Postpolitical consumer education or repoliticization of transnational civil societies?

Debates on Global Learning and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) stress the importance of global engagement in civil society and the possibility to influence global policies by changing individual consumer behavior. The paper will examine two related questions. The first point to be considered is, in which way people (especially students) are addressed as cosmopolitan citizens instead of (or in addition to) national and transnational citizens, for example European Union Citizens? One potential reason for a revival of the normative orientation to cosmopolitanism can be seen in the ongoing economic, social-ecological crises and in the increasing lack of democratic legitimacy in the EU as well as in its member states. But the obvious assumption that global problems can only be handled on a global scale could also lead to misleading educational objectives. Of course, the very idea of cosmopolitan citizenship has had an important influence on the development of human rights policy (and in International Law, as limited as it may have been). But until now there is no realistic perspective for a cosmopolitan democracy, in order to deal with actual global crises like climate change, poverty, or migration. The second part of the paper will document exemplary analyses of curricula and educational policy on the understanding of a cosmopolitan dimension in Global Learning and ESD-Programs. The leading question is how far those programs and curriculum-recommendations (e.g. the new “Orientierungsrahmen für den Lernbereich Globle Entwicklung”, Bonn 2nd edition 2015) are reduced to the individual dimension of sustainable “consumer citizens”, intercultural competencies and (private) social responsibility. Or, in which way global power conflicts and a lack of democratic representation and participation on transnational policy regulation (like climate policies or free market agreements) are at stake at all in Social Science and Political Citizenship Education.