Idea Of Cosmopolitanism Research Articles

Home As a Mobile and Flexible Domestic Space in Amitav Ghosh’s Alternative Ideas of Cosmopolitanism

In this globalized cosmopolitan world, the concept of home has become one of the most crucial socio-cultural perceptions, playing a significant role in establishing community and transnational relationships both at the local and the global level. Amitav Ghosh’s alternative ideas of cosmopolitanism are committed to criticizing the neo-imperial characteristic of the contemporary capitalist cosmopolitan world. This paper argues that Amitav Ghosh through his selected fiction - The Shadow Lines (1988) and The Hungry Tide (2004) - has shown how breaking away from the conventional, constrictive ideas and established definitions of home, that often run the risk of becoming the birthplace of many of the communal, regional or national fanatic ideologies, contributes to forming alternative ideas of home and family that are more mobile and flexible in nature and how they are instrumental in shaping individuals as true cosmopolitans.

The cosmopolitan idea in Spanish Krausism and its influence on the progress of Spanish society

Este trabajo se centra en la indagación histórica del cosmopolitismo en el pensamiento decimonónico español de origen krausista como precursor en nuestro país de la idea de ciudadanía global y gobernanza cosmopolita. Hay que decir que el pensamiento krausista español de finales del siglo XIX resultó crucial en el desarrollo de las ciencias sociales de nuestro país, interesándose por el derecho, la sociología, la psicología, la ciencia política y, sobre todo, la educación, al tiempo que también fue decisivo en la emergencia del primer feminismo español. El objetivo de este trabajo, por tanto, no ha sido otro que mostrar la importancia del hispanismo krausista en el desarrollo del cosmopolitismo, elucidando el alcance de su influencia en los más variados ámbitos de la vida de la época, lo que le confiere especificidad y una relevancia singular desde un punto de vista crítico e historiográfico. Los krausistas creían en una humanidad unificada, la educación integral y humanista y la participación ciudadana. Abogaban por una sociedad equitativa y justa, la descentralización del poder y la colaboración entre naciones. También promovían la tolerancia religiosa y el diálogo intercultural.

Post-WWI Balkan revival: The ancient Greek legacy in the Sokol movement 1919-1924

Statistical analysis of relevant resources reveals the expansion of the Yugoslav and Czech Sokol Movements from 1919 to 1924, a period after World War I marked by a cultural and economic crisis. The ideological orientation of the Balkan Sokol movement towards strengthening integral Yugoslavism and realizing ideas of cosmopolitanism coincides with the two main domestic and foreign political tendencies of the newly founded Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. This paper aims at defining the ancient Greek legacy inherent in the socio-political role of Sokolski glasnik [Sokol Gazette] in the early postwar period. The Sokol national movement, a sports and political organization based on 1919 foundations, lasted almost continuously until the beginning of World War II.

A Subaltern Cosmopolitanism Perspective on Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy

The study researches how cosmopolitanism is used as a critical idea in thinking about subaltern contrivance for resisting neoliberal economic and emotional constraints. Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy is an exemplar of the multiplicity and heterogeneity of plots and characters. Like every creative writer who attempts to forge a new route, Amitav Ghosh attracts a lot of criticism for his excessive seriousness and dark narrative. Ghosh attempts poised and pretreated characters in the plot to derive a standard acknowledgment of the history. Historic events and characters are always a high end to a novel. This article explores the trivialities all subaltern characters face irrespective of their class, caste, race, and gender. A precise assertion is presented in the article by corroborating Gayatri Spivak’s proposition on subalternity and rehabilitating the idea of cosmopolitanism through the rise of the subaltern characters in the novels. The paper hypothesizes the evolution of all characters under various plights.

Kozmopolitanizm: Evin Sınırlarını Aşmak

This contribution engages with the idea of cosmopolitanism critically and tries to present cosmopolitanism as a process that designates the inner dimension of globalization in the name of cosmopolitanization. The first step in this treatment is to examine the relationship between globalization and cosmopolitanism. Then the second step is to define a new cosmopolitanism, "cosmopolitanism at home." This paper aims to develop a proper conception of cosmopolitanism with its relation to borders – crossing borders – and home. I argue that if cosmopolitanism exists, there should be a home as a form of unity with its idealized borders.

THE MOTIVES OF COSMOPOLITANISM IN THE LYRICAL COLLECTION “POET, OKEAN I RYBA” AND IN THE COLLECTION OF ESSAYS “UZDOVZH OKEANU NA ROVERI” BY VASYL MAKHNO

In the article the attempt of comprehension the motives of cosmopolitanism in Vasyl Makhno`s work based on the material of the lyrical collection "Poet, okean i ryba" and the collection of essays "Uzdovzh okeanu na roveri" is made. On the basis of the texts of the collections the principles of author’s identification in the artistic world of lyrical works and essayistic texts are analyzed, based on the ideas of cosmopolitanism as universal human values that prevail over ethnic problems in the artist`s worldview. Furthermore, the origins of the idea of cosmopolitanism in Vasyl Makhno`s work are also substantiated, representing the formation and transformation of the author`s worldview as the Ukrainian author who lives on the American continent. Due to the categories of "presence" and "belonging" in place, the methods of reconstruction and reproduction of the author`s search for own identity are analyzed. In the article the topoi are examined through the category of “journey”, which are common and different in the artistic worlds of the lyric collection and the collection of essays, representing the author`s reflection through the category of "location". It is concluded that, while acting in various guises, among which the guise of "foreigner" is important, the author appears to the recipient as a cosmopolitan striving for harmony and the search for own "self". In the analyzed collections of lyric poems "Poet, okean i ryba" and the essays "Uzdovzh okeanu na roveri" by V. Makhno common and distinctive features of the reconstruction of space as a place for author`s and reader`s reflection are revealed.

Queering consumption: The discursive construction of sexual identity among gay fashion consumers in Hong Kong

The purpose of this study is to investigate how sexual identity is constructed among gay fashion consumers in Hong Kong through myriad consumption practices. We employed ethnographic research methods and conducted thirteen in-depth interviews with gay male consumers in Hong Kong to examine the relationship between identity and lifestyle consumption, as well as symbolic consumption and tribal behaviour, within a ‘gay’ community. The findings captured four stages of gay consumers’ identity construction, which began with (1) negotiating one’s sexual identity and changing their perception of gay identity, (2) tremendous identity change, (3) consumption behaviour change and eventually (4) full acceptance of one’s sexual identity. The construction and the expression of sexual identity among gay men in Hong Kong were found to be associated with Confucian-oriented social structures and various marketplace ideologies. This study contributes to the existing discussion of gay consumption literatures by offering a non-western context where the discursive construction of sexual identity – and the negotiations involved in its representation – reflects the multitude of tensions between Chinese culture, on the one hand, and ideas of modernity and cosmopolitanism, on the other.

Tweeting the World a Better Place

While the reputation of the platform Twitter was severely dented during the presidency of President Donald Trump, who often retweeted far-right content, this article engages from the argumentative assumption that Twitter is an inherently cosmopolitan online space, both in terms of statements found there and of the lived experience of users on the platform itself. Cosmopolitanism is understood as a normative concept and as a descriptive term for increasing cultural interconnectedness. Twitter users may engage in pursuing liberal aims by taking responsibility for or identifying with all humanity, and thus enact the more conceptual ideas of cosmopolitanism into pragmatic and viral utterances. They may also be deemed cosmopolitan influencers. Based on qualitative interviews with ten purposely selected Twitter users, it is argued that the motivation behind such online political engagement is chiefly societal and activist, and stems from a desire to change society and, indeed, to “give back to society”. Tweeters are guided by an array of values, such as authenticity, solidarity, justice and equality, and freedom of expression. These socially-engaged Twitter users also often see themselves as exceptional, and able to view social developments others cannot see. The data shows that positive reinforcing as well as negative discouraging feedback plays a crucial role and gives hints for the promotion of Cosmopolitan Twitter.

Our Home: a revolutionary case study in social pedagogy

At the turn of the twentieth century, Western European governments embarked on anti-terrorist agendas, labelling certain ethnicities as undesirable for spreading revolutionary ideas and criminal degeneracy. Several educational experiments emerged intending to eliminate the so-called degenerate element. Academics rarely consider this influence within famous examples by Maria Montessori (1870–1952) in Italy and Janusz Korczak (1878–1942) in Poland. Indeed, the conflation of the two educators obscures that each held opposing views in this critical debate. Years of war and revolution in Polish territories had produced multitudes of orphans, traumatised children and child soldiers. Following Polish independence in 1918, tensions remained high between ethnic minorities and ethno-nationalists. Social pedagogues aimed to rebuild society by drawing on Polish communitarian theories on rights and conflict. Engaging with this history of ideas related to cosmopolitanism and communitarianism disrupts dominant ideas within debates on human rights and citizenship. This article challenges the usual depiction of Korczak’s philosophical position aligned with cosmopolitan ideas on children’s rights. Associated historical research reveals that Polish social pedagogy emerged with the understanding of human rights as situated, embedded and embodied within time and place. Social activists rejected utopian visions to embrace the local conditions at the time, including the violent realities of Polish society, where teachers were often revolutionaries and terrorists. The orphanages established by Korczak functioned as sociological research centres emphasising human rights and democratic ideals while aiming to influence surrounding neighbourhoods. This article summarises Korczak’s worldview by reversing a famous epigram – it takes a child to raise a village. Such children’s rights pioneers envisaged that following years of imperialism and war, their model institutions would grow into a nationwide network fostering democracy and multiculturalism on a broader scale. In the current global context of conflict and anti-terrorist agendas, these institutions serve as critical case studies of possibilities.

Dimensions of Ethnic Boundary-Making: Experiences of Young Muslims and Christians in Religious Transnational Fields in Oslo

This article examines the religious transnational orientation among young Muslims and Christians in Oslo. The study draws upon Andreas Wimmer’s (2013) theory of ethnic boundaries to analyse the characteristics of the ethnic boundary-making emerge within a religious transnational field, and how social closure, language, ideological framing and sociopolitical dimensions contribute to the ethnic boundary-making. The data consist of 22 qualitative interviews with young people between 16 and 35 years old. The article shows that most young Muslims and Christians involved in religious transnational activities influenced by multicultural, cosmopolitan ideas and interfaith collaborations. Some youths, however, are involved in religious transnational activities where there are no forms of social exchange or cooperation with other religious and ethnic groups. Some groups use their native language to reinforce the ethnic boundaries, providing a link between their religion and nationality. Others use language to establish generational differences between young people and their parents. As for the ideological framing, the findings show those boundary-making efforts that emphasize the incorporation of Islam in the West. The sociopolitical dimension refers to the classificatory struggles of Muslims with right-wing politicians who argue Muslims in Europe and Norway represent a danger to Western democracy and values.

Displaying Socialist Cosmopolitanism: China’s Architectural Aid in the Global South, 1960s–70s

After World War Two, modern architecture was disseminated worldwide by western architects. However, the role of Chinese architects in Asian and African countries during the Cold War has been largely overlooked. Chinese-aided projects were initiated by communist leaders and executed through state-owned design institutes and construction companies. This article explores these projects as a cultural expression of socialist cosmopolitanism, as China sought to reshape the world order of the 1960s through political, cultural, and material interventions. It argues that architects from state-owned design institutes helped newly independent Guinea and Sri Lanka form national identities through architectural intervention by adopting cosmopolitan ideas that maintained sensitivities to differences and appreciation for others. By embracing situated cosmopolitanism and socialist ideologies, Chinese political leaders and building professionals saw themselves as partners with revolutionary ambitions who respected others with geographical and cultural differences on the global stage.

Moral Cosmopolitanism and the Challenge of Global Terrorism

The world is bedevilled by terrorism. Of the most recent treats and challenges that the world faces there seem to be none bigger than terrorism. There is hardly a week that passes when you do not hear of terrorist attacks in one place of the order. Terrorist attacks have been perpetuated in places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan, the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Italy and so forth. The effects and impact of terrorism are incalculable. Thousands of lives and properties have been lost to terrorism. If terrorism is not mitigated or stopped it has the capacity to plunge the world into a new dark age. The paper examines the reality, effects, and causes of terrorism. It uses critical analytic and evaluative methods to examine terrorism from the lens of moral cosmopolitanism. The paper proposes that the idea of moral cosmopolitanism that affirms the common humanity of all humans and obligates each human to come to the help of others, even strangers can help to combat global terrorism. The paper finds that there is need to educate, conscientize, and persuade global terrorists with the value of moral cosmopolitanism. If this can be done it will greatly help in mitigating global terrorist attacks.

Cultures of unwelcome: Understanding the everyday histories of exclusionary practices – A view from across the German border

AbstractThis article sheds light on the socio‐cultural dynamics Merkel's open‐door policy set in motion in Austria. Based on the Anti‐Merkel discourses that came to infiltrate Austrian mainstream politics, it will show how the summer of displacements 2015 led to a pronounced move to the right. While many commentators have tended to link the post‐2015 triumph of reactionary parties to the sense of crisis caused by the few months the European Union opened its borders to asylum seekers, the article demonstrates that we need to be more careful in our analyses of the roots of exclusion. By zooming in on the everydayness of anti‐cosmopolitan practices in an Austrian mountain community, it argues that if we are to understand the current backlash against liberal and cosmopolitan ideas we need to pay attention to genealogies of exclusionary practices, or ‘cultures of unwelcome’.

Reply to Critics

Reply to Critics

Space Community as an Enabler of Cosmopolitan Ideas Through Large Technical Systems

Space exploration has been a source of visions of a positive future development of humanity as a spacefaring species, as well as a possible warring domain of humanity as a nation-faring species. In this way, the post-WWII age was defined by a belief that technology can be the cause of either positive or dystopic futures, respectively. However, the development of political science since then has provided us a different perception of the relation between technology and politics. In this article, we show how large technical systems (LTSs) could overcome the imprisonment of identity in a national straitjacket in interstate interactions and could subsequently enable a more inclusive cosmopolitan global governance. We argue that political reality could be determined by technology; it could be that normative theory, injected into LTSs that existed for decades, determines the available space for political steering. The space domain is specific given its inherently cosmopolitan epistemic space community that has the power through its expertise, ability to mobilize scientific facts, and also policy, to shape not only how LTSs of the future would appear but also on what normative foundations they would stand. The space community should become aware of its political capital instead of continuously asking for a Global Space Agency that would involve all nations. LTSs and the space community, therefore, effectively become two vehicles of the political change. We use three cases for this change that require LTSs to be addressed: orbital debris, planetary defense, and interstellar travel. The principal problem of ambitious activities in space does not lie, we propose, not only in lack of knowledge, lack of technical capabilities, or a lack of funding but also in lack of our ability to enable cosmopolitan ideas in political practice. The novel approach to space policy we suggest in our article builds on the basic principles of cosmopolitan theory, and uses the concept of a responsible cosmopolitan state, and the Welsh School of critical security studies, namely a theory that focuses on security as emancipation rather than security as an absence of an identified threat, to argue that security sensitive LTSs are not a burden but rather an instrument to enable positive political change.

Re-examining Notions of Transnationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Xenophobia in Postcolonial Africa: A Textual Analysis of Teju Cole’s Open City

This article looks at how ideas of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and xenophobia are dramatized in the postcolonial novel in the Teju Cole’s Open City. The article examined transnationalism and cosmopolitanism as the quest that compels characters in the novel to move out of their initial localities; interrogated how the selected novel attempts to re-read the transitional mode of subjectification occasioned by transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and xenophobic attacks on immigrants and established why the immigrants in the text face the xenophobic treatment and how they negotiate the cross-cultural complexities of their new worlds. This article leaned on Taiye Selasi’s Afropolitanism theory. The article used close reading of Open City, exploring themes and motifs in the text. Data was analysed using content and thematic analysis. The article found out that the notions of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and xenophobia in postcolonial Africa have birthed new identities which have been engaged and interrogated by the Teju Cole in Open City. The paper concluded that the notion of Afropolitanism, with its focus on both rootedness and movement, must be understood as an effort to bring together two divergent frameworks for an understanding of African identity. This article will benefit scholars in the field of migrations, human rights, and globalisations by tackling and exposing the complex view of globalisation, a criticism that transcends national boundaries, colonial worldviews, and postcolonial geopolitics and is based on mutual informing assumptions. It benefits literary studies, especially identity studies and African studies, because it interrogates how migrations bring out new identities and how these new identities stretch the understanding of the new direction of African literature.

UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI AND IMMANUEL KANT

Ideals of universal power able to manage and solve social and ethical (religious) questions as many ways to reach the highest wisdom, and consequently, fullest well-being of humankind to reach a perpetual peace are present throughout human history so that we can find these ideals in Plato’s Republic, in Aristotle’s Politeia and other works concerning the establishment of more or less utopic “states” and commonwealth since our days. In the present essay we shall scrutinize the universalistic vision of Italian thinker Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and the cosmopolitan idea of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). We decided to analyze the political philosophy of those thinkers on the following grounds: on one hand, D. Alighieri took as the basis of his rumination Roman Empire that having as solid basis of its universalistic ideology Right of every Roman citizen (lying on the observance of religious and civil obligations), and the so-called pax romana[1], a theoretical ground on which D. Alighieri would create a communitas a secular led by Reason commonwealth, which might have replaced the so-called humanitas (in Augustinian understanding of such idea); and, on the other hand, I. Kant tried to explain how human self-improvement under the right use of Reason (that we understand like ethical ruling principle of humankind) can be achieved to lead human beings from the state of nature (a semi-brutal one) to the state of reason, which would have as final end a perpetual peace in a universal republic. On those bases we shall try to detect common theoretical and ideal features between D. Alighieri and I. Kant’s vision, so to prove that universalistic power is not a despotic power, but a unifying power under ethical and spiritual principles of the whole humankind.
 
 [1] The Pax Romana (Latin for "Roman Peace") is a roughly 200-year-long time span lasting from accession of Caesar Augustus, founder of the Empire (27 BC) to the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD) identified as a period and golden age of increased as well as sustained Roman imperialism, order, prosperous stability, hegemonial power and expansion, despite several revolts and internal political riots.

False friends: Leftist nationalism and the project of transnational solidarity

A growing number of left-wing scholars criticize practices of transnational solidarity. Pointing to the cooptation of “globalism” by neoliberal capitalism, these scholars utilize this critique to advance leftwing nationalism. In this article, I reconstruct symptomatic texts of this genre and identify the critique of (liberal) cosmopolitanism as the common denominator in their calls for nationalizing the Left. As a consequence of their opposition to cosmopolitanism, these authors reject freedom of movement or global justice activism. In order to examine whether the project of transnational solidarity is affected by this critique, I reconstruct its justifications in Critical Theory and postcolonial-feminist theory. Hauke Brunkhorst and Chandra Mohanty exemplarily theorize transnational solidarity in different ways, but each based on a substantial critique of liberal cosmopolitanism. By that, I show that a principled return to nationalism derived from a critique of cosmopolitanism is informed by coincidental evidence that rejects practices of transnational solidarity because of their alleged embeddedness in cosmopolitan reason. Drawing on La Via Campesina, I illustrate principles of a transnational solidarity project that is not justified with liberal cosmopolitan ideas. Their experiences challenge the nationalist/statist critique while not falling back into naïve and/or neoliberal cosmopolitanism.

Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought

Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought

UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI AND IMMANUEL KANT

Ideals of universal power able to manage and solve social and ethical (religious) questions as many ways to reach the highest wisdom, and consequently, fullest well-being of humankind to reach a perpetual peace are present throughout human history so that we can find these ideals in Plato’s Republic, in Aristotle’s Politeia and other works concerning the establishment of more or less utopic “states” and commonwealth since our days. In the present essay we shall scrutinize the universalistic vision of Italian thinker Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and the cosmopolitan idea of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). We decided to analyze the political philosophy of those thinkers on the following grounds: on one hand, D. Alighieri took as the basis of his rumination Roman Empire that having as solid basis of its universalistic ideology Right of every Roman citizen (lying on the observance of religious and civil obligations), and the so-called pax romana[1], a theoretical ground on which D. Alighieri would create a communitas a secular led by Reason commonwealth, which might have replaced the so-called humanitas (in Augustinian understanding of such idea); and, on the other hand, I. Kant tried to explain how human self-improvement under the right use of Reason (that we understand like ethical ruling principle of humankind) can be achieved to lead human beings from the state of nature (a semi-brutal one) to the state of reason, which would have as final end a perpetual peace in a universal republic. On those bases we shall try to detect common theoretical and ideal features between D. Alighieri and I. Kant’s vision, so to prove that universalistic power is not a despotic power, but a unifying power under ethical and spiritual principles of the whole humankind.
 
 [1] The Pax Romana (Latin for "Roman Peace") is a roughly 200-year-long time span lasting from accession of Caesar Augustus, founder of the Empire (27 BC) to the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD) identified as a period and golden age of increased as well as sustained Roman imperialism, order, prosperous stability, hegemonial power and expansion, despite several revolts and internal political riots.