This article aims at an active dialogue between Ulrich Beck and East Asia with respect to cosmopolitan imagination. Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology requires a reflective cosmopolitan publicness to cope with various kinds of global risks. We therefore extract three different layers of publicness from neo-Confucianism – survival-oriented, deliberative, and ecological – and argue that Beck’s cosmopolitan vision can be better conceptualized when properly linked to, or founded upon, the Tianxiaweigong normative potentials of neo-Confucianism. In so doing (...) our intention is to make Beck’s implicit (Asian) sensibilities and the implicit Asian (cosmopolitan) orientations explicit, as a double process of cosmopolitan self-reflection and dialogue. We also draw attention to the analysis of the cosmopolitan actor in East Asia. Finally, we note that the cosmopolitan future of East Asia still remains uncertain and that reconciling global risk politics, national interests and cosmopolitan morality presents a big challenge to second modern transformation. (shrink)

The article critically assesses Ulrich Beck’s body of work and its importance for contemporary sociology. It demonstrates that Beck’s elaboration of his original theory of the ‘risk society’ into a theory of the ‘world risk society’, ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘metamorphosis’ involved several key theoretical innovations. Firstly, Beck adjusted his notion of risk to include the threat of international terrorism in his diagnosis of the risk society. Secondly, he introduced a distinction between ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘cosmopolitization’ in order to capture the specificity (...) of contemporary social change. Thirdly and most recently, Beck outlined a theory of ‘the metamorphosis of the world’ which marks an important shift of emphasis from ‘the negative side effects of goods’ to ‘the positive side effects of bads’. In conclusion, the article identifies a number of theoretical ambiguities and unresolved questions in Beck’s theory. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 21st century the conditio humana cannot be understood nationally or locally but only globally. This constitutes a revolution in the social sciences. The `sociological imagination' (C. Wright Mills) so far has basically been a nation state imagination. The main problem is how to redefine the sociological frame of reference in the horizon of a cosmopolitan imagination. For the purpose of empirical research I distinguish between three concepts: interconnectedness (David Held et al.), liquid modernity (Zygmunt (...) Bauman) and cosmopolitization from within. The latter is a kind of class analysis after class analysis, which takes on board globalization internalized. For the purposes of social analysis, therefore, it is necessary to distinguish systematically between the national manifestation on the one hand and cosmopolitan reality of `global flows', currents of information, symbols, money, risks, people, social inequalities, on the other. This internal involuntary and often unseen cosmopolitanization from below of the national sphere of experience is occurring, however, with the power of economic globalization. So what does inner `cosmopolitanization' mean? The key concepts and questions of a way of life, such as nourishment, production, identity, fear, memory, pleasure, fate, power and politics, can no longer be located and understood nationally, but only globally whether in the shape of globally shared collective futures, capital flows, impending ecological or economic catastrophes, global foodstuff chains, transnational power games, or the `Esperanto' of pop music. In this article I look at transformation in the understanding of space-time, of identity, of the production paradigms, as well as at the resulting consequences for key sociological concepts like class and power and, within this frame, point to certain dilemmas of cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

How are individuals socialized today? To answer these questions, a unique investigation has been carried out using two scales of analysis: the scale of the cosmopolitan world as well as the scale of everyday life and socialization to otherness.

Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology affords a much-needed rethinking of the transnational politics of climate change, not least in pointing to an emerging inter-urban geography of world cities as a potential new source of community, change and solidarity. This short essay, written in honour of Beck’s forward-looking agenda for a post-Euro-centric social science, outlines the contours of such an urban-cosmopolitan ‘realpolitik’ of climate risks, as this is presently unfolding across East Asian world cities. Much more than a theory-building (...) endeavour, the essay suggests, Beck’s sociology provides a standing invitation for further transnational dialogue and collaborative empirical work, in East Asia and beyond, on what are, arguably, the defining challenges for the 21st century world of global risks. (shrink)

The sociological debate about globalization has often neglected the place of religion in a global age. This absence is problematic, given the creative role of the world religions in the shaping of the modernization and globalization processes. This article treats globalization as a particular phase of the general process of modernity, and considers religion in terms of four paradoxes. The first (the Nietzsche paradox) argues that, against the received wisdom, fundamentalism is a form of modernization. Although religious fundamentalism may be (...) a reaction to the hybridity brought about by globalization, it is not a traditional reaction. The second (the Parsonian paradox) argues that modernization and globalization constitute religion as a special and separate institutional sphere of society, and hence transform religion into a problem of modernity. Fundamentalism attempts to reverse this pattern and, in the marginal societies of the global system, fundamentalist religion challenges this western version of modernized religion. The third (the McLuhan paradox) is that religious values in a global village expose the incommensurability of cultural systems, but relativism is not easily sustained in practice and globalization paradoxically increases the need for human rights universalism. While nationalism as a framework for cultures conflicts with attempts to develop general systems of rights discourse, it is not evident that the creation of alternative rights systems (such as Confucian codes) appears to be immediately viable. The final (the Montaigne paradox) explores the contradiction between Orientalism as a necessary consequence of the discovery of Otherness and Otherness as a necessary experience of cosmopolitan humanism. The article concludes with a discussion of the possibilities of cosmopolitan virtue in the context of these paradoxes of globalization and religion. (shrink)

This essay argues for the fruitfulness of Beck’s idea of cosmopolitanism for understanding the changing political, sociological and psychological attributes of climate change. This argument is illustrated through brief examinations of how climate change is contributing to the dissolution of three modern dualisms: nature-culture (ontology), present-future (epistemology) and global-local (geography). Not only does the cosmopolitan perspective help to understand the ways in which science and society are mutually constructing the phenomenon of climate change, it also offers us a way (...) of asking ‘what can climate change do for us?’ rather than ‘what can we do for climate change?’ Sociologists are needed for answering this question. (shrink)

This text was prepared for presentation in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010. Its aim was to explore a dialogue with Asians toward a cosmopolitan sociology. Beginning from the idea of entangled modernities which threaten their own foundations, Ulrich Beck advocated a complete conceptual innovation of sociology in order to better comprehend the fundamental fragility and mutability of societal dynamics shaped by the globalization of capital and risks today. More specifically, he proposed a cosmopolitan turn of sociology: (...) first, by criticizing methodological nationalism; second, by introducing the concept of cosmopolitization; third, by re-mapping social inequalities; fourth, by discussing risk society in the context of East Asian development; and fifth and finally, by proposing a cosmopolitan vision. Along this line, Beck attempted an overview of the researches done on second modern transformation in East Asia and suggested that an active dialogue may be possible when Asians begin to see the West from their perspectives rather than being caught in the Euro-centric and West-hegemonic presuppositions. (shrink)

Sociology is part of the agenda of modernity which privileges epistemology to the neglect of ontological issues. In the modernist mode, sociology was considered only an epistemic project, a project of knowing about the world with proper procedure and scientific method and neglected issues of consciousness, self, relationship of subject and object, and ontological issues of self-nurturance and self-transformation. The neglect of ontology is a crucial gap in modernistic sociology which continues to persist even in contemporary new (...) formulations such as cosmopolitan sociology, offered by Ulrich Beck. For Beck, sociology needs to move from methodological nationalism to methodological cosmopolitanism. But this move is primarily methodological and epistemic and does not address the ontological preparation needed for the transformation of sociology from its contemporary binding in nation-state to a cosmopolitan one. This needs a new self-conception on the part of sociologists, not only as citizens of the nation-state but also as citizens of the world and children of Mother Earth. The later self-conception calls for not only reiteration of self-identity as sociologically constituted but also transcendentally nurtured, urging both the sociologists as well as all human beings to realize that they are not only role occupants but also transcendental selves living in varieties of communities but at the same time transcending these. The chapter explores some of these issues as it puts forward the idea of society as multiple movements of ontological epistemology of participation. (shrink)

Debates about cosmopolitanism in the spheres of political philosophy, sociology and postcolonial criticism have on the whole ignored specific histories of the cosmopolitan imagination and its vernacular expressions in everyday life. This article draws on aspects of the urban and often feminized worlds of entertainment, commerce, the arts and the emotions in metropolitan England during the first decades of the 20th century, in which an interest in abroad and cultural ‘others’ increasingly signalled an engagement with the new, in (...) order to argue for a notion of cosmopolitan modernity. This should be understood not just as a reflexive stance of openness, but also as a dialogic formation – a counterculture – part of a psychic and often gendered revolt against the conservatism and xenophobia of the parental culture. (shrink)

Scholars believe that cosmopolitans—individuals who are open to foreign cultures—contribute to the adoption of Euro-American conceptions of food in the Global South. However, there remains a dearth in our understanding of the links between globalization, cosmopolitanism, and the reproduction of food and food cultures more broadly. In this paper, I draw from the sociology of translation to examine the mechanisms by which cosmopolitans reproduce food across space and time, a conceptual approach I refer to as ‘cosmopolitan translations of (...) food.’ This approach focuses on how human and non-human actants (mostly cosmopolitans themselves) mediate and translate the discursive and material elements of food as they travel from one geographic context to another. The broader history, socio-culture, and political economy where cosmopolitan actants are situated further influence these translations, resulting in diverse expressions of food globalization. I illustrate the merits of this approach by examining the emergence of alternative food in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Based on qualitative research, I find that alternative food in Manila has striking similarities to and notable differences from its counterparts in the United States. I purport that these similarities and differences can be attributed to Filipino cosmopolitans’ unconscious and intentional translations of what they understand as alternative food. Mediating these layers of translations are Filipino cosmopolitans’ mobilities and access to new media, as well as the colonial histories and postcolonial encounters that define their consumption tastes. (shrink)

In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological ...

Sociology was born as an attempt to delimit an object of investigation offered by society as a social reality. The ambition was that of "treating the social facts as things" (Durkheim) or of understanding and explaining the social relations by respecting an "axiological neutrality" (Max Weber). Today, however, we are in the presence of a new kind of sociologists, and they are by no means the less popular ones, who are not trying to avoid assessments in their analysis of (...) the present social world. I have in mind especially two sociologists, Ulrich Beck (Munich) and David Held (London). I will discuss in particular the view of sociology presented in a recent book of Ulrich Beck ( Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter , 2002, translated into French under the title Pouvoir et contre-pouvoir à l'ère de la mondialisation , 2003), and I will show some analogies between Beck and Held. Finally, I will try to identify the points that make the present sociological epistemology different from that of the great founders of this science. (shrink)

Conceptualizing cosmopolitanism : a reappraisal -- A historical sociology of cosmopolitanism -- Cosmopolitanism and social theory -- Cosmopolitanism : social and cultural research -- Cosmopolitanism : legal and political research -- Cosmopolitanism in Ireland.

``I am therefore I have rights," argues this paper. Mere existence qualifies a human being for universal human rights. Yet human beings do not live in solitude; they are always embedded in a network of social relations which determines their rights and duties in its own terms. Consequently, the debate about the universality and relativism of human rights can be best understood by combining legal and sociological perspectives. Such an approach is used in this article to explore the tensions and (...) contests around the universality of human rights in Islamic law. Whether all human beings or just citizens are qualified for the inviolability of human rights is a question which divided Muslim jurists into two schools: Universalistic School, emanating from Abu Hanifa, advocated for the universality of human rights, while Communalistic School, originating from Malik, Shafii and Ibn Hanbal, advocated for civil rights. Universalistic School was adopted by such great cosmopolitan empires as Umayyads, Abbasids, Mughals and Ottomans. It was also reformed by the Ottomans during the nineteenth century in the light of the new notions of universal human rights in Europe to purge remaining discriminatory practices against non-Muslim citizens and to justify constitutionalism and democracy. Yet the universalistic tradition in Islamic law has been forgotten as the chain of memory was broken after the collapse of Ottoman Empire. This article briefly unearths the forgotten universalistic approach in Islamic law to build upon it a modern universalistic human rights theory for which there is a pressing need at this age of globalization. (shrink)

Identity politics and citizenship are often envisaged in dichotomous terms, but cosmopolitan theorists believe commitments to “thin” universal values can be generated from divergent “thick” positions. Yet, they often gloss over the ways in which the nexus of thick and thin is negotiated in practice—a weak link in the cosmopolitan argument. To understand this nexus better, we turn to women’s rights organizations (WROs) in polarized Turkey to show that women affiliated with rival camps (e.g., pro-religious/pro-secular, Turkish/Kurdish, liberal/leftist) can (...) mobilize over issues like empowerment, violence against women, and education. However, thick readings of these issues inflect upon collaboration. This has spurred pro-religious and Kurdish women to develop strategies that flag their specific concerns. As such, mutual recognition along cosmopolitan lines appears possible—and is reinforced through iterative encounters—but is not necessarily negotiated between equally empowered agents and entails complex processes of contestation and concession-making. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article analyzes Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men as an illustrative contemporary example of cinematic cosmopolitan utopianism. Departing from the anti-utopian bias that pervaded modes of being, cultural texts and sociology in the late twentieth century, the film rearticulates utopia as a cosmopolitan method necessary to transform nonsustainable paradigms of progress and individualist worldviews. Against an apocalyptic eco-social backdrop, the evolution of the narrative and the protagonists conveys a stressed sense of directionality forward and elsewhere in (...) search of hope. The film's use of spaces and formal choices argues against social exclusion and bigotry, prompting viewers to expand their utopian horizons outside the borders of the national. Daring to envision the end of dystopia, the film ultimately hopes for a cosmopolitan remapping of the global beyond the frameworks provided by anti-utopia, nation, risk and neoliberalism. (shrink)

The turn to cosmopolitanism in educational research on citizenship education is indicative of a wider discourse of cosmopolitanism evident throughout social and cultural policy. This discourse represents a more 'light-hearted' use of the term than the philosophical tradition offers. This discourse should not be dismissed, however, but, instead, attention should be paid to who the citizen is that is addressed by such language. An analysis informed by Foucault's concept of governmentality draws attention to the way in which the discourse of (...) cosmopolitanism relates to the entrepreneurial self and the form of accountability demanded of the knowledge economy. A particular understanding of citizenship and of our relations to others becomes apparent. In educational research on citizenship education, cosmopolitanism is afforded a problem-solving role in relation to globalisation and, more specifically, diversity. Attention is drawn to a meta-level, of the role of particular forms of research in answering to the demand for accountability. Research practice in educational research, or more specifically, education policy sociology concerned with citizenship education, is conducted in terms of the policy language it seeks to critique. Rather than seeking the openness associated with cosmopolitanism, therefore, such research is itself accountable to the demands for particular knowledge of the citizenry. This treatment is also evident in contemporary urban planning policy, similarly concerned with cosmopolitanism as a response to diversity and inclusion. In the current discourse of cosmopolitanism, 'diversity', 'inclusion' and indeed 'citizenship' operate in particular ways through social and educational policy that rather than being dismissed should be addressed due to their role in the construction of contemporary citizenship. (shrink)

In this book, Michael Murphy argues that if cosmopolitanism is to remain critical and relevant, what is required is a process of critique and cooperation. At the level of intercultural exchange, this requires understanding the encounter with the Other as a mutual phase of development and holds out the potential to rejuvenate world philosophies. Through this process the cosmopolitan imagination emerges from a dialogue between global traditions of relational sociologies on matters of common concern. The second stage of the (...) book applies this methodology to provide a radical account of being and acting in the world. This will be achieved through engaging in conversation with the works of the critical theorist, Gerard Delanty; the decolonial theorist, Walter Mignolo; and the Buddhist, Confucian, and phenomenological-inspired work of Watsuji Tetsurō. In providing a move away from abstractions and ideals to instead focus on injustices and everyday life, Murphy uncovers an independent source for political legitimacy not defined by the rationality of the state or dependent on the ideals of Western philosophy. Part of this investigation also reveals a post-individual account of agency as an enactive being. Emphasising agency as becoming has the potential to allow us to reimagine the relationship between the self and the institutions of democracy. The main themes of this book are eurocentrism, critical cosmopolitanism, post-individual subjectivity, and democracy--back cover. (shrink)

This book is an empirical study of global citizenship education in ten secondary schools in the United States and Asia. Proponents seek to equip students with the consciousness and competencies necessary to make a world of universal benevolence, peace, and prosperity. However, many of the moral assumptions of global citizenship education are more complex and contradict these goals, and are just as likely to have the unintended consequence of reinforcing a more particular Western individualism. Dill argues that global citizenship education (...) in its current forms has significant limits that proponents have not yet acknowledged, which may very well undermine it in the long run. (shrink)

First, this article will outline the metaphysics of `the social' that implicitly and explicitly connects the work of classical and contemporary cosmopolitan sociologists as different as Durkheim, Weber, Beck and Luhmann. In a second step, I will show that the cosmopolitan outlook of classical sociology is driven by exclusive differences. In understanding human affairs, both classical sociology and contemporary cosmopolitan sociology reflect a very modernist outlook of epistemological, conceptual, methodological and disciplinary rigour that separates (...) the cultural sphere from the natural objects of concern. I will suggest that classical sociology — in order to be cosmopolitan — is forced (1) to exclude non-social and non-human objects as part of its conceptual and methodological rigour, and (2) consequently and methodologically to rule out the non-social and the non-human. Cosmopolitan sociology imagines `the social' as a global, universal explanatory device to conceive and describe the non-social and non-human. In a third and final step the article draws upon the work of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde and offers a possible alternative to the modernist social and cultural other-logics of social sciences. It argues for a inclusive conception of `the social' that gives the non-social and non-human a cosmopolitan voice as well. (shrink)

The emerging interdisciplinary body of cosmopolitanism research has established a promising field of theoretical endeavour by bringing into focus questions concerning globalization, nationalism, population movements, cultural values and identity. Yet, despite its potential importance, what characterizes recent cosmopolitanism research is an idealist sentiment that considerably marginalizes the significance of the structures of nation-state and citizenship, while leaving unspecified the empirical sociological dimensions of cosmopolitanism itself. Our critique aims at making cosmopolitanism a more productive analytical tool. We argue for a cosmopolitanism (...) that consists of conceptually and empirically identifiable values and outlooks. While there has been some progress made in this direction in the recent literature on cosmopolitanism, most writing still considers cosmopolitanism as something so delicate that it cannot be measured. Furthermore, in order to appreciate the full currency of the concept, we argue that researchers must not only agree on some common determinants of cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan dispositions, but also ground their analyses of cosmopolitanism in the context of enduring nation-state structures. (shrink)

This article addresses the character and potential of the radical cosmopolitanism that is currently flourishing within the social sciences. I explore how cosmopolitanism is articulated in a number of disciplines–including international law, international relations, sociology and political philosophy–and how it conceives of its own age. I focus first of all on the timeconsciousness that informs the cosmopolitan representation of modernity, in particular its projection of a rupturebetween the old ‘Westphalian’ order of nation states and the advancing cosmopolitan (...) order of the present, and, second, on the nature of cosmopolitan critiques of nationalism, socialism and ‘modernist’ social and political thought in general. Behind this focus lie a question over the extent to which cosmopolitanism replicates in its own normative proposals the defects of that which it criticizes, and another question over the means by which the critical kernel of contemporary cosmopolitanism can be separated from its doctrinal shell. (shrink)

We present a critical appraisal of the impact of the Internet upon processes of democratization and de-democratization in contemporary society. We review accounts of `the information revolution' as these have become polarized into mutually exclusive rhetorics of future cosmopolitan or citadellian e-topias. We question the Manichean assumptions common to both rhetorics: particularly the fetishism of information technology as an intrinsically democratizing or de-democratizing force on societies. In opposition to this new technological fetishism we focus upon Internet historicity; the human/machine (...) nexus; Internet policing and appropriation presenting a different story of the Net, emphasizing contingent, indeterminate and negotiable characteristics of sociotechnical systems, preparing for a more radical critique of existing theories of `global technological citizenship'. Refiguring `culture' as technopoiesis, we argue that an alternative approach to global civil society minimally presupposes a cultural sociology of the Internet: approaching information technologies as the product of specific sociocultural practices and as historical sites of ethico-political transformation and reflexive self-figuration. (shrink)

Modern sociology and anthropology proposed from their very beginnings a scientific study of religion. This paper discusses attempts to understand religion in this ‘scientific’ way. I start with a classical canon of anthropology and sociology of religion, in the works of E. B. Tylor, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim. Science aims to be a discourse that transcends local identities; it is deeply cosmopolitan. To offer a local metaphysics as its basis would produce a discourse that was not (...) recognizable as a contribution to the cosmopolitan conversation of the sciences. So, a science of religion cannot appeal to the entities invoked in any particular religion; hence the methodological atheism of these three founding fathers. This cosmopolitan ideal, the calling of the scientist, on the one hand, and the concern to understand the ideas of other cultures, on the other, can pull in different directions. Understanding requires us to appeal to our own concepts but not to our own truths. In the explanations, though, truth – the universal shared reality – has to matter, because the scientific story of religion has to work for people of all faiths and none, precisely because it is cosmopolitan. Not everything we call a religion will have historical Christianity's laser-like focus on ontological truth-claims. But as long as there are people making truth-claims in the name of religion, there will be the possibility of a tension between the very idea of a science of religion and some of the multifarious collections of beliefs, practices and institutions that make up what we now call ‘religions’. (shrink)

The criticism is often made of sociology, especially in the US, that it is mired in ethnocentrism, provincialism, needlessly scientistic methods, and a depoliticized quest for the status of a ‘true science’. Though a strong case can be made for such an accusation, it is also true that certain exemplars have succeeded in transcending these crippling shortcomings of practice and imagination. One such scholar is examined in this article with an eye toward not only the scope of the work (...) attempted, but the rhetorical posture that made his notable success possible. It seems to be the case that certain gifted members of the ‘Sixties generation’, through cross-disciplinary education and with cosmopolitan intentions, managed to create a new type of sociology in the US during the 1980s and 1990s which had not existed before. This article explores one such case. (shrink)

In the edited book “Bourdieu and Chinese Education”, a group of scholars in China, Australia, Canada, and the USA engage in a dialogue with Bourdieu and raise persistent questions not only about issues of equity, competition, and change in Chinese education, but also about the value, venture, and violence in using established Western intellectual frameworks for analysing Chinese education. In response to these questions, this special issue analyses and discusses Chinese rural education, teacher education, language education, health and physical education, (...) and transnational education; and proposes a series of new conceptualisations, for example, regression- and network-based field analysis, Bourdieu-Chinese philosophy encounter, field of mediation, localised pedagogical capital, and new Chinese habituses (e.g., contemptuous habitus, diasporic cosmopolitan habitus, habitus (re)structuring). Such collective effort responds to the strident, and sometimes misleading, castigation of Bourdieu for determinism; and also disputes the non-reflexive, celebratory tone that consecrates the French sociologist and his canonical theorem, and hence reproduces the symbolic violence in the doxic academia. In this vein, the special issue is respectful for, but not restricted to, Bourdieu’s sociology, showing no timidity in questioning and contesting the framework of the famed thinker when research problems and findings demand so. (shrink)

Contending discourses underlie many of the worlds most intractable conflicts, producing misery and violence. This is especially true in the post-9/11 world. However, contending discourses can also open the way to greater dialogue in global civil society and across states and international organizations. This possibility holds even for the most murderous sorts of conflicts in deeply divided societies. In this timely and original book, John Dryzek examines major contemporary conflicts in terms of clashing discourses. Topics covered include the alleged clash (...) of civilizations; societies divided by ethnicity, nationality, or religion; economic globalization versus resistance; plus an in-depth discussion of the 'war on terror'. Dryzek concludes by highlighting the limitations of current neoconservative and cosmopolitan approaches, arguing that only deliberative global politics offers unprecedented new possibilities for democratic engagement in the international system. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, politics, philosophy, and sociology. (shrink)

An exploration of the broad parameters of the post-nation-state sociology which is called for by a powerful and inter-related set of political, economic and cultural factors which are extending globalisation. In this context, theoretical and methodological innovation is to be preferred to the problematic application of older models such as those provided by Hegelian Marxism or Weberianism. Some arguments against the cosmopolitan thesis and risk society thinking are explored, as is the relation between risk society and cosmopolitanism.

Although emerging scholarship in the social sciences suggests that religion can be a potential catalyst of cosmopolitanism and global citizenship, few attempts have been made to bring to the fore new theoretical positions and empirical analyses of how cosmopolitanism -- as a philosophical notion, a practice and identity outlook -- can also shape and inform concrete religious affiliations. Key questions concerning the significance of cosmopolitan ideas and practices - in relation to particular religious experiences and discourses -- remain to (...) be explored, both theoretically and empirically. This book takes as its starting point the emergence of cosmopolitanism -- as a major interdisciplinary field -- as a springboard for generating a productive dialogue among scholars working within a variety of intellectual disciplines and methodological traditions. The chapter contributions offer a serious attempt to critically engage both the limitations and possibilities of cosmopolitanism as an analytical and critical tool to understand a changing religious landscape in a globalizing world, namely, the so-called 'new religious diversity', religious conflict, and issues of migration, multiculturalism and transnationalism vis-à-vis the public exercise of religion. The contributors' work is situated in a range of world sites in Africa, India, North America, Latin America, and Europe. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of globalization, religion and politics, and the sociology of religion. (shrink)

This article traces the historical roots and origins of the concept of the “axial age” until it reaches its moment of consolidation, with the book The Origin and Goal of History, originally published in 1949, by Karl Jaspers. In addition, some contemporary authors are analyzed who, based on a critical examination of the concept, propose to update it. By analyzing the epistemological characteristics of each of these stages, we can show which elements continue and at the same time which elements (...) change in the understanding of the axial age. While in the first two phases (historical and philosophical), there was a greater emphasis on the simultaneity and equality between civilizations, its shift to the field of sociology (phase 3) implied a greater emphasis on the diversity of civilizations. We also point out that in the current phase, unlike the previous stages, the concept shifts from the analysis of pre-modern civilizations to the analysis of modern civilization as a type of axial era. Despite these shifts and changes, we understand that there is a common basis present in all phases of the discussion. In addition, the research concludes that, despite certain evolutionist readings, criticized here, the concept of the axial age, whether used in a historical-philosophical or sociological key, contains cosmopolitan and plural assumptions and, as such, continues to be an important analytical resource for understanding the complexity and cultural diversity of past and present civilizations. (shrink)

Multiculturalism is one of the most controversial ideas in contemporary politics. In this new book George Crowder examines some of the leading responses to multiculturalism, both supportive and critical, found in the work of recent political theorists. The book provides a clear and accessible introduction to a diverse array of thinkers who have engaged with multiculturalism. These include Will Kymlicka, whose account of cultural rights is seminal, liberal critics of multiculturalism such as Brian Barry and Susan Okin, and multiculturalist critics (...) of liberalism including Charles Taylor, Iris Marion Young, James Tully, and Bhikhu Parekh. In addition the discussion covers a wide range of other perspectives on multiculturalism - libertarian, feminist, democratic, nationalist, cosmopolitan - and rival accounts of Islamic and Confucian political culture. While offering a balanced assessment of these theories, Crowder also argues the case for a distinctive liberal-pluralist approach to multiculturalism, combining a liberal framework that emphasises the importance of personal autonomy with the value pluralism of thinkers such as Isaiah Berlin. This clear and comprehensive account will be an indispensable textbook for students in politics, sociology and political and social theory. (shrink)

This article differentiates between three different axes of conflict in world risk society. The first axis is that of ecological conflicts, which are by their very essence global. The second is global financial crises, which, in a first stage, can be individualized and nationalized. And the third, which suddenly broke upon us on September 11th, is the threat of transnational terror networks, which empowers governments and states. Two sets of implications are drawn: first, there are the political dynamics of world (...) risk society. In an age where trust and faith in God, class and progress have largely disappeared, humanity's common fear has proved the last - ambivalent - resource for making new bonds. Second, the methodological nationalism that preoccupies the sociological imagination has to be overcome and a `methodological cosmopolitism' has to be created. (shrink)

The idea of cosmopolitanism is increasingly in circulation both in the social sciences and in the language of everyday life. There is, however, much uncertainty about what it means, what it refers to and what role it plays in social scientific thinking. In this book Robert Fine explores the concept of cosmopolitanism, its contribution to critical thought, and its application to a number of pressing political issues: taming global marketisation, resisting the resurgence of nationalism and fundamentalism, constructing transnational forms of (...) political community, enhancing the role of international law and human rights, prosecuting crimes against humanity and assessing the legitimacy of humanitarian military intervention. He explores the idea of cosmopolitanism both as a description of social reality and as a key element in the life of the modern mind. Cosmopolitanism offers an innovative discussion of the social, legal and political dimensions of the cosmopolitan turn in the social sciences. It should be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of social theory, sociology, political theory, cultural studies, international relations and law."--Book cover. (shrink)

Study of the foreign magistri and protomagistri of the medieval cathedral of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) (ca 1130-1350, rebuilt after 1693) reveals the social dynamics of artists’ travel in Mediterranean ports. Building on previous research of the builders’ artistic contexts and references, this analysis combines close reading and comparison of contract documents, discussion of Ragusa’s foreign citizenship law, and questions informed by the sociology of mobility. The study concludes that the governor patrons of Ragusa Cathedral exploited the increased physical and occupational (...) mobility of Adriatic builders, then arrested that mobility by offering the builders social advantages in the form of professional security and a path to citizenship. This balance of mobility at multiple levels manifested in the cathedral’s cosmopolitan and open-ended design. (shrink)

This paper draws on Collins’s conflict theory to understand the contemporary surge of populism. It puts forward an account centred on citizenship rights and the state, and on ‘my nation first’ politics in four countries: the US, Sweden, India and China. Collins has identified a capitalist crisis, the dynamics of geopolitical legitimacy, and state-penetrating bureaucracy as three central processes in modern societies. Especially the last of these focuses attention on the conflict between cosmopolitan elites and ‘the people’, construed in (...) exclusionary terms, which is on the rise in all of the four cases discussed here. The paper analyses the similarities and differences between them, and sketches the prospects for populist politics. (shrink)

This article attempts to respond to the major critical themes in the commentaries by Jones, Hibbert and Lecce on the book Cosmopolitan Regard. The book's ‘statist’ assumptions are acknowledged, and defended in light of the project that is undertaken. Its use of an un-sociological notion of legitimacy (in contrast to ‘justification’) is explained. Its argument is characterized as one that seeks to constrain agency rather than to prescribe distributive outcomes of a strongly egalitarian kind. Finally, the argument's dependence on (...) empirical assumptions is recognized. (shrink)

The review article examines the relation of solidarity and cosmopolitanism in contemporary political philosophical and sociological debates. In some contexts solidarity and cosmopolitanism are closely related, in others they are understood to be incompatible. The main body of the report is divided into three parts displaying a tentative classification of the reviewed literature on the subject. The first part serves to outline a general account of solidarity, the communal obligations that follow from it, and its opposition to the moral arguments (...) grounding cosmopolitan obligations. The second part deals with the actual development and realization of solidarity and cosmopolitanism, as well as the tension between both within the European Union. The third part considers some arguments for the extension of solidarity relations beyond state or nation towards cosmopolitan affiliations, obligations and institutions. Finally, a reading of solidarity and cosmopolitanism is offered in which both are compatible with each other. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze the conceptions of internationalism and the international mind that Mead uses in "The Psychological Bases of Internationalism" (1915); in his 1917 Chicago Herald columns defending U.S. entry into the war; in Mind, Self, and Society (1934); and in "National Mindedness and International Mindedness" (1929). I show how the terms "internationalism" and "the international mind" arose within conversations among some Anglo-American thinkers. While Mead employs these terms in his own philosophical and sociological theorizing, he draws their (...) meaning from these conversations and does not generate their meaning from within his own theorizing. This places Mead among the "conservative internationalists" of his time. With this analysis, I then show how Hans Joas's criticisms of Mead's support for the war are misplaced. I also show how Mead's internationalism, correctly understood, cannot support Mitchell Aboulafia's construction of Mead's cosmopolitan self. Throughout, I demonstrate how Mead's discussions of internationalism need to be read in historical context, and are more political than scholars such as Aboulafia and Joas have supposed. (shrink)

This book assesses the rapid transformation of the political agency of religious groups within transnational civil society under conditions of globalization weakening sovereign nation-states. It offers a synthesis of the resurgence of Jasper's axial thesis from distinct lines of research initiated by Eisenstadt, Habermas, Taylor, Bellah, and others. It explores the concept of cosmoipolitanism from the combined perspectives of sociology of religion, critical theory, secularization theory, and evolutionary cultural anthropology. At the theoretical level, cosmoipolitanism prescribes how local, national, transnational, (...) global, and virtual spaces ought publically to engage in transcivilizational discourse without presuming the secular assumptions tied to cosmopolitanism. Employing insights of critical theory, this book offers a micro-level analysis of the pragmatics of discourse of each axial tradition contributing to the role of religion within multiple modernities. While circumscribing the particular historical limits of each tradition, the book extends their internal claims to species universality in light of the potential for boundless communication Jaspers saw initiated with the Axial Age. In Jon Bowman's novel and important work, he rethinks the challenges of global justice. Bowman is not just concerned with global justice in the modern world, but with a genealogy that begins with a better understanding of the Axial age, one that is also the unique signature of cosmoi-political institutions. Arguing with depth and precision, Bowman challenges Kantian and Rawlsian universalism. His argument provides a new interpretation of cosmopolitan justice as he explores the deeper roots of cosmopolitan justice. James Bohman Saint Louis University Jon Bowman's Cosmoipolitan Justice is an important, innovative and timely work. Construing globality in terms of pervasive conditions of worldwide interdependence, Bowman advances a decidedly pluralistic account of cosmopolitanism, one uniquely shaped by recent theories of multiple modernities. His analysis is sustained by a highly informed appropriation of such diverse thinkers as Theodor Adorno, Abudullah An-Naim, Talad Asad, Schmuel Eisenstadt, Jürgen Habermas, Karl Jaspers, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Charles Taylor. One special feature is the book's synthesis of research on global governance with that on post-secularity and the place of religion in the public sphere. On this basis Bowman presents a distinctive account of the world's axial religions, one underwriting a multi-polar, intercultural global public realm able to address social, political, and economic issues confronting the global community today. This book should be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, political theory, international relations, sociology, and religious studies. Professor Andrew Buchwalter Department of Philosophy University of North Florida. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art in Social Studies: Exploring the World and Ourselves with RembrandtIftikhar Ahmad (bio)IntroductionRembrandt’s art lends itself as a fertile resource for teaching and learning social studies. His art not only captures the social studies themes relevant to the Dutch Golden Age, but it also offers a description of human relations transcending temporal and spatial frontiers. Rembrandt is an imaginative storyteller with a keen insight for minute details. His narrative (...) of the culture, society, economy, geography, and contemporary events of seventeenth-century Dutch life is as vivid and perceptive as a historian’s eloquent text. How people lived in community, how the city of Amsterdam functioned, how important religion was to people, how diverse and cosmopolitan the culture was, how interdependent the world was in the seventeenth century, and what the social and civic ideals of the Dutch people were during the Golden Age—Rembrandt’s paintings, etchings, and drawings neatly organize these and other social studies themes into visual messages. More importantly, our appreciation and interpretation of Rembrandt’s work helps us learn about not just Dutch society and culture of four hundred years ago but also about ourselves. The passion, emotions, conflicts, and inspirations of his subjects are essentially human and eternal, arousing empathy in every generation and cross-section of society. In this article I look at Rembrandt’s art for the purpose of teaching and learning social studies in our contemporary interdependent world—a world that is chronologically and geographically distant from the Dutch Golden Age but in many respects shares its enduring values, norms, ideals, pursuits, challenges, and possibilities. To do so, I employ a conceptual lens—the curriculum thematic strands of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)—to examine Rembrandt’s art in order to explore life and make meaning of the story that is being told about the human condition, and to seek out its relevance to ourselves and [End Page 19] our world in the early twenty-first century. Although Rembrandt’s oeuvre is extensive, including the diverse genres of self-portraits, group portraits, drawings, etchings, landscapes, and religious themes, for our limited purpose I have selected only those works that, in my judgment, correspond with the following seven of the ten thematic curriculum strands of the NCSS:CultureTime, Continuity, and ChangePeople, Places, and EnvironmentIndividual Development and IdentityProduction, Distribution, and ConsumptionGlobal ConnectionsCivic Ideals and PracticesThese thematic curriculum strands are derived from the foundational disciplines of the social sciences and humanities such as anthropology, history, geography, sociology, political science, psychology, economics, philosophy, and law, but they are conceptually interrelated.1 For example, culture is a core concept in anthropology but it is also relevant to Time, Continuity, and Change, which is the main concept in the history discipline. Similarly, culture is relevant to the theme of People, Places, and Environment, which is the central focus of geography. More importantly, since social studies is about human experiences, there is a general consensus among the social studies educators that classroom teachers should draw content knowledge not just from the social sciences as mentioned here but from wide sources “to construct curricular experiences enabling students to actively relate new knowledge to existing understanding.”2 That is to say all fields of knowledge that are related to human civilization and that help in developing students’ skills in reflective thinking, decision making, and problem solving are relevant to social studies education. Those fields also include art. Rembrandt’s art is especially relevant because his themes are universal and the social, political, and economic contexts in which he created his work—globalization, individualism, and free enterprise—are more or less similar to our age.It needs to be mentioned that by looking at Rembrandt’s art from the social studies perspective it is not my intention to strip his work of its aesthetic scope and value. On the contrary, by looking at Rembrandt in the social studies classroom I seek to humanize social studies education itself. That [End Page 20] is to say I wish to step back from the conventional view of social studies to feel free from the bonds of traditionalism and discover, describe, analyze... (shrink)

pt. 1. lecture 1. Issues and problems ; lecture 2. Mircea Eliade's Cosmos and history and cyclical time ; lecture 3. The early enlightenment and the search for the laws of history, Vico's New science of history ; lecture 4. The high enlightenment's cult of progress, Kant's idea for a universal history from a cosmopolitan point of view ; lecture 5. Hegel's philosophy of history ; lecture 6. Marx's historical materialism ; lecture 7. Nietzche's critique of historical consciousness, On (...) the advantages and disadvantages of history for life ; lecture 8. Weber's historical sociology -- pt. 2. lecture 9. Taking the long view, Arnold Toynbee and world historical speculation ; lecture 10. Twentieth-century neo-idealism, R.G. Collingwood's The idea of history ; lecture 11. The positivist conception of historical knowledge, Carl Hempel's The function of general laws in history ; lecture 12. Analytic musings, Arthur Danto's Narration and knowledge ; lecture 13. Social history, structuralism, and the long duree, Fernand Brandel's On history ; lecture 14. Post-structuralism and the linguistic turn, Hayden White's Introduction to metahistory ; lecture 15. Naturalism revisited, William McNeill's Plagues and peoples ; lecture 16. The heterogeneity of historical understanding. (shrink)

Why are things different on the other side of national borders and how can this be explained sociologically? Using as its point of departure Dutch cycling culture, a paradigmatic example of non-state-led national similarity, this article explores these questions. The first section introduces Norbert Elias’ concept of ‘national habitus’, using this notion to critique comparative sociology and argue for a more processual approach to national comparison. The second section discusses four processes that have contributed to increasing similarity within nations: (...) growing interdependence within nations; increasing density of networks and institutions; vertical diffusion of styles and standards; and the development of national we-feelings. Together, these processes have contributed to the development of national habitus: increasing similarities within nations and increasing differences between people living in different countries. These processes reached their apex in the second half of the 20th century. The third section explores how these processes have diminished since the 1960s, leading to increasing variations within countries and growing similarities between comparable groups in different countries. Both the rise and decline of national habitus are illustrated by changes in Dutch cycling culture. Particularly important is the breakdown of trickle down as a result of the rise of the egalitarian informal ethos. This analysis poses new challenges for sociologists: first, concerning comparative research; second, concerning the diffusion of styles and standards; and, third, concerning the consequences of the decline of national habitus for social inequality, as evidenced by the growing rift between ‘locals’ and (bike-loving) ‘cosmopolitans’. (shrink)

Degrowth is identified as a prospective turning point in human development as significant as the domestication of fire or the process of agrarianisation. The Transition movement is identified as the most important attempt to develop a prefigurative, local politics of degrowth. Explicating the links between capitalist modernisation, metabolic throughput and psychological individuation, Transition embraces ‘limits’ but downplays the implications of scarcity for open, liberal societies, and for inter-personal and inter-group violence. William Ophuls’ trilogy on the politics of scarcity confronts precisely (...) these issues, but it depends on an unconvincing sociology of individuation as a central process in modernity. A framework is advanced through which to explore the tensions, trade-offs and possibilities for a socially liberal, culturally cosmopolitan and science-based civilisation under conditions of degrowth and metabolic contraction. (shrink)

The aim of my contribution is to outline three points of overlap between Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Durkheim’s sociology of morality in their respective views on social ethics: I will start by characterizing their shared conviction that the foundation of any form of morality cannot be found in some abstract principles but in actually existing, institutionalized normative rules that inform us about our role-obligations. In the second step I will show that Hegel and Durkheim also share the social-theoretical (...) conviction that we should differentiate modern societies into three different spheres all entailing different sorts of role-obligations; a part of this step will also specifically deal with the question of how both thinkers conceive of the problems raised by the modern, capitalist market economy. In the third part of my contribution I will consider the question of whether we find in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right a placeholder for what Durkheim refers to as a kind of cosmopolitan ethics, a standpoint beyond the role-obligations connected to membership in individual states. In my conclusion I will raise the question of the relevance of Hegel’s and Durkheim’s shared views on the basis for social ethics for contemporary discussions in political and social philosophy. (shrink)

Don't fence me in : Rorty and Sartre -- On freedom and action : Dewey and Sartre -- A (neo) American in Paris : Bourdieu and Mead -- Mead on cosmopolitanism, sympathy, and war -- W.E.B. Du Bois : double-consciousness, Jamesian sympathy, and the cosmopolitan -- Self-concept in the new sociology of ideas : reflections on Neil Gross's Richard Rorty : the making of an American philosopher -- Eros and self-determination -- What if Hegel's master and slave were (...) women? (shrink)

The concept of transnationalism, despite a variety of earlier uses, has recently been used to describe the sociological phenomenon of cross-border migrants considering more than one place ‘home’. This can be in terms of identity and belonging, cultural expression, family and other social ties, visits, financial flows, organising working life in more than one nation-state or transnational political projects. In this paper I discuss the theory and practice of transnationalism to assess the practical, explanatory and normative strength of the concept. (...) I then introduce three different forms of cosmopolitan approaches and assess whether transnational migrants' practices contribute to a cosmopolitan outlook and active global citizenship. I show that the extent to which transnationalism contributes to various forms of global citizenship varies according to the different conceptualisations of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. In conclusion I draw out the implications of these differences for the future protection of the rights of migrants. (shrink)

While early theory and research on cosmopolitanism have been criticized for their European focus, a number of works have incorporated non-Eurocentric perspectives. This article contributes to this literature by examining the colonial production of cosmopolitan orientations as evidenced in the writings of Frantz Fanon. Colonialism has been treated as a deviation in the historical sociology of cosmopolitanism, but Fanon helps disclose how colonialism has also contributed to a particular form of cosmopolitanism that has been overlooked in existing theory (...) and research: postcolonial cosmopolitanism. This form of cosmopolitanism, forged from the spaces of colonialism’s contradictions, emphasizes global citizenship and humanism but strives to remember rather than repress the history of modern empire. It seeks to negate colonialism’s contradictions and thus realize the ideals which Europe had initially pronounced but which it failed to institute. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the gradual emergence of modern Indian philosophy through the cross-cultural encounter between indigenous Indian and Western traditions of philosophy, during the colonial period in India, specifically in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This volume acknowledges that what we take 'Indian philosophy' or 'modern Indian philosophy' to mean today is the sub-text of a much wider, complex and varied Indian reception of the West during the colonial period. Consisting of -twelve chapters and a thematic introduction, the (...) volume addresses the role of academic philosophy in the cultural and social ferment of the colonial period in India and its impact on the development of cross-cultural philosophy, the emergence of a cosmopolitan consciousness in colonial India; as also the philosophical contribution of India to cultural globalization. The issue of colonialism and emergence of new identities in India has engaged the critical attention of scholars from diverse fields of inquiry such as history, sociology, politics, and subaltern studies. However, till today the emergence of modern Indian philosophy remains an unexplored area of inquiry. Much of the academic philosophical work of this period, despite its manifest philosophical originality and depth, stands largely ignored, not only abroad, but even in India. This neglect needs to be overcome by a re-reading of philosophical writings in English produced by scholars located in the universities of colonial India. This edited volume will facilitate further explorations into the presence of colonial tensions as they are visible in the writings of modern Indian academic philosophers like B. N. Seal, Hiralal Haldar, Rasvihary Das,, G. R. Malkani, K. C. Bhattacharyya,. G. N. Mathrani and others. (shrink)