Citizenship, the global context.

by Anthony Milner, Basham Professor of Asian History, Faculty of Asian Studies, ANU

Presented at Manning Clark House Weekend of Ideas "Australian Citizenship - is it really worth having?", 29-30 March 2008

Perhaps we should consider the regional context of Australian citizenship as well as – or even before – the global context. And I am particularly interested in the potential for dialogue.

Listening to the speakers in yesterday’s panel on Indigenous Australians, and to the way many presenters acknowledged (very properly) the indigenous owners of this land, I wondered if we should have given greater consideration to Indigenous concepts of belonging, and to how certain of these concepts might be brought into a closer dialogue with European understandings of citizenship. Would such a conversation – and we will return to the word ‘conversation’ – be of particular benefit to the appreciation of environmental issues on the part of the European-origin majority in this country?

As I say, however, the dialogue with which I will be concerned is that with societies in the Asian region. When there was talk yesterday about how the proverbial man from space might view developments in Australia, I thought it would in fact be the Asian context of Australia that would be striking. In the rare serious conversations with Europeans about Australia, I often find that the issue which most interests them is the quality of Australian engagement with the Asian region. They ask how well we Australians - influenced so strongly in our political, legal and social thinking by a heritage of European, especially British ideas - relate to societies still often seen as exotic in Europe, and certainly as having resisted Western notions regarding human rights and democracy. How Australia deals with its Asian context, then, is a matter of global interest, and it also goes well beyond how we promote our economic and security interests in the region.

In his first major speech on relations with the region, given for the ANU on 26 March, Prime Minister Rudd stressed strongly the economic dimension of Australia’s interaction with Asian states, but he is well aware of the need to address the value and psychological dimensions. Asian commentators on Australia’s role in the region have themselves drawn attention to the need for a more comprehensive engagement – especially if Australia is to gain a central role in the emerging regional architecture. Approaches to citizenship – to concepts of community, types of belonging – form of course one theme in such a comprehensive engagement. Yesterday, Petro Georgiou insisted that we do not need a government manufacturing identity for Australians in a top-down process, but it might be an advantage to have a government willing to foster public reflection about how Asian engagement might potentially challenge our social values, including those relating to our perceptions of citizenship. It is all the more important to reflect on values – and contrasting values – when we recall James Jupp’s observation at this conference about the way values change over time: how far we have moved today, for instance, from the late nineteenth-century, racist and narrowly Protestant views of Sir Henry Parkes.

Citizenship itself is an idea in motion – we talk now of ‘global citizenship’, ‘flexible citizenship’ (Ong 1999), ‘cultural citizenship’ (Rosaldo 2003) and other forms that go beyond state borders: there has also been discussion of ‘ASEAN citizenship’. Australia is of course not a member of ASEAN, but we do attend the East Asian Summit and it is just possible that we will eventually give consideration to an ‘East Asia citizenship’. Will engagement with the Asian region, we need to ask, demand new thinking in Australia about what ‘citizenship’ can mean? The presence in Australia of a growing Asian immigrant community also raises this issue, encouraging further speculation about whether Australian citizenship might develop in more cosmopolitan (less, European, especially British) ways.

In a recent book the Ghanaian critic, Kwame Anthony Appiah, has written of cosmopolitanism in a way I find helpful. He identifies two strands intertwining in the notion: one concerns our obligations to others; the other strand entails taking seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives. The latter means attending to the practices and beliefs that lend significance to those different lives:”people are different, the cosmopolitan knows, and there is much to learn from our differences” (Appiah xiii). He warns of the problem of speaking of ‘a citizen of the world’: “are you really supposed to abjure all local allegiances and partialities in the name of the vast abstraction, humanity?” (xiv) To return to Alison Broinowski’s paper in this panel, Appiah’s discussion of difference would appear to diverge from that of Arif Dirlik’s insistence that to speak of one’s own civilization is necessarily to insist on superiority over another.

The defining (and recognition) of difference, therefore, can be a step toward a greater cosmopolitanism – including a more cosmopolitan understanding of citizenship. In Australia’s Asian context there must be a premium on promoting dialogue with a range of regional concepts of citizenship – and the dialogue might of course be usefully expanded to cover value perspectives in many other areas. Such an exploration of difference has long been a concern of mine, going back in particular to when I was director of the Australian-Asian Perceptions Project of the Academy of the Social Sciences in the 1990s. In this project – assisted by Jim Jupp, Alison Broinowski and Peter Bailey (all at this conference) and many others in Australia and the Asian region – we analyzed contrasts in values and perceptions in such areas as business ethics, national security and citizenship. We considered contrasts between one Asian society and another, and tried to throw light on what characterizes Australia in regional terms. What were the practical implications of value differences, we asked, in business and security transactions and in the field of immigration? These were important concerns a decade ago, and are probably more urgent today as we become even more deeply implicated in Asian societies and economies. Now, however, I would draw some quite different conclusions from this type of comparative analysis. But let me first give an idea of the material we encountered with respect to the concept of citizenship (Milner and Quilty 2001).

Western perceptions of citizenship have certainly been influential, but in considering influential perceptions in the Asian region we certainly identified important modifications, significant nuances. In Malaysia, for instance, the term for ‘citizen’ carries an allusion to the monarchical unity – the ruler-focused community – of the past. It also conveys a sense of family, and thus is strongly communitarian in inflection. In China the word for ‘citizen’ (gongmin) conveys the idea of a public good – a collective good. It stresses collectivity not the individual and – so a recent article by Peter Harris stresses – still carries some sense of a gentry-centred, elite view of administration and justice. Harris comments that, as in some other East Asian states – even where there are functioning democratic systems – the idea of citizenship “still tends to have a remote, exotic quality, far from the everyday realities of community, business, city, government and state’.

Ethnicity is especially important in much East Asian social thinking. In Japan today, being a citizen continues to convey a strong ethnic tone, though in fact (so my colleague Kent Anderson has explained to me) it is getting administratively easier for long-term Korean residents to be accepted as Japanese citizens. In Malaysia there is a virtual hierarchy of citizenship based on ethnicity – with special rights being given to the so-called indigenous Malays in education, business and the government bureaucracy. The large Chinese and Indian communities enjoy in a sense only a second-class citizenship – something most Australians claim to reject absolutely, although we heard vital negative evidence yesterday in our session on Indigenous Australians.

In a number of Asian countries there is a stress on the obligations of citizenship, rather than the rights. We Australians may criticize what we see as a lack of civic rights in Singapore – for instance, a suppression of freedom of speech – but in the city-state itself there is probably a greater and genuine attention to maintaining the coherence of the community and upholding the principle of civic responsibility. Citizenship there appears to be highly prized. In the 1990s in Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir introduced the ‘loyalty song’ – a national song – that celebrated a single-minded communitarian devotion of the citizen to his/her nation. Australians may be cynical about such endeavours – but a survey of middle-class Malays undertaken at this time did reveal a real suspicion of Western-style individualism and anxiety about what the respondents saw as Western permissiveness and selfishness (Kahn 1997). In Thailand the idea of citizen contains the sense of membership of the Thai race – the term for ‘citizen’ derives from the Sanskrit word for ‘birth’ – and it is in fact relatively easy to retain Thai citizenship despite acquiring citizenship in another country. But Thai citizenship, it seems, must also be understood in terms of Thai monarchical thinking. Being subjects of their king – having this sense of belonging – gives an added communitarian dimension to Thai citizenship, and to the stress on obligation.

What ought we to make of differences in perceptions of citizenship? As Appiah suggests, it is not helpful merely to ignore local beliefs and practices and insist on the vast abstraction, humanity – to insist on a global perspective. Nor are there solid grounds for dismissing Asian forms of citizenship as steps on an evolutionary ladder, leading toward the adoption of the type of understanding that is influential in Australia. In international, intercultural exchanges – as I understand it – it is the respectful recognition of difference that is a vital starting point. The desire for this recognition has been called a driving force in human relations. The failure to give recognition – something which can result from a genuinely high-minded, liberal, homogenizing appeal to the equality of man – can be seen as a harm, a provocation. This is an argument (developed a few years ago by the philosopher Charles Taylor) that is of vital importance – for example, in the handling of Islamic religiosity of various forms.

When I was working on the Academy Project some years ago I think we were fairly well aware of the need to recognize difference; but where I would take a new approach today is in considering the implications for Australia. A decade ago the comparative process, I felt, led to an enhanced perception of the concepts that prevail in our own country, including concepts relating to citizenship. In the matter of citizenship, we were struck a decade ago by Australia’s exceptional (in regional terms) emphasis on the individual rather than the community – and on the rights of the individual (free speech, freedom of assembly and so forth) and the equality of individuals. We also noted that for residents in Australia the acquisition of citizenship was relatively easy in regional terms - and (at the time of the Project) little attempt was made in Australia to spell out for new citizens what citizenship of Australia entailed. This handling of citizenship seemed not merely to be a matter of legal forms but also of political culture, including the stress on individualism. Beyond the issue of citizenship, I should say, the Academy Project – in making comparisons and contrasts between Australia and Asian societies – identified many of the Australian characteristics that were listed yesterday in the session on values. Apart from the individualism, there was the egalitarianism, the skepticism regarding authority, the adversarialism (in politics, the courts, the media) and the stress on freedom – most of these elements in the liberal ideological tradition. Although not particularly remarkable if we are examining Australia in a British or United States context, such characteristics are significant in terms of our Asian context.

A decade ago, it seemed to me, the Academy Project said something about what would happen to Australia itself in a deeper engagement with Asia. There was anxiety in the country at the time, so Hugh Mackay and Judith Brett told us, of a possible ‘Asianization’ of Australia – and the Hanson movement soon brought home the accuracy of their observations. In fact the Project research suggested that ‘engagement with Asia’ and ‘Asianization’ should by no means be confused. Engagement, at least in the short and medium time term, might actually sharpen not threaten our sense of ourselves – of our heritage of liberal ideas. One sign of this sharpening, I thought, was the way the leading Australian historian, Stuart Macintyre, responded to his participation in the Project’s workshop on ‘citizenship’. Some Asian participants who had settled in Australia expressed their appreciation of Australian citizenship, with its freedoms and security, but were surprised at the lack of pride in citizenships shown by most Australians, and wondered why the “test for admission” was not more serious. These Asian observations stimulated Macintyre to ruminate on the history and character of Australian citizenship – in The Academy of Social Science’s annual Cunningham Lecture – and to draw the attention of the Keating government to the way our approach to citizenship was viewed by at least some Asians coming to this country. Both the Keating and Howard did, of course, address the issue in their different ways.

The Howard government was certainly concerned to combine a fairly vigorous economic and security engagement with the Asian region with a defence (and often celebration) of what it tended to see as core Australian values. That government sought to reassure the Australian community that engagement with our region did not mean the Asianisation of Australia. There are problems, however, in assuming this approach can be maintained on a long-term basis. With our deeper engagement with Asian societies, and our strongly growing number of Asian immigrants to this country, issues of cultural and psychological engagement can be postponed but not ignored. In many areas of values and perceptions – not just those relating to citizenship – it will become increasingly necessary to consider the implications of Australia’s geographic and practical relationship to the Asian region. For one matter, we cannot take for granted the continued dominance of Western power in the region.

What, we have to ask, would a decline of United States power in particular mean for Australia – in cultural as well as security and economic terms? How would such a relative decline influence relations within the Australian domestic community, as well as between Australia and Asian societies? I am not sure it will always be an option just to insist on the universal validity of dominant Australian values. And will English prevail as the language of international communication in Asia?

This brings me back to dialogue, and to the suggestion that citizenship – as well as numerous other institutions and values – are always subject to change. In promoting such dialogue – promoting it so as to be able to anticipate and influence change – it may be that having a sharper sense of what we have inherited (the cluster of liberal values that have been and continue to be influential) will help us to think about the possibilities for cosmopolitan adaptation or compromise. Once we recognize difference, as Appiah suggested, the potential for a greater cosmopolitanism is enhanced.

The dialogue itself might best be understood as a ‘conversation’ – a term the philosopher Michael Oakeshott preferred when discussing the building of a community (and I would include here an international community as well as a more cosmopolitan domestic community). Conversation, Oakeshott reminded us, suggests acknowledgement and accommodation. It is a concept that allows for diversity – participants have the space to claim recognition for their particular identities and integrity. But conversation also requires that those on all sides listen as well as speak.

Calling for a conversation about citizenship and many other matters – a conversation within Australian society as well as between Australians and people in Asian countries, and one that reaches beyond the economic matters that have been given such prominence in the Prime Minister’s recent speech – may seem a pretty mild request. But such a conversation may well be demanding.

Consider for a moment the extraordinary fury that followed the Archbishop of Canterbury’s comments about Islamic Law earlier this year. The Anglican Church received some (possibly well-deserved) teasing yesterday – but Rowan Williams has certainly demonstrated courage in addressing matters that must arise as a result of the presence of a substantial Muslim population in Britain (at least two million by now). Citing Abdullah Saeed of the University of Melbourne, he attempted to calm Western fears about the Sharia – attempted, as said, to deconstruct some of the crude oppositions and mythologies concerning Islamic Law. Williams then proceeded to consider the issue of the possible ways in which a religious conscience – not merely a Muslim but also a Jewish or Christian conscience – might be accommodated in English law. He speculated on how the rule of law establishes a “space accessible to everyone” – a space in which people must come to terms with the “actuality of human diversity” and not be allowed to insist on “finality for their own boundaries of practice and understanding”. Williams, I should add, declared that he is uncomfortable with the influential assumption that “a citizen is essentially and simply to be under the rule of the uniform law of a sovereign state, in such a way that any other relations, commitments or protocols of behaviour belong exclusively to the realm of the private and of individual choice”.

It is not possible to go into detail here about the Archbishop’s views and the responses they provoked; but, so far as I can see, the his speech presented a challenge to Muslim Fundamentalists at least as great as that presented to the upholders of English law. The points I want to stress are 1) Williams was trying to promote real dialogue, genuine conversation – extending what seems to me to be genuine recognition to a very broad range of Muslims, and 2) the uproar that followed his speech is a sign of just how difficult it is to develop serious, inter-religious/inter-cultural conversation of this type. Given the size of Britain’s Muslim population, however, is it not inevitable that some such exploratory thinking would take place? And given where Australia sits in the world – and our economic and security priorities – can we avoid such difficult conversations in our own country?

To conclude: the need to explore different perceptions of citizenship in the Asian region – comparing these with perceptions influential in Australia – would seem obvious. Understanding such differences will assist in practical ways, including in the settling of immigrants. But a larger question concerns whether our Australian approaches to citizenship might eventually evolve in ways that recognize the specifically Asian context of this country. As a first step in our public conversation, we might at least need to be more explicit about citizenship – about what we perceive to be the rights and obligations of citizenship – than we generally like to be. Contrary to some advice given yesterday, it may be necessary to become a little less Australian in the way we approach citizenship – to adopt a less laid back, less taken-for-granted, attitude. We must be careful as well about insisting that our views represent universal rather than historically-bound principles: we will need at least to recognize difference.

In practical terms, I certainly agree with Dick Woolcott and Alison Broinowski that we will need to review our monarchical system – among many other reasons, it makes little sense to our Asian neighbours, including to members of Asian societies who have chosen to settle in Australia. Also, as we review our new Australian citizenship test – and it does need reviewing – it would be prudent to undertake a serious investigation of how citizenship is currently understood in Asian societies, particularly those from which we receive most immigrants. We might perhaps repeat, in more systematic fashion, the consultative process in which the Academy of Social Sciences engaged a decade ago.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony 2006: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers (London: Penguin)

Harris, Peter 2002: ‘The origins of modern citizenship in China’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 43, 2, 181-203

Kahn, Joel S. 1997: ‘Malaysian Modern or Anti-anti Asian Values’, Thesis Eleven, August.

Macintyre, Stuart 1993: ‘Rethinking Australian Citizenship’, Cunningham Lecture, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia

Milner, Anthony and Mary Quilty 2001: Australia in Asia: Comparing Cultures (Melbourne: Oxford University Press)

Oakeshott, Michael 1962: Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London: Methuen)

Ong, Aihwa 1999: Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press)

Rosaldo, Renato 2003: Cultural Citizenship in Island Southeast Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press)

Rudd, Kevin 2008: ‘Address to the East Asia Forum, in conjunction with the Australian National University, Advancing Australia’s Global and Regional Economic Interests’, 26-3-2008

Taylor, Charles 1994: ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in Amy Gutmann (ed), Multiculuralism (Princeton: Princeton University Press)

Williams, Rowan 2008: ‘Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective’, Royal Courts of Justice, 7-2-2008