Perspectives on Citizenship and Community

Listening to the Ancient Human

There is a common, flagrant disregard for the past in the digital era, which often leads to the misconception that all modern phenomena are entirely new. In reality, much of human nature in the digital age remains connected to the ethos of previous generations. While tools like email, wikis, and YouTube represent new delivery methods using wireless bits, they are essentially the latest efforts to fulfill the ancient human desire to expand individual and group communication. Ignoring these ancient connections results in a sense of instability, where every new gadget feels like a threat. Many professionals and citizens feel "punch-drunk" from constant innovation because they fail to see that technological invention is driven by the need to satisfy the "ancient human" within, who has long desired community and citizenship. Understanding the historical perspective of these concepts helps simplify complex digital issues.

An Extremely Short History of Citizenship

The term "citizenship" originates from the Latin word civitas, meaning "state" and "membership in that state." Traditionally, citizenship is a legal concept based on association with geographic communities. The laws, politics, and culture of these local, state, or national entities determine an individual's rights, privileges, and obligations. However, while communities have existed for millennia, citizenship as a political and anthropological concept is relatively recent, emerging from centuries of philosophy, trial, and error. The traditional geographically-based definition is increasingly challenged by the concepts of "global citizenship" and "digital citizenship," which imply that physical place is no longer the primary factor in defining a citizen.

The Spartan Experiment: The Orwellian Beginning

Western citizenship can be traced back to Sparta, one of the first Greek city-states ($700\,BCE$). Unlike kingdoms, the Greek polis was governed by a representative body of the citizenry. However, Spartan citizenship was exclusionary and militaristic. According to scholar Derek Heater ($2004$), Spartan citizens were an elite group of warriors trained to control a slave class. They shared meals, training, and economic opportunities while subjecting others to tyrannical rule. This was a classic "Animal Farm" scenario where some were far more equal than others. Despite its flaws, Sparta introduced concepts recognizable today, such as justice, representative government, civic involvement, and the development of community institutions.

Plato and The Republic: Foundations of Virtue and Education

Written in $380\,BCE$, Plato's The Republic is the first major Western literary work to explore community and citizenship. Plato provided the philosophical basis for representative government, marking a break from autocratic rule. He argued that citizens must be virtuous and engaged, qualities best cultivated through state-run education. However, Athens—Plato's city—was still restrictive; representative rights were skewed toward the wealthy, and day workers, peasants, women, slaves, and foreign expatriates were excluded from political rights. Schooling was likewise reserved for the elite classes.

The Roman Empire: Flexible Citizenship and the Person vs. Place

Spanning from approximately $500\,BCE$ to $500\,CE$, the Roman Empire developed a more flexible approach to citizenship status. It featured two primary Tiers:

1. Honestiores: Senators, knights, and veterans. They were exempt from harsh punishments like crucifixion and generally only faced banishment or property forfeiture.
2. Humiliores: Day workers, peasants, and slaves. They faced brutal penalties, including work in mines, the galleys, or being fed to wild beasts.

Uniquely, slaves in Rome could eventually become citizens. Furthermore, Rome expanded citizenship to favored cities outside of Italy, allowing Roman law to cover citizens regardless of their location. This was a revolutionary shift: citizenship resided in the "person" rather than the "place." This established the first hint of universal rights and citizenship that exceeded a local sphere of influence.

Stoicism and the Cosmopolite

Emerging during the Greek and Roman era, the school of Stoicism championed the idea of the kosmopolite, or "citizen of the world." Philosopher Martha Nussbaum ($1997$) notes that Stoics believed every human dwells in two communities: the local community of birth and the "community of human argument and aspiration." This philosophy focused on a higher order of citizenship belonging to anyone with reason and concern for humanity, a precursor to modern global education and global perspective movements.

The Fall of Rome and the Communication Tipping Point

The Roman Empire split in $284\,CE$ into Western and Eastern halves. The Western Empire collapsed around $500\,CE$ due to external invasions, internal bureaucracy, and Christianity. Historian Jean-Pierre Isbouts ($2010$) argues the tipping point was economic: the flight of bullion to the East for luxury goods like silk and spices left no cash to pay troops. Media expert Marshall McLuhan ($1964$) identified another cause: the depletion of papyrus, which crippled Rome's communication system. Without centralized communication, authority collapsed into chaos and intense localism. This ushered in the "Dark Ages," a period of $500$ to $800$ years where legal citizenship vanished, replaced by systems of obedience to the Church and privileged classes.

From Florence to the Enlightenment

Sporadic experiments in citizenship resurfaced in the city-states of Italy. In the $15th$ century (Quattrocento), Leonardo Bruni in Florence conceived of a democracy based on Platonist principles, where citizens enjoyed the protection of the law (res pubblica – "the public matter"). Though the House of Medici honored these principles, rights were still limited to the mercantile classes.

Modern citizenship, however, is a product of the Age of Enlightenment ($17th$ and $18th$ centuries), which prioritized science and reason over superstition. Philosophers like Rousseau and Locke argued that citizenship should be based on an end to privilege and the protection of individual rights. A new social covenant emerged: the state protects the citizen's freedom in exchange for the citizen's support of the state. These ideas formed the foundation for the French Revolution ($1789$) and its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, as well as the American Revolution.

The T.H. Marshall Framework of Citizenship

Scholars like T.H. Marshall classify modern citizenship into three areas of rights and obligations:

1. Civic: Personal freedoms such as speech, religion, assembly, thought, and the right to own property and seek justice.
2. Political: The right to participate in the political process and exercise political power.
3. Social: The right to live a civilized life according to prevailing societal standards.

Core Lessons for Digital Citizenship

1. Virtuous Behavior: Creative and fair communities cannot be fully legislated; they depend on individual priority-setting and personal decisions. This is as true for digital citizens as it was for ancient ones.
2. Balancing Needs: Citizenship requires balancing personal empowerment with community well-being. This is difficult in the "infosphere" where users are often physically disconnected from those they impact.
3. Education: As Thomas Jefferson noted in $1818$, a system of general education for all citizens is necessary to produce an educated populace. Digital citizenship must be taught, not inherited.
4. Participation: Without active engagement, citizenship becomes static. The digital realm is highly participatory, and society must help students use these tools wisely.
5. Ongoing Debate: Citizenship is not just "doing the right thing," but a process of constantly re-evaluating what the "right thing" is.
6. Inclusivity: Unequal social orders create instability. This applies to the "digital divide" (socioeconomic disparity) and school policies that must balance protection with the freedom to practice digital navigation.
7. Media Evolution: Citizenship depends on shifts in media to spread ideas. The Enlightenment relied on the printing press; modern digital citizenship relies on social media.
8. Tie to Community: Citizenship arises because humans naturally congregate. The "ancient human" desire for group ethos carries over into cyberspace.

The Evolution of Community: Three Models

Sociologist Barry Wellman ($1988$) identified three models of community reflecting historical shifts:

1. Solidary Community (Pre-industrial): Intensely local, place-based, and agricultural. While often idealized as small and interpersonal, life was frequently hard and subject to despots.
2. Neighborhoods (Industrial): As systems shifted from gemeinschaft (community) to gesellschaft (society), community resurfaced in urban neighborhoods. Life and work separated as people moved from fields to factories.
3. Personal Networks (Post-industrial): With modern transportation and communication, individuals became the "hub of a wheel," connecting to dispersed people via technology. Community and geographic citizenship began to separate completely.

ISTE Standards: Three Levels of Community

The ISTE standards identify three overlapping experiences of community:

1. Local Community: Geographically immediate and personally meaningful (family, school, town). Actions have visible, unmediated effects.
2. Global Community: Affiliations "beyond self" that include broader social and environmental settings. It focuses on the interconnectedness of Earth as an ecosystem and global technological/human bridges.
3. Digital Community: Groups sustained through electronic rather than geographic proximity. These are chosen based on common needs or interests (e.g., a YouTube channel, listserv, or wiki). They often "feel" local despite being geographically distributed.

Strategies for Developing Global Awareness

To move "global community" from an abstract concept ("ground") to a concrete reality ("figure"), educators can:

• Deepen Web Exploration: Mining the global web for deeper insights into the world.
• Direct Connection: Facilitating international email collaborations or study groups.
• Global Issue Inquiry: Using curricula centered on climate change, intercultural communication, or energy development.
• Ripple Effect Focus: Having students study their individual impact, such as analyzing energy consumption habits and their effect on natural resources.
• Site-based Learning: Using local understanding as a launch point to understand others' relationships with their own homes and ecosystems.
• Balancing Unique and Universal: Recognizing that people are simultaneously more alike and more different than imagined.

Multiple Identities and the Digital Future

Writer Amartya Sen ($2009$) emphasizes that individuals possess multiple identities (local, national, global, personal, professional). Digital community amplifies this fact. Individuals can manage these various identities to build bridges in Virtual Reality (VR) that assist in Real Life (RL). The goal for students is to reach a metaperspective—becoming critical thinkers who are informed, reflective, intelligent, contextualized, proactive, and compassionate in their digital activities.

Questions & Discussion

1. How do changes in digital technology change the nature of citizenship?
2. What perspectives are needed to evaluate the new communities in which we participate?
3. What behaviors and codes of conduct are befitting for citizens in these new communities?

These three questions serve as the guiding force for critical thinking in digital citizenship education.