A Cosmopolitan Resistance to Anti-Globalism: Centering Using Human Rights and Sustainability in Citizenship Education

Abstract

The article explores how notions of cosmopolitanism and human rights can be used to interrupt current political movements that seek to undermine global efforts toward peace, justice, and sustainability. After outlining how cosmopolitan orientations can raise critical consciousness and promote the global perspectives needed to address humanity’s most pressing issues, human rights education (HRE) is offered as a framework to approach these topics in social studies classrooms. With a focus on the potential of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to support aims of global citizenship education (GCE), curricular suggestions center on three dimensions of sustainability:  cultural preservation, environmental justice, and peacemaking. By globally contextualizing local civic action, this article also demonstrates how students can situate themselves as cosmopolitan actors within their communities by emphasizing the interconnectedness of human rights and sustainability. To illustrate the integration of these concepts with civic education, SDGs and UN rights doctrines are explicitly linked to NCSS initiatives and social studies standards. Ultimately, this article aims to provide theoretical and pedagogical guidance for instruction that navigates contested conceptions of citizenship and recent movements toward nationalistic social studies education, which undermine the role of democracy in civic engagement.