Global justice and educating for globally oriented citizenship

This chapter explores global justice in relation to ideas about global ethics. It commences from the assumptions, first, that the manifest effects of increased globalisation raise serious questions about what, if anything, ethically obligates one to others, and second, that a global ethic requires a foundation which moves beyond empirical claims in order to provide a meaningful ethic for human bonds qua human beings. It is argued that to understand global justice must necessarily involve a conception of the moral relationship between people living beyond national boundaries, and that in order to be meaningful, such an ethic must include a basis for motivation. It is argued that in order to take political-representational dimensions of social justice seriously we must have an understanding of the ethical relationship between humans. To illustrate this point, some key issues regarding a particular form of political-representational justice – dialogical interaction – are explored. Finally, the chapter dentifies some implications of the discussion offered for education for citizenship, and in doing so posits a particular way of conceiving the ‘globally oriented citizen’.