Academic warm-up 3: Like it or not, we are all citizens of the world
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Professor of Social Anthropology at UiO talks about the implications of social connectedness in the world today.
A traditional society or community is generally held together by kinship or unity of place. In an interconnected global world, both of these principles are being challenged.
Connectedness and conflict
Human beings across the world are now tied together through a broad range of networks, from media reports and popular culture to transnational migration, trade and tourism. Many of the conflicts, struggles and controversies characterising the contemporary world are the products of connectedness. Just think about the Euro crisis, political Islam, environmental issues and the terrorist attacks in the USA in 2001 and Norway in 2011.
Think locally, act globally?
Some speak of the tension between the global and the local, but perhaps it is more accurate to speak about different ways of being global. A popular slogan in the 1970s was "Think globally, act locally".
Perhaps it may be turned on its head today: "Think locally, act globally"? The world has become one place, even if its global citizens remain divided by their shared destiny.
More about the Global Citizen lecture series.
More about Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at UiO.
