World Citizenship

In the video we watched in Intercultural Communication on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, I saw people being treated as if they were less valuable than a piece of paper. This is because they were refugees—“internationally displaced persons . . . victims or potential victims of persecution on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, gender, or political views”—who had fled their homelands out of fear (262). Thus, they did not have time to collect papers validating them as fellow humans worthy of equal treatment.

The people in the video were a part of transnational migration, a “movement in which a person regularly moves back and forth between two or more countries and forms a new cultural identity transcending a single geopolitical unit” (259). The reason for this is that they were regularly shunted from nation to nation because of their illegal status. Indeed, as illegals they were actually prevented from getting jobs and often deported.

Paradoxically, one gentleman that we saw actually attain a visa was then restricted from

leaving the country at all. The point is, then, that international laws restricting movement are highly illogical and ridiculously discriminatory. Indeed, Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Barbara Miller refers to this as the “right of return” and explains that it was “elevated by the United Nations to an ‘inalienable right’ in 1974” (273).

However, international laws hardly allow for someone to fulfill their right to leave any country because they are then not allowed to reside anywhere else as full and equal citizens. The most common barrier is that applying for visas or green cards are extremely long, complicated, and discriminatory processes that do not lend themselves to helping foreign citizens that are in poor situations due to violence or a lack of opportunities in their home nations. For example, take a look at who may apply for visas in the United States. The list is limited to visitors, students, workers with a U.S. employer, and people with family already in the U.S. Indeed, the qualifications for a green card are the same—“green card through family . . . green card through a job”—though it does at least include “green card through Refugee or Asylee status.” However, whether or not people are really refugees is still determined by a person with a clipboard when they are “admitted to the United States.” Furthermore, the system is clearly classist. If a person is leaving his or her nation for the fact that there are no jobs and he or she has no money for school, how exactly is it that he or she should legally transition to an area with opportunities? I certainly have no answer for this question, and it seems none of the world’s nations do either.

Thus, in response to this inadequacy of laws was born the World Citizenship movement. It was created by Garry Davis, a former WWII bomber pilot, who stated that:

the essence of democracy is universal participatory decision-making, whereas the essence of national sovereignty, a hangover from the feudalism and the absolute sovereignty of kings, is exclusivity and the non-participation of citizens outside the national boundary. Citizens "belonged" to the nation only while all humans outside that nation were "foreigners," or worse, "aliens."

Indeed, the World Government of World Citizens issues the World Passport which “over 150 countries have visaed . . . on a case-by-case basis.” The passport is founded upon the tenants penned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and “therefore it is premised on the fundamental oneness or unity of the human community.”

What is needed now is a universal acceptance of our shared humanity. To do so, we must abandon our “lifeboat mentality, a view that seeks to limit enlarging a particular group because of perceived constraints on resources” (272). Indeed, one of the most common arguments I hear against Mexican immigration to the United States is that they are taking all of our jobs. However, that is utter crap. Often, illegal immigrants take jobs a citizen would not. Also, an illegal immigrant’s residency in the United States is no more of a threat to employment than the people already living here. Indeed, additional people create a rise in demand which, in turn, leads to a rise in supply and creates more jobs.

Thus, in summation, it does not hurt us, the unduly privileged, to ensure the rights and freedoms of our fellow humans. Indeed, it serves only as a reaffirmation of the shared humanity from which all of our natural and inalienable rights derive. It follows, then, that the only injurious action is to do nothing while the freedoms of our fellow humans are impinged upon, thus debasing the very foundation upon which our own rights and governments stand.

Chapters 3 and 8

Many people tend to drastically oversimplify past and present economic systems. Usually, people tend to think that their current economic system is far more advanced than their ancestors’ economies. However, past systems such as foraging were extremely complex. Also, what most do not realize is that foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, and agriculture are still alive today—even within our contemporary, industrialism/informatics society.

(Old and new economies, as seen through the eye of the modern man.)

For example, consider foraging, “a mode of livelihood based on resources that are available in

nature through gathering, fishing, hunting, or scavenging.” This seems like the mode of livelihood least likely to still exist in our society, right? Wrong. People hunt in the United States a great deal. My Dad, in fact, hunts deer. Thus, he supplements a modern industrialism/informatics system—“the mode of livelihood in which goods and services are produced through mass employment in business and commercial operations and through the creation, manipulation, management, and transfer of information via electronic media”—with foraging, “the oldest way of making a living.”

Indeed, my Dad and I also participate in horticulture, “a mode of livelihood based on cultivating domesticated plants in gardens with the use of hand tools.” We grow squash, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, and other plants. It is, in fact, extremely common in the North Georgia region, in which I live, for people to be both foragers and horticulturalists. These systems also provide for a mode of “personalized consumption” because it leads naturally to farmers’ markets where people buy produce directly from the producer. Miller even acknowledges the farmers’ market system in Cultural Anthropology in a Globalizing World.

In addition, being part of a foraging and horticulture microculture provides a “social safety

net” because of “leveling mechanisms” that are an unwritten part of the society. This leveling mechanism is a “norm . . . an accepted standard for how people should behave that is usually unwritten and learned unconsciously through socialization.” If one person or family has a surplus of a certain meat, fruit or vegetable, then that person is expected to give away the extra. Later, when the people in the sharing circle have a surplus, they will in turn give away what extra food they have. This is a system of “generalized recipricoty”—“a transaction that involves the least conscious interest in material gain or thought of what might be received in return and when the return might occur”—which is a form of “balanced exchange”—“a system of transfers in which the goal is either immediate or eventual balance in value.” For instance, my neighbor Charlotte made peach preserves and gave some to me. In return, a few weeks later, I brought over brownies that I made. She has also given me apples and vegetable plants. So, when I went home to the mountains, her husband asked me to pick up sorghum and honey, the staple items of my region.

Thus, because we are part of a group that shares foraged and grown food items, we are a “band, the form of political organization associated with foraging groups, [involving] flexible membership and no formal leaders.” Indeed, everyone in my group is either “related through kinship,” which comprises most of the group, or they are neighbors or people with whom we have a significant sort of friendship. We even “come together at certain times of the year” around holidays due to “foraging patterns and ritual schedule.” At these times, the men will go hunting either together or by themselves, and the women will have potlucks and exchange food items and recipes. Indeed, we even have an informal “leadership” because it is my grandmothers that host the holiday events.

If someone in the band breaks the norms of our group, they will face the typical small-scale

society form of “social control”—“shaming and ridicule.” Indeed, it is a norm in our group that neighbors should give to the correct person any mail mistakenly delivered to them. Recently, though, my neighbor Marty—who is Charlotte’s sister—gave away my $50 pair of shoes and kept for herself my $25 kayaking gloves, both items that I bought offline. I handled the situation “at the interpersonal level through discussion,” and she paid me back for my items. However, her remediation was helped along by the fact that Charlotte found out what Marty had done and rebuked her.


Apart from modern foraging and horticultural systems, though, everyone participates in the systems of pastoralism—“a mode of livelihood based on domesticated animal herds and the use of their products, such as meat and milk, for 50 percent or more of the diet”—and agriculture—“a mode of livelihood that involves growing crops on permanent plots with the use of plowing, irrigation, and fertilizer; it is also called farming.” All of the food we buy in the supermarket, or anywhere else, comes from pastoralism and agriculture.

Therefore, it is irrational that Barbara Miller should need to make it clear that the model in the book does not “imply a judgment about the sophistication or superiority of more recent modes of livelihood.” This is because all of these modes of livelihood still exist today in our modern society, as evidenced in my own life.