Cosmopolitan Practices Research Articles

Practice of Patriotism, Ethnocentrism, Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in India: An Interrogation

The central concern of this paper is to examine intersectionalities between the ideals of cosmopolitanism, patriotism, ethnocentrism and nationalism in general, and their changing facets and interfaces in India. It argues that being a multiethnic and plural society, the civilisational ethos of India is conventionally founded on cosmopolitanism. The practice of patriotism and its accommodative principle of unity in diversity have provided the building blocks to this cosmopolitanism. During India’s independence struggle these ideals encountered the forces of modernism, ethnocentrism, communalism and ethno-nationalism. In contemporary India the forces of economic neoliberalism, developmental imbalances and persisting social and economic inequalities, post modernism, hyper modernism, populism, and cultural politics have become part of social reality. Notwithstanding the prevalence of the ideals of cosmopolitanism and civilisational interactive processes, these encounters have brought cumulative fluidity in the social, economic and political orientations in contemporary society, and have created further space for the influence of ethnocentrism and cultural politics as a means to remain rooted in society.

Exclusionary Cosmopolitanism in Buenos Aires

ABSTRACT In this article I explore the organisation of practices of vernacular cosmopolitanism in the city of Buenos Aires. The starting point is a series of festivals and activities organised by the city government to promote and celebrate its cosmopolitanism. I then explore the spaces where they take place, and the monuments built by immigrant communities that populate the urban landscape. I read these in relationship to the ideological making of the Argentine nation and state, showing that the vernacular cosmopolitanism being promoted is exclusionary in character, and Eurocentric in orientation. Furthermore, I suggest that this form of exclusionary cosmopolitanism has an ideological affinity and shared genealogy with the settler colonialism that underpins Argentine nation building and its territorial state consolidation. I also show that in these celebrations of diversity, the government of the city of Buenos Aires strategically uses immigrant institutions and their networks, subsuming their particularity and multiplicity to that of the city and the nation.

THE AUTONOMY PROJECT OF C. CASTORIADIS IN THE CONTEXT OF NEW COSMOPOLITANISM

The author addresses the prospects of the new cosmopolitan- ism project, which appears as a choice focused on individuality and its survival as an integrity in diversity. This reveals the relevance of Castoriadis’s autonomy project. The author believes that Castoriadis’s language of describing social reality can be used quite organically to characterise the latest trends in the development of cosmopolitan practices. The substantiation of the formulated assumptions is the purpose of this article. The article shows that new cosmopolitanism is an attempt to find an inclusive solution to the problem of universalism, which classical modernity and old cosmopolitanism failed to solve. The development of the discourse and practices of autonomy can become one of the effective means of such a solution. The main idea of the paper is that the projects of autonomy and new cosmopolitanism have similar goals and a direction, and they are a means of implementing cosmopolitan attitudes, or the process of cosmopolitanization. New cosmopolitan theories speak primarily of others, of otherness and autonomy. Autonomous societies can develop and implement cosmopolitan programs. If there is no adequate reflexivity in a heteronomous society, then autonomous societies are reflexive by their very nature. The new cosmopolitanism revives the project of autonomy, takes it from a purely theoretical dimension to a practical one, and allows to discuss its practical implementation. To clarify this parallel, it is important to consider Castoriadis’s interpretation of the political dimension of social life. In this case, we are talking about developing cosmopolitan citizenship, which represents the highest level of individual autonomy. The article shows the most important role of creative imagination in its interpretation by Castoriadis in solving the identified problems and establishing various institutions of society. The article concludes that paideia is the central dimension of any policy of autonomy, which gives form to social chaos. Thus, we stop to divide the human world between ‘us’ and ‘them’ — us: the only real human beings; the others: savages, barbarians, heathens, we stop considering our representation of the world as the only meaningful one. This is the essence of cosmopolitanism as it is interpreted by the new cosmopolitanism.

On the Educational Potential of Ubuntu

Abstract The literature on Ubuntu is as prolific, as it is diverse. Over the past two decades the increasing attention has been devoted to Ubuntu in relation to African education. In recognising the richness of attention, which has thus been afforded to Ubuntu, this article attempts to offer something else. I consider the concept of Ubuntu as an African notion for education, in the same way that some Europeans describe bildung as education, and ta’dib, for some Muslims, means education. Hence, in this article, I firstly analyse the concept Ubuntu. Secondly, I show how Ubuntu relates to at least three meanings of education, namely, interdependent human action, deliberative inquiry, and socially responsive action. Finally, I make an argument for Ubuntu as a cosmopolitan practice, thus further enhancing its educational impetus before concluding with the rationale for Ubuntu, namely a cultivation of dignity.

Kochi: provincialising postcolonial metro-cosmopolitan spatialities

There is much to learn about how some locales come to be deemed as more cosmopolitan than others. Mumbai is hailed as a cosmopolitan city and even a model for India. With an increasing sense of disappointment about the decline of cosmopolitanism in such metropolitan cities, there is a need to look at what other locales can offer as alternative models of cosmopolitanism. This article addresses Kochi as a locale that is nuanced with precolonial practices of cosmopolitanism. This move towards provincialising cosmopolitanism – in the sense of moving away from metropolitan locales to highlight deeper, more historical and local ways of being cosmopolitan – is informed by the growing emphasis on the need to explore subaltern or vernacular cosmopolitanism.

Networks of Alterity in Syndemic Times: Sociodigital Media Controversy Around Racism in Mexico

ABSTRACT This contribution seeks to contextualize historically a particular conjuncture through which significant changes to the national formation of alterities are expressed and performed by different media outlets and socio-digital networks as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Mexico. By analysing three significant media events – which have triggered a broader discussion about racism, ethnicity, mestizaje, media and politics in Mexico – I argue for the need to develop a theoretical framework able to account for the constitutive relations between communication technologies, culture industries and singular articulations of local, regional, and cosmopolitan practices of inclusion/exclusion, at a time when notions of indigeneity, afromexicanidad, whiteness and mestizaje are being reshaped politically.

Refugees, race and the limits of rural cosmopolitanism: Perspectives from Ireland and Wales

In many parts of the Global North, the imagined (and often illusionary) “whiteness” of rural societies has been both exposed and contested by the transnational movements of racialised migrant workers, refugees, asylum seekers and other immigrants. Such dynamics have prompted a renegotiation of ideas of race and rurality, with both reactionary responses of white populism and more progressive responses that assert a “rural cosmopolitanism” that evokes associations with hospitality, solidarity and community in rural culture. To explore these themes, this paper discusses evidence from three rural towns in Ireland and Wales with recent settlement of refugees or asylum seekers. The paper examines the articulation of a discourse of cosmopolitanism in the towns, the roles that are scripted within these discourses, both for migrants and for established residents, and the performance of these expectations. It reveals gaps between discourse and practice, with “actually existing cosmopolitanism” in the towns being characterized by ambivalence and precarity. The paper argues that both the discursive construction and the partial practice of cosmopolitanism are embedded in the rural, non-metropolitan settings of the towns and informed by place-specific palimpsests of migration and colonialism.

Global Brands, Cosmopolitan Socialization, and Consumption: the Case of ikea and the ‘Stuff’ of Ordinary Cosmopolitanism

Abstract In this paper we consider how the global brand ikea works as an agent of cosmopolitan socialization and shapes everyday practices of cosmopolitan consumption. Drawing on material from case study research, we consider ikea’s support of cosmopolitan consumption through its emphasis on corporate social responsibility and framing of a cosmopolitan brandscape. We argue that ikea actively works to socialize individuals toward a moral cosmopolitan view, with the aim of enlisting consumers in the co-performance of global socio-environmental responsibility. Based on our interview data, we discuss how ikea does not so much cultivate cosmopolitan outlooks as affirm existing moral and aesthetic orientations, while easing ethical consumption concerns with a socially responsible image. Further, we show how ikea conducts a subtler, practical form of socialization: shaping ordinary cosmopolitan practices – ways of doing cosmopolitanism – with sustainable ‘stuff’ and in-store activity. In this way, ikea supports the co-production of a very ordinary, if not, convenient cosmopolitanism.

Virginia Woolf's modernist narratives and cosmopolitanism focused on Three Guineas and Mrs. Dalloway

The ideal of a cosmopolitan person’s being a ‘citizen of the world’ is multifaceted encompassing both conflicts between individuality and universality, affiliations to community, family and conflicts, plus displacements from home to home. This paper attempts to analyze Woolf’s feminist and modernist works Three Guineas and Mrs. Dalloway in the context of cosmopolitanism. Among the inconsistencies and contradictions in Woolf’s works, the question of how her cosmopolitanism can be compatible with her Englishness requires also a reexamination of related topics such as her alleged anti-Semitism and patriotism. Firstly, in order to advance the study of cosmopolitanism in Woolf’s modernist literature I will compare the speculations of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s rooted cosmopolitanism and Martha Nussbaum’s Stoic cosmopolitanism. Secondly, attentive especially to her eloquent statement in Three Guineas , “As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world”, I will analyze the significance of Woolf’s contentions as to how marriage, nationality, and patriotism relate to the desire for world citizenship. Finally, in Mrs. Dalloway, focusing on the daily lives of immigrants, expatriates and foreigners living in the cosmopolitan city, London, I will interpret Woolf as being inseparably associated with feminist and pacifist patriotism and performing the ethical practice of cosmopolitanism—doing kindness to strangers—through her modernist narrative techniques and strategies.

Navigating ‘Small Objects of Foreignness’

Too often, totalizing discourses about the nature of the global metropole attempt to control its social and political story and render it an idealized object rather than a space of discrete subjects and perspectives. Walking the city is an act of social experience that allows the urban wanderer to see what has previously been hidden or inaccessible. Urban rambling reveals the ways in which racial and ethnic minorities have been colonized and marginalized, and how their communities have been rendered invisible as well. This paper examines how the metrolingual and metro-cultural practices of cosmopolitanism combined with the micro-strategies of decolonization serve to provide a counter-place to the dominant space of the Toronto city landscape. I frame this investigation with Dionne Brand’s novel, What We All Long For, as a narrative background, complemented by my own experience of aleatory urbanism through several Toronto neighbourhoods to explore the ways in which individual communities resist and re-negotiate the hegemony of settler-colonial municipal and linguistic practices.

Growing up and belonging in regimes of geographical mobility. Young cosmopolitans in Berlin

ABSTRACT The focus on geographical mobility is consolidating within youth studies. Mobility now increasingly characterises contemporary youth, and seems to play a crucial role in marking the transition to adulthood, conveying the complexity of youth cultures. Moving abroad represents an opportunity that fuels the transition to adulthood, by enabling young people to experience cultural diversity, experiment with practices of cosmopolitanism and reframe their sense of belonging in terms of places, times and relationships. The paper draws on a qualitative study of young Italians who have recently moved to Berlin, and explores the relationships between the transition to adulthood, mobility, cosmopolitanism and sense of belonging. It highlights the deep structural and cultural roots of their mobility practices: mobility is present from an early age in their desires, regardless of their class of origin or educational qualifications. Their mobility practices also involve a daily reworking of their sense of belonging, which sees them navigating family and friendship bonds, and new relationships of intimacy that ‘make home’ and often arise in the context of a cosmopolitan generation on the move. The paper shows how these young cosmopolitans piece together this mosaic of belonging and explores its link with the coming of age process.

Moral cosmopolitanism, civic action and ethical consumption: Social differences in young Australians’ global citizenship

The relationship between global citizenship identity and actions remains an unsettled issue. In this article we use the PISA 2018 survey to explore whether global citizenship identity is associated with a greater likelihood of engaging in ‘globally minded’ practices among young Australians. Descriptive analysis reveals that self-reported global citizenship identity is associated with higher levels of moral cosmopolitanism, more so than with greater intercultural values or with more positive attitudes to immigrants. However, this self-declared identity does not necessarily translate into cosmopolitan action. Statistical modelling shows that, in the Australian context, global citizenship knowledge, values and identity account for a limited proportion of differences in self-reported cosmopolitan action. We argue that a sociological theory of practice helps explain these results. We conclude by highlighting future research opportunities to better understand the social determinants of global citizenship practices, including by exploring out-of-school socialisation and a broader range of cosmopolitan practices.

Crossing Boundaries: Poetry, Metaphor, and Cosmopolitan Dialogue at the Court of Roger II

ABSTRACT The Siculo-Norman king, Roger II (1095–1154), created a courtly culture that used art, architecture, and literature to reflect the symbolic and cultural values of the states that ringed the Mediterranean. An essential vehicle for Roger's cosmopolitan dialogue was the performance of court poetry that was broadly inclusive of the poetic conventions of the Latin, Greek, and Arabic-speaking worlds. Poetic performance at Palermo created an integrative dialogue of cultural valuation that crossed political as well as linguistic boundaries. While such acts of statesmanship might seem quaint to modern eyes, the potential of Siculo-Norman cosmopolitanism becomes more intriguing when we reflect on the current reality of failed states (Northern Africa), continuous conflicts (Israel), and fissured unions (EU) that ring the Mediterranean today. Roger's diplomatic use of poetry offers a refreshing alternative to the broken dialogue that exists in contemporary interstate relations in the Mediterranean. This paper illustrates that diplomatic poetic exchange has the ability to create cross-cultural commensurability in ways that modern cosmopolitan practices rooted in international law cannot.

CRITICAL URBAN THEORY IN THE ‘URBAN AGE’: Ruptures, Tensions, and Messy Solidarities

AbstractThis symposium extends debates over Neil Brenner‘s and Christian Schmid's planetary urbanization framework as ‘a new epistemology of the urban’. The contributors find much that is provocative and productive in the planetary urbanization approach as it has been advanced thus far. They also have concerns about the ways in which this approach has the potential to limit the bounds of urban theory (intentionally or not). Thus the collection extends existing engagements (most notably via a 2018 special issue of the journal Society and Space) with planetary urbanization by scholars working in minor theoretical registers as an effort to offer positive critique in the context of elaborated alternatives. The intent of the collection is, in short, to offer reflections on urban scholarship in the ‘urban age’ that resist some planetary urbanization theorists’ call to pin down urban theory and instead might leave it open to ‘radical alterity’. The introduction, four research articles and one commentary that make up the symposium cover such topics as urban migrant labor, the multiple temporalities of urban development, caste and urban ecology, the politics of knowledge production, and theorizing as cosmopolitan practice.

Politics Beyond Imperial Cores: Spatial Production in the Peripheries of Medieval South India

Current scholarship on medieval South India has developed a comprehensive account of the ways in which political claims were constituted by dynasts and their subordinates in a range of contexts, from imperial courts to provinces. It has elaborated the modalities of political claim-making through instantiations of politico-cultural traditions or ‘cosmopolises’, and the integrative processes and social changes associated with them. However, this scholarship largely focused on imperial capitals and secondary urban settlements, which constituted nodes in the political networks of polities and loci of contestation and integration within them. Regions in which cosmopolitan traditions did not inform political practice remain opaque to this historiography. This article investigates one such contest- the ‘contested’ Raichur Doab. It explores the politics of the production of a settlement- MARP-30 and the ways they were negotiated to constitute relations of inclusion and exclusion.MARP-30 is part of the multi-component site at Maski that during the period of MARP-30’s occupation does not evince evidence of cosmopolitan practices. Examining the constitution of socio-political relations in this context will expand our understanding of political practice in medieval South India to include practices inaccessible through texts and under-explored archaeologically, and yet typical of medieval South India given the political and social dynamism that characterize the medieval period.

Mobility for Me but Not for Others: The Contradictory Cosmopolitan Practices of Contemporary White British Youth

This article seeks to problematise the perception that young people are committed cosmopolitans by highlighting some of the contradictory and contingent practices that young White British youth engage in. To do so, I explore a contradiction that emerged in my recent projects when young people talked about mobility and migration, namely how some White British youth want (and assume) freedom of movement for themselves but are opposed to freedom of movement when it involves immigrants coming to Britain. Here I argue that this can be viewed as an effort to enjoy the benefits of a cosmopolitan lifestyle (particularly through geographical mobility) while nonetheless wishing to limit opportunities for cultural Others to do likewise. This manifestation, I suggest, should be seen as a one-way form of cosmopolitanism that is not just contradictory, but also a reflection of the mixed messages young people in Britain receive about mobility, migration, multiculturalism, citizenship and individualism.

Jazz and cosmopolitan practice

Cosmopolitanism has increasingly been used as a concept to analyse and discuss the cultural and musical practice of jazz musicians. As an interpretive wedge for discussing the history of jazz, cosmopolitanism has been associated with the culturally hybrid establishment of jazz. However, definitions and applications of the term 'cosmopolitanism' remain somewhat ambiguous. In this article, building on the scholarship of cosmopolitanism in jazz, anthropology, philosophy and sociology, I use my ethnographic research with Australian musician Lloyd Swanton to identify certain practices and behaviours. I question how we determine whether a jazz musician's practices can be usefully described as cosmopolitan. I then examine the implications of identifying musical and cultural practice as cosmopolitan and the role of this term in identity formation.

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.

A work of death: martyrdom, myth and dead women in contemporary Spanish film

ABSTRACT In the same moment that the Spanish government passed the Ley de memoria histórica, recognizing the rights of those persecuted during the Civil War and dictatorship, the Spanish Church escalated its own project of remembering, more than doubling between 2007 and 2013 the number of beatifications of clergy killed during the war. This discordant combination of circumstances has been reflected in cultural production where cinematic representations of the Civil War dead have often reanimated tropes of the Catholic popular imagination. While these films mark a broader cultural move away from the Church rhetoric of sacrifice and martyrdom and towards human rights frameworks as a way to deal with past traumas, their reliance on the culturally charged motifs of traditional hagiography has meant that contemporary martyr narratives remain entangled in older national myths. Taking examples from Emilio Martínez Lázaro's 2007 film Las 13 rosas, Mikel Rueda's Izarren Argia (2010) and Benito Zambrano's La voz dormida (2011), this article will demonstrate how the interpenetration of opposing discourses both undermines the films’ contribution to the project of historical memory while also offering powerful moments of reflection and empathy at the intersection of traditional martyrology and cosmopolitan memory practices.

Conferred cosmopolitanism: class-making strategies of elite schools across the world

Drawing on a multi-sited global ethnography of elite schools, this article explores how these institutions work to produce subjects that will thrive in a globalized world. We examine how despite a similar commitment to global citizenship education and a cosmopolitan orientation across all schools, the intersections between the transnational and national sphere continue to shape the specific futures students are being prepared for. Thus, while all schools understand cosmopolitanism as being acquired by working across difference and having international mobility experiences, the specificities of the national socio-economic contexts and the founding principles of each institution, shapes the kinds of ‘leaders’ being formed, which in turn differentiates the specific cosmopolitan practices being promoted. Ultimately, these elite institutions are seeking to create an elite class by conferring a cosmopolitan status on their students which will have direct convertibility for the specific futures being envisioned for them.