Global Citizenship Education at a Dutch University College: Latin American Liberation Psychology informing the construction of the other and the self

Eri Park,Sabina Weistra,Marcin Skład

doi:10.24297/jssr.v7i3.6626

Abstract

The Going Glocal project, run at University College Roosevelt (Utrecht University) in the years 2013-2014, has the aim of providing students with more knowledge to reflect about issues of global justice in a society shaped by processes of globalisation and cosmopolitanisation, and thus an increased interconnectedness. Fifteen students attended courses on Global Justice and Activism in Mexico and Global Citizenship and went on a fieldtrip to Mexico during the summer. To answer the questions did the students self-other conceptualisation change? two out of the ten interviews conducted between September and January 2014 at UCR are analysed in the light of Social Identity and Social Representation Theory. The participants, who acquired knowledge about Latin American theory and encountered members of the Zapatistas movement, constructed the other and approached the issues of taking responsibility and knowledge from very different perspectives, thus displaying the diversity of the impact this project had on its participants.

Highlights

In present days people‟s positions can only be understood in global, rather than national, terms, due to increasing processes of globalization and cosmopolitanization, which promote interconnectedness across boundaries and this is why issues of global justice are becoming of concern beyond the national borders (Beck, 2002)
In terms of how the „other‟ was constructed and how their self-concept changed, Orlando constructs the „other‟ as an object rather than a subject, projecting onto him what he does not want to see in himself. He is struggling with acknowledging his privileged position and does not see a link between the fact that he is a man from the West and the ability to take this trip or between the Dutch pension company contributing to the wind-mill project and his family potentially giving money to the fund
Miriam is aware of possessing the power of changing the status quo in the sense that she can contribute to how society shapes hers and other people‟s lives, in a way that seems deeply inspired by Latin American theory and her encounter with members of the Zapastista movement

Summary

Introduction

In present days people‟s positions can only be understood in global, rather than national, terms, due to increasing processes of globalization and cosmopolitanization, which promote interconnectedness across boundaries and this is why issues of global justice are becoming of concern beyond the national borders (Beck, 2002). In the framework of this initiative, the students reflected upon their social representations of the „other‟, their position in the global dynamics and their identity. In the light of this, the questions this paper aims to answer are the following: did their self-other conceptualization change? If so, how?

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion