Cosmopolitan Vision Research Articles

Eurasian Emigration from Singapore

Abstract In the late modern era, emigration and concomitant citizenship renunciations in countries that do not allow dual citizenship can be the result of lifestyle preferences or better work opportunities. Although emigration is an integral dimension of cosmopolitanism in an era when national borders are porous, Singapore discourages the emigration of its citizens but prefers its new migrants to maintain cosmopolitan links. This is perhaps anomalous to its cosmopolitan vision. Eurasians of mixed European and Asian ancestry are a small minority ethnic group who have emigrated out of Singapore in large numbers. This work examines how their cosmopolitan politics of belonging have been at odds with the state’s authoritarian tropes of citizenship as ‘push’ factors responsible for this minority ethnic group’s dwindling population.

Innovation in citizenship policies

ABSTRACT A viable citizenship program is pivotal for state development, and to let official policy determine politics as taught by T. J. Lowi. National states based on national-state citizenship are weaker and weaker before the key challenges of our times. That is why citizenship programs are more and more focused on innovation policies to integrate ius sanguinis, ius soli, citizenship on investment and citizenship on performance. This paper provides a strategic innovation policy by linking development and global citizenship. Innovative law-making, citizenship policy innovation, and development are dramatically interconnected to evolve a scenario in which citizenship represents a key intangible asset to generate tangible wealth in open horizons where free circulation of tangibles or intangibles is strategic and linked to downsizing the bureaucratic burdens, the local power centers by evolving a much leaner and higher organizational standard of citizenship: legally, isotropically, and socially. This results in a new theory of social systems as a useful tool for the management of the complexity of social relations, breaking territorial boundaries, and making them cosmopolitan (Beck, 2006. The cosmopolitan vision. Cambridge: Polity Press). In order to achieve this, the present study will be approached and related with cosmopolitism and development, aiming to bring new contours of study to this subject.

How to think the world? Achille Mbembe on race, democracy and the African role in global thought

How to think the world? Achille Mbembe on race, democracy and the African role in global thought

Sardonic Attitude of the Roux in the Great Railway Bazar

This study examines Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar (1977) so as to trace his perception on the Asian states, peoples and cultures during his railway journey across Asia in 1973. The study primarily seeks an answer to the question: does Theroux adopt cosmopolitan vision of the contemporary globalized era or follow the colonial vision of the colonial era? The study borrows theoretical concepts of colonial and cosmopolitan visions from Debbie Lisle. In the process of textual analysis, the study also brings theoretical concepts in travel writing theory and criticisms of various critics on the primary text. The study, finally, comes up with a conclusion that Theroux has implicated the colonial vision as it locates numerous evidences of his condescending and sardonic attitude on the Asian states, peoples and cultures.

The political desirability, feasibility, and sustainability of planetary defense governance

Planetary defense is a delicate topic that has inherently sincere intentions – to save the Earth, biosphere or humankind from an asteroid capable of causing an extinction event. However, the call for action in an exceptional situation that uses scientific knowledge to rationalize exceptional political decisions is an obvious target for criticism by critical security studies scholars. The following article offers a policy framework to avoid the inevitable harsh criticism when any planetary defense policy is thoughtfully designed. The aim is to bring knowledge from political science and international relations theory to the planetary defense community to help build the future planetary defense political and technical architecture that will be desirable, feasible and will sustain. The article argues that it must be ethically desirable for involved actors, politically feasible in the current international system and sustainable in the long-term for the sake of humankind survival and prosperity. The theoretical approach reflects realistic dynamics between nation states but also proposes more visionary cosmopolitan future of humankind; it introduces ethical security studies to argue why, when and how planetary defense can be ethical but also derives from neoliberal thought to propose a policy of technological interdependence. The article combines critical reflections of current technical proposals, anticipate the criticism and proposes the least complicated way through the maze of international relations. The planetary defense has potential to unite people around the world in the Ulrich Beck's cosmopolitan vision, but it must take into consideration that rational solutions focused on effectivity enabled by engineered technology do not necessarily bring the desirable future.

In Search of Hybridity: Grainger, MacDowell and their Cosmopolitan Imagination

While their names are not frequently juxtaposed in existing scholarship, Percy Grainger and Edward MacDowell both maintained that cosmopolitanism was not merely a return to eighteenth-century idealism, but also a practical solution to mediating the anxieties of their epoch. I argue that, as members of a transatlantic network of artists, their overlapping system of referents and mutual fascination with Nordic cultures was integral to the development of mutable definitions of cosmopolitanism. At the same time, the deliberate consciousness of difference that permitted for the simultaneous expansion and contraction of identities also contributed to the rise of conflicting imperatives. In the case of Grainger, certain tensions remain unresolved, including the propensity to circulate racial hierarchies under the moniker of ‘cosmopolitanism’. Therefore, in this article, I offer a methodology for appraising the common foundations of their affiliations, advance new analytical tools for evaluating the practice of ‘cosmopolitanizing’ local sources, and problematize the purported universality of their resultant discourse. By focusing upon the particular aspect of harmonic contextuality, I find that a distinct mode of hybridity emerged as they sought to distance themselves from European artistic models while in living America – one that ironically brought properties of time and space into closer proximity. This study thereby illustrates that the consequences of their cultural dialogue led to the end of anachronisms in the service of a ‘continual and restless spirit of change’.

Broadcasting Nature Poetry: Una Marson and the BBC's Overseas Service

Although the nature poems of the Jamaican writer Una Marson are usually set against her transnational projects, they are inextricable from the cosmopolitan vision described in her radio broadcasts and journalism. Studies of transnational modernism have brought to the fore Marson's participation in pan- Africanist political and literary networks, her poems' mediation of the black West Indian woman's experience, and her work promoting West Indian literature in the metropolitan institution of the BBC. Analyses of Marson as a transnational igure, however, have obscured aspects of her literary production—speciically, her nature poetry. Placing Marson's West Indian nature poetry that was broadcast by the BBC in the context of the original programs reveals the efects of moving from print publication to radio broadcast. And, along with her editorials for the Jamaican literary magazineThe Cosmopolitan(1928–31), Marson's BBC broadcasts (1939–45) make the case for the ongoing relevance of the pastoral tradition to public life.

Reading \u2018Fundamental British Values\u2019 Through Children\u2019s Gothic: Imperialism, History, Pedagogy

This paper reads the U.K. Government’s “fundamental British values” project alongside two children’s Gothic novels, Coram Boy (2000) by Jamila Gavin and City of Ghosts (2009) by Bali Rai. In 2011 the U.K. Government outlined what it described as “fundamental British values” (FBV), making it a requirement for U.K. schools to promote these values. Many critics have shown that the root of FBV lies in Islamophobia and imperialist nostalgia and suggested that the promotion of “British” values in school will exclude minority groups already under siege from racist elements in contemporary Britain. Other critics argue that the promotion of FBV reduces opportunities to explore issues of belonging, belief, and nationhood in the classroom. This article argues that the Gothic fictions of Jamila Gavin and Bali Rai offer a space in which to critically examine British history (and so, its values) in a way that is acutely relevant to these education contexts. Coram Boy and City of Ghosts use the Gothic to interrogate aspects of British history elided by the FBV project. That is, they point to Britain’s imperial and colonial history and offer a rejoinder to the Government’s insistence that “British Values” equate to democracy, respect for the rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance of those from different faiths and religions. Furthermore, Gavin’s and Rai’s use of the Gothic creates a space in which the ambiguities and contradictions inherent in FBV can be explored. However, their “gothicized” histories of Britain do not render the idea of shared values invalid. The diversity and interconnectedness of the characters offer an alternative version of identity to the patronising and arrogant FBV project, which is aimed at promoting a national identity based on sameness and assimilation. Rai and Gavin look to Britain’s past through the lens of the Gothic not only to refute nationalism and racism, but also to offer a productive alternative that gestures towards a more cosmopolitan vision of identity.

Imperial and critical cosmopolitans

This article argues that two modern reinterpretations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, that is the BBC’s Sherlock (2010–) and CBS’s Elementary (2012–), differ in their representations of the city in ways that bear significant political ramifications. In particular, Sherlock repeats many of the social structures of Conan Doyle’s stories that construct an imperial cosmopolitan vision of life in London, while Elementary offers an interpretation of Holmes’s life in modern New York with a critical cosmopolitan ethos. Building on the works of Craig Calhoun, Ann Stoler, Paul Gilroy, and Walter Mignolo, this article argues that imperial cosmopolitanism refers to a colonial node wherein the global circulation of goods and people leads to increases in segregation, social differentiation, and ethnocentrism, whereas critical cosmopolitanism refers to circumstances under which the arrangement of the global city creates increased contact between various kinds of people as well as decreased social differentiation, which may lead to mutual understanding, solidarity, and what Lauren Berlant calls political empathy. This article demonstrates these two divergent approaches by analysing the programmes’ aesthetic choices, depictions of social contact between Holmes and the diverse inhabitants of the city, and the representations of women, particularly with regard to the casting of Watson. As a result, the article finds that Sherlock depicts London from above as a space that must be strategically traversed to maintain social distance, while Elementary depicts New York from street level as a space wherein Holmes learns to encounter diverse others as co-equal citizens and the audience is invited to experience multiple perspectives. Consequently, Sherlock reiterates an imperial cosmopolitan view of urban globalisation, while Elementary includes key preconditions for the emergence of critical cosmopolitan mentalities.

Reflections on structural inequality, struggle and the meanings of citizenship: a zainichi Korean teacher narrative

Teachers across the globe engage in day-to-day struggles for justice, often with support from unions and community-led groups. Teacher narratives reveal opportunities forbuilding an inclusive theory and practice of education for social justice. I profile one teacher, a third generation zainichi Korean permanent resident in Japan, employed to teach ethnic studies. Her account highlights teachers’ political and moral responsibilities, and ways in which professional and political commitments may coincide. Her work is contextualisedwithin historical and ongoing struggles for equality in Japan. Despite structural inequalities , she empowers students to claim their rights. Through the curriculum, she challenges asymmetrical power relations and hate speech, presenting a complex narrative of twentieth century Japanese history. She presentsa cosmopolitan vision, to meet the challenges of global citizenship. I argue teachers need to recognise both ethical and political dimensions of their role, to provide a solid foundation in empowering youth to work for justice and human rights. .

Tourism and the critical cosmopolitanism imagination: ‘The Worst Tours’ in a European World Heritage city

With its old core classified as a World Heritage Site since 1996, Porto has recently been experiencing a tourism boom. Voted ‘Best European Destination’ of the year three times since 2012, this mid-size city core area is experiencing an economic renewal after decades of neglect. Many of the new ventures are tourism-orientated: restaurants, bars, hostels, short stay apartments and specialised crafts shops are populating previously derelict eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings, bringing new life to previously depopulated streets. Most of these ventures are fronted by middle class individuals who saw their traditional economic outlets wither during the Portuguese economic crisis and consequent international bailout in 2011. This paper analyses a particular tourism venture: a walking tour of the city called ‘The Worst Tours’. The offspring of three architects, these tours differentiate themselves by not aligning within a hegemonic model of tourism that focuses on the built heritage of the UNESCO classification and its historical discourse on the city, offering instead a more politically engaged discourse in which the urban and social impacts provoked by Portugal’s economic downturn and the touristification of the city’s economy are highlighted and discussed with the tour participants. I will approach the tour through the lens of critical cosmopolitanism and the idea of a cosmopolitan imagination producing new relations between self, other and the world in moments of openness.

Perpetual Peace and Cosmopolitical Method

This article explores the bases of Kant’s cosmopolitanism in his more systematic writings on freedom, judgment, and community. My argument is that, if we peer beneath his more explicitly normative prescriptions for achieving “perpetual peace,” we find the tools not just of a cosmopolitan vision but what we might call a “cosmopolitical method.” While many assume Kant’s political thought descends directly from his moral philosophy, a look back at relevant passages in the first Critique reveals an alternative reading that points toward his theory of reflective judgment, which combines practical freedom with judgments based on theoretical concepts. Of particular importance is Kant’s conception of community as commercium, through which Kant discerns all matters of right to concern the way free actors are constrained to share the earth in common. These considerations allow for a broader way of thinking about Kantian cosmopolitanism, one that is responsive to the reflective judgment of world citizens as they encounter new challenges.

“Difficult Conversations across Religions, Race and Empires: American Women Missionaries and Japanese Christian Women during the 1930s and 1940s”

This essay examines how American and Japanese women in the foreign missionary movement struggled to reconcile the rise of state Shintoism, Japanese patriotic nationalism, and American racism and nationalism with their Christian faiths during the 1930s and 1940s when the United States and Japan were moving towards war. It applies Kris Manjapra’s notion of “aspirational cosmopolitanism” as the conceptual framework in its exploration of how an American woman missionary and her Japanese convert developed different visions of egalitarian cosmopolitanism and remained faithful to their Christian faiths as the states of Japan and the United States demanded more conformity to their wartime notions of patriotism. Charlotte B. DeForest, the last missionary president of Kobe College, who struggled with the questions of shrine visits and racism against Japanese Americans, managed to shape a new hybrid identity as Christian and “supernational.” Takeda (Cho) Kiyoko, her former student, finally identified a Japanese dual consciousness through the image of “humans in shells”—a clue to another cosmopolitan vision rooted in Christian faith appropriate to Japanese culture in reconciliation with Asia.

Solidarity’s reach

Solidarity has a key role to play in the allocation of responsibility for refugee protection, as is implied by Article 80 TFEU. Yet, EU law fails to provide a definition and a clear indication of what it entails, especially as for its external reach. Against this background, this article embarks on a theoretical/practical investigation of the normative bases of ‘EU solidarity’. Building on a cosmopolitan vision, it unpacks the multi-polar/multi-functional nature of the concept, as a founding value and constitutional (meta-)principle of EU law. In such a guise, it will posit that solidarity gives rise to an (autonomous) primary law duty of responsibility sharing/good faith cooperation that requires ‘fairness’ and ‘respect for fundamental rights’, as a uniform/all-pervading structural command generally applicable across policy fields. So configured, solidarity governs intra/extra-EU relations (based on the principle of coherence). The institutional, material, and procedural aspects of solidarity are thus explored to distil its horizontal, vertical, and systemic facets. Combined, they arguably produce a triple duty of conduct, loyalty, and result that permeates EU integration as a whole, calling into question the self-serving approach currently guiding the Common European Asylum System’s (CEAS) ‘external dimension’, as exemplified by the EU-Turkey ‘deal’.

Is London open? Mediating and ordering cosmopolitanism in crisis

This article analyses cosmopolitan imagination and ambivalent morality at times of urban crisis. It focuses on #LondonIsOpen – the city’s media campaign in response to the nation’s Brexit vote. In this case, cosmopolitanism’s discursive tools – especially the ideals of the Open city and hospitality – are mobilised to summon a range of actors in defence of the city. The article analyses the mediation of cosmopolitanism in a campaign film and in Londoners’ online and offline responses to it. These responses reveal #LondonIsOpen as a compelling example of cosmopolitan imagination, but also of cosmopolitanism’s moral fragility in the neoliberal city. As shown, urban dwellers overwhelmingly embrace the cosmopolitan value of openness. Yet, their visions are divided between neoliberal cosmopolitanism and vernacular cosmopolitanism. By analysing the moral space of mediated cosmopolitanism, I argue that, unlike the nation, representational struggles in the city increasingly take place within, rather than against, cosmopolitanism.

CONVENIENT COSMOPOLITANISM:DANIEL DERONDA, NATIONALISM, AND THE CRITICS

The specter of cosmopolitanismhauntsDaniel Deronda. In a curious reversal of critical fortune, the novel condemned by many of its initial reviewers for dabbling into obscure mystical doctrines and for pontificating far too explicitly about the significance of narrow loyalties and local attachments has recently come to embody a scrupulous investigation of cosmopolitan ethics. The sources of this radical shift in the understanding ofDaniel Deronda’s politics are theoretical as much as they are interpretative. For some time now, humanistic scholarship has been simultaneously attracted to cosmopolitanism and embarrassed by it: while we continue to be drawn to cosmopolitanism as an ideological project invested in overcoming tribal loyalties and in celebrating the encounter with the other, we are also resistant to its universalizing logic which we often see as complicit with the hegemonic tendencies variously present in the intellectual legacy of the European Enlightenment and in contemporary global capitalism. Faced with this tension, several influential scholars –– most notably Amanda Anderson and Kwame Anthony Appiah –– have turned toDaniel Derondaas an example of a cosmopolitanism free of pernicious hegemonic connotations, a cosmopolitanism understood as a commitment to open exchange between nations and races, rather than as the erasure of all cultural difference. In doing so they have, however, simultaneously overextended the concept of cosmopolitanism, rendering it very nearly meaningless, and misjudged the politics of Eliot's novel, overlooking its deep commitment to the logic of ethnic nationalism. In this essay I wish to use what I take to be the dual failure — interpretative and theoretical — of recent readings ofDaniel Derondain order to reexamine both the politics of Eliot's late writings and the ways in which we use the concept of cosmopolitanism in our critical practice. I will argue, first, that thecosmopolitan Deronda, constructed in a series of influential interpretations over the past two decades, is a specter, an apparition. This phantom, as we shall see, was constructed due to an unusual alignment between the desire to dissociate the great Victorian moralist that was George Eliot from the charge of slipping into narrow nationalist worldview and the desire to recuperate a non-hegemonic vision of cosmopolitanism. Second, I will argue that the novel's much discussed marginalization of Gwendolen Harleth in favor of Daniel Deronda's nationalist mission does not constitute simply a rejection of an egotistical heroine in the name of higher duties, but rather a decisive moment in Eliot's late career and in the history of Victorian fiction: by unequivocally favoring the hero's nationalist commitments over the heroine's private struggles, George Eliot has also rejected the private sphere which has traditionally preoccupied nineteenth-century fiction, in favor of the fantasies of collective destiny. Before analyzing the full implications of this shift, however, I will outline in more detail the interpretative history in which this essay intervenes.

Does philosophy contribute to an invasion complex? Sloterdijk the antagonist and the agonism of Mouffe

ABSTRACTThe political backlash against multiculturalism alongside the media portrayal of the global refugee crisis would suggest that the spaces for cultural difference have contracted and moved into a mode of transnational crisis management. This article addresses the moral panic over cultural difference by challenging some of the philosophical frameworks that have justified naturalized negative attitudes towards migrants and dismissed the viability of cosmopolitan perspectives. In particular, the author will critically evaluate the antagonistic perspective developed in Peter Sloterdijk’s writings and Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonism. To grasp the complex and hybrid forms of cross-cultural exchanges, the author argues that a more robust vision of cosmopolitanism is necessary.

Eleştirel Kozmopolit Bir Düşünür Olarak İbn Haldun

Cosmopolitism is neither a personal life style, nor a universal understanding on ethics, nor a global political institution. It is rather a "cosmo-polis" world-view. What we mean by "cosmo- polis" is a universal “gemainschaft” of citizens. Up to now, Ibn Khaldun’s real value as a doctrinaire of ciritical cosmopolitics hasnot been put forward. The distinctive feature of Ibn Khaldun’s cosmopolitan view is his effort to determine the interference points between the urbanized elits of Egypt, Maghreb, and Andalusia, which were competing with each other. More precisely, the most essential difference of Ibn Khaldun and his generation’s cosmopotical elits was their harmony with literature. Ibn Khaldun invented terms such as “asabiyyah” “umran” and “badawiya” on various layers of meaning. Additionally, he assigns a central role to religion and religious norms, values, and institutions in the cosmopolitan vision of humankind.

Grasping the Syrian War, a view from Albanians in the Balkans

Reactions to the brutal Syrian War from European governments and Europe's Muslims have been diverse and subject to many shifts over the past few years. This paper focuses on how Albanian political and Islamic religious figures living in the Balkans have come to interpret the war. I focus on discourse, the ways in which these different agents communicate with their audience, and the wider contexts they evoke. Government sources and religiously themed lectures delivered by prominent imams on the social networking site YouTube are used to assess these trends. The most obvious aspect of these debates is the ways in which these agents use the war to press their own agendas, the government to affirm their commitment to the “West” and an ethnicized view of Islam, while Islamic religious leaders use it to reconnect their audiences to a more cosmopolitan vision of their past. War thus becomes a catalyst for a resurgent contestation between different groups vying for control over what it means to be “Albanian” and “Muslim” in the twenty-first century.

Citizen Fox: The Global Antitrust Vision of Eleanor Fox

This chapter will examine the growth of Professor Eleanor Fox’s global and cosmopolitan vision for the future of competition policy. Over her illustrious career, Professor Fox’s scholarship traces an arc that began with the battle for the soul of U.S. antitrust law as the Chicago School’s influence began to dominate the discourse, enforcement policy, and eventually the case law. At the same time, Professor Fox also participated in the vigorous debate over the extraterritorial application of U.S. law to international cartels, monopolies, and mergers. Perhaps as a result of the changes in U.S. antitrust law, Professor Fox became a prominent voice in analyzing EU competition law and explaining that system to U.S. and international audiences as the influence of the U.S. as the antitrust hegemon began to wane. EU competition law was a natural focus for her scholarship, given its more complete vision of competition law in numerous important ways that fascinated Professor Fox. In more recent times, Professor Fox has also focused on the proper level of governance for competition policy in a globalized economy. She has focused on issues of gaps, legitimacy, and sufficiency to argue that global problems deserve, and require, global solutions. Depending on the specific issue, she has argued for the use of true international instruments and institutions ranging from international codes, WTO rules for competition policy, cooperation, harmonization, technical assistance, world restatements, as well as other hard law and soft law solutions, to solve the familiar problems of national competition law being used to regulate global markets. What most distinguishes Professor Fox from most other scholars in the field is her cosmopolitanism, a willingness to look at competition issues through the lens of global welfare not tied to individual citizenship. While often controversial, this perspective has allowed Professor Fox to find creative solutions for historically intractable problems and maintain an unwavering moral compass in addressing competition policy as a means to address poverty, democracy, and economic justice for the have nots in the global economy. We salute these accomplishments and conclude by speculating on the future and the promise as well as the obstacles for the implementation of Professor Fox’s global vision.