(Up)Rooted cosmopolitanism: from anathema to an educational response to contemporary challenges

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years there has been growing scholarly interest in education for cosmopolitanism, a normative social and political theory that views all human beings as citizens of a single global community. Based on the premise that changes in the world are reflected in changes occurring in discourse, this article explores the changes in the concept of cosmopolitanism from the dawn of history, through its rejection in Soviet Russia, to its re-emergence today as a viable educational response to the challenges of globalisation. In the last few decades, the slur of ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’ has turned into ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ corresponding to a ‘both-and’ approach to both nationalism and cosmopolitanism. It has thus become a driver of educational change in an era marked by hybridity, uncertainty and dialectical non-binary ways of thinking and living in the world.