Global citizenship: climbing out of the box

Abstract

Central to many models of global citizenship as a graduate attribute is the
notion of competent cross-cultural exchange. These models often generate
what might be termed a market view of culture in which cross-cultural
exchange becomes a swop shop of apparently readable differences. Often
these differences will concern faith, nation, dress, cuisine, business
conventions and manners. There may be truth to the representations of
differences of this kind but the danger is in reifying them into a system of
classification that cannot handle a more complex understanding of difference.
This article offers a contribution to the debate about such complexity.