"Citizenship and Agency
Under Neoliberal Global
Consumerism
A Search for Informed
Democratic Practices."
John Buschman
Abstract
This article situates the ethics of information professionals within its contemporary
public and political settings. An information ethics so contextualized
can help promote the kinds of democratic and global citizenships that
are the basis of this special issue of the Journal of Information Ethics. While
this paper cannot fully canvas the issues raised, it can take us some way in
balancing our perspective on the political issues packed inside the goals of
an informed, global citizenry. It proposes a coherent network of concepts
about the political context of the contemporary world by mapping its challenges.
The article reviews the political and public content of the concepts of
global and globalization, citizen and citizenship, and discusses the implied
agency of the informed global citizen. It concludes with a discussion that
draws out some of the broad responses to these contexts.
The call for papers for the Information Ethics Roundtable 20¡4 conference
describes global citizenship as the possession of “knowledges, skills and attitudes
that make it possible … to be actively involved in local, national and global
institutions and systems that directly or indirectly affect their lives” (University
38 Journal of Information Ethics, Spring 2016
Journal of Information Ethics / Volume 25, Number 1 / Spring 2016 / pp. 38–53 /
ISSN 1061-9321 / eISBN 978-1-4766-2189-0 / © 2016 McFarland & Company, Inc.
