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'Cosmopolitanism'

Chapter · January 2011

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Rodanthi Tzanelli
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Cosmopolitanism

The concept refers to ways of knowing the world and the forms of belonging this

knowledge generates. The term is comprised of kòsmos (our socially constructed

world) and polìtis (the citizen of a pòlis or ancient Greek city-state, the civic

organization that exerted influence on European politics). The term resonates with

Aristotle’s conception of the human as zõon politikòn, a being that exists in relation to

others in a polity. It has been suggested that Aristotelian texts are in fact Arab

readings of Aristotle subsequently re-imported in the West to revive its intellectual

traditions. The Stoic teachings, according to which both the polis and the cosmopolis

preserve the common good, acted as stepping-stones to early Christian understandings

of the cosmopolitan as the ‘citizen’ of God’s Kingdom. Christian exclusivism is

evident in Augustine’s neoplatonic cosmopolitanism that presupposes the love of

God, in contrast to the love of the self that non-believers maintain. In short, Christian

teachings erased non-European (non-Christian) contributions to European civilization

at large.

Modern European theorizations of cosmopolitanism are attributed to

Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, who produced the first abstraction of the

cosmopolitan subject. But Kant’s kosmopolìtis missed the exclusivist Hellenistic

understandings of citizenship and polity. The ‘world citizen’ of the Hellenic orator

Isocrates (436-338 B.C), to whom the concept is often attributed, was supposed to

speak Greek, think Greek and act as a Greek (Panegyricus, par.50) in the context of

the Alexandrian empire. Those who did not conform to Isocratian expectations were

non-humans (barbarians). Feminist theorists critiqued Kant’s cosmopolitan subject as

a predominately male political (and socio-cultural) actor in Europe and beyond.

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Mindful of the Christian legacy, critical political perspectives used the term to debate

the role of the nation-state (the particular) in global geopolitics, emphasizing the

significance of a cosmopolitan outlook for the future of global citizenship, justice and

democracy (Held 1995).

In more recent years the concept’s relation to the institutional structures of the

nation-state began to wane. Cultural theorists examine how our learning habits and

practices shape our multiple identities as consumers and producers or how

pedagogical experience is used to situate citizens in the world at large and vis-a-vis

other viewing (including non-European) positions. The post-Kantian philosophical

trajectory of the concept suggests that any ‘cosmopolitan’ respect for human diversity

that promotes solidarity on a global scale cannot be achieved solely through

formalized agreement (as in Kant’s inter-state legal agreement to maintain global

peace, or Rousseau’s ‘social contract’ to achieve social togetherness), because it also

demands the development of moral sensitivity for specific cultural contexts. The co-

existence of the specific (culture, nation, tribe etc…) with the universal highlights

both the inescapable tensions within cosmopolitanism as a condition of being, and its

creative-productive nature as a state of becoming part of a human whole.

Particular readings of Kantian philosophy render the concept relevant to the

sociology of globalization, production and consumption. Literal meanings of kòsmos

(from kosmõ= to make beautiful) introduce an aesthetic-cultural dimension to the

concept. Pedagogy, aesthetics and politics converge to suggest a method of ‘knowing’

through visual enactment and bodily performance. This model of cosmopolitan

aesthetics, which finds application in creative industries (e.g. film industries such as

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Bollywood and Hollywood, mega-events such as the Olympic Games, expos),

selectively borrows from the Kantian sensus communis, the moral universe of human

solidarity, and the literal meaning of kosmopolítis as the subject that inhabits the space

of the aesthetic. Theorists talk about ‘aesthetic reflexivity’ (Beck, Giddens and Lash

1994; Lash and Urry 1994, pp. 5-6) as constitutive of contemporary knowledge

economies to refer to a contemplative form of learning that transforms human beings

into agents who monitor the social world rather than accepting a predetermined place

in it. Formalized aesthetics (from aésthesis or sense) is the philosophical principles of

art, but its banal understanding refers to ideas of beauty that we acquire through

sensory experience.

While this ‘banal’ form of cosmopolitanism forms a response to a progressive

geographical de-contextualization of the concept, it is linked to everyday practices: it

refers to clashes, dialogues and fusions of ideas that occur every time people (e.g.

diasporic families), objects (e.g. consumer products) and ideas (e.g. broadcast

narratives) are on the move (Cheah and Robbins 1998; Hebdige 1990). The

technological history of mobilities (e.g. the history of the train, the car, the telephone,

the mobile phone) serves as an essential link between material cultures and

universalized human experience (e.g. travel or migrations). It proffers a way to

examine, for example, the commodification of travel as a leisure activity or travel’s

role in the global capitalist arena (e.g. business travel) (Urry 1995; Tomlinson 1999).

It may also be used as a heuristic tool to examine how capitalist networks exploit the

interplay of virtual (cinematic, Internet) with terrestrial forms of travel. Mediations of

travel through the Internet (advertising of tourist destinations, marketing holiday

packages) or even the electronic enactment of leisure routines (e.g. computer games,

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interactive sites and blogospheres sustained by global communities of travel or movie

fans) are concrete examples of such cosmopolitan belonging too. Air travel also

captures this mode, as it affords to travelers a god’s eye view, a view of the earth from

above. This detached form of knowledge renders viewers (travelers) an omniscient

gaze (e.g. looking at countries, towns, villages) while separating them from what they

see (Szerszynski and Urry 2006). Other examples of techno-cultural links are traced

in the cosmopolitanization of music styles that ‘belonged’ to particular cultural

geographies before becoming part of global cultures: thus when we visit music stores

we find salsa or belly dancing CDs in the ‘world music’ section. These genres have

been moved out of their context (of assigned gender roles, racial politics) to form part

of a subculture that crosses state boundaries. Alternatively, music or dance fusions

(e.g. hip-hop or rap) may eventually become appropriated by specific ethnic

subcultures (e.g. Afro-Caribbean groups). Although in these examples the particular

and the universal maintain bilateral communications, they all remain part of creative

industries that operate as transnational or global agents.

For cultural theorists tangible and intangible artifacts that borrow from

different cultures also serve as manifestations of cosmopolitan belonging. The

Louvre’s Pyramid, I.M. Pei’s architectural invention, fused the classicist style of the

Second Empire (rooted in French imperialism) with Eastern structures to produce a

postmodern complex. This served as a statement of France’s overcoming of its

colonial past. Such attempts are viewed with skepticism amongst theorists that

advocate a political and moral understanding of cosmopolitanism, highlighting that

the argument conflates material fusions with political planning and international

economic inequalities. Thus, Pei’s Pyramid has been a controversial project since its

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announcement in 1985 as one of President Mitterand’s most ambitious grand projets

that countered France’s colonial legacy the very moment national politics worked

towards sustaining the racist structures on which the modern state was created (e.g.

policies targeting labor migrants from former colonies). Such criticisms bring the

mechanics of global labor markets to the fore, tying cosmopolitanism to the legacy of

racism, slavery and colonialism. The history of the concept, replete with paradoxes of

exclusion - of other cultures and polities, of phenomenologically established (based

on gender, race, disability) ‘difference’ - in a supposedly inclusive agenda, continues

to affect its application. A more conciliatory approach acknowledges both arguments

as complementary rather than competitive trends. In this intermediary approach global

interconnectedness is not manifest only across institutions and cultures but also within

them. This informs for example Appadurai’s (1990) conception of global cultural

flows or ‘scapes’ (of images, ideas, products etc…) or Beck’s (2002) replacement of

abstract ‘cosmopolitanism’ with a processual cosmopolitanization that advocates the

communication of the local or regional with the global. Such hybrid theory can

facilitate research into migration and consumption or global risks such as terrorism or

pollution alike, generating more effective links between them. If we accept that the

politics of cosmopolitanism are part of the history of globalization and its auxiliary

oppressive agendas (colonialism, racism, sexism) we may also discern in the

sociology of cosmopolitanism and its diverse history (flows of ideas from East to

West, South to North, rurality to metropolis) the seeds of an emancipatory agenda that

can forge inclusive policies.

See also:

Aestheticization of Everyday Life

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Air and Rail Travel

Civil Society

Communication

Cultural Flows

Enlightenment

Globalization

Internet

National Cultures

Trans-national Cultures

Rodanthi Tzanelli

Bibliography

Appadurai, Arjun. ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’,

Public Culture 2/2 (1990): 1-24.

Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash. Reflexive Modernization.

Cambridge: Polity, 1994.

Beck, Ulrich. ‘The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies’, Theory, Culture

and Society, 19/1 (2002): 17-44.

Cheah, Pheng and Bruce Robbins. Cosmopolitics. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1998.

Hebdige, Dick ‘Fax to the future’, Marxism Today, 34/1 (1990): 18-23.

Held, David Democracy and the Global Order. Cambridge: Polity, 1995.

Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1994) Economies of Signs and Space. London: Sage.

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 Szerszynski, Bronislaw and John Urry. ‘Visuality, mobility and the

cosmopolitan: in habiting the world from afar’, British Journal of Sociology, 57/1

(2006): 113-131.

Tomlinson, John. Globalization and Culture. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press, 1999.

Urry, John. Consuming Places. London: Routledge, 1995.

Word count: 1,511

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