Cosmopolitan Power Research Articles

Re-envisioning the Heritage: Towards Interpreting Mandalay’s Multi-ethnicity through the Lens of Old City Quarters

Mandalay is a multi-ethnic metropolitan city since the 19th century. Mandala symbolism is included in the city structure of Mandalay. In order to compete the Western power structure, Mandala was based in Mandalay’s city planning design which was planned in parallel with Yangon to go against the colonial power. It was quite transparent which ethnic groups were kept there, how they served the king and made cultural exchange among them and formed the national centre of cosmopolitan power and future multi-ethnic capital city. After the king was sent to exile and during the colonial period, these diverse cultural patterns were disturbed. It has undergone many changes since its creation, very slow and inappropriate ad-hoc developments after independence and only promoting the ancient Myanmar cultural heritage in past few decades. This paper highlights the multi-ethnic cultural heritages of Mandalay where Mandala symbolism is included in the the city planning concept. The unique Myanmar feature of Mandalay not only lies in its Buddhist and ritual believes, but also in its multi-ethnic groups’ rituals and meanings because of nearly 170 years of impermanence of different heritage of diverse ethnic groups. There are some parts still visible in daily fabric and activities. The paper concludes that the complexity of urban cultural heritage highlights that simple definition of urban identity does not make sense for Mandalay. Capturing Mandalay’s ethnic complexity is beyond the range of a single short paper. In this paper we will limit our discussion to a focused discussion of Islamic, Thai, Chinese, Christian and Manipuris and Assamese communities. Mandala’s cultural exchange was transparent and there are still the possibilities to be so in 2023 landscape.

Rethinking National Power? From IR Theory to Foreign Policy Practice

Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism and Constructivism. By Guilio M. Gallarotti . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 315 pp., $29.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0521138123). In this book, Giulio Gallarotti ambitiously advances a “project on power” (p. ix) that he began in The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics (2010). In that first work Gallarotti sought to specify a well-known phenomenon. In Cosmopolitan Power he builds on that project. He seeks to develop an account of how states can avoid the power curse; that is, how they can increase their power without undermining it through the very process of its augmentation. The key, Gallarotti argues, is for states to pursue the right kind of power: cosmopolitan power, a combination of hard and soft power that does not rely too heavily on either one. Whereas hard power compels through threat, soft power persuades weak states to “emulate” strong ones as the strong “endear” themselves to the weak (pp. 21–22). Since, as Gallarotti argues, hard power is a feature of Realist thought and soft power of Neoliberal and Constructivist thought, making sense of cosmopolitan power requires a theoretical blending of the major traditions in International Relations (IR). In this way, Cosmopolitan Power takes up an intellectual position alongside other synthetic theories of IR like Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics (1999) or G. John Ikenberry's After Victory (2000). It also takes up intellectual company with more policy-oriented works, like Joseph Nye's The Powers to Lead (2008). The bulk of the book is absorbed with developing and historically illustrating the specific processes and strategies entailed in cosmopolitan power toward the end of generating …

The co-evolution of cosmopolitan and national statehood – Preliminary theoretical considerations on the historical evolution of constitutionalism

The article claims that we should not just look towards a utopian future in fulfilling a claim about realization of a cosmopolitan, non-national world order. Already during antiquity the idea of a transcendent universal order took on a differentiated form at the same time as there happened to be institutionalization. Since the legal revolution of the long 12th century, this duality has been constitutional and has had a hierarchical structure. However, not only was the invention legal, it was also organizational; hence, the modern political, legal and organizational powers emerged long before the more celebrated state-building processes of the 16th and 17th centuries. The point is that the order was both political and cosmopolitan, institutional and universal. The nation-state was an exception compared with this long and widespread legacy of cosmopolitan power. But the universality of subjective rights was re-institutionalized according to principles that excluded inequalities. This was set in motion even before the UN Charter, not just with the ideas of 1789 but also institutionalized in Roosevelt’s New Deal together with the social and political rights that were institutionalized specifically as a consequence of the World Wars and the political claims that followed.

Book Review: Giulio M. Gallarotti, Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism and Constructivism

Book Review: Giulio M. Gallarotti, <i>Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism and Constructivism</i>

Book Review: International Relations: Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism

Book Review: International Relations: Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism

Cosmopolitan power in international relations: a synthesis of realism, neoliberalism, and constructivism

Introduction 1. The theory of cosmopolitan power 2. Crucial-case textual analysis of the founding fathers of Realism: the classical inspirations 3. Crucial-case textual analysis of the founding fathers of Realism: the modern inspirations 4. Case studies of soft empowerment: free trade, the classical gold standard, and dollarization 5. Case study of hard disempowerment: US foreign policy and the Bush doctrine 6. Case study of soft empowerment: the power of modern American culture 7. Conclusions.

Cosmopolitanism: Sovereignty denied or sovereignty restated?

This article explores and criticizes key assumptions of contemporary cosmopolitanism, not least the notion of post-sovereignty, trying to understand how the cosmopolitan power and sovereignty critique may be very compatible with present-day reconfigurations and relegitimizations of state power and sovereignty. Through a critique of how cosmopolitans sketch out a problematic nation state's past and a more factual efficient and morally appropriate post-nation state condition the article claims that cosmopolitanism may come to serve as legitimizing cover for a new sovereigntist language and practice wielded by the same powers who were dominant in the nation state age, namely the Western states. The purpose of the article is to ask whether cosmopolitanism and humanitarianism have become the new sovereigntist language uniting state officials and state-critical scholars?

Becoming modern in Toronto: the industrial exhibition and the shaping of a late Victorian culture

North American cities of the late nineteenth century, grappling with the effects of industrial capitalism and urban growth, were subject to a succession of massive social transformations. Scientific and technological advances were shifting the balance of cosmopolitan power, and people faced the challenge of comprehending and adapting to the rapidly changing social environment. In Becoming Modern in Toronto, Keith Walden shows how the Toronto Industrial Exhibition, from its founding in 1879 to 1903 (when it was renamed the Canadian National Exhibition), influenced the shaping and ordering of the emerging urban culture. Unlike other studies of its kind, it fully integrates experiences on and off the fairground by viewing the fair as a microcosm of developing structures in the city and surrounding rural areas. The book is arranged around seven thematic elements - order, confidence, display, identity, space, entertainment, and carnival - each of which concerns the way the Exhibition contributed to a search for definition in the face of innovation. The efforts to divide existence into logical, unambiguous categories and to promote controlled conduct was, however, constantly frustrated by the novelty of the fair itself. The Exhibition presented fairgoers with new perspectives and information, while the exhibits simultaneously denied and invited their participation. Though the fair seemed to glorify professional accomplishments and legitimate Tlite leadership, it also implied that the fruits of industrial capitalist society were not exclusive. Walden concentrates on these ambiguities, revealing how the status quo was both confirmed and challenged at the fair. Becoming Modern in Toronto takes into account a variety of social tensions and concerns that pervaded late Victorian culture. It will be compelling reading for historians, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists, as well as for those interested in the symbolic and social meaning of public festivity and its regulation.