Готовый перевод с сохранением структуры:
Open Class for the course “My Community: From Local to Global”
On Friday, May 1, we held the final session of the course My Community: From Local to Global in the format of an open class.
Such classes are a wonderful format, because they make it possible to bring together those who have already mastered the main material — and who speak the shared language of the discipline being studied — with those who came to Nomadic University for the first time, drawn by the specific topic of the class or simply wanting to “get acquainted” and see in person how Nomadic University lives.
We always begin such classes with an extended introduction around our common nomadic table, where everyone brings something tasty, so the table is full of treats — and the meeting becomes warm and heartfelt 🙂
Open classes are attended by lecturers from other courses, graduates of previous cohorts, and everyone who simply read about us in Afisha Batumi. We are happy to welcome everyone; people are eager to get to know one another and talk about themselves — and this is especially wonderful to see in a course dedicated to Communities!
The topic of the class was a very sensitive one: we examined how civic identity is formed, using the familiar example of “Soviet identity.” Through a series of propaganda images that filled our lives, we recalled what they actually meant to us. It was especially valuable that several Georgian citizens were among the participants, sharing the specific features of “Sovietness” with a “national accent,” and explaining how Georgian identity intertwined with the feeling of the “greatness of the Soviet person.”
We also recalled how this greatness began to rapidly collapse under the pressure of shortages of ordinary goods and food crises, when products were distributed “by ration cards.”
However, the concept of the unity of the people, a single common goal, the need to serve the Motherland, and the inadmissibility of deviating from the common path along which the Party and the government were leading the country had been very firmly embedded in mass consciousness. And here comes the important point: there were also those who did not agree with this imposed unity, who developed a different identity for themselves — and were deprived of Soviet citizenship by the Soviet state and persecuted as “traitors to the motherland.”
We recalled some of them, the most famous ones, while looking at their portraits: what allowed these people “not to give in,” to build their own civic identity that did not coincide with the current instructions of the Party? All of them were morally greater than the belonging indicated by their Soviet passport; they were citizens of the world.
We discussed what it means to be a global citizen in practice.
If one wants to participate in governing the affairs of the world, one needs to understand how this world is governed — and this is the focus of an entire field of knowledge and practice: global governance.
We examined the “architecture” of global co-governance as the constant intersection and interaction of multiple global and regional actors and mutual obligations between them: intergovernmental organizations, commercial corporations and associations, and non-governmental citizens’ associations whose work concerns everyone — from the state of the environment to the protection of vulnerable people, or those resisting violations of citizens’ rights in their own country.
We analyzed this using the example of a specific organization, Amnesty International: who it consists of, how exactly it works, how it is governed, and how it manages to influence governments, corporations, and intergovernmental organizations.
All participants had many vivid examples of the work of global organizations that influence specific lives, including here in Georgia. One can join the work of such organizations right now in order to truly become a global citizen, a citizen of the global world. This is exactly what we wish for all our graduates! 🤓
