we consider a citizenship in action, co-produced by people rather than by the state, then we can think of the idea of global citizenship as a global commitment.

Though Durkheim had not perceived the distant consequences of deepening individualism in the field of citizenship, his theory nevertheless provides tools for studying it. Because fundamentally, Durkheim "makes citizenship a sort of indicator of modernity [and] thus invites [us] to […] move away from the analysis of the strictly legal field […] towards the historical field" (Déloye, 2018, p. 254). This is why, after theorising the abandonment of major religions, then national communalisation, the author remained able to envisage a 'human homeland' by suggesting that 'the human ideal' was a latent aspiration of our societies, whose individualism today seems less and less compatible with a citizenship (pre)defined by specific states.

#### **5 Undertaking the Necessary Reflexivity in Research and Training**

It has been said that while the ideological content of citizenship can be potentially global, it is exercised locally. However, contrary to this dichotomy, the regulated division of labour in modern societies makes it more and more plausible that people, so different from each other in terms of beliefs, profession, culture (etc.), have only one thing left in common: their humanity. Hence contemporary moral individualism not being naturally satisfied with this contradiction, as illustrated by the success of the global citizenship slogan. If organic solidarity values differentiation and interdependence, then it is no longer necessary for people to be similar (in terms of beliefs, profession and culture) in order to be considered, without distinction, as human beings. Is that not a good enough reason to imagine each other as fellow citizens on a global scale?

Hence the importance of the GlobalSense research. Inviting future teachers to consider how citizenship (statutory or active) might be taught in a transnational framework is a Durkheimian way of accompanying and co-regulating the division of labour, between our five countries, in an area where European (Erasmus+) and quasi-global (UNESCO) directives are growing.4 This is how the sociological framework is gradually refined – to be confronted with the empirical field resulting from GlobalSense – concerning secondary groups, of which the trainers and the (future) teachers are part.

But here too, it is necessary to distinguish between, on the one hand, the Durkheimian toolbox and its contemporary extensions; and on the other hand, the Durkheimian theses on the state in its relationship with secondary groups. On this second level, the Bordeaux sociologist's analysis is rather dated. In addition to the fact that today, a large minority of teachers are not civil servants, it is necessary to underline the extreme variety of configurations in terms of division of labour, communities of practice, collegiality (spontaneous or forced), decision-making power, degree of responsibility, uncertainties on how to define the teaching profession, relationships between training and the profession's realities, reasons for becoming a teacher, attractiveness, recognition and occupational prestige.

Whilst taking these aspects into account, this book nevertheless must identify priorities to avoid dispersion. This is why the focus is on the renewal of the Durkheimian and more broadly the holistic thinking, to grasp citizenship education from an international perspective. The questions usually dealt with by sociology of teachers and of teacher training will therefore be more secondary here, since our approach so far is based on the following conviction: studying the words we use, as researchers, provides reflexivity, essential to the scientific approach. For if educational notions are tools, they are also objects to be scrutinised. The question therefore is less about promoting GCE than about

questioning, from a comparative and transnational perspective, how the notion of citizenship circulates in educational and social spaces in the era of globalisation, and explore the observable variations and circular relationships between policies that promote these notions and their manifestations in context in educational and cultural practices. (Malet & Garnier, 2020, p. 16)

To this end, let us study the most visible recommendation in favour of GCE, which is the one from UNESCO. As academics in ETS, we must take it seriously, since ETS undertake a social project, whilst also submitting it to a necessary criticism.

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, peace and sustainable development continue to be threatened by human rights violations, inequality and poverty. Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is UNESCO's response to these challenges. Through its work, the Organisation empowers learners of all ages to think about these issues globally, not just locally, and to become active promoters of more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, safe and sustainable societies. GCED is a strategic area of UNESCO's Education Sector programme, which benefits from the Organisation's work in the fields of peace and human rights. It aims to instill in learners the values, attitudes and behaviours that underpin responsible global citizenship: creativity, innovation and commitment to peace, human rights and sustainable development.5

This means thinking about problems from a different (global) perspective and actively promoting better societies (peaceful, inclusive, safe, tolerant, sustainable), by inculcating values, attitudes and behaviours. We see here the theme of learning and skills, but not of citizenship as such. Indeed, it is not enough to inculcate values, to give pause and arouse certain behaviours (in the learner) in order for a global citizen to emerge (this is something the GlobalSense pre-service teachers often acknowledge, as we shall see). At most, the approach can lead to a form of active citizenship, different from a statutory citizenship. But is it global?

This is not to say that UNESCO's action does not concern (global) citizenship, for the historical stake is undeniable. In 2012, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon launched the Global Education First Initiative with three objectives:


However, this is an institutional framework whose content still needs to be clarified: "the concept of global citizenship is subject to polarizing forces, diverse and divergent interests, ideologies and, by implication, contestation" (Torres, 2015, p. 10). It remains to be seen what exact form GCE can take, while avoiding the 'dissolving consensus' (Rosanvallon, 2006) specific to such political initiatives.

For Carlos Torres, the most legitimate content to 'fill' the GCE without sacrificing it to divergent interests is that of Paulo Freire's pedagogy of emancipation. Though the path is seductive, Torres' vision is fundamentally liberal, in Rawls' sense (Torres & Bosio, 2020, p. 107). The author does not hide this, defining citizenship education as developing virtues such as loyalty, autonomy, open-mindedness, work ethic, as well as analytical and critical ability. Torres admits that these are values defined in the context of Western philosophies, while suggesting that they are shared, to varying degrees, in other civilisations: "Though these values are defined and defended in the context of Western philosophies, the question that one could raise is whether these values are shared by other civilisations such as the African, Arab or Asian civilizations" (Torres, 2017, p. 15).

This interpretation was confirmed during the Torres conferences in Bordeaux, on October 24 and 27, 2022. The speaker strongly emphasised a world division between a liberal bloc (whose central pole is in Europe and North America) and an illiberal bloc (composed of Iran, China, Russia, India). In this context, the promotion of GCE can only be of the liberal conception of citizenship, i.e. geographically implanted in the liberal pole, made up of liberal societies. This is what gives relevance to arguments that underline the national, therefore relatively local, anchors of political liberalism (Miller). Citizenship is potentially global because it is liberal, and it is liberal because it is defended primarily, as Torres acknowledges, by Western liberal philosophies.

In this, Torres' position remains consistent, because it admits the subjective aspect of the researcher's commitment on behalf of the GCE, which is firstly a narrative mobilised according to very diverse interests. Nevertheless, UNESCO's initiative in favour of GCE must be seen from a broader perspective. Indeed, it concerns the

transformations [which] take place [in part] as a result of an integration into supranational political groups and the dissemination of organisational principles and common transnational school standards, generating a certain formal convergence of the school's regulatory framework […]. The pressures on education systems converge, but nevertheless do not lead to a homogenisation of the solutions implemented, despite the adopted reforms' congruence. National societies […] are called to reformulate their democratic and civic education project, because of these circulation phenomena, but also because they no longer constitute the exclusive or ultimate scope of reference for the individuals who compose them, themselves stretched between different spaces and scopes of achievement and recognition. (Malet & Garnier, 2020, p. 12)

Educational projects related to citizenship are therefore reformulated on a global scale, yet, according to the authors, national societies remain the actors of this reframing. In other words, if educational conceptions of citizenship can no longer remain within the exclusive horizon of a single nation, this does not eliminate the question of how citizenship and its education can become global, and thus how national societies reformulate their respective projects.

#### **6 GlobalSense Pre-Service Teachers: Which Scale Is Pertinent to Approach Global Issues?**

The exploration of student teachers' perspectives within the GlobalSense program unveils a narrative that to some extent transcends borders, delving into the interactions of individual perceptions, national influences, and the broader global landscape.

#### **6.1** *The Perceptions of Migration by Student Teachers: A Global or National-Dependent Topic?*

The student teachers, particularly in Israel, the US and France reflect on the fact that national contexts influence pre-service teachers' representations of global issues such as migration, which affects and interconnects most countries:

Moreover, the online meeting with student teachers from other countries reminded me that there are prevailing issues – such as immigration policy – which are global, but are experienced according to the context of a country. (Matteo, TUP, USA)

We realised how our point of view is influenced by the country we live in. (Oléann, NU, France)

Though migration is a global issue, is it approached differently in each country, which is why I am not convinced it is relevant to debate with other teachers how to teach about it. (Asaf, HUJI, Israel)

Some go further, noticing similarities or differences in the way pre-service teachers from different countries plan to approach the topic of migration in the classroom:

Israelis took a different perspective, because Israel has a particular perspective of Jewish migration. But the Germans took a more similar approach [to ours], so we probably have the same point of interest. ( Etienne, NU, France)

When it comes to migration, French and German are more focused on definition & motives of migration in a social and historical context, whereas Israelis are more focused on construction of identity. (Batiste, NU, France)

It is interesting to note that student teachers from the Weingarten University of Education (WUE) in Germany and the Free University of Brussels (FUB) in Belgium do not mention these national perspectives. Can these differences be linked to the fact that they are trained in decentralised systems, as opposed to their Israeli and French peers? Quite possibly, with the level of centralisation of an education system being linked to that of standardisation of the curriculum. If so, why are their US peers so focused on their and their fellow student teachers' national 'biases' towards migration? We are inclined to look here at the civic education curriculum they themselves were taught as students of Pennsylvanian schools. Indeed, it centres mostly on US citizenship, as explained previously. This is also largely the case of the French and Israeli curricula, which do not officially recognised GCE as a component of civic and citizenship education.

This is different, however, from what student teachers in Wallonia-Brussels and Baden-Württemberg will have experienced at school. The former will have learnt about global issues, thanks to the involvement of actors outside the education system. The latter will have followed courses on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), a broad concept that seeks to equip learners with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary to contribute to sustainable societies and address global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty, and inequality.

These broader perspectives, to which FUB and WUE pre-service teachers were faced with as students, may explain why their reaction to taking part in the GlobalSense project and, more specifically, the exchanges with their peers from the other countries, is centred on the importance of emotions. This seems to serve three main purposes according to the data collected: not hurting students' feelings who might have a history of migration in their own background; not being judgemental of their students' opinions on migration; and encouraging them to have an open mind towards migrants, but also towards people's views on migration:

I found Patricia and Jessica's lesson very creative and pertinent as they used a game to make students think of what a 'privilege' is. […] I realised [that] what a privilege is for someone, is not for someone else. Those are notions that encompass a very large spectrum and we, as teachers, have to be open-minded and let our students express themselves freely even if their interpretations are not the same as ours. (Vanessa, FUB, Brussels)

The most important thing is to always see the human and not the big 'problem' migration. […] During the lessons it is important to treat the topic very carefully because each student could be affected. (Johannes, WUE, Germany)

The pre-service teachers who took part in GlobalSense tend to either see the topic of migration, which questions the concept of citizenship, through a national lens of 'immigration policy', and 'definition of migration in a social and historical context' (France, Israel and USA) or from a more global perspective, that leads participants to evoke questions of empathy and understanding (Germany and Belgium).

#### **6.2** *Balancing Global Approaches and Adaptation to Local or National Contexts*

The student teachers' self-reflections further illustrate the tension between approaching global issues in the classroom from a global perspective, and a national or local one. One pre-service teacher for instance believes that she and her peers all share certain values:

The fact, that all of our lesson plans had an eye for empathy and to foster that empathy was something I really enjoyed. [The exchange] has accompanied all of us and it will keep doing that. (Leonie, graduate student, FUB, Belgium)

Another of her peers from Weingarten in Germany indicates her wish to use a global approach when tackling global issues in the classroom, putting aside the national scale all together:

So, for me it seems, that the challenges with migrations are more or less the same, especially in Europe. Because of this similarity I thought about some more similarities in challenges with migration, that do not just affect Germany, but other countries as well. Why should we not teach that from the beginning on in a global way? […] because in case we sit all in the same boat and have to solve the challenges together for a better world. (Julia, WUE, Germany)

Other pre-service teachers also acknowledge the importance of taking into account the global scale when approaching certain topics such as migration, but not at the expense of the national scale:

It is important to mention the impact of global issues on a national level but also a global level, because our students will be citizens of the world. It will make them more aware & able to handle such topics. (Rukiye, FUB, Belgium)

I think that this [GC] is an issue to defend in order to face new challenges. […] Students must grow up with a sense of global belonging as well as a sense of national belonging. (Clara, Senior education advisor, NU, France)

The discussion helped me understand my role as a future teacher in exposing my students to the ways things are done in other places, so they will always know and remember that the world is a much bigger place than we sometime think. I would like my students to realize that while an issue is very important for us here in Israel, it can also be relevant in other places and we can maybe learn from each other. (Noa, HUJI, Israel)

I want to teach students what it means to be a global citizen and have them contrast and compare it with what it means to be a United States citizen. This in a sense will get them to focus on the varying meanings and interpretations of what a citizen is and how it can both be loosely and strictly defined depending on the context. (Jimmy, TUP, USA)

However one student teacher in particular, from Temple University in Philadelphia, believes that these issues, though they might be global, cannot be framed with an approach and practices shared by all (future) teachers:

I do not believe that there is a singular globalized process that would work […] in all of our nations. Our methods should be catered specifically to our students because their experiences are inherently different, even from other students in our nations. (Jessica, undergraduate student, TUP, USA)

This is similar to what Asaf, a pre-service teacher from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) expressed and that we mentioned above, feeling that the students exchanges are of no interest since "Though migration is a global issue, is it approached differently in each country".

These quotes highlight the importance given by the professional group of pre-service teachers to the idea of raising their students' awareness to the world around them and its influence on nations. Yet they are not necessarily prepared to give up their prerogative, which consists in adapting their approach of these topics to their students' particular context.

Clara's (NU, France) views, mentioned above, might be linked to the fact that in France, civic education is closely tied to republican citizenship and mainly focuses on national issues. Nonetheless, it does also encourage students to consider global perspectives, reflecting universal values and indicating a partial alignment with the principles of Global Citizenship Education.

Regarding Asaf and Noa's (HUJI, Israel), what might explain their differing perspectives? The Israeli education system is centralised and the curriculum is standardised, with an emphasis on particularistic principles of Jewish nationalism: is it possible that the curriculum, while it incites Asaf to align his approaches on it, is in part what prompts Noa to advocate for a broader outlook, fearing as some scholars that it has become too nation-focused?

The views of the two Brussels pre-service teachers quoted here also differ from one another. While one student emphasises the positive impact of empathy to approach global issues with students, the other underlines the importance of a double focus on a national and a global perspective. This difference may be explained by the fact that Belgium supports Global Citizenship Education (GCE) through the Development Cooperation Act and a cooperation agreement. While the curriculum does not explicitly mention GCE or SDG s, various actors contribute to global awareness, meaning that both student teachers' views align with the Wallonia-Brussels curriculum.

Similarly, though the two Philadelphian student teachers' perspectives differ, they both align with the Pennsylvania curriculum, albeit for different reasons. By focusing on comparing global and U.S. citizenship, Jimmy's approach aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of citizenship in a globalised world, fostering critical thinking and global awareness within the flexibility of the U.S. education system. On the other hand, Jessica underscores the importance of localised, context-specific approaches that consider the unique experiences of students within the nation. These differences align with broader discussions about the challenges and perceptions of global citizenship education within the U.S. educational system.

Julia's viewpoint is the most focused on the global scale, resonating with the Baden-Württemberg (Germany) education system and curriculum in several ways. By aligning with the curriculum's commitment to international cooperation in education, by emphasising the fostering of a sense of shared responsibility, by aiming to cultivate informed and engaged students, by focusing on empathy and collaboration, and by wanting to tailor approaches, she acknowledges the flexibility within the German curriculum, empowering teachers to adapt content based on students' unique contexts.

These perspectives illustrate how educators navigate and adapt their approaches based on their cultural and educational contexts. Some stress that they will focus on context-specific approaches within their national system. The others all, to a certain extent, call for a broader outlook than the national level: either by still making a place for this scale, or by advocating for international cooperation or an empathy-based approach that seems to have no borders.

#### **6.3** *What Is (Global) Citizenship?*

Thus, the participants in the online exchanges indirectly question the scale at which citizenship should be approached. By doing so, they also challenge the concept of citizenship: is it a status, produced by the state and that one then possesses? Or does it require action, in which case, it is not so much a question of possessing citizenship, as it is of exercising it. By extension, if we consider a citizenship in action, co-produced by people rather than by the state, then we can think of the idea of global citizenship as a global commitment. Some pre-service teachers' self-reflections after their exchanges illustrate this point, anticipating the importance of carefully choosing how they approach a topic and involving their students in more practical activities, in order to enrich their individual understanding of (global) citizenship:

After listening to the various perspectives, I realized that the decision of which topic to teach, and why and how to teach it develops a cognitive framework in students. That is, it shapes the way that students learn to think about topics, and the way in which they perceive topics. (Matteo, TUP, USA)

I think it is also important that the teacher does not dogmatically determine which values are right and which are wrong. Rather, his task is to encourage his students to judge and reason for themselves. (Tom, FUB, Belgium)

In other words, regardless of how their national contexts influence their views on global issues and whether to approach them in the classroom from a historical perspective or a social perspective for instance, it would seem most of the participants in the online exchanges believe in the necessity of not using a top-down posture, but of getting their students to actively search for and confront their ideas and opinions:

It is important that the students work independently or in groups while the teacher takes a back seat. (Yvonne, WUE, Germany)

We [speaking of the Nantes University and Temple University students] agree on the importance of debating with students on issues as important politically. (Quentin, NU, France)

One thing I did find interesting was that a majority of the students from other countries wanted their students to participate in student-led discussions regarding the topic of migration, in the hopes that students would be able to share their own opinions and viewpoints. (Joy, TUP, USA)

Furthermore, they believe this approach requires an emotion-based approach rather than a more classical knowledge-based approach:

In raw terms, I knew that France and Germany host refugee populations, I knew that human rights […] are important for them. But until now […], I didn't feel their urge to change it […]. I couldn't become aware of such 'emotional knowledge' without interaction. It might even be that raw knowledge about the issues cannot transfer things successfully [in the classroom]. (Germàn, HUJI, Israel)

The self-reflections of student teachers illustrate the academic debates regarding the appropriate scales for addressing citizenship-related questions. Originating from what Durkheim termed differentiated countries, the participants exhibit varying perspectives on this matter. While they explore the nuances between national and global considerations, they all recognise the significance of broadening perspectives on migration. Despite their diverse national backgrounds, the common thread emerges in the dual conceptualisation of citizenship: as a commitment or as a status. Operating at the professional level, these educators navigate the inherent tensions between commitment and status, translating them into emotions or considerations of the national context. Hence, while there can be a debate between GC conceived as a status *or* a commitment, we see that the cosmopolitan perspective that forms the aspirations of the GlobalSense student teachers, necessitates embracing both dimensions.

#### **Notes**


## **The Educator State in the Context of Globalisation**

As announced at the beginning of this book, the goal is to clarify terminologies in the most honest way possible, by explaining the normative ideals that necessarily frame our approach. Indeed any notion, even the most apparently neutral and generous like global citizenship, carries non-demonstrable principles and a relationship to values. The course taken leads to the refusal of two postures already mentioned:


To avoid these pitfalls, the third posture claimed here is that of critical republicanism, itself close to the socialist ideal, which some aspire to rebuild in Durkheim's wake (Callegaro & Marcucci, 2018). In this perspective, the nation is the form taken by the social relations on which the constitution of our individuality depends; while nations, being conceived in what makes them different, give form to a pluralised process of promotion of relatively common (transnational) ideals. Moreover, in this process, "the plural of nations […] comes to be reflected in each of them" and that is why "inter-nationalism, taken literally, is the axis of restoration of the national idea against [conservative] nationalism" (Karsenti & Lemieux, 2017, p. 19).

We just saw how the reality of nations is important for the student teachers, and so it is important to specify further the place of nations in the endeavours to go towards GC. We will see that there are certain conceptual obstacles, precisely because of this type of pendulum between the idea of humanity understood as a sum of individuals and the idea of moral individualism, which is an ideal formed in certain nations, even if it spreads in the world. Hence, a debate between conservatives who believe citizenship must be linked to a nation, and the nominalists who push for global citizenship. We believe there is a middle way.

#### **1 Reacting to Liberal Nominalism without Giving in to Conservatism**

In this perspective, it is necessary to take manifestations of conservative nationalism seriously, as reactions to an anomic division of labour that tends to disembed the economy from national society. It is therefore necessary to think of the three motifs constitutive of modernity– liberal, conservative and socialist – together for, while they oppose each other, they also contribute to defining the present situation. Typically, national-conservative reactions, often xenophobic, could indicate that interdependent relationships have increased on a global scale; thus the national-conservative reaction might indicate a certain success of the liberal motif, which values globalisation and blurred borders in the name of the principled autonomy of individuals. The challenge is then to draw an alternative, socialist response to this liberal motif, which, associated with economic neo-liberalism, has increasingly obvious limits.

According to Karsenti and Lemieux, this requires serious thinking about the nation and bringing the national idea to life through education, providing an increased ability to grasp oneself within a totality, in order to perpetuate and transform it. Therefore, the authors question the disembodied trans-national. If the idea of a European cosmopolitanism is not an empty word,

it is to the extent that Europe was built on the basis of internationalism, that is, as an association of nations […]. As such, it is not an exaggeration to say that Europe matters even more than the UN [of which UNESCO is a part]. Because the United Nations are in this way fundamentally different from Europe: as a supranational entity, it brings together all states indistinctly, liberal and democratic or not, fully assuming the gaps that may exist between 'facticity and validity' and limiting itself to formulating 'idealising assumptions'. In the case of Europe […] the gap between facticity and validity is not allowed for any of its constituent parts. (Karsenti & Lemieux, 2017, p. 98)

The specificity of the European model is therefore that its implementation is constantly judged by its results. In addition, it is today the regulation and integration of the division of labour within it that is one of the conditions of its survival. The resulting socialism is therefore intimately linked to national realities and even to national-conservative expressions as a reaction, perceived by Durkheim, to a pathological division of labour. Strikingly, the authors go so far as to write that socialism

is quite comparable, and in some respects identical, to reactionary thinking. Only to the extent that it succeeds in transmuting this primary attitude into a will of social science, in order to allow effective political action, does socialism separate itself from reactionary thinking and finally come to occupy a position that is diametrically opposed to it. (Karsenti & Lemieux 2017, p. 48)

How then can we transmute this reactionary thought, some aspects of which, in particular the will to think the totality, are identical to socialism? For Durkheim and many of his followers, only the state is likely to ensure a 'normality', understood as avoiding the pathological, by making society aware of itself and, consequently, of new rules and standards corresponding to the irreversible deepening of the division of social work.

#### **2 Overcoming Plain Liberalism: Yes, but How?**

These avenues must now be put to the test. This requires pointing out the blind spots of Karsenti and Lemieux' position: for though their purpose is politically lucid, it nevertheless remains fragile from an epistemological point of view.

First, the authors accuse 'liberalism' of abandoning the idea of social totality, thus legitimising their search for an inseparably socialist and sociological third path. However, the typically liberal edifice of John Rawls would collapse if he did not refer to a social totality in reference to the idea of people. Furthermore, political liberalism is constantly evolving internally; it is therefore important not to freeze its reading. In other words, "instead of mobilising our prior conception of what liberalism is to understand Rawls, we should better mobilise Rawls to develop a new conception of what liberalism could be" (Laden, 2006, p. 342).

Moreover, the authors of *Socialism and Sociology* exaggerate by imagining that sociology – once freed from the 'mental grip' that methodological individualism supposedly exerts on it – would be a more socialist discipline and, therefore, more democratic than anthropology (too conservative), history (too individualistic) and the law (too contractualist and therefore liberal). Does this thesis not telescope too much the political, ontological and epistemological levels? Only a fixed reading of 'liberalism' makes it possible to oppose 'socialism' and legitimise the said 'sociological' path which would be in 'elective affinity' with the latter. To be convincing, Karsenti and Lemieux would have had to distinguish the ontological register from the political one. And once these different registers at stake are unfolded, which is the least one can do when one intends to find 'elective affinities' between a discipline such as sociology and a political current such as socialism, then it becomes difficult to play Socialism, supposedly in 'elective affinity' with Sociology, against Liberalism that would parasite the latter.

However, a closeness exists between our approach and that of the authors of *Socialism and Sociology*. If they do not focus on the divides between liberalism and republicanism, but between liberalism and socialism, the fact remains that their reflection integrates a third common term: nationalism. They stress that it is precisely the denial of nationalism, as a properly modern phenomenon, that prevents the formation of a real socialist path. Furthermore, relying in part on the spirit of the nationalist demands – as reactions to unbridled liberalism – can bring out the socialist third way, nationalism being in part the expression of a need to integrate and regulate the division of social work.

Therefore, the Durkheimian gesture suggested in this book gives critical republicanism a new meaning, by thinking its articulation with the holistic perceptive, at the ontological level (collective entities such as the nation as a modern form of society), as well as at the political level (its affinities with socialism). It is to try, through a research on citizenship education, to grasp the social aspirations emerging from the deepening division of labour, making it possible to raise awareness of its expression at the state level. This implies developing, in teacher training, new working methods at the service of a communication circuit between societies and states (Callegaro, 2018), promoting new professional rules.

There is no doubt that global citizenship is linked to the context of globalisation, in which Western education systems are inserted and which Western universities try to grasp as an object of research and training, whilst being impacted by this object. Completeness on the subject is out of reach here, but here is a summary of the situation in broad strokes with a focus on themes touched on in GlobalSense: migration, climate, relations between nations and minorities from post-colonial immigration. As members of modern societies, we tend to be aware that events taking place thousands of kilometres away are nevertheless part of our close reality. When the Amazon forest goes up in smoke, we know that it has an impact on the global climate. When migrant boats sail on the Mediterranean, we know that our European states can decide, depending on the elected governments, to welcome or reject them, and under what conditions. When Islamist attacks tear apart Africa and the Middle East, we assume that it has to do with decolonisation, with the strategic and commercial links established between our states and certain dictatorships, and with our consumption of fossil fuels that contribute to the revenues of well-known companies and diplomatic relations between our states and authoritarian regimes.

#### **3 Moral Individualism as a Collective Ideology**

People may of course interpret these elements differently. Has decolonisation not already taken place? Is the Amazon not situated in Latin America? Can and do we really want to welcome migrant boats? Is our consumption really in question, knowing that the 10% richest people on the planet emit almost half the greenhouse emissions? As a citizen, any answer to those questions is possible. However, few pre-service teachers and teacher trainers would deny their relevance. This is already a way of recognising the global scope of the themes that should be taken into account in citizenship education.

Though Durkheim had not perceived the ecological question, which connects people's subjectivities around the planet, he did sense a growing cosmopolitan feeling as the deepening of the integrated and regulated division of labour produced organic solidarity. This important idea emphasises that the perception of these new connections between people, potentially global, is a product of the ideology of the modern. Thus, if I think that the fate of the Uighurs concerns me because they are my fellow beings, it is due to the fact I perceive them from the point of the collective ideology that Durkheim called (with no pejorative connotation) the cult of the human person.

It is therefore an ideology with an individualistic content, but which nevertheless remains, as has been said, formed at the societal level. Without an integrated and regulated division of labour and without organic solidarity, it would be hardly viable and therefore not widespread beyond particular individuals. Indeed, the idea of a humanity composed of fellow beings is found in many societies; but it is in only some of them, at a given time, such as the France described by Durkheim and the United States described by Tocqueville, among others, that this idea became a collective representation.

That is why, contrary to what a superficial analysis of the global citizenship slogan might suggest, humanity is not itself a community, and each nation relates to the world differently. Insofar as it is of interest to our research, we note that the teacher trainers and pre-service teachers within GlobalSense are members of 'modern' countries and are, therefore, marked by the collective ideology of the cult of the human person. Thus, they are aware of the importance of citizenship education from an international perspective.

However, official national requirements remain to some extent marked by an earlier stage in the division of labour that confers the quasi-exclusive framework of training of the citizen to the nation. This is not a problem in itself, but we can hypothesise that individuals marked by moral individualism, in increasingly differentiated societies, have new aspirations in this field.

In which case the researcher's role is to promote their conscious expression, possibly leading to the creation of new rules within self-regulated (professional) secondary groups. For division of labour creates eminently practical problems, that professional corporations, according to Durkheim, are best able to respond to. If the word 'corporation' strikes strangely on the ear, one can also mention professional associations, unions and, more occasionally, some research-training projects, such as GlobalSense, whose aim it is to promote the reflexivity of future teachers and their trainers.

#### **4 The State at the Service of Social Thinking**

The Durkheimian approach thus contributes to the transformation of practices, without becoming prescriptive. Indeed, though the role of the state is not to summarise society's thought, but to "add to it a more meditated thought", as Durkheim said, it remains that the latter is anchored in secondary groups. Society's thoughts are mediated by the state in a continuous communication process, clarifying the obscure feelings that affect society to help it achieve a higher degree of reflexivity (Steiner, 2018). Nevertheless, nothing is so simple. We have already suggested above that the Durkheimian sociology of the state is as innovative as it is ambiguous. Therefore, before putting it to the test, let us answer some of the criticisms against it.

When social conflicts are important and hinder the healthy deployment of organic solidarity, Durkheim does not imagine that the state can forge privileged links with certain groups more powerful than others: "the existence of classes or castes such as those with high socio-economic inequalities have no influence in his eyes on the nature of the state, which probably derives its 'strength' from its rationality alone" (Birnbaum, 1976, p. 252). Similarly, when Durkheim theorises democracy as a process of communication between state and society, "he does not take into account the possibility of a strategic manipulation of the second by the first" (Sintomer, 2011, p. 408).

Conversely, while the state becomes a "hotbed of new, original representations, which must put society in a position to behave with more intelligence than when it is simply driven by the obscure feelings that impact it" (Durkheim, 1900/2020, p. 150), society is not really a counter power, but rather a space where 'counterweights', such as professional corporations, become *partners*, which the state must enter and control – the crucial question being: to what extent? The emancipation movement is therefore carried out preferentially from the state to society: "Individuals can, without contradicting themselves, be the instruments of the state, because to realise individuals is what the state's action tends towards" (Durkheim, 1900/2020, p. 127).

In short, the development of professional corporations is both a guarantee of democracy (as intermediate forces between the state and individuals) and a potential limit to it. If Durkheim is in favour of them, it is because they exercise, through their trade, what is an already social way of thinking, while he distrusts groups of individuals gathered under the *aegis* of a common interest (local communities, social movements, social classes). The fragility of the Durkheimian edifice is thus revealed. Rather elitist, it requires an educator-state to prevent political communication from society overwhelming it. Indeed, the state is supposed to ensure its mission through a completely neutral body of officials, in order to strip them of their personal interests and put them at the service of this highly elaborate concept that the state is.

This is why, seeing that civil servants embodying the state are also private persons, Durkheim considered that they should neither unionise nor go on strike as mentioned previously, thus constricting them to his political sociology. This view disregards unionism's political power to challenge the possible arbitrariness of the state administration, allowing it therefore to assume this role of 'counterweight' of which Durkheim speaks. Nonetheless, the author does not choose this path, instead depicting democratic deliberation as being disentangled from the social context. Can democratic deliberation, once rid of private interests thanks to the supposed impartiality of the state, truly reflect 'society'?

These fragilities are the reasons why the Durkheimian proposals must be read today in a more liberal, pluralistic perspective, adapted to modern democracies (Guérard de Latour, 2014). This is all the more feasible because criticisms of Durkheim's political sociology are not necessarily salient regarding the object considered here. Teacher training indeed remains a state prerogative, one that Durkheim fulfils in Chapter IV of *Education and Sociology*, a course addressed to pre-service secondary teachers at the Faculty of Literature of Paris University. In short, though Durkheimian political sociology is a bit fragile, its assumptions around a state-led teacher training could be tested accurately, especially since we now benefit from a Rawlsian rereading of his work.

#### **5 A Two-Fold Rawlsian Reading of Durkheim**

How can secondary groups create new rules in close connection with the state, without enduring its weight? Here appears the usefulness of the sociologist Anne Rawls' reading of Durkheim in a liberal perspective. The proximity between her father John Rawls and Durkheim lies, among other things, in the Rawlsian distinction between summary and constitutive rules. The former regulate activities that already exist (cooking recipes, traffic regulations); the latter are institutional facts, in that they create the possibility of carrying out the activity in question, such as playing chess or making a promise.

Let us illustrate this point. Though one can cook without following a recipe, and drive without following traffic regulations, one cannot keep a promise for utilitarian reasons: the result may be the same, but it will not be a kept promise. Indeed, one can only keep a promise if the action carried out, is carried out because of the promise made, not because of external and contingent circumstances (such as usefulness) on which the promised action depends. Yet this distinction intersects the Durkheimian distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity. In modern societies, summary rules still exist, but increasingly give way to constitutive rules.

As Anne Rawls strongly emphasises, contrary to current interpretations, Durkheim did not cease to emphasise that, in modern societies, differentiated, diversified, individualised, upset in their morphology by the division of social work, collective consciousness can no longer – and must no longer – […] rely on the primacy of this first type of [summary] rules. […] A form of social solidarity has become necessary (and desirable), which now proceeds from below and not from overhanging institutions, that does not depend on the authority of collective beliefs, but rather on a shared commitment towards 'practices' – as understood by John Rawls – based on forms of internal, horizontal self-regulation, in short on constitutive rules. (Chanial, 2019, p. 21)

This is where the well-known Durkheimian proposal of professional corporations, as secondary, self-regulated groups, interwoven between the state and individuals, makes sense: the corporate model that Durkheim advocates for must bring together workers from different companies – or working in the same workplace – who share common work practices (Rawls, 2021). These aspirations are perceivable in the students' self-reflections.

By being a part of a global community, we are able to share our interactions with various institutions and how they affect our classrooms, and how they can affect those in other places. Additionally, this showed me the importance of teaching cooperatively. As seen with this particular activity, we are able to teach students about a global issue, such as migration, by working with others who experience it differently. (Blake, pre-service teacher in social studies, TUP)

The objective, according to Durkheim, is for the state to assume its role as the social brain (cf. Chapter 4), formalising the constitutive orders that emerge in society as the division of labour deepens. In this sense, as has been said, the state is primarily an organ of thought; if it must act, it is to ensure the necessary conditions for the deployment of constitutive practices: cooperation, reciprocity, equality of access, communication, internal self-regulation of practices. From a methodological point of view, an interactionist interpretation of Durkheim's approach emerges, and the inquiry consists in asking whether people are able (or not) to produce social facts recognisable by all, under the conditions that are theirs. That is the meaning of the adjective 'constitutive'. The rules constitute social facts, just as the rules of chess constitute the collective action of playing chess.

To produce social facts in this way, it is necessary, to varying degrees, to establish trust (Garfinkel), a working consensus (Goffman) and a joint commitment (Gilbert). These models, purified and anchored in the sociological tradition (not only Durkheimian but also interactionist), reveal the capacities to create social facts which, deployed by members of secondary groups, are essential in societies marked by the rapid deepening of the division of labour. Sociology is in charge of studying these capacities and new forms of social facts; the state is in charge of formalising the new constitutive rules – according to Anne Rawls – elaborated by secondary groups. This interpretation of the Durkheimian perspective extends the gesture of political philosophy. Indeed, Durkheim insisted that sociology was not intended to discover an existing but unexplored continent (the 'social', *le social*), since it was motivated by an already political intention: to study the 'social' was also, *ipso facto*, to constitute it (Callegaro & Marcucci, 2018).

However, we must take care to not misinterpret the notion of state. The point is not to evoke a hypertrophied macro-actor, or a neutral and reasonable power that would turn the confused feelings of the people into 'clear' thoughts and speeches. Birnbaum and Sintomer's aforementioned criticisms, as well as Cuin, Déloye and Dubet's remarks about Durkheim must therefore be taken into account. Moreover, a state is not exclusively national. A challenge for GlobalSense is, precisely, to activate an interstate lever, if only as a co- financer (the European Commission), in order to develop a new framework that matches the latent aspirations of society, such as the cosmopolitan patriotism Durkheim already sensed as a European horizon calling for a new form of government. In this perspective, we want to capture "that part of the unconscious that first escapes the state because it refers to the changing aspirations of political society impacting the law" (Callegaro, 2018, p. 220).

The simple fact of internationalising teacher training, within the framework of GlobalSense, is a way of supporting the division of labour, since higher education is becoming Europeanised, as evidenced by the European Commission framework Cooperation partnerships in Higher Education. To use the terminology of Anne Rawls, the objective of training-research is to provide actors with an updated professional framework for the creation of social facts according to constitutive rules. This is a partly spontaneous order, just as in the corporations of which Durkheim speaks, since the pre-service teachers, in principle at least, are fully interested in this device and benefit from huge flexibility to suggest ideas and express their aspirations.

Yet it remains to be seen how constitutive rules can be promoted whilst avoiding any prescriptive imposition on the part of the state and/or supranational bodies, thus ensuring the conditions of self-regulation of the professional group(s) composed of pre-service teachers and teacher trainers. It also remains to be seen what the place of the recapitulative rules is (as opposed to constitutive ones), since habits, grammars of citizenship, and conceptions of the profession are very prominent.

This liberal interpretation of Durkheim provides a methodological framework to clarify the vagueness of the GCE slogan. As the debates about it show, global citizenship does not really make sense in the current state of things, except as a distant and abstract ideal. Durkheim had perceived, as suggested in the second part of this book, that in order to be truly coherent, a cosmopolitan citizenship would require imagining humanity itself organised as a society. However, Durkheim considered this idea so unimaginable that it did not even come into play. Whatever one thinks of his pessimism or his realism, the crucial point is that the sociologist-philosopher and professor of education science did not abandon the ideal of a finally unified humanity, because he knew that this was the ultimate ideal of the modern.1

Indeed, the irreversible deepening of the division of labour parallels the increasingly demanding affirmation of the cult of the human person: organic solidarity no longer requires similarities between individuals and it is the individual, as an ideal, who ultimately remains an object of worship.

In modern societies, individuals, Durkheim judged, are constantly differentiating themselves, to the point that they potentially only have one thing in common: the fact that they are human beings. The moral foundation of these societies could therefore, in his eyes, only be individualism, understood as the sacralisation of the human person. Yet, this individualism implies "sympathy for all that is man, a wider pity for all pains, for all human miseries, a greater need to fight and soften them, a greater thirst for justice" [*Individualism and intellectuals*], which potentially has no limits. The result is that the moral individualism of modern societies leads to the rise of a "broad conception of humanity" [*The division of labour*], that is, of a moral cosmopolitanism. (Truc, 2012, p. 61)

Under these conditions, the professional groups directly involved, including pre-service teachers and their trainers, anticipate the stakes of the GCE if only because they know, more or less confusedly, that


This implies a new international division of labour in citizenship education. However, it is necessary to accompany this process in order to avoid a pathological division of labour (anomic or constrained), contrary to the development of organic solidarity that secondary groups are supposed to promote. This is why the promotion of 'good practices' and non-reflexive training engineering are not solutions but obstacles (Barthes, 2017a). To avoid them, GlobalSense must return to the sociological tradition, itself anchored in political philosophy, and examine certain concrete conditions that might allow professionals to establish new constitutive rules in favour of citizenship education in an international perspective. In particular, we are interested in collectivisation procedures: modes of cooperation, communication tools, spaces for discussion, exchanges of practices, joint work.

That being said, the 'social facts' thus created cannot hide other more massive and more durable phenomena: historically and culturally settled definitions of citizenship, habits, conception of the profession, its reality in a given society in terms of esteem, prestige, status, recognition … The Rawlsian interpretation of Durkheim is therefore an interesting tool, but it cannot hide the persistence of summary rules or even mechanical solidarity in our modern societies (Mauss, 1968, p. 105).

#### **6 Cosmopolitanism: A Modern Ideal**

Using Durkheimian tools updated by socialists (Karsenti, Lemieux), republicans (Pettit, Guérard de Latour) and liberals (Rawls), we can return with more precision to the debates on GCE. Let us first give an illustration of the French case, which is the country where Durkheim's thought was first developed. As Durkheim is a founder of sociology, this specific illustration can be insightful to clarify the debate on GC, which occurs in other countries. In France, some versions of the republican project tend towards authoritarian nationalism, if not racialism (Fassin, 2013). This raises concerns that call for a cosmopolitan ideal. Yet this process can lead to an under-theorisation of the totalities, often national, at the principle of the deepening of the ideal of individual autonomy. In Dumont's words, mentioned above, the nation is a global society composed of people who consider themselves as individuals.

However, is the Dumontian remark still valid today? Is it not obvious that the nation-state is less powerful today under the combined effects of world markets, international treaties, relations of worldwide economic competition, communication networks whose speed far exceeds that of the 20th century? Therefore, can we still consider the nation-state as the ultimate framework for autonomy? In short: is the holistic approach still relevant? Yes, because it evolves; moreover, regarding our research more specifically, we can see that it is not necessary to go beyond the national framework to understand curriculum changes regarding citizenship in an international perspective. The national French curriculum, which we have outlined above (concerning the level of *collège*, i.e. middle school), includes elements on global citizen engagement (global issues, global engagement). Though this is not specifically global citizenship, which in any case is 'only' a horizon, this French curriculum does have a global perspective. Indeed, it takes note of the insertion of the nationstate in frameworks that go beyond it and could even possibly 'threaten' it: ECHR, UN, NGO s and international conventions.

The neo-Durkheimian approach is not, in fact, incompatible with the common idea in GCE according to which global citizenship does not replace national citizenship. Nevertheless, although this idea is obvious, it is very diversely interpreted; so that holism will lead us, *infra*, to challenge the 'nominalist motif' in GCE. Revisiting classical sociology implies relying on a theory of modernity, rendering useless the hypothesis that we have entered a radically different 'new era', a 'new world' and a 'new civilizational situation', to use expressions used by postmodern thinkers. Indeed, the truly modern ideals (freedom, autonomy, emancipation, equality, etc.) still animate us, including in GCE, and that is why it is important to continue to use classical sociology.

In this case, by explaining the fundamental *modernity* of the cosmopolitan attitude, Durkheim avoids the nominalist pitfall oblivious to the (often national) totality, by following the principle of individualism as a value. However, this oversight is precisely what favours the instrumentalisation of the cosmopolitan ideal, in favour of market ideologies of a globalisation without borders (Nussbaum, 2019). The question that remains is: how does the cosmopolitan ideal manage (or not) to project itself onto a global citizenship (as an ideal or a reality) that legitimises GCE? In some of its influential versions, the multiculturalist ideal in GCE is fundamentally *nominalist*, preventing one from thinking about citizenship in a satisfactory manner. However, it is also important to reject the conservative response that denies any relevance to the notion of global citizenship. In doing so, it is possible to sketch out a third educational path and its practical consequences in a particular environment.

ETS are a privileged actor of the training of teachers and educational staff, and as such are at the crossroads of these issues. They embody a project of society, more or less related to state prescriptions, whose expected results they seek to translate and/or criticise, whose declinations they wish to trace, whose modalities of circumvention of national rules they try to identify, whilst themselves being framed by international recommendations, inter-state treaties, etc. ETS thus handle various orders of discourse – administrative, political, scientific – whose respective specificities they must understand, from the perspective of an articulation closer than in other disciplines, with ethical and socio-political questions, in terms of aims and social projects (Albero & Barthes, 2022). This justifies the mobilisation of several disciplines by returning to their foundations in order to unfold the many registers around the notion of GCE.

#### **7 Escaping the Consensus Rhetoric**

Durkheim also formulated a social project. It took into account both the national totality and the processes of individuation in modern societies, through the notion of organic solidarity. The more differentiated the functions (especially professional ones) are, the more people are united, because they need each other within the framework of an important division of labour, provided that the latter is integrated and regulated. The European pre- service teachers and senior education advisors – as opposed to the US and Israeli participants – mention how taking part in GlobalSense has led them to this realisation:

In France global issues are usually taught by history/geography teacher, but now I see it can be taught by other teachers. Bringing teachers and students around a global issue […] could bring cohesion. (Eline, senior education advisor, NU, France)

It is important for a teacher to be aware that their students come from different backgrounds. As a teacher of English and German, I will address these topics in my classroom. But talking to the philosophy teachers has made me aware that it can be difficult. (Sofia, pre-service teacher, WUE, Germany)

As a future English teacher, I don't feel I have the necessary training to go in depth in global issues, and I need the help of a rhetoric/philosophy teacher. However, it is still an interesting topic for English classes and can help sensitise students. (Zineb, pre-service teacher, FUB, Belgium)

The quotes illustrate Durkheim's theory on the organic solidarity that emerges from interdependence. Teachers from various disciplines, such as history/geography, English, German, and philosophy, collaborate and learn from each other. This cross-disciplinary interaction fosters a collective understanding of global issues and promotes a sense of cohesion, reflecting the organic solidarity Durkheim describes. The shared learning experiences contribute to a more comprehensive and interconnected educational approach, reinforcing the idea that the collective knowledge of educators enriches the overall educational system.

In practice, cross-disciplinary collaboration among educators reflects Durkheim's organic solidarity theory. This fosters cohesion and a collective understanding, while Durkheim's theory underscores the state's role in acknowledging and embracing societal differences. Indeed, far from homogenising the social body, the state as a social brain was destined, as an organ of thought, "to concentrate the diffuse psychic life at work within society by supplementing the form of unconscious regulation which operates there through a conscious regulation [and thus to render] society conscious of its own diversity" (Guérard de Latour, 2009, p. 226). Thus, to use the title of the work quoted here, Durkheim gives a nod to *The Republic of Differences*.

These are intra-national differences, recalling that neo-Durkheimian republicanism is in no way opposed to a multicultural society; but what about the supra-national level? How can the republican ideal, which centres on the notion of state, hold in a cosmopolitan perspective that transcends state borders, in a far more globalised era than that of Durkheim? Many solutions have been proposed within the French School of Sociology, including by Mauss who envisioned an organic solidarity between nations. In addition, many important authors who do not explicitly subscribe to holism, such as Deweyan pragmatists and liberal sociologists, continue to think of citizenship essentially within the national framework, despite what they may say.

And this is hardly surprising if we recall the observations made above: insofar as modern ideology is individualistic, it is natural to make its collective dimension implicit. This we have seen, with Dumont and Descombes, in the introduction of this typescript and we extend these remarks here by briefly echoing Kitcher's general comments on education, also mentioned at the beginning of this book.

#### **7.1** *The Deweyan Society, a Classic Vision of Citizenship*

Kitcher is interesting in this respect because he does not claim to be either republican or Durkheimian, but liberal in the lineage of Mill, Rawls and Dewey, though his approach to citizenship is not so different from that of claimed holists. The difference between Kitcher and holists is, above all, that they accept and want to explicit the collective dimension of modern ideology. For the rest, the American philosopher *de facto* feeds a fruitful tension between individual autonomy and inscription in a totality. He places himself in the perspective of an egalitarian Deweyan society, secular and operating independently from the outside. The challenge, inseparably philosophical and political, is to provide an educational 'Deweyan' localised experiment within identifiable boundaries, which other societies, seduced by this experimentation, would replicate. This operation cannot be entirely summarised here, which is why we will focus on the citizenship approach.

To introduce his fourth chapter titled "Citizenship", Kitcher uses what he considers a significant example: an American colony that founded the city of Guilford in Connecticut. Admittedly, he says, the situation has changed because the pioneers of the 17th century faced imminent dangers (territorial conflicts, hunger and seasonal hazards) that forced them to remain members of a cohesive and supportive community. Nevertheless, they undoubtedly had the prototypical experience of a true democracy that Tocqueville had witnessed, where each person's problems were discussed in a careful, inclusive way, respectful of others' position, and where solutions were the object of genuine collective deliberation. Kitcher's reflection is therefore fraught with tensions, between the past reality of a community of citizens and its future ideal.

*Perhaps* that was the way things were in Guilford. For, although it is possible to see the deliberations of the communities of New England as a step towards democracy […], it is also possible that cooperation was only done between supposed 'equals' such as fathers, [but not] women, young people, servants or, of course, slaves. The model citizens of New England never existed – they are a utopian fantasy for today's world. Nevertheless, one of the fundamental tasks of education is to create – or recreate – the best possible approximation of such citizens. (Kitcher, 2022, 118)

Though this society was imperfect, this does not prevent the author from using it as a model. Thus, citizenship is weighted with a community anchor, in the sense of a political community in this case very restricted. Too restricted? Undoubtedly, but it would be difficult to denigrate Kitcher's thinking as communal, nationalistic and inattentive to the problems of the world as a whole. The author indeed claims his cosmopolitanism, and this is one of the reasons why Martha Nussbaum considers his latest work as an "imposing achievement worthy of being placed next to the classical works of John Dewey, John Stuart Mill and Rabindranath Tagore".2

For cosmopolitanism cannot ignore the psychological anchorages of humans, whose ethical virtues are first cultivated within the family, neighbourhood or nation – in short, in relative proximity (Nussbaum, 2019). At the same time, the ideal of cosmopolitanism is to say that "nothing that is human is foreign to me"; or, to paraphrase Montesquieu, that we must strive to consider what is useful to the homeland as a crime, if it is detrimental to Europe. To manage this tension between proximity and distance, Montesquieu defended an argumentation in concentric circles.

If I knew something that was useful to me and detrimental to my family, I would reject it from my mind. If I knew something that was useful to my family and not to my homeland, I would try to forget it. If I knew something that was useful to my homeland and harmful to Europe, or that was useful to Europe and harmful to the human race, I would regard it as a crime. (Montesquieu, 1949, p. 981)

#### **7.2** *Singular Interpretations of Convergent Phenomena*

However, these circles that go from the local level, where ethical virtues are cultivated, towards the global level as a legitimate horizon (the "human race"), are hardly taken into account in the 'consensus rhetoric' of the global level. If the aims of education systems can converge under the effect of globalisation policies, an important trend of comparative education, called hermeneutic, invites us to explain how societies, as interpretive communities, react to these policies.

The requirement to take into account the intensification of the flow of culture and people and the reciprocal influence between distant socio- cultural contexts results less in an improbable transnational standardisation of social models than in singular forms of appropriation by 'interpretative communities' of convergent phenomena. (Malet, 2005, p. 178)

Thus, GCE could identify these convergent phenomena materialised if only by UNESCO's recommendations in this area. Nevertheless, GCE cannot be *in itself* an interpretative modality to be favoured in the various socio-cultural contexts. For one of the risks of GCE is to promote the expert position as governments, meanwhile, seize the idea from a market development perspective in which the citizens most open to 'global diversity' are the most competitive, the point being for them to take part in world trade.

There are more risks than these, but this remark is enough to emphasise that GCE is confronted with the tensions of comparative education in general: scholarly esotericism, political decision support, pedagogical support?

It is, at the very least, difficult to find a balance between, on the one hand, a scientific isolationism, anxious to preserve the field from the academic impurity of the expert discourse, which will then be conveniently placed in the heading 'international education', in opposition to 'comparative education' […] and, on the other hand, a healthy openness and confrontation, yet likely to endanger the theoretical basis and academic legitimacy of the specialty. (Malet, 2005, p. 175)

Constantly balancing between scientific isolationism, expertise activity and attempts at a healthy confrontation, academics must at least carry out a reflexive approach towards their own commitment. And this is all the more crucial in GCE because researchers are already globalised, in the sense that they are people who travel from one conference to another, constantly communicate via email or videoconference with colleagues located on the other side of the planet, while nevertheless sharing a rather similar social and professional condition. In other words, the experience of researchers is already in affinity with the global citizenship slogan.

How then do they study, analyse and promote GCE with the necessary distance? The most radically reflexive critics affirm that this globalised experience makes the promoters of GCE very sensitive, in a romantic perspective, to the figure of the globalised migrant crossing borders, so that the image of the latter could constitute a mirror in which some Westerners indulge (Papastephanou, 2018). The criticism certainly is brutal, but it is all the more interesting to formulate it because it comes from the *Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education*: thus it is not an external criticism, but internal, intended to advance the cosmopolitan ideal and the notion of global citizenship – even if it means criticising it head-on.3

Similarly, if we value global citizenship, how can we not implicitly devalue local citizenship? Attempts to bring about conciliation certainly emerge, by means of a portmanteau word, 'glocal'. That being said, is the impression that the global level is nobler, more inclusive, multicultural or even more human than the local level a consequence of our (local) position as hyper-connected researchers from North America or Western Europe for instance? In other words, is the academic trend towards the global level

the sign of intellectual progress, of a better understanding of a world that has truly changed – that is, we used to be in the local, now in the global – or is this a way of expressing the experience of those who travel from conference to conference at an increasing speed and are, moreover, seized by the ease with which they can communicate with their colleagues around the world, thanks to the Internet? I have argued that the situation I have just described may well explain this new intellectual trend – I am thinking of the experience of academic elites, itinerant intellectuals, an experience that is relayed by the representations given by CNN and other international media and by the more spontaneous representations offered by media executives, politicians, diplomats and heads of jet settised non-governmental organisations. This speech therefore indicates a point of view. It is that of globalisation elites who maintain a distanced relationship with the planet of consumption and reification. Seen from Sirius, the world appears to them as a multi-ethnic bazaar or an exotic neighbourhood and they marvel at this extraordinary bric-a-brac of cultures so diverse, and present in this space. Hybridity is therefore the sensual and above all visual appropriation of a space that is rich in cultural differences. It is the space of one who observes it, or rather consumes it, appropriates it. (Friedman, 2000, pp. 195–196)

This anthropologist's criticism should invite any researcher to commit to an important work of reflexivity. Nonetheless, it must be nuanced: researchers who support GCE are not all globalised in the same way. Many African researchers, for example, are dominated in the university market (lower wages, more limited access to books, travel bans), so that the caste of itinerant elites who travel from one conference to another does not necessarily correspond to those who actually promote GCE. On the contrary, the networking of researchers at the global level could be a way to decline the vague notion of global citizenship in multiple ways.

This is why the aforementioned handbook aims to display the great geographical variety of its contributors, from all continents, and not just those from the most prestigious, globalised and influential universities. The very scope of GCE therefore gives way to fruitful debates, prudence and hesitations. Consequently, the political aim of GCE is not obsolete, provided that it is approached from a *realistic* perspective.

#### **8 Return of Collective Entities**

The term 'realistic' is used here with a double meaning. The first consists in refusing a closely nominalist posture that *strips of their reality* certain collective entities (political society, nation). We wish to underline that in sociology, the realistic posture is opposed to nominalism. The nominalist academic, such as the French sociologist Raymond Boudon, will say that 'the State', 'the socialist party' and 'the Church' neither think nor act for themselves. The reason for this being that these entities are not truly real since they are solely names, used out of convenience. Only individuals who are members of these fictional entities can think and act. On the contrary, the realist, such as Emile Durkheim, will say that collective entities are endowed with a capacity to think and act of their own.

As for Pierre Bourdieu, he was a nominalist, despite appearances and his opposition to Raymond Boudon regarding methodological individualism and 'holism'. Indeed, the habitus dear to Bourdieu is an individual attribute (although formed in a social structure), as are people's tastes in *Distinction*, as well as their cultural capital, etc. This remark may be surprising, because Bourdieu is generally thought of as a holist (are fields not totalities?). Nonetheless, this point was clarified in the introduction (regarding the notion of state). Furthermore we can for instance recall, in Bourdieu's work, the constructivist imprint of the spokesperson creating groups since

the group does not exist before a representative emerges to become the spokesperson [within the framework of] a conception closely dependent on an individualistic ontology […] [that] reveals an originally dissocialised understanding of the individual, or that accesses the social only through the 'magic' of group building. (Heurtin, 2022, p. 310)

On the contrary Durkheim, a realist, envisaged a fact such as suicide as a strictly social, non-individual phenomenon, showing that "sociological regularities do not correspond to psychological regularities […]. [Therefore] adopting a Durkheimian view on Bourdieu's *Distinction* implies challenging the concept of habitus" (Magni-Berton, 2008, pp. 302, 312). Ultimately, beyond the (false) quarrels around 'holism' that have marked Francophone sociology, realism suggests a return to Durkheim, in order to take seriously the social realities that a reflection on citizenship in an international perspective cannot circumvent: groups, collectives, nations. These realities form the anchoring of interpretive communities, whose seriousness is essential in comparative education, especially in the so-called hermeneutic approach.

The second sense of the realistic posture claimed here consists in taking into account the reality of teacher training in the different countries by not assuming the inevitability of globalisation processes (of which GCE is a stakeholder) and by emphasising the various ways in which actors interpret, appropriate and even circumvent ideas that circulate in a transnational way. This time, realism is opposed not to nominalism, but to abstraction. In this perspective, we start from the principle already mentioned according to which GCE is a vague notion susceptible to various uses. It therefore points to a more general phenomenon, linked to changes in education systems as a result of globalisation policies. What should guide us in the first place is not so much GCE, as the observation that the school "can no longer rely on the assurance on which it was built, that of a convergence between the culture of which it is the bearer and which develops inside it, and the contemporary forms of social and political integration of individuals" (Malet, 2012, p. 75).

To refer to a student-teacher's reflection that we have quoted previously, when a country's civic and citizenship education curriculum is no longer entirely relevant in regards to the reality of the society in which students evolve, and the questions they ask themselves about it, it becomes, in part, up to their teachers to go beyond the curriculum in order to give their students the knowledge and analytical skills to address this reality.

GCE therefore is one way among others to promote 'social participation' in an evolving space-time marked by globalisation policies. Consequently, the question in this perspective is not to educate towards global citizenship as such. GCE is first and foremost a 'narrative' whose objectives are potentially broader (Tarozzi & Torres, 2016), falling within 'social inclusion' and 'skills capitalisation', including the 'social and civic skills' valued by the European Commission. Therefore, teachers and their trainers are caught up in tensions that need to be explored.

A double injunction is [indeed] addressed to them: the transmission of a common good and the fulfilment of equal rights, in an ideal of integration, and at the same time the realisation of the individual in his potentialities, in a concrete project of capitalisation of skills and social participation. The abstract ideal of emancipation is replaced by a concrete ambition for social inclusion. School and its teachers have, in short, become uncertain regarding a mission of cultural transmission, under the influence of globalisation policies […]. These inherent phenomena of mediation [and adaptation] are linked to 'educational traditions' and the conservatisms that impact the teachers of the countries concerned ("enable teachers to widen their perspectives to see beyond the influences that have traditionally shaped their behaviour", CERI [Centre for Educational Research and Innovation – OECD], 1998). It is obviously a pragmatic way of setting out the issues, not to ask ourselves about meaning. What is at stake in the forms of adaptation (or inadequacy) of national schools and their teachers to globalisation policies is however more complex and is due to five sets of issues in tension, which are distinctly national even if they are declined at an international level […] [One of them concerns] the function, which is at the heart of the action of education, of linking the subject of education and training to a cultural community and of transmitting cultural goods in the project of forming an educated and critical citizenship. (Malet, 2010, pp. 98–100)

Although GCE is part of a multi issue system, it should be noted that it is not a policy of globalisation in the strong sense of the word. GCE is rather a diffuse and multifaceted narrative that manifests itself in very different ways depending on the country. Germany and Great Britain, for example, are much more affected by these requirements than France is. Does this mean that teacher training in Germany is more global, open, inclusive, universal than it is in France? If so, should France emulate Germany?

These are not pertinent questions, but they make it possible to emphasise that, in the GlobalSense consortium, the German team is able to handle GCE vocabulary at the same time as a *prescription* that legitimises its educational action, an *analytical tool* that justifies its academic function, and as a *political aim* that legitimises its underlying ethics. Such a harmonious interweaving deserves to be taken as a research object since it concerns the alignment of expertise, research, policy and the role of universities (Barthes, 2017b). Let us unfold this point.

GCE is an intervention in search of a theory […] I conceptualize it as a 'multi-vocal' symbol. The anthropologist Victor Turner explains that multi-vocal symbols are capable of being interpreted in multiple ways by different actors and, in some cases, can become the site of conflict as different interest groups compete to have their own interpretations accepted as the dominant one. […] As a matter of fact, GCE is characterized in multiple ways. […] Who is in charge of promoting GCE and who is in charge of evaluating its effectiveness are important questions, and require an alterity between the UN system, the global system, and the nation-state systems. There are many typologies but not a single theory that can encompass all the different interpretations in a holistic way. I believe what we need now is a meta-theory. (Torres & Bosio, 2020, p. 107)

If GCE is looking for a theory, or even a meta-theory, it is because it needs a framework to permanently unravel the intersection, or even the telescoping, between political and educational incentive, scientific challenge, political aim of a discipline (ETS), and all this according to the values of the researcher, that is to say those oriented towards truth, which give shape to four norms as specified by Merton: universalism, communalism, disinterest, organised scepticism – a set of norms deemed constraining but perhaps less so with University's managerial mutations.

#### **9 What Political Philosophy?**

To avoid this kind of asymmetry between countries, and between national prescriptions that more or less match the rhetoric of globalisation, the analysis must refocus on the experience of teacher trainers and pre-service teachers by clearly separating prescriptions (or slogans) from research issues.

Admittedly, an educational ideal carried by ETS could be better achieved if it was prescribed by a ministry. Therefore, the point is not to reject, on principle, slogans that give substance to prescriptions. Nevertheless, ETS must be able to develop their own ideals, with full academic autonomy, without unquestioned political keywords interfering with them. This is what is at stake in our proposition to turn towards Durkheim's approach. It allows us to re-appropriate a classical questioning, anchored in our disciplines, in order to maintain our autonomy in regard to slogans. This is the meaning of Torres' call on the need for a (meta-)theory to channel the narrative of GCE.

Above all, if we want to seriously consider GCE as an object of study and not simply as a prescription that educators and trainer-researchers are in charge of implementing, then we must be able to dissociate it, even temporarily, from any particular political philosophy. In other words, a truly comparative approach should be able to take into account several perspectives in political philosophy.

Indeed, despite some appearances conveyed by GCE narratives, there is no obvious logical link between what is 'global', 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism'. Neo-liberalism is also global, although not genuinely multicultural, at least not according to Nancy Fraser for example. Similarly, the Islamic State bases its actions on the (global) *Ummah* while offering its members a citizenship under Islamic law. Admittedly, the neo-liberal perspective should be rejected, and even more so the ideology of the Islamic State. However, focusing on the global level is not necessarily the best way to achieve this, since it does not have the monopoly on social justice, openness to others or tolerance (Joppke, 2021).

Essentially, despite what many of its proponents may say, GCE is much more about scale than it is about a particular philosophy. Here is a list, established by Oxley and Morris (2013), of currents associated *de facto* with GCE. A tag author is associated with each of them, in order to offer a clearer indication of these currents' meaning.


This overview shows that the scope of GCE is about as broad as the field of citizenship education in general. Far from being limited to values of openness, tolerance, peace or connection between people, GCE is primarily a consequence of the change in the scale of action of nation-states in the context of globalisation policies. Additionally, this movement is far from unambiguous, because the nation tends to slip back in through the window when it is chased out the door, as the French saying goes.

The notion of global citizenship is not without its critics, having been criticized as being unpractical and 'too abstract' to generate the emotional and moral energy needed to galvanize action and make changes. The idea of a world state is further problematized, with Parekh arguing that such an entity is more likely than not to be "remote, bureaucratic, oppressive and culturally bland". […] [The] recognition of citizenship as the primary mode of individual and collective identity and the tangible duties it entails [makes it necessary to] ground the 'free floating' global subject in space and time. Globally oriented citizenship thus parallels national citizenship on two counts. First, it refers to political activity and empirical assumptions to do with law, justice and rights. Second, it depends on an 'imagined community' of people sharing the same transcendent human values of humanitarianism, respect, justice and nonviolence […]. For some theorists this means uncoupling nationality from citizenship and promoting global citizenship and responsibility. For others it demands a deepening of one's democratic citizenship of a nation. (Matthews & Sidhu, 2005, p. 55)

The statement echoes previous investigations on collective entities. To what extent is it possible to uncouple citizenship from national reality, even if it is enlarged (federation, international conventions)? What are the consequences of an under-theorisation of this aspect, resulting in a GC described as "remote, bureaucratic, oppressive and culturally bland"?

Debates on the Republic, multiculturalism and liberalism revolve around these issues. Some consider that post-industrial societies are based on a new mode of integration making traditional nation-building institutions obsolete (Luhmann, Beck). Others continue to see national integration as a key element of democratic identity (Durkheim, Joppke). In GCE debates, we have the choice to explore one or the other of these avenues. However, the work tools developed in this book invite us to go down the second one. Hence, the agenda is not just to convene political liberalism to

criticise republican dogmatism in light of [post-national] identity claims. It is also a question of considering the capacity of republican thought to reveal the limits of the liberal perspective and to offer its own way to meet the challenge of multiculturalism. […] Among these works [falling under this renewed republicanism], the most relevant to clarify the nature of the 'societal culture' and its role in the actualisation of citizenship are those that do not dissociate the issue of ethnic [and cultural] diversity from the problem of national integration. (Guérard de Latour, 2009, p. 24)

A general analysis of the pre-service teachers' and senior education advisors' reflections, after they took part in the GlobalSense exchanges, can illustrate this point by showing that the focus of these reflections tends to vary depending on the participants' context of training. In the following excerpt from a self-reflection, a student teacher analyses the different ways they and their peers from another country (in this instance, the US) handled the instruction to imagine a lesson plan on migration:

To me it felt like the Americans were trying to stay on the surface of the matter and avoid any heated debate, where I wanted to engage my students in a core discussion, and examine the complexity of the issue. I guess the differences has to do with the question of how sensitive the topic is in the public view. (Noa, pre-service teacher, HUJI, Israel)

Depending on the countries, as has already been mentioned, participants either focused essentially on the influence of the national context on the way people approach the topic of migration (participants of NU (France), TUP

(USA) and HUJI (Israel)); or on the necessity to use emotions such as empathy and sensitivity (FUB (Belgium) and WUE (Germany)).

It is interesting to underline the fact that the participants all express a certain awareness of the limits of a national framework, though those from Brussels and Weingarten are less constrained by them, going directly to an emotion-based approach indicating they do not feel limited by a strong national narrative. However, from a deeper analysis of the data consisting in noting what the participants' second point of focus was, distinctions emerge inside these two groups. Concerning the former one, we notice that NU participants tend to mention developing their students' critical thinking and the benefits of using an interdisciplinary approach to global issues, whereas HUJI and TUP participants rather comment on the importance of using emotion, primarily empathy, to approach global issues in the classroom. While this is in part due to an influence of their teacher training, we notice an evolution in their approaches after the international exchanges.

Nonetheless, in the other group (FUB and WUE), characterised by a main emphasis on this use of emotion, participants then either focus on the need to develop students' critical thinking and the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach (FUB) or, in the case of WUE participants, on the importance of facts and rational thinking. The NU participants are the only ones who do not develop an emotion-based approach on migration. This is due to a specific training in disciplinary didactics linked to the fact that history and geography teachers are, in France, those usually in charge of Moral and civic education, the field that is most in line with the GCE ideals. The place of emotions is less important in history and geography than in other disciplines, which includes notably religion (WUE), social studies (TUP), philosophy (FUB).

#### **10 Student Teachers' Nuanced Perspectives in Global Education: Balancing Emotions and Critical Thinking across National Context**

The reflections of the participants following the online student exchanges highlight a divergence in focus based on their training contexts. Participants from different countries exhibit distinct emphases: those from NU (France), TUP (USA), and HUJI (Israel) concentrate on the influence of the national context on addressing migration issues, while participants from FUB (Belgium) and WUE (Germany) prioritise the use of emotions such as empathy and sensitivity.

Exchanging with peers from other countries in order to grasp different, less local ways of apprehending global issues seems to them an interesting and stimulating idea:

I also learned from these exchanges how, considering different countries, we all deal differently facing migration issues. But in every case, it raised my views showing me different faces of these issues. On geographical, economic, political points, every country has its particularity so we can have a wider view of our own when considering the others. (Victor, graduate student in Philosophy, FUB, Belgium)

Through the international exchange, I became aware that a country's law and morality are bound to each other and that this has to be addressed accordingly in the classroom as well. (Saskia, WUE, Germany)

Conversely, a student teacher underlines the fact that official curricula can be framed at a national or local level, giving teachers little flexibility in the content of their teaching.

The only issue is in Belgium regarding GC we have to follow programs. And they are too old for what we are facing today. I will try to even if it isn't in the program. (Manon, graduate student in Philosophy, FUB)

An observation emerges regarding awareness of national frameworks: participants from Brussels and Weingarten see them as limitations, while those from Nantes, Jerusalem, and Philadelphia do not.

The Belgian and German focus on the use of emotions suggests their interest in approaching issues from a global scale for several reasons. By prioritising emotions such as empathy and sensitivity in approaching global issues, they indicate a recognition of the interconnectedness of diverse cultures and experiences on a global scale. Understanding and incorporating emotions in discussions about global challenges implies a desire to bridge cultural gaps and connect with individuals from different backgrounds. Furthermore, by expressing insights gained through the international online exchanges, such as recognising the interconnectedness of a country's law and morality, they express an understanding of the global implications of local decisions and the need to address these interconnections in the context of education.

A deeper analysis of participants' secondary focuses reveals distinctions within the two main groups. Nantes University (NU, France) participants prioritise developing students' critical thinking and advocating for an interdisciplinary approach, whereas Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI, Israel) and Temple University of Philadelphia (TUP, USA) participants emphasise the importance of emotion, particularly empathy. In the second group, centred firstly on emotional engagement, Free University of Brussels' (FUB, Belgium) participants stress the need for critical thinking and interdisciplinary approaches, while Weingarten University of Education (WUE, Germany) participants highlight the significance of facts and rational thinking.

In short, the participants' self-reflections reveal nuanced perspectives. Student teachers from FUB (Belgium) and WUE (Germany) emphasise a global scale through emotions, whilst also highlighting the need for rational and critical thinking. On the other hand, participants from NU (France), TUP (USA), and HUJI (Israel) focus on the national context, especially migration, while also (in the case of the two latter), also acknowledging the importance of an emotion-based approach to global issues. This diversity in approaches reflects nuanced understandings.

#### **Notes**


## **The Progress of Modernity**

 *Nominalism, Conservatism, Socialism*

As mentioned above, the point of this work – and of debates on GCE in general – is neither to uncritically adopt GCE, nor to rigidly reject it. Rather, our objective is to include prescriptions and recommendations on GCE, as well as their promoters, in our analysis. We wish to identify the political criteria that give substance to what remains for now a vague notion, in order to prevent its co-optation by interests and ideologies.

To progress on this aspect, we turn to Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge to distinguish three typical motifs of modernity: liberal, conservative and socialist. This triptych provides an overview of the process of modernising societies, as modernity progresses1 through an educational shift towards the global level, as expressed by GCE. We will show that part of the debate on GCE crystallises around the Mannheim triptych; and we will then suggest, with Karsenti and Lemieux, that the socialist motif has a more reflective status than the other two. This will allow us, in the end, to justify our whole posture: our relation to values, critical republicanism, an inseparably sociological and philosophical approach, and a society project which is clearly situated in ETS.

The argument can be summarised as follows: many GCE proponents adopt a nominalist motif, which, by de-emphasising the national totality, and though it is a vector of the ideal of individual autonomy, does not try hard enough to think about the conditions of this autonomy, thus potentially aligning with a neoliberal fantasy (Kaufmann, 2010). In reaction, some thinkers embrace a conservative motif, arguing that global citizenship does not exist, even as an ideal. According to them, the mere idea is absurd. However, in doing so, they overemphasise the national reality, using a pseudo holism that refuses to question the arbitrary link between citizenship and nation (Spector, 2021), made even more manifest by current globalisation policies. A posture that questions both previous motifs, has richer resources to interrogate the postures of the educator and the researcher. The critical republican motif, as a version of the socialist motif, thus emerges.

Yet, instead of the liberal motif in Mannheim's work, we shall discuss a liberal-nominalist motif, to distinguish it from general political liberalism. For as we have said, the latter is hard to separate, in several of its versions, from critical republicanism and it admits the principled existence of collective entities, such as 'the people' (Rawls, 1999). In addition, we have suggested that the question remains open as to whether a Republican such as Pettit would not rather be a Liberal who 'internally' problematises his own tradition, by rewording the liberal egalitarianism of Rawls or Dworkin (Larmore, 2001). In short, refusing to associate liberalism and nominalism too closely, the focus here will be on the liberal-nominalist motif as a subcategory of the liberal motif.

#### **1 The Liberal-Nominalist Motif: Become a Competent Global Citizen!**

Within GCE, diverse currents and controversies exist. The point here is not to synthesise them, but to detect the clashing of the three aforementioned motifs. To this end, let us explore James Banks' arguments, one of the most prominent figures of multiculturalism in GCE, considered a 'founding father' of so-called multicultural education. Banks emphasises the importance of "helping students acquire cosmopolitan perspectives and values, necessary for global equality and justice". To this end, he emphasises four dimensions of citizenship: civic, political, social and cultural. Under the latter, the author includes many elements, including race.

Citizenship education should also help students to develop an identity and attachment to the global community and a human connection to people around the world. Global identities, attachments, and commitments constitute *cosmopolitanism* […]. As citizens of the global community, students also must develop a deep understanding of the need to take action and make decisions to help solve the world's difficult problems. […] A transformative citizenship education also helps students to interact and deliberate with their peers from diverse racial and ethnic groups. A transformative citizenship education also recognizes and validates the cultural identities of students. […] Equal status between groups in interracial situations has to be deliberately structured by teachers or it will not exist. (Banks, 2008, p. 135)

The author's point is, with the laudable goal of 'structuring' an equal status between racial groups, to make them visible by organising interactions in class on the basis of the racial parameter, legitimised as the cultural identity of the students that the teacher must 'validate'.

Two issues remain unclear. Firstly, the exact link between cultural identity and racial belonging is ambiguous. Skin colour can be considered as a culture (one can claim one's black culture as an effect of one's black skin, by taking into account the ways it is perceived in a given environment), but this is far from always the case. Secondly, how can the goal of removing race as a pertinent public criterion – ultimate objective of any anti-racist policy – coexist with such strong emphasis being put on it in the classroom (Sabbagh, 2011)? These questions are challenging and specific to the United States' context; furthermore, it is not our intention to solve them. Nonetheless, on a more general level, Banks seeks to find what is a difficult balance for multicultural nationstates. On the one hand, under the praiseworthy pretext of not essentialising cultural and racial identities, the latter are defined, from an explicitly postmodern perspective, as fluid, multiple and moving.2 On the other hand, the insistence on the need for recognition and validation of these identities (by the teacher) tends to stabilise them.

Banks' educational ideal is therefore placed under the sign of the recognition of students' 'diversity', in order to make them aware of the fact that self-identity and identity of others are 'co-relative' and 'co-creative'. This would make them likely to engage in the world as global citizens. Yet it begs the question of what allows students to nurture a relationship of choice regarding identities? To clarify this point, the author establishes a scale of identities, from the 'cultural' to the 'national' and then the 'global'. The first link, cultural, is considered subnational.

Only when the national civic culture is transformed in ways that reflect and give voice to the diverse ethnic, racial, language, and religious communities that constitute it will it be viewed as legitimate by all of its citizens. Only then can citizens develop clarified commitments to the nation-state and its ideals. […] Students cannot develop thoughtful and clarified national identifications until they have reflective and clarified cultural identifications, and they cannot develop a global or cosmopolitan identification until they have acquired a reflective national identification. (Banks, 2004, p. 302)

This passage is underpinned by a liberal, and therefore national, conception of diversity (ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious) that must be able to express itself in society ('give voice'). Nevertheless, according to the same passage, a reverse movement must also take place: the nation-state proceeds from this diversity (ethnic, religious, etc.) once it has been recognised and 'reflected' in civic culture and once the students have clarified their 'cultural' identifications. This statement is interesting, but leads to the following question: how can one clarify one's cultural identity without an already established relationship with individualism as a characteristic value of modern societies, in other words, of nations?

Banks is well aware of the problem, but answers it in an allusive way: "A delicate balance of diversity and unity should be an essential goal of democratic nation-states …. Cultural, national, and global experiences and identifications are interactive and inter-related in a dynamic way" (Banks, 2004, pp. 296, 301). However, this type of evidence needs to be clarified. For the question remains of how diversity proceeds from unity and vice versa. It is not clear that the answer in terms of "delicate balance" of "interactions" and "dynamic interrelationships" is sufficient. Rather, it may actually blur the issue.

#### **1.1** *The Overlooked Reckoning of Individualism as a Value*

Indeed, if the 'global community' is the educational horizon ("help students develop an identity and attachment to the global community"), it remains that the relationship of choice with regard to identities (co-construction, cocreation, fluidity, etc.) does not take place within the framework of such a vast totality as the global community. Rather, it happens within a more restricted entity that provides its grammar, such as the characterised American political community, in a manner similar to the societies of Western Europe, through hyper-individualism and the cult of the person referred to by Tocqueville, Durkheim and Dumont.

Admittedly, individuals may choose identity elements (cultural, etc.) from all over the world; but the world community, assuming it exists (as Banks argues it does), is not individualistic to the same degree, nor in the same way as societies of Western Europe and North America, unless western individualism is projected onto the world community, at the risk of adopting a colonial perspective under the guise of diversity. Moreover, to choose elements of one's identity (such as cultural), is to have towards them an individualistic relationship, thus standardised by a liberal society. The identities of which Banks speaks, are in fact transcended by the individualistic ideology that makes up the body of our particular societies: these identities have become objects that one can choose.

Therefore, Banks' educational model presents a gap between the totality and its parts. The national totality provides one side of the argument, making it possible to place identities under the sign of individualism; while the other side of the statement features a world community that is not characterised by the cult of the person, typical of western societies. This hiatus is certainly not prohibitive; on the contrary, it might be fruitful. Nonetheless, is it enough to approach it by invoking a vague balance between unity and diversity?

Balancing unity and diversity is a continuing challenge for multicultural nation-states. Unity without diversity results in hegemony and oppression; diversity without unity leads to Balkanization and the fracturing of the nation-state. A major problem facing nation-states throughout the world is how to recognize and legitimize difference and yet construct an overarching national identity that incorporates the voices, experiences, and hopes of the diverse groups that compose it. Many ethnic, language, and religious groups have weak identifications with their nation-states because of their marginalized status and because they do not see their hopes, dreams, visions, and possibilities reflected in the nation-state or in the schools, colleges, and universities. (Banks, 2008, p. 133)

It is hard to disagree with these generous words. However, they do not suffice to dismiss the ideal of political liberalism, which Banks criticizes for too often implying 'assimilationism'. Indeed GCE takes, under his pen, a pseudo radical appearance, dismissing "assimilationist, liberal and universalist" approaches, accused of not taking sufficient account of the migratory processes and of requiring citizens to "give up their first languages and cultures to fully participate in the civic community of the nation-state" (Banks, 2008, p. 130). However, by failing to scrutinise the conditions that make individualism possible – and though this provides the basis of the argument on postmodern identities – it becomes difficult to identify the originality and coherence of the multiculturalist path advocated by Banks in the field of GCE (Levinson, 2010).

#### **1.2** *Multiculturalism's Propensity for Nominalism*

Granted, universalism, liberalism and assimilationism can go hand in hand and it is legitimate to denounce any assimilationist perspective that dons the robes of universalism, in order to better hide its conservatism. However, if the word liberalism has any meaning, it seems unlikely that it could be both assimilationist and liberal, or assimilationist and universalist, or liberal while requiring that citizens abandon their first languages and cultures. Banks implicitly concedes this point, suggesting the impossibility of circumventing the liberal values of his own nation: "The national community should embody democratic ideals and values, such as those set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights" (Banks, 2004, p. 299).

However, failing to further conceptualise the civic community (ultimately referred to as the world community), Banks' multiculturalist apparatus leads him to portray a fairly individualised global-citizen commitment. For it is the individual himself who in the end is supposed to become the promoter or even the guardian of world justice, from the moment he has acquired the expected skills in terms of global citizenship and has carried out his work of identity co-construction. It is why Banks embraces a *de facto* nominalist perspective. This is a recurring problem in the postmodern current with which the author sides. Indeed,

The postmodern perception of culture, nation or even society as potentially essentialist is based on their definition as a collection of identical individuals, a radically individualistic and reductionist definition. Because it is then within the individual body that the different cultural traits (ideas, subjective morality, relationship to objects, and even physical physiognomy) can mix. (Vibert, 2015, p. 129)

This point must be emphasised because it is customary to think that multiculturalism is necessarily anti-nominalist. Does it not consist in recognising collective entities such as cultural, religious, ethnic communities, etc.? Certainly, but authors who start from a postmodern postulate, such as Banks, take for granted the radical individualisation of identities (while admitting the existence of tribalisation phenomena as a perverse effect of hyper-individualism). Therefore, under the guise of talking about groups, they refer to differences that can be expressed on the surface once the value of moral individualism has been fully shared.3

As we have seen, this value is truly societal, even if its content refers to the individual. Failing to realise that may entail the risk of portraying a non-social individual, typical of postmodern multiculturalism. The communities referred to by Banks, promoter of GCE who succumbs to the nominalist bias, are thus collections of primarily non-social individuals.

The concept of 'community', far from being an outdated archaism, therefore follows as its shadow – a shadow that appears intermittently – the process of individualisation that characterises the deployment of "modern ideology" [Dumont, 1983], a set of representations and value-ideas centred on the primacy of a moral, autonomous and primarily non-social individual. (Vibert, 2004, p. 362)

Essentially, postmodern multiculturalists, as well as nominalist liberals, stage *a posteriori* collectives (Kaufmann, 2010) whose political realities are reduced to the interplay of intersubjective and therefore inter individual relations. In doing so, they conceal the *a priori* collectives that nevertheless make the very notion of the individual imaginable, notion that Durkheim saw emerging in the cult of the person, proper to modern societies.

This inability to consider *a priori* collectives invites us to wonder if global citizenship education is not a vague slogan, at the crossroads of different discourses that can be mobilised, among others, by government lobbies that have an interest in highlighting two elements. On the one hand, the inevitability of globalisation as it has occurred (since citizenship is called 'global' under the *aegis* of a 'world community' that supposedly already exists); and on the other hand, the importance of training citizens adapted to this new reality, from a cultural and economic point of view. It may then be that GCE, in some of its versions,

ironically turns out not to be a global project for all, but a more localised political project, led by some countries promoting the social imaginary of globalisation for their own purposes […] by transcending and concealing other local alternatives and perspectives: non-global or antiglobalisation. (Mannion, Biesta, Priestley, & Ross, 2011, p. 450)

#### **2 Conservative Motif: Against Cosmopolitan Abstraction, Be One with the Nation!**

The lack of conceptualisation of the (usually national) political community that shapes conceptions of (global) citizenship education explains why in return, proponents of the Conservative motif absolutely reject the idea of global citizenship. They argue that the only viable educational framework is the nation, whose principled reality guarantees a system of rights and duties towards well identifiable fellow citizens, who can therefore not be projected onto the indeterminate field of the world.

#### **2.1** *Legitimate Reminder of the Political Society*

The principle of the welfare state is often invoked in this regard. By guaranteeing a certain fairness on a territory, thus being an undeniable lever of true citizenship, this principle involves reciprocal social compensation, depending on each person's contribution, that is to say on the contribution of each fellow citizen as an identifiable member of the political society. As a result, social aid granted to certain categories of economic migrants is based on the principle of reciprocity between contribution and compensation in variable territories. These are sometimes European (hence the idea of European citizenship) and sometimes global but, in the latter case, there are also conditions of competence and/or financial autonomy as in the typically globalised Australian, Canadian or British point systems (Joppke, 2021). The contours of national and federal political societies, and the shadows they cast on a global scale, are clearly outlined here.

Acknowledging this association between citizenship and territory, itself a reflection of a historical and political sedimentation, the conservative motif in citizenship education hardly consists in 'recognising', and even less in 'validating', students' identities. The question is first to admit the principled fact of the nation-state, itself likely to spare the expression of cultural and ethnic identities within the framework of a more general system of rights and duties: non-discrimination, freedom of thought, freedom of worship, compulsory schooling under so-called national values, etc.

Let us be clear: conservative does not necessarily mean right-wing, xenophobic or assimilationist. The retained meaning, more nuanced and deeper, is Mannheim's: it is a question of preserving the 'social' as modernity threatens to break it down. The conservative motif is therefore properly modern in the sense that it attempts, like the socialist and liberal-nominalist motifs, to understand and accompany the social. A conservative stance, in this sense, is not necessarily conservative in the strictly political sense.

The question then remains to what extent the culture associated with the state can be 'preserved' and legitimately recognised. If the proponents of the conservative motif criticise the notion of global citizenship because it operates a denial of the national totality, it remains to be seen how they give consistency to the latter, not only from a descriptive point of view, but also normative.

#### **2.2** *Illegitimate Reminder of the Ethical and Cultural Community*

As in the previous section, the point here is not to synthesise the debates, but to focus on a typical author whose work has undeniable resonance: in this case, David Miller. Being a philosopher gives him an external position to social sciences, from which he rejects the idea of global citizenship, because of the primordial nature of the duties due to one's co-nationals as members of the same 'ethical community', separate from human beings as such who are outside of it (Miller, 2002). The conservatism of the argument is fully revealed in its appreciation of the majority religion that the state would be entitled to recognise as a symbolic guardian of its legitimacy, including in the eyes of religious minorities who, according to the philosopher, would perceive the recognition of a particular religion by the state as an act of esteem towards religious values in general (Miller, 2020).

Although this argument is presented as belonging to liberal nationalism, which is enduring in the Anglophone context, it is similar to the so-called French 'republican' arguments of Pierre-André Taguieff and Dominique Schnapper, already criticised in their time in the name of a critical republican perspective (Laborde, 2001). In fact, just as Miller assumes that the nation-state can explicitly rely on a majority religious identity, the French republicans who advocate the conservative motif have hardly taken note of the catholic-secular imbalance, favourable to compromises with Christianity (private schools under contract with the Ministry of education, exceptional status of Alsace-Moselle) but much stricter regarding Islam, especially since the prohibition of the ostensible wearing of religious signs by students of publics schools (Laborde, 2008). Thus, figures of French classical republicanism,4 despite their displayed secular commitments, join arguments expressed in the name of liberal Anglo-Saxon nationalism. For the former as well as the latter, adopting the same conservative motif, citizenship can in no case be global.

The Conservative argument is not irrelevant. Its advantage is that it is factual, precise and careful in its choice of terms, especially with Miller as an analytical philosopher. The factual background provided does not make it easier to identify these 'global' citizenship and community that some claim to seek and/or bring about – not to mention those who believe they have already found a global community. Indeed, lawful and regulatory systems are at best federal or inter*national*. One can deplore this reality: is it not despairing that states, even associated, are not able to 'globally' face global challenges? However, does this current disability in itself prove that another (global) scale would be more relevant?

Liberal nationalists have doubts about this. In 2019, Yael Tamir published a book entitled *Why Nationalism?* Her answer was clear and provocative: because nothing else work.

Though it seems reasonable to assume that global challenges demand global institutions, in reality, international collaboration starts with the state. To begin with, it is important to note that presently, there are no effective global institutions. […] The fact that no state is powerful enough to make a global difference does not prove that any other political entity can replace it. (Tamir, 2020, p. 540)

Certainly, GCE proponents do not argue that a global entity should 'replace' nation-states. However, Tamir's argument that "international collaboration starts with the state" reminds us, against the nominalist motif, that the main actors at the global level are not individuals but states. On the other hand, if burning problems have a global dimension (wars, climate change, nuclear proliferation, migration, access to water), then it is these problems, not citizenship, that are global. Thus, they deserve to be treated on a global scale, which is why citizens around the world need to be sensitive to them, becoming globally concerned citizens – but not global citizens.

Finally, while some subjects need to be dealt with on a global scale, others are likely to be better dealt with on a national scale, allowing for instance the levying of taxes intended for the redistribution of wealth, the construction of public infrastructure, and even the development of armies capable of defending liberal countries (and therefore liberal principles).5

I do not want to deny that the responsibilities of citizenship change as we move into a world in which co-ordination at a global level on issues like climate change becomes increasingly vital. So we do need to reconceive citizenship, though not, I have argued, by changing the central arenas in which it is practiced. Not the global citizen, but the globally concerned citizen, is the ideal we should be aiming to promote. (Miller, 2012, p. 242)

However, the argument has its limits, because this "central arena" of citizenship depends on how states are able or not to defend individual rights. What are the duties towards the nation as an "ethical community" (Miller) if the nation fails to respect the rights of minorities because of their ethnicity, their (non-)religion or their sexual orientation? The conservative motif here reveals its weaknesses. What to do when social aspirations are not satisfied with 'liberal nationalism', as practised in a given state? The nation-state is in fact only one 'ethical community' among others and this is reinforced by transnational flows of people promoting commitments to transnational communities.

Hence, what is lacking in the conservative motif is the dynamics of modern societies and the evolution of the aspirations of their members under the effect of deepening individualism. The conservatives fail to grasp the status of the state as an organ of social thought and not as a mere community, elements that the members of the French School of Sociology had however perceived.

#### **3 Questioning the Citizenship Framework**

To complete Mannhein's triptych, we have to identify the missing motif, in other words the socialist one, which one could also label the critical republican motif, in view of the issues addressed here. Its strength, according to Karsenti and Lemieux, is that it is the product of a reaction to the other two, the conservative and the liberal-nominalist, while they emerge in reaction to a single motif.

Indeed, if one follows Mannheim, liberal-nominalism opened the adventure of modernity, as a reaction to traditionalism. It showed that collective entities (the state, the monarchy) are not inscribed in a timeless order, but are human conventions that can be questioned and even eliminated. Conservatism is, secondly, a reaction to liberal-nominalism: the point being to preserve the collective entities that hold the social body together, which is irreducible to individuals. It is important to understand that both motifs are profoundly modern. The mistake would be to say that Liberal-nominalists 'destroy' the social order and that Conservatives are 'reactionaries' in the pejorative sense of the word.6

This understanding allows us to study from a greater distance the arguments exchanged between some supporters of GCE (become a competent global citizen!) and their conservative opponents (against cosmopolitan abstraction, be one with the nation!). The third motif, socialism, has a different status.

The trihedral they form [liberal-nominalism, conservatism and socialism], is modernity itself. The point therefore is not to choose between them, to privilege one by hoping that it wins and erases the others. The trihedral is necessary, and in it the question is to know which dominant is marked, knowing that its hegemony can never go so far as to erase the presence of the other two, each being determined by this relationship. […] One of these ideologies, socialism, tends to produce more reflexivity than the others […] Socialism is neither the project of a despotic state, nor that of a state's downfall, but that of a state that is constantly democratising itself […] to render this utopia possible that can be called 'the self-direction of society'. (Karsenti & Lemieux, 2019, pp. 142, 156)

Therefore, the question is not to find a median, lukewarm and comfortable way. The challenge is rather to rehabilitate an overlooked notion, covered by the first two reasons described above, and to find a Durkheimian track that has the means, in education, to handle the imperative of reflexivity that is specific to the socialist motif, to which critical republicanism belongs. Two steps are therefore necessary. The first is to identify the reflexivity tools within GCE. The second is to place, with Durkheim, the educational ideal at the centre of the approach. Because the triple figure of the philosopher, professor of sociology and professor of education science is not due to an institutional coincidence: it has a true coherence.

#### **3.1** *Making Multicultural Education Coherent*

The socialist motif in GCE appears as we unfold the apparent paradox between individuation, totality and plurality, in a Durkheimian vein already established in political theory (Guérard de Latour, 2014). To approach the socialist motif, we must first refuse the conservative reaction. The identities of which Banks speaks (multiple, diverse, hybrid) do not reveal a maladjusted relationship to national citizenship that the conservative motif intends to restore under the auspices of (a more or less liberal) nationalism. The profusion of identities in question rather attests to the deepening of individualism specific to modern societies: to be able to choose one's identity. However, before being the sign of alterities that the teacher should recognise and validate (as advocated by Banks), identities can only take place within the framework of the totality, that is, the political society, which makes them possible as individual attributes. Indeed, "we are told that our identities are plural. But I can only have several identities if it is me – one and only individual – who owns them" (Descombes, 2017, p. 17).

This is precisely what Banks' approach fails to emphasise, and is the reason multicultural education remains a "conceptual mess" (Levinson, 2010, p. 428). Brought to fruition, the logic of the recognition and 'validation' of identities reduces social relations to intersubjective relationships (Rochex, 2020), which refers, despite the insistence on 'communities' and 'cultures', to a liberalnominalist approach. It is therefore necessary to prioritise the objectives of this type of educational approach. What would the criteria be for 'validating' the identity of students "coming from a culture that values 'assertive' or 'macho' boys but denigrates girls for being 'authoritarian' or 'aggressive'?" (Levinson, 2010, p. 431). Counter-intuitively, 'recognising' and 'validating' minority cultures could be easier in culturally segregated environments, since the teacher can then adapt to their audience; while "the more a class of students is culturally diverse, the harder it becomes to teach in a culturally congruent manner" (Levinson, 2010, p. 431).

Certainly, any multicultural thinker would be highly dismayed by the argument that (ethnic and/or social) segregation might actually facilitate multicultural education. However, it is the conclusion that logically imposes itself as long as we consider individualism more as a given than as the product of a political society – or even a societal culture if we follow Louis Dumont. By failing to grasp this reality, the risk is to project oneself onto a totality that does not exist (the world community) and to find on arrival what had been "postulated at the beginning: the global individual, detached, free, light … and empty" (Vibert, 2015, p. 129). In short, a global individual, but not a citizen.

Thus, the question shifts. As presented by Karsenti and Lemieux, the socialist motif, as a reaction to the two other constitutive ideologies of modernity, offers an additional reflexivity. How can it be implemented? First, by admitting that students already know how to distance themselves from society to feature (cultural, ethnic, etc.) sub-groups to which they belong or wish to belong. In doing so, they are in line with individualism as a value making up the substance of our liberal societies, whilst testing the current framework of citizenship. Being in line with 'a whole' on the one hand, putting it to the test on the other: holding both sides of the problem is not easy. This is evidenced by the fact that this tension, explored by Durkheim, has been concealed in sociology, a discipline that has largely embraced nominalism (Callegaro & Giry, 2020; Rochex, 2020; Urfalino, 2021).

In summary, the risk with 'identity recognition' and the vague promotion of 'diversity' is of reducing social relations to inter subjectivity. Therefore, one must overcome the opposition between, on the one hand, liberal-nominalists forgetful of the 'third-party registry' under the pretext of identity recognition, and on the other, conservatives hypostasising this reality in the form of identity nationalism.

#### **3.2** *Reflexive Postures in GCE*

We have emphasised above that GCE is not particularly multiculturalist, neo-liberal, Marxian, postcolonial, religious (etc.), since approaches to global citizenship extend across the spectrum of political opinions. In this, Banks' approach is not sufficiently reflective, because it equates GCE and multiculturalism. Admittedly, politically, it is better to be open, tolerant, to fight injustice and accept 'diversity' than to be neo-liberal – although these various orientations can also be combined (Joppke, 2017). However, on a conceptual level, associating GCE with the multiculturalist ideal is confusing. How is neoliberals' approach of citizenship less 'global' than Banks'? To solve this sort of problem, social science research might explicit its specific socialist gesture, especially when it comes to thinking about education.

Sociology, in France at least, has seen its destiny linked to pedagogy and education. Durkheim was a teacher of pedagogy throughout his career, which is not a coincidence. […] In this regard, the extreme modernity of socialism lies in the fact that its educational ambition is to ensure that every individual, whatever their place in society, is able to study the practices of the groups in which he or she participates, with an autonomous judgment oriented towards the question of social justice. The ambition is also that, by doing so, this individual is able to demonstrate a minimum of reflexivity on his or her groups and on those of others. Thus conceived, access to education becomes the means for all to learn to distance themselves from the heritage received – not in order to reject it, but to relate to it differently. (Karsenti & Lemieux, 2019, pp. 157–158)

The socialist motif differs here from the liberal-nominalist one, emphasising "the heritage received" that governs modern societies. However, these elements of totality are not rigorously conceptualised in Banks' work, even though they underlie his model, exposed from then on to the severe criticisms of Levinson. Conversely, conservatives do not accept that one can distance oneself from the national heritage received. One can note this in Miller's support for the recognition by the state of a majority religion. It can also be found in Schnapper's backing – as president since 2018 of the Council of Elders on Secularism (French Ministry of National Education) – of the prohibition of ostensible wearing of religious signs by parents accompanying school trips, thus supporting a majority heritage rigidified by the state.

However, leaving the field of GCE to find reflexive resources pointing to the socialist motif is unnecessary. They primarily involve a critical relationship between researchers and trainers themselves, with respect to the categories they use. Such an approach comes from the *Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education*, which consists in recalling that global citizenship, often legitimised by the cosmopolitanism of Diogenes, has local roots, not only Greek, but also marked by the perspective in *I* of the famous sentence attributed to the latter: "I am a citizen of the world". The subject of the sentence is centred on the (European) individual who is supposed to integrate the world from his own perspective. The cosmopolitan paradox here is obvious. It consists, from a localised point of view, in separating the world into several categories. On the one hand, individuals who claim to not be rooted, and on the other, rooted individuals. Yet, is cosmopolitanism not about bringing people together? Let us be clear, this is not necessarily an *impasse*, but it is at the very least a serious paradox that needs to be dealt with as such.7

Moreover, the focus of many GCE currents on migration and the right to universal hospitality ignores the fact that

I owe to some arrivals more than hospital treatment; furthermore, the framework of hospitality obscures what we might owe to those who, having remained rooted, are never met [by the cosmopolitan] as newcomers […]. Cosmopolitan reflections around hospitality fail to ask research questions that would challenge both narcissistic and empathetic identifications of the western 'I' (self-described or self-prescribed as nomadic) with the fellow traveller (the moving other). (Papastephanou, 2018, p. 182)

This critical analysis alone cannot resolve the tensions mentioned above. However, the point of it is to question internally, in the *Handbook* dedicated to the subject, GCE itself, by asking: to what extent could GCE be the fruit of a particular vision of the world? The question therefore is not about being for or against GCE, because such a question replays the foreseeable oppositions, perceived by Karsenti and Lemieux, between proponents of the liberal-nominalist motif and the conservative motif. As a way out of this quarrel, it is necessary to include the prescriptions and recommendations on GCE and their promoters in the analysis.

#### **4 A Republican Interventionism Limited to the Educational Sphere**

In short, critical republicanism differs from the liberal-nominalist motif as well as the conservative motif, and signals towards the third path of socialism. What then of Durkheimian republicanism? Deeply anti-nominalist, Durkheim was not satisfied with an opposition between the individual and society, because the deepening of the 'cult of the human person', according to him, was a matter of social totality via organic solidarity that was supposed to reconcile differentiation and interdependence. If the resulting diversity was, for Durkheim, especially professional, there is no need to confine it to this aspect. Cultural diversity is also an element of the evolution of social solidarity and we can consider it, in return, as "the engine of a profound transformation of national identity" (Guérard de Latour, 2009, p. 240).

However, a point of divergence between conservative and critical republicans lies precisely in their reading of Durkheim. According to Schnapper, the latter had not foreseen that forms of mechanical solidarity, of the pre-modern type, could resurface in societies marked by a major division of labour. However, according to Guérard de Latour, the problem of our liberal societies does not lie in the supposed return of undesirable mechanical solidarity: in reality, the problem is that the division of labour is not integrated and regulated in a sufficiently coherent way.

On the one hand, discriminations (in employment, housing, educational guidance) are not compatible with a harmonious division of labour, because their persistence is due to rules that correspond to a previous state of division of labour. On the other hand, the need to be recognised for who we are – and what we do – is heightened, writes Durkheim, when the division of labour is important. Therefore, citizen manifestations of recognition of cultural authenticity, racial identity (etc.), do not go against organic solidarity but are on the contrary an effect of the latter. That is why there is no need to play the republican ethic against the supposed return of mechanical solidarity. The challenge is rather to best accompany the inevitable deepening of the division of labour, by promoting the 'communication circuit' mentioned previously between state and society.

In other words, if Durkheim had clearly seen the pathologies of modern society, he did not think it appropriate to explain them by posing the costly hypothesis of a return to a mechanical solidarity, a hypothesis conversely made by Schnapper, more recently in a book under the direction of Bernard Rougier (2021) on *The Conquered Territories of Islamism* (*Les territoires conquis de l'islamisme*). Instead of a conservative republican morality claiming to stand on the side of organic solidarity to counter the supposed return of mechanical solidarity, we need organs to shape collective thinking and to connect different social demands: Durkheim "saw the state as a regulatory body that does not impose rules from the outside but merely codifies norms that emerge naturally from the division of labour" (Guérard de Latour, 2014, p. 154).

That being said, it is possible that the "contemporary explosion of a neopatrimonial [type of] local solidarities", based on local custom, language, ethnicity or kinship, also reveals an inadequacy of republicanism, itself driven by the Durkheimian belief in an Hexagonal exceptionalism, having supposedly constituted one "same group [which] is both state and nationality", due to national centralisation, the French Revolution and the rationalist education that would result from it (Birnbaum, 2018, p. 223). This is therefore an exercise in thinking with Durkheim against himself.

On the one hand, his national-republican belief no longer holds. But on the other hand, there remains his thought of the state as an organ of clear thinking, regulating, codifying the new norms and rules that emerge naturally from the division of labour and new social aspirations that do not fail to accompany it, even in the form of local solidarities that some equate with pre-modern mechanical solidarity. We see how the critical neo-Durkheimian and republican approach we seek to build is not an *ad hoc* undertaking for working on GCE.

#### **4.1** *The Social Totality as an Engine of Pluralism*

Finally, the critical republican position is to say that school education is a focal point for shaping society. If Durkheim did not believe in the return of mechanical solidarity, deeming the division of labour irreversible, he stressed however that one cult brings together the humans of modern societies: the cult of the individual, also called 'cult of the human person'. Moreover, this cult is similar to mechanical solidarity. It certainly has an increasingly focused content: as Durkheim says, the collective consciousness tends to be reduced to it. Nonetheless, it remains anchored in a concrete social reality, especially the nation, as the author affirmed in *Individualism and Intellectuals*.

The individualist, who defends the rights of the individual, defends at the same time the vital interests of society; for he prevents the criminal impoverishment of this last reserve of collective ideas and feelings [whose object is moral individualism] which are the very soul of the nation. (Durkheim, 1898/2020, p. 286)

The socialist motif and its critical republican declination thus make it possible to give coherence and consistency to the multiculturalist version of GCE. On the one hand, the too rapid projection into a non-existent 'global community' explains why the proponents of the conservative motif reject the very idea of GC and rightly recall the principled reality of the nation. On the other hand, the conservative motif, in which classical republicans and some proponents of liberal nationalism are inscribed, does not sufficiently admit the reflexive scope of social sciences. Indeed, is the ideal of GC not already an integral part of ordinary conceptions of citizenship?

The socialist way, as Karsenti and Lemieux point out, responds simultaneously to the two preceding motifs: before recognising identities, it must be admitted that they derive from the 'cult of the person' specific to modern societies. This cult of the person is not a given, because it requires the inclusion of citizens in a political community, which is *defacto* national and is important to promote (Laborde, 2001; Levinson, 2010), whilst taking into account the reflective capacities of actors. This includes those of researchers and trainers, who themselves redefine and question the traditional frameworks for exercising citizenship from a possibly global perspective.8

#### **4.2** *The Presence of the State in Teacher Training*

The Durkheimian gesture makes full sense in a research on teacher training, of which the state remains the privileged body, even if its reality is diffuse, contested or adapted to local contexts. Indeed, the state, in the Durkheimian approach, must not be reduced to its central organs such as the government, the National Assembly or the judicial system. Its presence is also manifested in everyday life, in France certainly, with flags (school *façades*, charter of secularism in blue-white-red colours), the symbol of Marianne (in town halls, on postage stamps, in administrative documents) or, in the GlobalSense research, through prescriptions, circulars and national examinations. The fact that the state also passes on international recommendations does not change this reality.

The presence of the state is one of the most salient issues in the GlobalSense research. The goal is to set up a training device that is common to the five countries, under the disputed label of GCE. However, each team has more or less leeway to do implement this device, depending on the local relationship of trainers, but also of pre-service teachers, to the state. Thus, the national civil service entrance examinations remain significant in France, with direct consequences on the relationship between the professional groups constituted by teacher trainers and their students, who are pre-service teachers and future senior education advisors (*conseillers principaux d'éducation*).

In the meantime, the margins of manoeuver towards GCE are greater in Germany. This is due in part to the regulations already covering this subject, but also to the proximity to these professional groups of the federate states, who have their own Ministry of Education. Nonetheless, proximity is not necessarily synonymous of simplicity. The German GCE is driven by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the translation of requirements to the Ministries of Education come with its challenges.

The modern state is therefore not univocal and its sociological definition includes people's reflexivity. Exploratory interviews with the trainers enlisted in GlobalSense from a teacher-training college of Nantes University in France show how the state is:


We will see that the relationship to the state, at least the national conception of citizenship and the division between private and professional spaces, is apparent when preparing students for the GlobalSense training scheme. To show this, we will present here a part of the device in chronological order. As an introduction to the entire educational process, the consortium of five countries chose to ask the pre-service teachers (primary and secondary levels) the following series of questions:


This list of questions is a compromise: the research and training teams from Nantes and Brussels had contested questions 2 and 3. Firstly, they argued that inviting students to explore plurality of identity by means of a surname seemed simplistic. Secondly, that since surnames are generally patrilineal, this question renders the feminine 'inheritance' invisible by arbitrarily focusing the attention on fathers.

These reservations explain the compromise made in the third question, which nonetheless does not change the fact that the device is introduced with a link to the respondents' names, suggesting a pedagogical link between surnames and pre-service teachers' inheritance. That being said, the barrier turned into an opportunity, as students' responses revealed their differentiated reflexivity and critical abilities.

We can thus study the effects of this approach in GCE, thanks to a written and oral feedback that the pre-service teachers and senior education advisors from the five countries provided us with. Within the limits of this book, many aspects will not be mentioned, such as the lesson plans they produced; the interactions between them (in small groups) to develop these locally; the interactions between students from the different countries during two-hour long videoconferences; interviews with the Nantes University students who travelled to Germany and worked on lesson plans with peers from Weingarten University of Education; teacher-trainers' reflective reports; and the crossinterviews between teacher-trainers from the different countries. The focus, concerning the future teachers and senior education advisors, will centre on the prompts (i.e. the common documents that they filled out before working on the lesson plans) and the self-reflections (or feedback interviews) they wrote right after the zooms. We will start by an analysis of how the participants from Nantes University dealt with the device, before comparing this to their peers from the other countries.

#### **4.3** *The Nantes Appropriation of the GlobalSense Protocol*

Certain situations, during the training protocol, made the Nantes pre-service teachers and their trainers react. As previously suggested, they were interested in the GlobalSense protocol and quickly perceived its central issue. Its aim, at the very least, is to decentre (national) citizenship in order to make it fit its ideological content. Indeed, it should not just concern nationals, seeing as in our modern, individualistic and differentiated societies, citizenship in the full sense of the term is potentially open to all, contradicting the idea of a citizenship reserved for a predefined (national) group. This is due to the deepening of moral individualism, according to which, on a strictly ideological level, nothing decently allows the attachment of the individual to a particular nation:

the normative individual, by definition, has no other social ties than those to which he has consented and from which he can always emancipate himself …. The true 'society of individuals' can only be, potentially at least, a global society. (Descombes, 2013b, p. 214)

However, as soon as the Nantes students had read the aforementioned questions on inheritance and surnames, several of them had strong reactions, that are interesting to grasp in an ethnographic way. One of them was called Lemarchand (a typical French name, meaning the merchant) but, as his name does not suggest, he had dark skin (Métis type according to his testimony). However, of the two criteria (surname and skin colour), the second one is the most important to him, especially in daily interactions. Moreover, he explained that he did not see this ethnic criterion as a legacy, but rather as a stigma placed on him in certain contexts. In short, the student vaguely understood the intention of the questions asked, which were intended to explain the cultural identity of pre-service teachers through their name. However, he could not answer these questions without deconstructing them, and as a result, felt suspicious towards the GlobalSense protocol. His trainers tried to defuse this suspicion, by stressing that it is nevertheless interesting to see how citizenship education can have a different inspiration when it is internationalised.

Therefore, while researchers, members of GlobalSense, wished to take the pre-service teachers as their object, at times it was them who analysed the protocol and, by extension, the researchers. We will see below that in general, the question on names reflecting a so-called legacy was not well received in France, probably due to a republican conception of citizenship, a firm distinction between private and public spaces, and an approach to Moral and civic education through knowledge (more specifically History and Geography). However, this question was not better received in Brussels, probably, among other things, because civic and citizenship education is approached through Philosophy. Hence, the importance of taking into account the fact that the place of 'education towards' is not obvious depending on the country, "particularly in secondary schools where [the teacher] is recruited on the basis of their college education, is specialised, has expertise, and is legitimate because institutionally certified and … passionate about their field" (Barthes, Lange, & Tutiaux-Guillon, 2017, p. 11).

Another important reaction, in Nantes but also in Brussels, revolves around photos (see box below) submitted by the GlobalSense consortium to preservice teachers in order to raise awareness about migration. In France, the secondary school teachers most concerned by citizenship education, via Moral and civic education classes, are historians and geographers. Therefore, they do not really understand the point of these photos that are not contextualised but rather display a type of dichotomy: migrants, some apparently rejected versus others apparently welcomed. The French students, commenting on what they perceived as the device's artificial aspect, therefore considered it as an object to be analysed: what use are the photos if you do not know who took them, where and when, for what purpose, for what media, etc.?

#### **Extract of Documents Submitted to Future Teachers in the Five Countries**

Before getting started on their lesson plans, pre-service teachers from the five participating countries were asked to answer prompts. One of these said: "Please look at the following pictures and respond to the questions below. Both images depict migrants and refugees gaining arrival into a new country".

The first photograph depicted a half-dozen adults of both genders, with small children, talking to reporters, in front of banners on which was written: 'Humanity first. Resettling Syrian refugees' (the picture can be found by following this link: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ canadian-response-to-the-syrian-refugee-crisis).

The second picture showed roughly thirty young men energetically pulling down a chain-linked fence topped with razor wire (the picture can be found by following this link: https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/ assets/160229104223-01-migrant-crisis-0229-restricted-super-169.jpg).

In this way, the Nantes University pre-service teachers and senior education advisors were able to make sense of the GlobalSense training device, because doing a background research is part of Moral and civic education. Indeed, according to the curriculum, this type of research is part of the 'culture of judgment', essential for exercising an enlightened citizenship: contextualising information, identifying the author's intention according to the context, deconstructing false information, etc.

Hence, it was possible for the Nantes pre-service teachers to find the places where these photos were taken: one in Toronto in December 2015, the other on the border between Greece and Macedonia in February 2016. According to the publication contexts provided by CNN and the Canadian Encyclopedia respectively, the first photo represents a family of migrants, while the other represents a group of migrants. This is why some students went further by questioning, in the feedback interviews, GlobalSense trainers' intentions, as will be seen in the comparative analysis below.

These illustrative testimonies already show that these professional groups in the making (pre-service teachers and future senior education advisors) are looking for a way to self-regulate. We can see traces of this process in all the aforementioned international data that remain to be further analysed (notably the videoconferences and the lesson plans). Our objective is to test a new division of labour that would accompany, in a punctual and circumscribed way, the deepening and deployment of the cult of the human person (in Durkheim's words), for which citizenship and its education can no longer be exclusively national, but must be projected – as much as possible and without cutting corners – at a global level.

As mentioned previously, so far, 36 two-hour zoom sessions have been recorded, in which 312 students from the five countries have participated. In addition, thirteen focus groups of around ten students each have been held, with a total of 62 students providing in-depth feedback. Furthermore, interviews have been conducted with four Nantes pre-service teachers during their trip to Weingarten. In addition, we have the answers of 151 students to the prompts (including the photos above), the lesson plans themselves (106), and 212 self-reflections. Moreover, six cross-interviews have so far been conducted between trainers from the different countries.

Although it is under development, we will present here a salient part of the GlobalSense material corresponding to the first stage of the work provided by the pre-service teachers and future senior education advisors, namely the answers to the prompts. This is the most direct way to see international differences since all students answered the same questions. These concern four out of the five countries: though the German team did fill the prompts, the trainers did not consider them as an analysis material, but simply a pedagogical material for putting the trainees to work. Therefore the answers of the German students were not recorded and do not appear here.

#### **4.4** *The Student Teachers' Perspectives on GC*

The analysis proposed here is only meant to illustrate the general trends and does not disentangle the variables that might explain the data collected (this will be done in further articles). Indeed, participants' responses to prompts can be influenced by many factors, such as the national culture, initial training, the discipline studied, prescriptions; but also by the trainers themselves during the seminars they gave, in the context of GlobalSense, on citizenship education, hence the importance of the cross-interviews between trainers. This is the objective of Workpackage 4 (WP4) 'Towards meaningful practices', which will be completed by late 2024. It unfolds the communication process between trainers from the different countries involved, in order to precisely co-analyse the different contexts and better understand the data in return.

That said, the 'raw' corpus is no less instructive. A striking first fact, from our local point of view (Nantes and France), is that in Philadelphia, unlike in other countries, pre-service teachers hardly ever talk about ecology or climate change. Conversely, the Philadelphia corpus contains original approaches to global citizenship, in the sense that they do not appear in the answers provided by pre-service teachers from other countries. Thus, according to US respondents, GC consists in "stay(ing) up to date with the world news" and, more rarely, in consuming global cultural products.

In my opinion, to be a global citizen is to be an informed and aware person. You have an understanding and respect for the cultures around you and strive to learn more about them. I do see myself as a global citizen. I believe that this manifests itself in my life through my engagement with current events and world news – I try my best to stay up to date on what is going on. I also hope to travel internationally one day to enhance my passion for other cultures and experience them firsthand. (Meghan, TUP, USA)

I would like to say I am a global citizen, as I make an effort to keep up with international affairs and news. In my everyday life, I find myself reading articles about people and events from other places around the world outside of the US. I also consume various media (music, shows, art) from around the globe. (Alexis, TUP, USA)

I have not been far from the east coast of the United States, but I would say yes, I see myself as a global citizen. I use the internet everyday and listen to music from countries all around the world. (Dylan, TUP, USA)

The complexity of the data is not fully restored here since we focus, for comparative purposes, on the elements that do not appear in other countries. How can they be understood? First of all, Temple University students wish to obtain a Pennsylvania Certificate in Social Studies or in Citizenship Education that will allow them, according to their specialisation, to teach several subjects in secondary school: 'civics and government', 'world history', 'geography', 'economics'. However, we must also take into account more general parameters linked to the American nation: several students, sensing its isolationism, wish by contrast to look towards the world: "I try to be a global citizen. I make an effort to try to stay informed about the world and not just the USA bubble" (Evan). That being said, by the students' admission themselves, trying is not always the same as succeeding.

I definitely understand the importance of globalism and being a global citizen, yet I think that my understanding of history has been quite centered on America, so it makes me feel like I'm living in a bit of a bubble. I don't have family/friends that live outside of the country, so in that way I don't see myself as a global citizen, but I understand the importance of being one. (Leah, TUP, USA)

Despite this mixed feeling that emerges in US responses about being truly a global citizen, the vast majority of the Philadelphian pre-service teachers say they understand the point and importance of the notion of global citizenship, even if they sometimes define it in a very specific way: "stay up to date", "events happening globally", "travelling", "internet", "consume music and art from all the world". This is not the case for Belgian students, who specialise in philosophy in view of teaching Philosophy and citizenship classes.

I don't have any precise idea of what it means to be a global citizen. I guess today it means something like speaking English and being plugged on the internet. I consider myself [not as a global citizen but] as an European or occidental citizen, because I'm working everyday in the world of this culture: reading Greek, Latin, German, French and English classics and discussing them in an absolutely traditional Aristotelian style. I would like to help my students to think about the questions of today. One of them is the 'globalized' aspect of our world, and the NOTION of global citizenship, the way it is used and the institutions which use it. (Martin, FUB, Belgium)

The Belgian remarks' content is sometimes similar to their American counterparts' (the reference to the Internet for example) except for their irony. This is obvious in Martin's response who reduces the notion of global citizenship to "something like speaking English and being plugged on the internet", in order to better deconstruct it: "the way [the NOTION] is used".

We see the same approach in Djavanchir's answers to the prompts. He highlights his Persian origins (his father fled the Islamic revolution in 1979) and replies that the notion of global citizenship means "maybe being part of a growing system claiming to become universal or global". By emphasising that global citizenship would consist in being part of a system that claims its globality, this student marks a strong critical distance that never appears in the US responses. And reserves are just as present in Matsitsta's answers: she is a resident of Brussels whose bumpy migration path makes it difficult for her to project towards global citizenship.

My family is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am the first to immigrate. For me, this notion [global citizenship] seems very vague and confusing since simply based on the legal framework, I am resident in Belgium but I do not have access to certain rights since I am not a Belgian citizen. How then can I feel like a global citizen? (Matsitsta, FUB, Belgium)

The Brussels pre-service teachers are ultimately the most critical of GCE, as presented to them by the GlobalSense consortium. As for the Jerusalem pre-service teachers, who follow a course in 'civics and social science', they are generally convinced, like the Philadelphians, of the relevance of the notion of global citizenship. However, unlike the latter who bring global citizenship back to a kind of cognitive connection with the world ('news', 'events happening globally'), Jerusalem students keep a potentially ambitious, idealistic, action-oriented and emotional element ('feel solidarity', 'empathetic').

As a citizen of the global [world], I don't feel that we should live between national borders but see every human predicament as if it were mine. I will convey [in my teaching] the concept of global citizenship. I will ask the question what is the meaning to be a global citizen. What is the meaning of the word 'citizen' and what does the word 'global' mean and that one should feel solidarity towards others. (Asaf, HUJI, Israel)

To feel committed and empathetic towards those who are different from the individual. Unfortunately, I don't see myself as a citizen of the world adequately. I believe Israel is a melting pot where the problems that occur in the country remain in the country only. (Noa, HUJI, Israel)

Jerusalem pre-service teachers also often say that, in spite of the ambition they have towards this notion of global citizenship, they ('unfortunately', 'not adequately') do not feel they are citizens of the world. Unlike Philadelphian students, they regularly mention climate, as do the Nantes students, who generally say they have little understanding of the notion of global citizenship, while emphasising its relevance in the specific case of climate change. Some Nantes students say:

I don't find so much meaning in the word 'global citizen', maybe just the fact that we are the inhabitants of a single planet. I don't feel as a citizen of the world, only on an ecological aspect of preserving the planet on a global scale. (Thibaud, NU, France)

For me, to be a global citizen is to be aware of the challenges in our society and challenges for the future. We have together a global impact for the planet and we have to build together solutions. Yes, I'm a global citizen because in my everyday life, I would like to impact climate change with my consumption and my transport plans. […] I talk with others to promote this dynamic of reduction not just for me but for, so to speak, the survival of humanity. (Léa, NU, France)

From my point of view, being a global citizen means first of all having common points, a common culture in particular, and shared objectives, particularly political ones. In my everyday life, no, I don't see myself as a global citizen. Sometimes, in the context of targeted projects, I feel European (this summer I went to Romania as part of a European project) but I have never felt like a citizen on a larger scale, except perhaps on the theme of ecology, which is perhaps one of the subjects that can bring together the greatest number of people. (Évane, NU, France)

Moreover, the Nantes students – half of them future history and geography teachers and the other half future educational advisors – seem to need, in order to assimilate the notion of GCE, to represent a global society that, they emphasise, does not exist. This is a striking difference with the Philadelphia students, explaining why the latter, who more readily assimilate humanity to a community even if it is understood as a collection of individuals, project themselves more easily teaching GCE. Already illustrated in the previous excerpt by Évane, for whom global citizenship implies common political objectives ('shared objectives, particularly political ones'), the Nantes students are looking for a 'global group', as Jessie says below, or 'one body' as Benjamin says, to complete the missing logical link in their eyes.

I don't see myself as a global citizen, because I think the differences of culture, language and civilization still exist in the world and I think it's a good thing. Granted, related to some engagements, it's possible to see a process of globalisation. [But] in my opinion global citizenship does not exist and can't exist for the moment because we are too different  according to our countries or regions. Talking about a global group seems difficult to me. (Jessie, NU, France)

For me, being a world citizen means being one body. It means ignoring borders. So, today, no, I don't see myself as a global citizen. As long as racism, discrimination, states that have an apartheid regime towards populations, exist, being a world citizen will not be possible. (Benjamin, NU, France)

Finally, an important aspect concerns the photos of migrants to comment (those presented above). They are taken seriously by the Temple University of Philadelphia and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem students, who are willing to comment them, while the Nantes University and Free University of Brussels students tend to be very critical of the questions formulated. The Nantes students, especially the future historians and geographers, need to know about the pictures' context in order to carry out this task, as do the Belgian philosophers:

I have a problem pointing similarities that are abstract from their contexts. Sure I notice the absence of woman in the second picture, sure I see some people yelling on the second picture and what looks like a prison grid (or just a grid) with a barbed wire, but what does it mean? Secondly, for the similarities, how can I make guesses only by seeing? I see a lot of people, and some cameras, what else can I say more? (Victor, FUB, Belgium)

I completely lack context to understand the first picture. And 'Resettling' could mean things as different as accepting refugees or sending them back to where they came from. So I can't compare those pics. (Raphaël, FUB, Belgium)

To go further, each team has shared their first analyses in the wondering report which will then allow us to cross the interpretations of this corpus and obtain additional insights into the training situations, different concepts of the teaching profession and national contexts. A text analysis of the self- reflections using the Iramuteq software is also underway, among other avenues of work. In the meantime, we can already measure how much the notion of GCE is primarily a slogan that must be clarified, re-appropriated, reworked locally to make sense in the eyes of the people primarily affected.

As for the controversial question about pre-service teachers' surnames and how this, to some extent, reflects their 'heritage', all Israeli and American students took the question at face value. They tried and sometimes managed to trace this heritage, often linked to the Holocaust in Israel, and to the ancient Irish, Jewish, Polish, Italian or Hispanic (etc.) immigrations in the United States. As for the Belgians and French, their postures are more varied. If they sometimes responded, including in a precise way (for example, one student has a name that means 'salt seller', indicating that an ancestor probably exercised this trade), others refused to go along with this exercise (by answering 'nothing' or 'joke'), or responded by pointing out that their surname does not matter.

More work is needed to interpret these phenomena in a truly hermeneutic perspective (Malet, 2011), while explaining to the consortium members, sometimes surprised by the annoyance the French and Belgian students express, why they are more critical than others are. Conversely, researchers and trainers from Nantes are eager to obtain more details from some GlobalSense members to fully understand the interest of certain issues included in the scheme. All this should emerge, among other things, during the analysis of cross- interviews between trainers.

#### **4.5** *The State as a Reflective Body*

The friction between prescriptions (national and/or related to GCE), specific school subjects that the pre-service teachers are studying and their reactions encourage further reflection regarding the presence of the state. For Durkheim, the role of the state in its partnership with secondary groups was to break with the immediate practical emergencies that workers usually face: this being how they might access a more thoughtful form of thinking that the author called 'collective deliberation'. Conversely, ETS show that what is prescribed, although shaped by the state and its administrations, is translated, circumvented, questioned by workers, in as many steps as needed prior to its eventual appropriation.

However, the 'descent into generality', from the state as a macro-actor towards its manifestations and incarnations in local contexts, is explicitly studied in pragmatic sociology (Linhardt, 2010). Let us return to Durkheimian intuitions in this matter: the reflective state "is closer to men" and establishes with them a "more intimate communication".

It is not accurate to say that the state embodies the collective consciousness, for the latter overflows the state from all sides. Collective consciousness is largely diffuse; there are at every moment multitudes of social feelings, social states of all kinds of which the state perceives only the weakened echo. It is the seat of only a special, restricted, but higher, clearer consciousness, having of itself a more vivid feeling. Nothing obscure and uncertain like these collective representations that are widespread in all societies: myths, religious or moral legends, etc. We do not know where they come from or where they tend to; we have not deliberated them. Representations that come from the state are increasingly aware of themselves, their causes and their goals. They were brought together in a less hidden manner. […] Little by little, through the general movement of ideas, the state has gradually lost this sort of transcendence that isolated it. It got closer to men, and men got closer to it. Communications became more intimate. Government power, instead of remaining inward- looking, has descended into the deeper layers of society, receives there a new development, and returns to its starting point. […] We recognise from this trait one of the characteristics that distinguishes what is generally called democracy. (Durkheim, 1900/2020, p. 115)

The state therefore is a lever of democracy, provided that it is sufficiently reflexive to restore the diffuse consciousness of society that "overflows [it] on all sides", and that it is present in the "deeper layers of society", otherwise it would find its "transcendence" making it – as is unfortunately too common – an instrument for controlling populations. Is the prospect convincing? We have already mentioned its weaknesses. Nevertheless, by taking the reality of the nation-state seriously, all the while considering its evolutions in the context of social differentiation, it allows us to take into account arguments in favour of GCE, as well as those opposed to it. That is why, considering the different aspects articulated by Durkheim (the individual, the political society, professional groups, the citizen, the state, the cult of the human person), the point here is to help clarify the path towards the global level envisaged in GCE.

For this horizon proceeds from realities that a superficial approach of the 'global' level tends to ignore. In GlobalSense, the learners targeted by GCE are not essentially individuals, contrary to what the nominal bias tends to suggest; rather they are citizens embedded in a political society with historical and cultural traits, and in an institutional reality – often that of the state – whose content must be grasped. Is this not what the exploratory empirical material above suggests?

In doing so, we hope to avoid some anti-GCE criticisms, all the more formidable because their relevance is partially admitted, as we have seen, by promoters of GCE aware of the fragility and composite character (between *ethos* and narrative) of their ideal. The program is colossal and this book only sets the framework for future individual and collective research. A first step will be to carry out the GlobalSense program until the end of 2024, ensuring, as leader and scientific coordinator, the complementarity of WP s under the responsibility of interdisciplinary teams: sociologists, philosophers, historians and linguists, who are sure to fuel debate and enrich our educational science enterprise. For if ETS constitute an original epistemic field, they are nothing without their contributory disciplines.

#### **Notes**


## **Conclusion**

The articulation between philosophy and sociology – without reducing one of these fields to the other – suggests that true interdisciplinarity is possible if the philosopher agrees to pay attention to the methods of social sciences and the sociologist, exercising or not in the field of ETS, agrees to appropriate descriptive and normative concepts developed in philosophy. These cross-over attempts are not always encouraged, because of the separation of disciplines in the academic world. They exist nonetheless, including among renowned authors: the philosophers Michel Foucault and Ian Hacking clarified their theses with numerous empirical data; the professor of education science and sociology Emile Durkheim, as well as the philosopher-turned-sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, tried to reword Kantian issues,1 etc. The questions of secularism, republic and diversity in education require more specifically the use of political philosophy, which already maintains a dialogue with social sciences including ETS.

By putting this ambition to work, several questions emerged in the first part of the book. They are vast and difficult. From the point of view of political philosophy, how can we relate to the empirical contributions of social sciences, whilst maintaining a conceptual reflection on principles (liberalism, republic, secularism)? From the point of view of social sciences, how can one interrogate the researcher's relationship to an object, on questions that inevitably engage a normative judgment, if only because they are legally codified? Though these complex questions do not receive a definite answer in this book, vigilant attention marked the endeavour: though political philosophy would benefit from using social sciences, of which ETS are a part of, social sciences themselves remain powerless regarding certain controversial issues without the contribution of political philosophy. Moreover, they risk dissolving into social criticism, expertise and/or a posture of false neutrality easier to proclaim than to achieve depending on the issues addressed.

Hence the challenge of interdisciplinarity: to clarify conceptual questions, analysed in political philosophy, while confronting them with social phenomena as they occur, that is to say, in a complexity that inevitably goes beyond the delineated theoretical constructions. Accordingly, this book shares the ideals of educational internationalism, that of the IBE extended by UNESCO. It is a matter of taking seriously the idea that education, considered internationally, has a role to play in bringing to life the ideal of a united humanity, one that could eventually share a global citizenship.

However, our particular relationship to this educational horizon is mediated by history. The history of the IBE, as a matrix of educational internationalism, shows how generous slogans clash with the reality of geopolitical power relations, how what is claimed to be neutral is not, and to what extent an endeavour, presented as essentially federative, is the object of disagreements. These difficulties must be admitted, but do not lead us to abandon the project of attaining a GCE.

Rather, they invite us to frame it with the strongest possible tools. These come from the humanities and social sciences – social philosophy, political philosophy, sociology, anthropology – at the service of a research and training project in ETS. This project is materialised by GlobalSense, which both shows how student teachers are driven by a desire to project themselves towards a global citizenship, and highlights the national parameters (cultural, political and related to training) that leads them to adopt a reflexive and collaborative posture on their work.

These elements, taken together, take meaning in a renewed Durkheimian framework, which allows to think all at once the division of social work, cosmopolitanism as an ideal specific to complex societies with a strong organic solidarity, and new working methods at the service of international collaborations that are both committed to a common ideal and respectful of local specificities (curriculum, etc.), as well as the political conceptions of the student-teachers themselves. This last point is crucial since, as we have said, it is not up to researchers to instruct student teachers on what global citizenship is (since the definition is subject to debate, as admitted by UNESCO), but rather for the latter to appropriate a new framework of work which, by its international and collaborative character, follows the contours of the cosmopolitan aspirations of the modern, marked by moral individualism over the deepening of the division of social work, unavoidable according to Durkheim.

We have also taken seriously the fact that citizenship, secularism, nondiscrimination, freedom (etc.), as political and legal principles, are embedded in societies. Pettit's social philosophy is not a fruitful path since his holism is relatively insensitive to social sciences (Urfalino, 2022), but his reflections on freedom, as part of his political philosophy, are more interesting regarding our statement on citizenship. For the author, individuals are free if they form a people where non-domination is guaranteed by a state. The challenge then, in the second stage, is to ensure a non-domination between these agent-groups that are states.

How to apply neo-republican thinking to the international realm? This question needs to be addressed against the background of empirical assumptions about the sort of order that is feasible across the globe […] I consider the question here on the basis of th[e] assumption [that an order 208 Conclusion

of states of the kind with which we are all familiar is more or less bound to continue in existence] because it is hard to see how the world could cease to be organized on a state-bound motif. The concept of freedom as non-domination that is associated with neo-republican theory provides a guiding ideal in the global, not just the domestic arena, and does so even on the assumption that there will continue to be many distinct states. It argues for a world in which states do not dominate members of their own people and, considered as a corporate body, no people is dominated by other agencies: not by other states and not, for example, by any international agency or multi-national corporation. (Pettit, 2016, pp. 47–48)

The influence of Pettit's work undoubtedly explains the reasons why this book examines the ideal of global citizenship education in order to distinguish various components (prescription, ideal, slogan, academic notion, educational ethics) and dig a Durkheimian path. To do so, the book tries to shed light, around this vast object, on all the themes addressed by Durkheim as an essential figure in sociology, philosophy and ETS.

This is why several investigations had to be conducted simultaneously: holism, collective entities, ideology of the modern, collective representations, organic solidarity, the state, individualism, cosmopolitanism. For to study citizenship and its education is necessarily to think of society itself, in all its components and in its aspect that is non-reducible to aggregated individual phenomena.

The stake is vast, but to have it fully in mind is already a first step, and this, with the help of the many works of neo-Durkheimian authors who, opening multiple and sometimes very different paths, have nourished the present reflections, from the nominalist micro-holism of liberal inspiration (Gilbert) to the holism displayed as being socialist. These elements help establish a crystallisation point, that of a cosmopolitan neo-republicanism at the height of sociological stakes. In this regard, one of the most crucial questions was: what status should the nation be granted?

Cosmopolitans in global citizenship education tend to respond that if citizenship is global, then nations are logically secondary elements. And why not? This position corresponds perfectly to the ideology of the modern, as Descombes, who remarked that

the normative individual, by definition, has no other social ties than those to which he has consented and from which he can always emancipate himself …. The true 'society of individuals' can only be, potentially, a global society. (Descombes, 2013b, p. 214)

Except that, according to Dumont and Descombes, one should not confuse the normative individual and the empirical individual, at the risk of suggesting that humanity is essentially composed of individuals, according to a sociological nominalism that is not really recognised but which, nevertheless, runs through the idea of global citizenship as soon as it is approached without the necessary reflective distance. Yet, the idea of global citizenship is available in the holist tradition in philosophy and sociology. In essence, a truly cosmopolitical citizenship education must make GCE a slogan, and it is the holistic tradition in philosophy and sociology that allow this. This perspective leads, as mentioned, to socialism, of which critical republicanism is a part.2

Thus, two pitfalls are avoided. The first one is that of permissible partialism, taking note of the fact that the preference for the nation is in tension with the moral equality of people in general: the identification with the nation, even patriotism, is then permissible strictly to the extent that it does not contradict cosmopolitan morality. The problem is that moral impartiality towards all is impossible to maintain. It would forbid us from preferring to help close family rather than the whole of humanity. More crucially, permissible partialism sees patriotism as a matter of individual preference. However, "to take patriotism as optional, or simply permitted, undermines the commitment to see the wrongs committed by one's own state as falling under one's own political responsibility" (Erez & Laborde, 2020, p. 194).

The second pitfall avoided is that of globally responsible nationalism, which echoes the conservative positions mentioned above (Miller, Schnapper). Of course, the nation is an ethical community and it is only through this path that individuals can be held responsible for the actions of their state (whether single or pluri-national). If it commits injustices in the global framework, its subjects must feel connected to it in order to counter its actions. Globally responsible nationalism would therefore seem an interesting middle way between abstract cosmopolitanism and narrow nationalism, but the problem is that strong identification with the nation is a mechanism that reinforces the denial of injustices. One thinker will produce a narrative saying that the French Empire is not really responsible for the current problems of formerly colonised countries, while another will claim that the dominant national group is in fact the real victim.

The neo-republican approach is more nuanced. Of course, it is the belonging to a political society that awakens the commitment to defend individual freedoms. In this sense, neo-republicans are patriots. They echo Durkheim's intuition that it is modern societies as such, marked by the integrated and regulated division of social work, that celebrate the cult of the human person. This cult is therefore a collective ideology, even if its object is the individual. Nations, in turn, are judged by individuals according to this collective ideology; 210 Conclusion

that is why criticism of the nation does not imply the rejection of patriotism but is a constitutive part of it. Neo-republicanism nevertheless pays attention to groups' claims that they are dominated because it defends, more precisely, the idea of an enlightened self-interest. This is crucial: the best way to defend one's own freedom is to support public institutions that defend the freedom of all.

This neo-republican path, which poses at the same time the necessity of what is collective, or even societal (patriotism), and the critical skills resulting from our modern ideology (the cult of the individual that Durkheim spoke of) is thus also a neo-holist path. This is the missing piece to dispel the confusion that haunts part of the debates on GCE, between nominalism and conservatism. Acknowledging the urgency of clarifying the complex relationships between national and cosmopolitan ideals, social and political philosophy offers social sciences a lexicon referring to collective entities that frame republican principles, while erecting safeguards against any instrumentalisation of these entities in the service of an intellectual and political agenda that undermines individual freedoms. Thus, the cosmopolitan patriotism that Durkheim called for is updated. Its relevance has been confirmed by the Globalsense research program, and could lead to other avenues of work in education and training sciences.

#### **Notes**




Dubuisson, D. (2019). *The invention of religions.* Equinox Publishing.


Fabiani, J.-L. (2016). *Pierre Bourdieu. Un structuralisme héroïque*. Seuil.


Mauss, M. (1968), *Essais de sociologie*. Seuil.



Rosanvallon, P. (2006). *Democracy past and future*. Columbia University Press.



## **Index**


128, 129, 131, 134, 137, 139–141, 143, 146, 158–161, 164–173, 175–177, 180–182, 184, 186, 188–194, 200–202, 204, 205, 207, 209, 210


## **Global Citizenship Education Modern Individualism under the Test of Cosmopolitanism**

### **Sébastien Urbanski and Lucy Bell**

Global citizenship education is an essential topic in an increasingly interconnected world. Indeed the need for inclusive and globally conscious education, embedded in cosmopolitanism, is recognised as a way to prepare individuals to navigate diverse cultures, address global challenges, and actively participate in a globalised world.

Being both scientifijic and political, these challenges require an interdisciplinary exploration of citizenship education, merging sociology, philosophy, as well as education and training sciences. To do this, *Global Citizenship Education: Modern Individualism under the Test of Cosmopolitanism* offfers a framework that integrates Durkheim's holistic approach with critical republicanism.

The book is also rooted in the analysis of data collected through GlobalSense, a research project that focuses on preparing teachers to navigate the complexities of GCE within an international context. By presenting both a theoretical reflection and an analysis of an international training program within universities, this book can be of interest to academics, teacher trainers and (future) teachers themselves.

**Sébastien Urbanski**, Ph.D. (2012), Aix-Marseille University, is an associate professor at Nantes University. He has recently published a book on secularism and discrimination in school contexts, *Laïcité, discriminations, racisme: Les professionnels de l'éducation à l'épreuve* (with Françoise Lantheaume, Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2023).

**Lucy Bell**, Ph.D. (2019), Nantes University, is a postdoctoral researcher at Nantes University. She is the scientifijic coordinator of the GlobalSense research, funded by the European Commission and the Pays de la Loire Region.

Cover illustration: iStock.com/Yakobchuk

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**Sébastien Urbanski and Lucy Bell**

**Global Citizenship Education**

**Global Citizenship** 

**Modern Individualism under** 

**the Test of Cosmopolitanism**

**Sébastien Urbanski and Lucy Bell**

**Education**