'Subject', 'Consumer' Or 'Citizen' - Society Master Essay

 

Are you a 'subject', a 'consumer'… or a 'citizen'? The authors Jon Alexander and Ariane Conrad argue that our societies need a new narrative, and it starts by ditching the stories sold by authoritarianism and consumerism.

The doom-laden headlines of our times would seem to indicate there are two futures on offer.

In one, an Orwellian authoritarianism prevails. Fearful in the face of compounding crises – climate, plagues, poverty, hunger – people accept the bargain of the "Strong Man": their leader's protection in return for unquestioning allegiance as "subjects". What follows is the abdication of personal power, choice, or responsibility.

In the other, everyone is a "consumer" and self-reliance becomes an extreme sport. The richest have their boltholes in New Zealand and a ticket for Mars in hand. The rest of us strive to be like them, fending for ourselves as robots take jobs and as the competition for ever-scarcer resources intensifies. The benefits of technology, whether artificial intelligence, bio-, neuro- or agrotechnology, accrue to the wealthiest – as does all the power in society. This is a future shaped by the whims of Silicon Valley billionaires. While it sells itself on personal freedoms, the experience for most is exclusion: a top-heavy world of haves and haves-nots.

Yet despite the bandwidth and airwaves devoted to these twin dystopias, there's another trajectory: we call it the "citizen future".

Over the past few years we have been researching a book called Citizens, in which we propose a more hopeful narrative for the 21st Century. In this future, people are citizens, rather than subjects or consumers. With this identity, it becomes easier to see that all of us are smarter than any of us. And that the strategy for navigating difficult times is to tap into the diverse ideas, energy and resources of everyone.

This form of citizenship is not about the passport we hold, and it goes far beyond the duty to vote in elections. It represents the deeper meaning of the word, the etymological roots of which translate literally as "together people": humans defined by our fundamental interdependence, lives meaningless without community. It's a practice rather than a status or possession, almost more verb than noun. As citizens, we look around, identify the domains where we have some influence, find our collaborators, and engage. And, critically, our institutions encourage us to do so.

Seizing this future, however, will depend on seeing and embracing a bigger story of who we are as humans. So, how do we do that?

Over the past few years we have been researching a book called Citizens, in which we propose a more hopeful narrative for the 21st Century. In this future, people are citizens, rather than subjects or consumers. With this identity, it becomes easier to see that all of us are smarter than any of us. And that the strategy for navigating difficult times is to tap into the diverse ideas, energy and resources of everyone.

This form of citizenship is not about the passport we hold, and it goes far beyond the duty to vote in elections. It represents the deeper meaning of the word, the etymological roots of which translate literally as "together people": humans defined by our fundamental interdependence, lives meaningless without community. It's a practice rather than a status or possession, almost more verb than noun. As citizens, we look around, identify the domains where we have some influence, find our collaborators, and engage. And, critically, our institutions encourage us to do so.

Seizing this future, however, will depend on seeing and embracing a bigger story of who we are as humans. So, how do we do that?

While writing our book, we have encountered myriad examples of the citizen perspective. Look beyond the headlines, and you soon discover a global, cross-sector phenomenon – and what may look like isolated examples are connected by common themes.

Consider governance. The city of Paris has just approved the creation of a standing Citizens’ Assembly that guides policy, and has committed to distributing more than €100m (£84m/$101m) a year through participatory budgeting. Mexico City has crowdsourced a constitution for its nine million people, while Chile is in the midst of a citizen-driven Convention to develop one for the entire nation. In Reykjavik, game designers have built a participatory democracy platform that has brought hundreds of people into the operation of the city.

Perhaps most impressive of all, Taiwan showed the world a way through the pandemic, building its response around three principles – Fast, Fun, and Fair. This led the Taiwanese government to open its data, run challenge prizes for apps to track facemask availability (and much more besides), trust people enough only to restrict movement on the basis of "participatory self-surveillance", and even create a hotline that any citizen could call with ideas for what more could be done. The result? One of the lowest case-fatality rates in the world, without ever imposing a lockdown.

The citizen future is gaining a foothold in the world of business, too. Many businesses now aim to create "stakeholder value" not just "shareholder value". The former CEO of Unilever, for example, set the company a goal to be "net positive" contributors to society. And some of the biggest and some of the fastest growing companies in the world are experimenting with crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. General Electric, for example, routinely crowd-sources solutions to some of its key challenges. And the Body Shop cosmetics brand has instituted a pioneering Youth Collective as part of its governance structure.

Much more is going on below the conventional radar, rooted in business models that are built to spread rather than scale. Platform co-operativism (where Airbnb and Uber face competition from companies like Ride Austin and Peepl Eat, whose customers are also their owners) and equity crowdfunding (blurring the line between shareholder and customer and powering established businesses like Brewdog and new kids on the block like Yuup) are examples of such underlying models.

The citizen future is also taking shape in the nonprofit sector, as organisations reimagine themselves as enablers of citizen-led movements. In the UK, organisations like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and Friends of the Earth are re-orienting their strategies towards participation, coming in behind campaigns rather than starting their own. Greenpeace USA is embracing a more collective approach, seeking to be, in the words of chief executive Annie Leonard, "a hero among heroes". A new platform called Restor allows grassroots nature conservation projects from all over the world to plot their impact, connect and collaborate.

At the same time, community groups are rejecting the old models of aid and charity, and finding local solutions instead. Community share offers, for example, are a UK innovation that makes it simple for local people to invest in their own communities. In Grimsby in northern England, a group called East Marsh United have just successfully completed a £500,000 ($602,000/€594,000) community share offer that will enable them to buy 10 houses, create local jobs to refurbish them, and then let them out as a social landlord, creating a sustainable revenue stream for the rest of their operations.

And if there is one citizen who stands out above all in this whole story, it is Kennedy Odede: a man who started with a football and street theatre in one of the slums of Nairobi and has grown his organisation Shining Hope for Communities to a scale where it enabled over two million slum dwellers to support one another through the pandemic. It even plays host to a nascent World Communities Forum, a more collective alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks Jon Alexander and Ariane Conrad, BBC.