Respect for persons and for cultures as a basis for national and global citizenship

After distinguishing several ways in which the notion of the moral roots of citizenship and citizenship education can be understood, this paper focuses on the question ‘Is there some underlying attitude that citizens should have towards their fellow citizens?’. It argues for respect, rather than love or care, as being the appropriate attitude, in part on the grounds that the emphasis on respect helps to make moral sense of the notion of global citizenship. The rest of the paper argues that while understanding a person’s cultural background is necessary to respecting the person, there are two further connections between respect and culture. First, respect itself is in part a cultural phenomenon. Secondly, there is a case for saying that persons should respect, not only other persons, but cultures as such. It is argued that this case is flawed in its presupposition that distinct cultures can be identified. What is needed, rather, is respect for human cultural contexts in all their diversity. Introduction The idea of the moral roots of citizenship and citizenship education is open to a number of interpretations, as will be clear from the articles in this JME special issue. This openness to interpretation is already consistent with a certain kind of value pluralism, as is the very fact that it seems natural to speak of the moral roots, in the plural, of citizenship. The kind of value pluralism in question is Isaiah Berlin’s, or something similar (Berlin 1990; 2002): its central claim is the denial that all values can be reduced to one. Such a claim is not committed to denying objectivity to values, or to asserting ______________________________ *Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, LONDON, WC1H 0AL, UK. E-mail: [email protected]