Conceptualising a case, casing a concept? Two faces of global citizenship

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the insights to be gained through a comparison of the use of a politically constitutive concept that delineates unlike but connected ‘cases’ of a concept-in-use. Global Citizenship is a concept with increasing currency. This paper compares two different but connected ways in which the concept is being put to work by two different groups to achieve political aims. One is an educational reform movement, the other is a corporate lobby group. Both claim a progressive political platform under the banner of Global Citizenship. Both are trying to entreat people to see themselves as Global Citizens and in so doing change the world through the ‘transformation’ of the self. The Global Citizen created by this education and elite-led mobilisation will ostensibly solve the world's problems through their knowledge of it and make the world ‘a better place’. What methodological issues arise when these two ‘cases’ are compared?.