Getting involved: global citizenship development and sources of moral values

Abstract

Reviews the book, Getting involved: Global citizenship development and sources of moral values by Fritz K. Oser and Wiel Veugelers (2008). At present, academics in education, philosophy, sociology and many other disciplines are confronted with an endless stream of literature on citizenship. This book contains some good articles. Part 6 of the volume, for instance, which concerns ‘Conflicts between ethical involvement and economic engagement’, consists of two articles that approach the relation between ethics and economics in different, but equally interesting ways. His main point, however, is that there are generally good reasons why a subsystem like the economy has the particular logic it has and that it would therefore be unwise to ‘stigmatize [its principles] as morally deficient by nature’. Apart from the introduction, the book contains 23 articles, so the above-mentioned sample of valuable contributions is indeed just that. In the stream of publications on citizenship, then, this volume is not one to reach for when it reaches the surface—if it manages to do so, that is. Except, of course, if it were for one of those interesting articles that met with the unfortunate fate of ending up in this volume; but in that case, my advice would be to look for the relevant authors’ work elsewhere. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)