Cosmopolitan Hospitality Research Articles

Gender and the politics of maternalisms: Kinship-based imaginaries, responsibility and care in Australian refugee advocacy

Feminist scholarship has often been profoundly ambivalent about maternalist political mobilisations, seeing them as posing dangers of essentialising motherhood and of colluding with male-centred social orders, conservative politics and top-down state projects. This article looks at the complex and fluid politics of protest groups adopting familial kinship maternalist identities to militate politically for refugees and people seeking asylum, with particular reference to the Australian Grandmothers for Refugees organisation (G4R). A regular purple presence at demonstrations and on social media, the group’s 2000 members’ activities include vigils at ministerial and parliamentary members’ offices and detention centres, webinars, letter campaigns, petitions and parliamentary submissions. The G4R grandmothers’ role in the protests against the Australian asylum regime is part of a wider pattern of female predominance in contemporary organisations involved in such support and activism both locally and globally. The Grandmothers also exemplify the often-overlooked political energy of older women. The discussion explores questions about politicised kinship positionings, maternalist framings and mobilisations, and the cosmopolitan hospitality they offer. I am especially interested in how invocations of kinship-based location operate within these organisations, assuming ‘familial’ responsibility for and care of ‘Others’ within and beyond state and nation. Kinship tropes and imaginaries, while on occasion exclusionary and contradictory, arguably work to achieve a linking of political, ‘enraged’ affect with solidarity with the oppressed, enacting a transformative ethics in the public through effective political mobilisations of fictive kinship, responsibility, kindness, empathy and care.

An affective and posthumanist cosmopolitan hospitality

This conceptual article argues for revisiting and revising notions of cosmopolitanism and hospitality in light of the increasingly interconnected local to global domain of contemporary tourism. We briefly trace the contributions of three key philosophers in modernity who have contributed to the theorization of these concepts: Immanuel Kant, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. We then note some shortcomings of these approaches for contemporary problems of cosmopolitan hospitality and argue that Gilles Deleuze's conceptual apparatus enables a novel theorization to overcome the limitations of current approaches. This is done through an affective and posthumanist perspective, which introduces a new ethical understanding of cosmopolitan hospitality, dissolves problematic conceptual dualisms, and puts the focus on relational encounters, beyond spatiality.

Bureaucracy across Borders: Administering Cosmopolitan Hospitality at the English P.E.N., 1930–1945

From its inception, hospitality was inscribed in the vision of the English P.E.N., one of its stipulated aims being to provide a ‘vehicle for friendliness and hospitality’. Yet several writers who took leading administrative and representational roles during the 1930s and 1940s – Storm Jameson, E. M. Forster and J. B. Priestley, for example – were uncomfortable with the kinds of hospitality the P.E.N. sometimes purported to offer. They were concerned about the wartime propriety of elaborate lunches, dinners and parties. At the same time, this was an organisation that also tirelessly advocated for more substantial forms of refuge for displaced writers. Drawing on extensive archival material, this essay will examine some of the ambiguities embedded in the P.E.N.’s conception of hospitality during this period: the perceived clash between a social etiquette of hospitality (expressed through P.E.N. social gatherings) and a wider politics of hospitality (expressed in its drive to facilitate refugee reception in Britain).

A Prospective Comparative Study of Tacrolimus and Corticosteroids in the Treatment of Atopic Dermatitis

Abstract: Background: Atopic dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory disease which can recur at adulthood particularly in people with genetic predisposition like asthma or other hypersensitivities. It has an adverse impact on the daily life of patients and hence, it is clear that appropriate treatment is necessary; hence the study was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of topical agents Tacrolimus and Corticosteroids. Materials and Methods: This Prospective Observational Study was carried out in 108 patients recruited from the Department of Dermatology, Cosmopolitan Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram for a period of 6 months. A written informed consent was taken. Out of the 108 patients, 54 patients received Topical Tacrolimus and the remaining 54 patients received Topical Corticosteroids. Eczema Area Severity Index (EASI) score analysis was performed at base line and after 2 weeks of drug therapy. Results: The result of the study was developed by comparing EASI scores of all the patients. Two statistical methods were used for developing the result. Independent ‘t’ test for Between Group comparison and Paired ‘t’ test for Within Group comparison. From the statistical evidences, it is deduced that both the drugs are effective for treatment of atopic dermatitis (P - value < 0.05). After comparing both the drugs, it was found that Corticosteroids are more effective than Tacrolimus (P - value < 0.05). Conclusion: From this study, it has been concluded that both the drugs Tacrolimus and Corticosteroids have a significant role in treatment of atopic dermatitis. But on comparison of both the agents, Corticosteroids are found to be more efficacious than Tacrolimus. Key words: Atopic Dermatitis, EASI, Tacrolimus, Corticosteroids, Independent ‘t’ test, Paired ‘t’ test.

A study to evaluate the efficacy of cranberry extract supplements in prevention of recurrent urinary tract infections in female patients

Background: Recurrence of urinary tract infections (UTI) are either due to re infection or relapse. Overall likelihood of developing UTI is approximately 30 times higher in women than men due to their anatomical peculiarities. The objective was to evaluate efficacy of cranberry extract supplementations in prevention of recurrent UTI in female patients, assess the quality of life of patients, medication adherence of patients and effect of patient counselling.Methods: A prospective observational study was carried out for a period of 6 months and samples were taken from the Urology Department of Cosmopolitan Hospital, Trivandrum, Kerala. The selected patients were administered with cranberry extract supplements after their regular Antibiotic therapy and were observed for recurrence for a period of six months. Three follow ups were taken and the betterment was assessed using the score from prepared proforma.Results: 84 patients were analysed and among them we observed and concluded that 86.9% of patients were free of recurrent infection. Study shows that E. coli was the commonest infectious organism causing UTI. In this study the most commonly observed symptom of UTI was lower abdominal pain and the most common co morbidity was DM.Conclusions: Through this study it was concluded that the cranberry extract supplements significantly reduced the recurrence of UTI in women. Since the antibiotic prophylaxis is having the risk of developing resistance and side effects, the cranberry extract supplements can be suggested as a best alternative to antibiotics in recurrent UTI prophylaxis.

A study to evaluate the impact of patient counselling on the quality of life of female patients with recurrent urinary tract infection

Background: Recurrence of urinary tract infections (UTI) are either due to re infection or relapse. Overall likelihood of developing UTI is approximately 30 times higher in women than men due to their anatomical peculiarities and are normally treated with antibiotics. To evaluate effectiveness of patient counselling in prevention of recurrent UTI in female patients to reduce the risk of developing Antibiotic resistance and assess the quality of life of patients.Methods: A prospective observational study was carried out for a period of 6 months and samples were taken from the urology department of cosmopolitan hospital, Trivandrum, Kerala. Patient counseling was given regarding the disease, drugs and lifestyle modifications. A suitably validated KAP questionnaire was provided to each patient at their visits. By using an EQ-5D-5L questionnaire the quality of life of patients were assessed and analyzed.Results: 84 patients were analyzed. After the counseling knowledge level significantly improved to good from 6.9% to 72.4%, the positive attitude level was improved from 35.6 to 57.5% and the practice level was improved to good from 25.3 to 43.7%. The QOL improved to best from 1.2 to 71.4%. After counseling incidence rate was decreased to zero. The mostly observed risk factor was decreased water intake (69%). The common age group observed was 31-50 (41.7%).Conclusions: Patient counseling had an important impact on medication adherence and QOL of female patients with recurrent UTI. Effective patient counseling and better compliance decreased the incidence of recurrence and improved the quality of life of patients.

Effect of Lamaze method on pain perception, anxiety, fatigue and labour outcome among primi mothers during labour process

Background: Labour pain is the most severe pain a woman might ever experience in her life. Severity of pain and duration of labour psychologically affects a mother. It may lower the confidence, self-esteem and increase the level of anxiety and fatigue. The main purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of video based Lamaze Nursing care intervention on pain perception, anxiety, fatigue and labour outcome among Primigravida women admitted during childbirth. The conceptual framework for the study was developed based on Ernestine Wiedenbach’s helping art of clinical nursing theory.&#x0D; Materials and methods: Quantitative Post-test only control group design was used. The sample size was 200 primigravida mothers, 37 to 40 weeks of gestation (100 in each group) and the study was conducted in first stage of labour room cosmopolitan hospital, Trivandrum.&#x0D; Results: The study findings shows that Lamaze method and the techniques used in it were effective in reducing the pain, anxiety and fatigue during child birth and leads to a fine labour outcome Pain perception in experimental group was less when compared to control group, t=4.11(.01), anxiety in experimental group was lower when compared to control group, t value=6.44(.01), Fatigue was less among the experimental group when compared to control group, t value=9.09(.00) was significant. It was inferred that labour outcome in experimental group was better when compared to control group. t=5.17 significant at 0.01level. It was also depicted that there was association between pain perception, anxiety and fatigue and selected demographic variable like age, education duration of marital life, onset of labour&#x0D; Conclusion: The findings of this study indicated that Lamaze nursing care intervention helped the women to cope up with the birthing process. It is a simple, easy to implement and most acceptable way to tackle pain, anxiety and fatigue among parturient mothers. Nurses and childbirth educators must be willing to provide comprehensive childbirth education that introduces women to a variety of pain management options. The excavator results supported that the incorporation of Lamaze method in nursing care is one of the best intervention to cope up with labour process.

Second language teaching for global citizenship

ABSTRACTEnglish is a lingua franca of the world, and therefore English language teaching is an ideal means for global citizenship education. This paper aims to review existing theories and to make recommendations on second language teaching for global citizenship education. A Kantian perspective on global citizenships is adopted. Results of discussions suggest that Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT) offers a way out to the dilemma of inequality caused by native-speakerism and equality in global citizenship. Together with the notion of Linguistic Imperialism, GELT enables the blending of Kant’s cosmopolitan right and hospitality right which have been neglected in literature.

Contemporary British Children’s Fiction and Cosmopolitanism by Fiona McCulloch

Reviewed by: Contemporary British Children’s Fiction and Cosmopolitanism by Fiona McCulloch Rebecca Rowe (bio) Contemporary British Children’s Fiction and Cosmopolitanism. By Fiona McCulloch. New York: Routledge, 2017. Fiona McCulloch convincingly draws a connection between the contemporary British political climate and how young adult texts approach difference. McCulloch moves beyond multiculturalism by turning to the concept of cosmopolitanism, which she defines as “allow[ing] for a space in which differences can be celebrated and communitarian empathy offered” (2). She argues that this concept of cosmopolitanism, while potentially fraught with the same problems as multiculturalism, can be more useful because it focuses on celebrating difference and making connections through mutual empathy rather than erasing difference in order to create ordered sameness. She finds that this concept has been applied predominantly to adults, both in politics and in literature, whereas in Great Britain cosmopolitanism is a largely youth-led movement. Thus Contemporary British Children’s Fiction and Cosmopolitanism makes a case for how cosmopolitan young adult literature can positively affect the current conception of cosmopolitanism and tomorrow’s British citizens. McCulloch contends that the best exemplars of British cosmopolitanism are Scottish young adult novels written by women since devolution, the decentralization of power in Great Britain. She argues that devolution has had the biggest impact in Scotland, where the 2014 election for independence came close to passing, revealing a rise in youth political activism. According to McCulloch, this new wave of citizens is pressing for cosmopolitanism, for a revised sense of nationalism that recognizes difference on personal, communal, and national levels while also encouraging empathetic connection. Women writers in particular bring this movement together with feminism to form what McCulloch calls cosmofeminism, a cosmopolitanism that is nonhierarchical and engages many different ways of thinking and perspectives, as much feminist theory today urges. This way of thinking recognizes difference but does not rank it; it negotiates boundaries between people and identities, remaining flexible as concepts change and grow. Ultimately, she argues that texts for adolescents written by Scottish women are best able to encapsulate this nonhierarchical, mobile sense of national interconnectivity, teaching these traits to the rising generation of citizens. McCulloch breaks the book into three sections, with each chapter analyzing one text to demonstrate different ways that female authors can and do engage British cosmopolitanism. In part 1, “Ethical Endeavours,” she explores “the cosmopolitical routes charted” in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Jackie Kay’s Strawgirl “in their endeavours to encourage ethical post-devolution nationhood” (29). She argues that both of these authors are positively affecting young people by demonstrating how people can learn empathy through difference. Part 2, “Conflict and Conciliation,” focuses on Theresa Breslin’s Divided City, Gillian Cross’s Where I Belong, [End Page 120] and Kerry Drewery’s A Brighter Fear, all of which “interrogate contemporary conflicts, including domestic sectarianism and global warfare” (31). While McCulloch holds that Divided City successfully “considers the detrimental impact of static territorial national domesticity and encourages . . . readers to recognise others within a mobilised global home of cosmopolitan hospitality” (84), she demonstrates that due to their foreign settings, Where I Belong and A Brighter Fear, which have similar messages, ultimately “speak over rather than up for the globally dispossessed” (98; orig. emphasis). Finally, part 3, “Future Freedoms,” “analyses YA futuristic dystopian worlds and how they are engaging with contemporary real-world politics through their narrative space,” focusing on Saci Lloyd’s Momentum and Julie Bertagna’s Exodus trilogy (31). McCulloch argues that these books offer young adults agency through the ability to see past authoritative regimes. As this summary highlights, one of the more impressive elements of this book is how its author explores topics, such as love and community, that are traditionally considered “sappy” or overly sentimental. Modern scholarship has often denigrated these themes as part of “lowly” women’s writing, and, as McCulloch points out, women have been the predominant writers of children’s fiction. She effectively demonstrates, however, how these themes can be used to empower children and young adults to make positive political changes along the lines of cosmopolitanism. While resisting easy gender binaries, she suggests that women writers tend to write paths away from...

Patience on a Monument: Prophetic Time in Shakespeare, Fuseli, and Michelangelo

ABSTRACTThis essay shows how a political–theological reading of Twelfth Night yields a literary criticism alert to the injurious biases of inveterate prejudice and unequal power while seeking within the uneven status landscapes of Shakespearean drama and Biblical narrative signs of cosmopolitan hospitality and elastic virtue practices of attention and care.

Cosmopolitan Tourism and Host-Guest exchanges in the Nakanai Range, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea

MacLeod’s (2013) notion of 'cultural realignment' relates directly to the power of the tourism industry to affect the transformation of the lived environment. This paper posits that the ideal visitation involves the transformation of the visitor experience to conform to the cultural landscape and the social dynamics of place. Extending Robbin's(2015)biological notion of resilient island environments as sites of cosmopolitan engagement to the sacred geographies of island Melanesia (Bainton, Ballard and Gillespie 2012), I argue that multicultural dimensions of island livelihoods in Papua New Guinea that link trading partners and social relations, such as men’s houses, walking tracks, gardens and spirit tracks, provide social infrastructure for managing the opportunities and impositions of tourist encounters. Drawing upon anthropological fieldwork experiences with a colleague in a remote village in the Nakanai Mountain Range of New Britain Island, I situate the idea of cosmopolitan tourism within a mutual concern for the other in the spatial politics of the village. Such cosmopolitan tourisms are not simply products of state or marketbased imperatives but outcomes of intercultural negotiations between visitors and host communities, involving the reconciliation of the goals of visitor with those of the local people. In these spatiotemporal encounters, cosmopolitan tourism can generate reciprocal interdependence and obligation - relationships that are both material and semiotic.It is in this regard that suppressing the distinction between kin and visitor is of central import in defining cosmopolitan tourism in the village context. Papua New Guineans have long negotiated multiple types of social relations within networks of hospitality that have included local visitors, and more distinctly, colonial visitors such as missionaries, patrol officers and researchers. Cosmopolitan hospitality, based upon a mutual ethics of care and concern can help define more equitable forms of tourism in New Britain's ongoing integration into a global tourist economy.

Globalizing Literature Pedagogy: Applying Cosmopolitan Ethical Criticism to the Teaching of Literature

With global risks such as terrorism, fundamentalism, and xenophobia permeating our everyday consciousness, there is a pressing need for educators to cultivate in their students a cosmopolitan hospitality toward multiple and marginalized others in the world. Yet, despite growing interest in ethics among literary scholars, theorizations of ethical criticism are predominantly observed among scholars working in university settings rather than at high schools, and major scholarly texts on ethical criticism focus on literary texts that provoke ethical responses rather than on pedagogical strategies. In this essay, Suzanne Choo aims to address these two gaps by arguing that cosmopolitan ethical criticism should be a core feature of literature pedagogy in schools and by describing its potential for developing students as global ethical thinkers. The article situates cosmopolitan ethical criticism by distinguishing it from two other disciplinary practices, aesthetic criticism and didactic ethical criticism. It goes on to describe what cosmopolitan ethical criticism may look like in the classroom by examining pedagogical approaches to teaching literature employed by four high school teachers in Australia, Singapore, and the United States.

Gendering cosmopolitanisms: Hospitality and the asylum seeker Other

Debates about cosmopolitanism have pointed both to its exclusionary character as a problematic child of western modernity, analytically and politically dubious, and to the possibilities offered by the new cosmopolitanisms stressing cosmopolitan practice and ethics. This paper suggests that a gendering of such arguments can add important dimensions to these debates. Exploring the gendered character of the hospitality at the heart of cosmopolitanism's founding arguments, the discussion is grounded in an examination of the situated cosmopolitan hospitality offered by several prominent women-centred asylum seeker and refugee support and advocacy groups in Australia. These groups have created significant spaces of hospitality welcoming “Others,” deploying explicitly feminine imaginaries against the counter-cosmopolitanisms of the increasingly securitized and militarized border politics of the Australian state, and xenophobic anti-refugee nationalisms. The situated cosmopolitan hospitality and affective politics of these practices are linked to feminist arguments about political mobilizations of the feminine, especially the maternal, in social movements.

Erythema nodosum leprosum presenting as pyrexia of unknown origin

Case report A 63 year old lady presented to a peripheral centre polyarthralgia, multiple tender and erythematous nodules over her face, elbows, back and legs and continuous fever of 2 months duration. Routine investigations being negative, she was referred for further evaluation of PUO. On presentation, the patient was febrile. Apart from the nodules, examination revealed bilaterally thickened and tender greater auricular, ulnar and common peroneal nerves. Her left hand was swollen and tender due to ulnar neuritis. Bilateral symmetric sensory neuropathy was present upto the ankles. Few of the lesions over the face were found to be hypoaesthetic. Laboratory investigations showed mild transaminitis and an ESR of 64. Biopsy of a nodule showed septal panniculitis suggestive of erythema nodosum. ANA profile, cANCA and pANCA were negative. Split skin smears were positive for acid fast bacilli (AFB) with bacillary index between 2+ to 4+. Skin biopsy showed ill defined granuloma formation with occasional multinucleate giant cells. Fite’s stain revealed numerous AFB. A diagnosis of multibacillary leprosy with ENL was made. She was treated with prednisolone 1mg/kg/day followed by multidrug therapy comprising of dapsone, clofazimine and rifampicin. fever, neuritis and polyarthritis dramatically subsided after steroid initiation. Steroids were tapered and stopped over the next 2 months. This case is being presented because of rarity of presentation of ENL as PUO. Authors’ details Department of Infectious Diseases, Medical College Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram, India. Cosmopolitan Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram, India.

Trick questions: cosmopolitan hospitality

This paper consists of two texts. The first explores the limits of cosmopolitanism in practice, taking as its subject the Life in the UK Citizenship Test, inaugurated under the Labour Government in 2005. It argues that the test exemplifies the predicament of all attempts at cosmopolitan hospitality as unconditional welcoming, through a discussion of the relation between questioning and welcoming the stranger. Establishing the relationship between cosmopolitanism and hospitality as envisaged in Derrida’s reading of Kant it asks what kind of cosmopolitan hospitality is either possible or desirable by exploring what Derrida calls the ‘perversions’ inherent in the structures of hospitality. It focuses on the concept of the ‘trick questions’ that the state asks the foreigner observed by Derrida in his reading of The Apology of Socrates; questions that seem to invite answers but foreclose the possibilities of a free response. The second text asks how this logic that Derrida identifies can be pushed or coaxed into new ways of addressing the perceived threats of ‘unconditional’ hospitality through a reading of ‘unconditional hospitality’ as queer in the work of Tove Jansson

CIES Bibliography 2011

CIES Bibliography 2011

Representational and territorial economies in global citizenship education: welcoming the other at the limit of cosmopolitan hospitality

In this article, I argue that any success a discourse on cosmopolitan hospitality might have in global citizenship education depends on how it deals with its own limits, and I propose a way of responding to these limits that takes the cosmopolitan commitment to openness to the other seriously. Following Jacques Derrida, my point is that to teach global citizenship on the basis that we already can know who the other is risks counting some persons ‘in’ while leaving others ‘out’, which forecloses the possibility of welcoming something new and unforeseen at the limit of our cosmopolitan selves.

Upper Gastrointestinal Foreign Bodies - A Five Year Experience from a Cosmopolitan Hospital in UAE

Purpose: UGI Endoscopy is a useful tool to manage the extraction of inadvertent ingestion of foreign bodies from upper gastrointestinal tract. We report the cases from NMC Specialty Hospital, UAE over a span of five years from 2003-2008. Methods: All patients who underwent endoscopy for attempted extraction of ingested foreign bodies were reviewed. In cases where endoscopy was not indicated patients/parents were counseled for the same and those cases where extraction was not attempted, were excluded. Endoscopies were performed under GA in children and conscious sedation in adults. Accessories were chosen after testing their grip on similar objects before the procedure. Fluoroscopy was employed to facilitate localization during procedure. Results: The summary of all cases is shown in the table below. Swallowed coins and lead batteries were the most common foreign bodies found in the pediatric population. Fluoroscopy was utilized in locating the objects buried in the luminal food residue. The Rat Tooth Forcep simplified the extraction of coins while Polypectomy Snare secured firm grip on the slippery button batteries. Custom pins were 1.5 inch long with ball shaped plastic heads and sharp tips. Women use them to secure head scarf in gulf countries. In all cases accidental swallowing happened when patients were holding them between teeth while adjusting their scarf. Partial mucosal penetration by the pin was observed in one patient. She was initially sent back from emergency as an erect AXR was negative. But later on a supine AXR showed the pin when patient returned because of persistent discomfort. Pins were easily extracted by holding the sharp end with simple biopsy forceps. Polypectomy snare was also useful in doubling up of sharp edges of a swallowed prescription medicine with intact wrapper which was stuck across on both sides of the esophagus. Another potentially hazardous extraction of a 5 cm long denture, because of larger size and hard nature was safely achieved with the use of an over-tube. Extraction of a large and hard gastric bezoar partially imbedded in gastric mucosa after failed attempts to crush with a mechanical lithotripter, was achieved with surgery.Table: [1406] Types of foreign bodiesConclusion: A supine AXR is important to diagnose ingested radio-opaque foreign bodies. Fluoroscopy helps in locating non-visualized foreign bodies buried in luminal content. Thoughtful pre-procedure selection of endoscopic accessories simplifies the extraction of various upper GI foreign bodies. Over-tube facilitates safe extraction of large objects by diffusing the shear force over the esophageal wall. Non-crushable hard and large objects require surgical removal.

Flavoursome Scraps of Conversation

This article’s contribution to the sphere of urban lives and oral sources in twentieth century Australia is to conceptualise the sounds of the city within a specific framework, the cosmopolitan. Long before the advent of the contemporary cosmopolitan cafe latte lifestyle, people spoke and wrote about the cultural atmosphere of their city, perceiving the sounds generated by an eclectic mix of language, music and food to be constitutive of cosmopolitan hospitality and sociability. These ‘flavoursome scraps of conversation’, typically but not exclusively associated with ‘people of all nationalities’, specific neighbourhoods and locales, and sites of consumption such as espresso bars, continental delis, cafes and restaurants, captured at once the dailiness of cosmopolitan lives and broader historical circumstances involving migration, travel and commerce.

Amebic Liver Abscess - An Experience from a Cosmopolitan Hospital in Dubai

Amebic Liver Abscess - An Experience from a Cosmopolitan Hospital in Dubai