Cosmopolitan Identity Research Articles

Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene

While much has been written about the efforts in multiple jurisdictions to recognize nature and natural features as rightsholders, there has been relatively little research into the relationship of these Rights of Nature developments to the Anthropocene. This article uses historian Dipesh Chakrabarty’s argument for the adoption of a human species identity in the Anthropocene as a jumping off point to analyze how legal rights for nature, such as those enacted in the Ecuador and New Zealand, can help address what Chakrabarty identifies as the challenges the Anthropocene presents to contemporary political thought. These pressing challenges include how to politicize relations between humans and non-humans, extend justice and the sphere of human morality to non-humans, cope with human limitations on our abilities to represent non-humans, and to initiate a withdrawal from a human-dominated world that is a common though uneven legacy of imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. The article argues that by providing responses to these challenges, Rights of Nature laws may also further the development of a human species identity. However, it also qualifies this conclusion in several important regards. First, the more expansive of these protections, embracing all of nature within political boundaries and relying on a remedial approach to justice and broad notions of representation in fact may hinder the adoption of the kind of species identity for which Chakrabarty has called. Second, as a cosmopolitan identity, this identity may be inhibited by continued circumscription of Rights of Nature by notions of state sovereignty.

Kosmopolitanisme dalam Novel "Kapas-Kapas Di Langit" Karya Pipiet Senja: Analisis Sosiologi Sastra

The purpose of this study is to show the cosmopolitan behavior of the characters in the novel Kapas-Kapas Di Langit by Pipiet Senja based on a review of the sociology of literature and its implementation for literary learning in SMA/MA. This research is qualitative, with a descriptive method, and uses content analysis techniques on a primary data to be studied. The data that becomes the object of research is a novel entitled Kapas-Kapas Di Langit by Pipiet Senja. The results of the discussion found an analysis of 7 (seven) cosmopolitan identities as many as 26 findings, including (a) global or local hybridization that has common interests as many as 3 analysis findings, (b) competence (intercultural) in respecting local cultural diversity as much as 2 analysis findings. , (c) willingness and openness to involve themselves in cultural diversity as many as 6 analysis findings, (d) mobility to travel as much as 1 analysis finding, (e) refusing the "tourist" type approach as many as 4 analysis findings, ( f) desire to be able to feel variations in citizenship and postmodern as many as 4 analysis findings, and (g) critical attitude towards their own nation and country of origin as many as 6 analysis findings.

Global Markets, Risk, and Organized Irresponsibility in Regional Australia: Emergent Cosmopolitan Identities Among Local Food Producers in the Liverpool Plains☆

AbstractThis paper reflects on the conditions that emerge as regional Australia becomes increasingly immersed in international markets, global and local political shifts, and changing environmental conditions. In the Liverpool Plains region, farmers are deeply reliant on global export markets. Meanwhile, global demand for Australian minerals continues to produce both economic development and environmental degradation. In this context, farmers are drawing on transnational and national social movements to collectively construct their knowledge of risk and “organized irresponsibility” and resist environmental risk by positioning themselves as a part of a cosmopolitan public. While consistently evaluating risks associated with a proposed coal mine, farmers see themselves as having an ethical responsibility as food producers to provide for increasing global populations in a precarious world. These conditions are productive of new risks, identities, as well as new forms of critical, collective practice.

Being Cosmopolitan: Marketing Development Studies in the Neoliberal University

This article unpacks how ‘development’ is represented and sold in postgraduate development studies courses at two UK universities, based on a close reading of the course’s marketing materials and interviews with professional marketing staff within the university, academic leads on development studies courses and current development studies students. It explores the effects of development representations on students and their imaginations of the discipline and the university brand. I find representations of development engender a cosmopolitan desire mainly among international students and project a cosmopolitan virtue of the university through its development activities and associations. Contrary to seeing the cosmopolitan as a progressive political concept in a time of globalisation, I contend these cosmopolitan identities are imbued with the racialised legacies of colonial power.

Teoretyczne i praktyczne kłopoty z tożsamością narodową

Theoretical and Practical Troubles with National IdentityNational identity is one of the basic and most stable forms of collective identity. For many people it is a core value because it fulfills three important needs of man: the need to belong (rootedness), the need of axiological orientation and the need of respect due to any member of a respected community such as a nation. Two troubles are connected with national identity in present times. First, a strong sense of national identity can lead to ethno-nationalism, xenophobia and conflicts among nations. On the other hand, we are living in an epoch of globalization and international integration, which – in the opinion of many authors – endangers national identity and in effect may cause its loss and replacement with a cosmopolitan identity. The author undermines such views. He believes that strong national identity does not necessarily cause aggressive nationalism and xenophobia. Moreover, he does not agree with the view that globalization processes and integration tendencies will soon change national identity into cosmopolitan identity.

Semiotic Disruption and Negotiations of Authenticity among Argentine Fans of Anglophone Media

This paper investigates how subtitling and dubbing of foreign language media can be interpreted as cases of semiotic disruption, and how this interpretive frame comes to index a cosmopolitan identity among Argentine fans of Anglophone pop culture. The naturalization of voice/body/language assemblages allows fans to frame preferences for subtitles as an obvious consequence of “authentic” fan identity. Discourses of liberal inclusivity and literacy allow them to simultaneously explain others’ preferences for dubbing as consequences of class, education, and maturity. I argue that these stance‐taking strategies are ways of mitigating the economic precarity of being Argentinean in a global/izing world.

Cultural cities, urban economic growth, and regional development: The role of creativity and cosmopolitan identity

AbstractCultural heritage has been recognized as fundamental for local development. In particular, some recent works have highlighted the role of sophisticated transmission channels of this relationship, that is local creativity and cosmopolitan identity. Following a territorial perspective, the present work aims at combining the two approaches, in the belief that there could be a synergic interplay between creativity and cosmopolitan identity, reinforcing their individual effects. Accordingly, an original conceptual and operational taxonomy characterizing cultural cities is put forward. The contribution of the different identified patterns to urban and regional growth is assessed, as well as their capacity to valorize cultural participation.

Патріотичне виховання як чинник формування національної ідентичності в умовах російської агресії

The article examines the features of patriotic education of Ukrainian youth in the context of the formation of national identity. It is noted that this process was significantly intensified in the context of Russian aggression, when the entire Ukrainian people united into one, defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, democratic values, human rights and freedoms. Today, Ukraine is an outpost of European civilization, protecting it from the expansion of the Russian Federation. It is noted that in the context of increasing current threats and challenges, national-patriotic education is an important security factor, as it is aimed at forming the national identity of young people, their willingness to defend their homeland. It is emphasized that patriotism is the basis for the formation of national identity. It is pointed out that, in essence, national identity is a multidimensional concept that can integrate cultural, ethnic, professional, regional, gender, or other types of identities, preserving each of them. It is noted that several identity groups coexist in Ukraine, each of which seeks to become national. The first group includes identities that have a strong national-patriotic character, focused on preserving the identity of Ukrainians, the development of national language, culture, customs and more. The second group is partly pro-European cosmopolitan identities, focused on democratic pan-European values, seeking integration with the European Union. The third group includes pro-Russian identities, which are disappearing in the face of the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine, as Russia has completely discredited itself by destroying peaceful towns and villages, killing civilians. The last, fourth group consists of cosmopolitan identities that perceive themselves as citizens of the vanished USSR and do not accept the values of the three previous groups. It is noted that the idea of polyethnic, social, political harmony on the basis of the generally accepted goal – ensuring the spiritual and material well-being of the citizens of Ukraine should be the basis for the formation of national identity; The idea of patriotism, love for Ukraine as a defining value; national self-esteem and respect for representatives of other nations and national minorities. It is emphasized that in the conditions of Russian aggression there is an active formation of national identity, which is based primarily on supporting the culture and language of the titular Ukrainian ethnic group, education of patriotism and the formation of the Ukrainian political nation.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ РЕТРОСПЕКТИВНОЇ НАРАЦІЇ В РОМАНІ ДІНИ НАЙЄРІ "ПРИТУЛОК"

Migration has come to play an increasingly significant role in the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century in politics, economics, geography, and culture. One of the main concepts of the migration literature is the concept of immigrant's identity. For an immigrant an ability to formulate a new identity goes through the process of embracing a sense of belonging to two or more cultures. It is important to consider that immigration and its depiction in the 21st fiction has gained new meaning. The convergence of migration and globalization has reshaped the understanding of immigrant's self. Conflicts between the native culture and the host one are transformed into dialogues. In the article we are referring to Amin Maalouf's idea about transnational or mixed identity. He argues for the multiple identities in contemporary societies. The same approach has been verbalized in the research of Carola Suárez-Orozco who proposes the concept of cosmopolitan identity which embraces the sense of belonging to a global culture of inclusion. Today the work of identity formation is to synthesize different cultures. The article sets out to explore the psycho-emotional dynamics in the retrospective narrative of Dina Nayeri's novel "Refuge". It is argued that the act of self-reflective retrospection entails a steady decrease in a temporal distance between the narrator and the narrated. In the act of remembering the past the narrator of the novel discloses not only the moments of resentment of her Iranian identity but comes to understanding that to move forward she needs to acknowledge her past. Psycho-emotional dynamics of her meetings with a father develops from the complete resentment to the recognition of her Iranian identity. The moral distance between the narrator and the narrated permitted by the temporal distance between the past and the present helps the main protagonist, Niloo, to understand her desire to distance herself from the Iranian past. She starts building her new identity after embracing her cultural heritage. It is concluded that immigrant's identity today is based on the productive dialogue between different cultures which are united in one traumatized body of an immigrant.

Nationalized Cosmopolitanism with Communist Characteristics: The Esperanto Movement’s Survival Strategy in Post–World War II Bulgaria

AbstractThe case of the Bulgarian Esperanto movement under state socialism demonstrates a social movement can survive under authoritarianism by establishing a legitimate activist culture acceptable to the regime while pursuing its intrinsic goals. Bulgaria, a close Soviet ally, was a difficult case of movement survival. In the early years following World War II, the national Esperanto periodical Bulgara Esperantisto was a key organizing tool for the movement reporting on its activities, reaching out to potential recruits, and legitimizing the movement under the new communist-led regime. Examining the periodical’s discourse over a two-year period, I find that the movement managed to carve a space for itself in the new political context by advancing a form of what I term “nationalized cosmopolitanism.” Bulgarian Esperantists were able to maintain activist networks nationally and internationally, pursue intrinsic Esperanto goals, and sustain cosmopolitan identities under unhospitable conditions. The movement successfully legitimated itself by drawing from three cosmopolitan sources: Esperanto cosmopolitanism, communist internationalism, and Bulgarian peasant universalism. In the context of the nation-state system, invoking the nation was an effective legitimation strategy, even for a movement with cosmopolitan orientations, even under a regime justified in universal terms. Espousing pragmatism and partnerships while avoiding conflict, Bulgarian Esperantists were able to thrive under the new communist regime, recruit new members, and reconnect with the global Esperanto movement. I conclude that a legitimate activist culture can adapt to a regime’s ideology and institutional environment without necessarily being co-opted.

The Challenge of Cultivating National and Cosmopolitan Identities Through Literature: Insights From Singapore Schools

AbstractSince the late 20th century, scholars have called for a need to broaden the aims of teaching English Literature away from its Eurocentric focus. Much effort has also been invested in making the subject more relevant through diversifying the texts studied and connecting texts to current social and global issues. It is pertinent now to ask what the significant role of Literature is in a globally interconnected age. In particular, what do teachers believe are key philosophical objectives of teaching literature, and how does this influence the texts they select, the instructional strategies they employ, and the values they seek to cultivate in the classroom? In this article, we report on the first National Survey of Literature Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices in Singapore schools. First, we review four key pedagogical movements that have underpinned the teaching of literature in schools around the world: New Criticism, Reader‐Response Criticism, Poststructuralist Criticism, and Ethical Criticism. These respectively represent four key constructs (text, reader, culture, and other) used in the design and analysis of our survey instrument. Next, we report on the survey findings, focusing on Singapore as a barometer of current trends given its identity as an Anglophone country negotiating conflicting global and postcolonial identities with an education system that inhabits colonial traditions. We highlight key tensions arising from the impetus to develop national and cosmopolitan identities through Literature, and reflect on the implications for future directions in teaching.

Diasporic Consciousness in Bharati Gautam’s Vigata Ra Baduli

This article aims to explore the diasporic consciousness reflected through Bharati Gautam’s collection of memoirs Vigata Ra Baduli [Past and Hiccups]. As an American Nepali diasporic writer, Gautam has given expression to her experiences in the book. Spending about three and half decades as a diasporan, the writer’s consciousness is different from that of the common Nepali migrants to the USA. To analyse Gautam’s consciousness, this research has used African American philosopher DuBois’s idea of double consciousness. Different interpretations of DuBoisian double consciousness agree that a diasporan has a specific transnational awareness. The elemental aspects of such awareness are the dual nature of thought, relationship to the memory of the homeland, confused state of mind, alienation, a sense of loss of history and culture along with the gain of new cosmopolitan identity. The analysis concludes that Gautam’s diasporic consciousness is expressed through her conscious dealing with diasporic distance, marginalization and discrimination in both the homeland and hostland, the realization of her own divided self, feeling of alienation and the connection with the root. It is hoped that this study will contribute to the discourse of Nepali diasporic consciousness.

Exploring Self Identity: An Analysis of Audience Reception of Vlogs

This study analyzed the interpretation of the self-identity projected by Tasya Farasha through her YouTube content. The development of youth identity today cannot be separated from the role of social media. In this context, Tasya Farasha’s content was examined from the viewpoint of the audience who watched it. This study uses a reception analysis methodology with focus group discussion as data collection technique. The informants in this study were selected based on criteria and classified based on three different universities in Jakarta. The result showed that the informants perceived the content of Tasya Farasya’s broadcast as a reference for youth in forming self-identity both culturally and persuasively in speech and action. The self-identity that Tasya Farasya projects led to a cosmopolitan identity. An identity that sees human’s equality in a community. This self-identity also shows its resistance to various dogmas that discriminate against differences.

Migrating Objects and Wanderers between Worlds: Cosmopolitan Selves in Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes

Edmund de Waal‘s widely acclaimed family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010) is a hybrid text that fuses biography, autobiography and the biography of objects and interlaces these with critical reflections on art, transnationality, cross-cultural communication and the development of cosmopolitan identities. This article examines the central role of the collection of netsuke synecdochally evoked in the book’s title that not only provides the pivotal structural element but also the major conceptual focus of the text. I argue that this idiosyncratic gravitational centre effects the permeability of generic boundaries by establishing an intricate relationality between the narrative’s different protagonists, who continuously decentre and reconfigure each other. Moreover, the art objects’ own history of migration and multiple belonging becomes a blueprint for de Waal’s construction of his Jewish ancestors’ highly mobile and cosmopolitan selves, which sidesteps the narrowly circumscribed vision of national or religious identities. The full extent of these connections is revealed through an examination of the author’s artistic vision, his ceramic art and art criticism. Finally, I will read The Hare with Amber Eyes as an act of restitution in a two-fold sense: as an attempt to undo the politically motivated erasure of some of his ancestors’ traces and as a historical reminder of lived forms of cosmopolitanism that can speak to contemporary debates around globalisation and migration.

Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s The Disillusioned African: Rigidizing Cosmopolitan Borders, Binarizing Cosmopolitan Opportunities

ABSTRACT This paper draws on Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s The Disillusioned African to argue that thinking beyond cosmopolitan borders should be an essential dimension of a cosmopolitan imagination and cosmopolitan politesse that defines the relationship between African leaders and the African masses and Africa, the West, and the rest. Nyamnjoh’s novel affirms that the maintenance of fluid cosmopolitan borders would facilitate cultural encounters and engender cosmopolitan opportunities, which would blur the us/them dichotomies that define and confine relationships between African leadership and Africans and between Africa and the West or the rest. Analyzing the novel from this perspective affirms Nyamnjoh’s belief in nimble-footedness and flexibility in belonging. It is a perspective that foregrounds the author’s informative concepts of incompleteness and conviviality and thus the importance of reciprocal acknowledgment of the Other in her/his otherness among Africans, and between Africans and the West or the rest. The paper argues that this can indeed become the most potent feature and future of a common global cosmopolitan identity.

Ambivalence of Cosmopolitanism: A Study of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Writing

Although labeled as an immigrant writer, Ishiguro is not a typical one. His writing is not a repetition or successor of the diasporic literature. The various subjects and diversified locations of his works have been appropriately corresponded to his claim as “a kind of homeless writer”. He has always been locating himself in different cultures as well as engaged in a de-cultural writing, providing insights into the relationship between the subjective and the other, which shows his ambivalence dangling between different cultures. It is arguable that Ishiguro has several “deaths” before becoming a cosmopolitan. Nevertheless, the “killed” identity is inextirpable. The longing for subjectivity in his novels does not directly come from the cosmopolitan identity with whom he identified. Reading Ishiguro in the global context enables the detection of his compromise as a cosmopolitan writer constructed by a deliberate de-privileging and cultural alienation. Cosmopolitanism itself has been a paradoxical term in that its orientation points to the mutually inclusive “world” and “region”. Its implication is full of irreconcilable resistance and negotiation. The study is going to explore the ambivalence of cosmopolitanism in Ishiguro’s writing, to trace the progress of the making of the novelist as a cosmopolitan as well as embracing multiple cultures but denies clear boundaries, and to widen the scope of the discussion of globalization, localization, diasporic study, or postcolonial study.

FOOD, MODERNITY AND IDENTITY: ROOTED COSMOPOLITANISM IN ADICHIE’S AMERICANAH

In globalization era, there are many producers of global foods that have localized their products in order to get more costumers. Indeed, there are some people who cannot be separated with their locality, although they are part of global citizen. This paper discusses the tug-of-war between cosmopolitanism and localism within the persona of Ifemelu, the main character in Americanah, specifically in what food she eats and how the food is eaten and its influence on her identity. Americanah is a novel that tells the story of a Nigerian immigrant living in the United States who decided to return to Nigeria. The study focuses on the characters and characterization of the figures in the novel and it aims to show how a rooted cosmopolitan identity was formed in Ifemelu. The study is a qualitative research using the rooted cosmopolitanism theory proposed by Kwame Anthony Appiah. The research shows that Ifemelu's rooted cosmopolitan identity was seen through the negotiation between her cosmopolitan identity and her local (Nigerian) identity. The discourse on rooted cosmopolitanism built by the text reveals its partiality toward Nigerian local culture, specifically the Nigerian foods.

Cosmopolitanism and expatriate’s preference for host country food: The conditional effects of experiential capital and retail development

AbstractIn this paper we explore the insufficiently addressed domain of expatriates’ preference for local (host country) food. Extant literature on this segment of consumers shows that tensions created by moving abroad are also reflected in their varying preference for host country foods. By drawing on social identity theory, we investigate how a cosmopolitan identity drives a preference for host country food under the contingent effects of an expatriate's experiential capital and host country's retail development. Based on a unique dataset of 293 expatriates living in six countries of the Greater Middle East, the findings from binary logistic regression model show that cosmopolitanism significantly explains expatriate's preference for host country food. We also show that the dimensions of experiential capital have countervailing moderating effects on this relationship whereas in countries with lower levels of retail development, the relationship between cosmopolitanism and expatriates’ preference for host country food becomes stronger. The findings of this study imply that cosmopolitan expatriates should not be considered a uniform segment as previous studies have advocated. Eventually, this study offers valuable contributions to literature that investigates the influence of socio‐cultural identities in food consumption as well as to literature dealing with expatriate consumer behaviour.

CROSS-BORDER IDENTITY AS A DAILY RESISTANCE TACTIC OF COSMOPOLITANISM IN A TIME OF GLOBAL HEALTH EMERGENCY: GORIZIA-NOVA GORICA GO BORDERLESS

Ulrich Beck represented cosmopolitan society as overcoming the nation-states as the container of the respective civil societies. In order to understand these profound changes, sociology itself appears inadequate, populated as it is by definitions that Beck considers as zombie concepts: “the conceptual apparatus of the sociology of modernity appears in crisis because it is inadequate to describe the situation of societies in which the borders of the nation-states that contained them have dissolved in an extremely rapid period. Rather than a definitive departure from that sociology, Beck’s invitation to the international community of sociologists is to recalibrate their concepts in a cosmopolitan perspective» (Porcelli 2005: 8). The social contract, which was at the base of the construction of what Anderson defined the imagined communities, sanctioned the renunciation by the populations of part of their prerogatives of freedom favouring the security guaranteed by the sovereign power. The present global health emergency seems to have proposed the same social pact: more security and less freedom, especially people segregated within the resurging nation-states by new borders and walls. The remaining residue of globalisation is its economic-financial globalism. Ethnographic analysis along border areas reveals a consolidated cross-border identity experienced in people’s everyday lives as a tactic of resistance against the erection of new self-containment barriers. This contribution aims to analyse the salient aspects of this phenomenon in the city of Gorizia, which for decades has constituted an integrated metropolitan area of the Italian and Slovenian zones, defining a specific cross-border identity shared by both Italian and Slovenian citizens. This identity has not given way in front of the walls that have been restored in recent months in order to contain the contagion and therefore could represent what de Certeau defined as a tactic of resistance that in the present case bears witness to the invention of an increasingly cosmopolitan daily life. In this respect, the main points of the project book submitted for the candidacy of Gorizia-Nova Gorica as European Capital of Culture 2025 will be examined. The title of the bid book itself specifies the cosmopolitan identity of the area under analysis: “Go borderless”.

Children of Chinese Migrants in Spain: Life Experiences and Cosmopolitan Identities

ABSTRACT This article is a case study that uses the notion of cosmopolitanism as an analytical tool to explore the life experiences and cultural identities of three children of Chinese migrants living in Spain. Based on life narrative interviews, the article demonstrates that cosmopolitan outlooks and practices emerge in the lives of the participants as a multilayered mechanism that involves, on the one hand, circumstances and conditions such as educational and socioeconomic background, and on the other, a creative strategy aimed at subverting power dynamics and asserting one’s place within society. It is in this regard that the cosmopolitanism of children of Chinese migrants in Spain can be seen as both given and created.