Engendering cosmopolitanism: Gendered narratives of instability and agency

Abstract

Borrowing from Becker's (1999) conceptualization of personal disruption, this article examines prolonged moments of instability in the lives of two Colombian migrant women. Such moments, it is argued, appear critical to the extent that they bring into focus assumptions about continuity in life, and encourage individuals to confront, reconcile or rearticulate narrative categories that guide them (Becker, 1999: 206).It is on these terms that the paper engages the concept of cosmopolitism: as a narrative trope meaningfully deployed within critical engagements and evaluations of self, society, and strategic resistance, and ultimately as an expression of agency, however liminal. The view taken here recognizes that such expressions are always shaped by the social, cultural, political and material predicaments through which individuals live their lives. This includes most especially gendered norms, expectations and practices. In doing so it recognizes that critical uses of cosmopolitanism are significantly gendered.