Dr Chris Rumford, Senior Lecturer in Political Sociology, Royal Holloway, University of London
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"Cosmopolitanism and Europe"
conference. Royal Holloway, University of London, 22-23 April 2004
Abstracts
Gerard
Delanty, What does it mean to be a “European”?
The paper explores the notion
of Europeanism, asking the question what means to be an
“European”? in much the same terms as in Michael Walzer’s often cited essay, ‘What does it mean to be an
“American” ?’ Walzer’s analysis will serve as a point
of departure for a discussion of different conceptions of European
self-understanding. The paper will also critically discuss the nascent
discourse of anti-Americanism, arguing that it is premised on false claims
about American identity, as well as implausible assumptions about
This paper commences from Castells'
intriguing observation that 'European integration is, at the same time, a
reaction to the process of globalization and its most advanced expression'.
This observation about the EU's ambivalence in the
face of global processes is confirmed by recent work on European integration
and globalization, but a good deal of scholarship in EU studies and the
political economy of European integration remains wedded to (a) rationalist and
(b) discipline-based searches for simple patterns of causality. This paper argues that these predominant
scholarly patterns reflect broader issues in mainstream 'globalization
studies'. The EU offers a key test case in this regard because (a) it
challenges embedded notions of spatial scale (b) offers a model of governance
that breaks with the traditional hierarchies of the Westphalian
state and (c) reveals the fuzzy boundaries between academic and policy
discourses of globalization.
Paul Statham
“A ‘Europeanisation’ of the Public
Sphere in
This paper will investigate
the level, degree and form of ‘Europeanisation’ that
is evident in the political claims-making and institutional networking by
collective actors in the British public sphere, by reference to original
empirical data. The main theoretical questions to be addressed will be the
extent to which the level, degree and form of ‘Europeanisation’
in the public sphere is shaped by institutional developments, on one side, and
the role of conflict about Europe and its contribution to ‘Europeanisation’,
on the other. Political claims-making covers the ‘visible’ aspects of the
political demands made by collective actors in the public sphere. Sometimes,
however, negative findings with respect to ‘Europeanisation’
from claims-making data, have been criticised, because this method fails to
capture non-visible public events and demands, such as those by insider lobby
publics. In addition, and to counter this criticism, we propose to use a set of
data from structured interviews with key actors in key policy fields which will
provide evidence on the nature and type of links between actors within these
networks (with respect to the degree, level and form of ‘Europeanisation’).
The proposed analysis will be comparative across time and policy field
–European integration, immigration, agriculture- for
Ash Amin, Towards a New Idea of
This paper explores the meaning and relevance of the
‘Idea of Europe’ in the context of a multicultural and multiethnic continent
that increasingly draws on the presence and practices of people from
non-European backgrounds. The Idea of
Europe even in its contemporary use remains an ideal based on a
Christian-Enlightenment-Romanticist heritage, mobilised by supporters of
European integration as the bridge between diverse European national
cultures. In a
Eleonore Kofman “Figures
of the Cosmopolitan: migrants and
privileged nationals”
In contemporary European
social and political thought, cosmopolitanism is frequently closely linked with
the cultural citizen, ‘the modern person who is able to exercise rights and who
conceives him or herself as the consumer of other cultures and places’ (Urry 1995). The
cultural citizen is open to the variety of global cultures and can participate
equally at all levels of society from the local to the global. The world is
their oyster. The cosmopolitan or privileged national moves freely and
unfettered in space and in the imaginary .From a secure vantage point, this
cosmopolitan is at home anywhere. Yet this figure of the cosmopolitan draws upon
an ambiguous historical baggage where the rootless and flexible outsider, was
treated with suspicion and hostility. In 20th century
The concept of civil society
has been essential to democratic theory and numerous social movements. The idea
of civil society usually refers to the networks and associations that are
formed between the home and the state that allow for public forms of discussion
and argument. The idea of civil society came back into discussion during the
eighties when a number of Eastern European dissident intellectuals pointed out
how Communist practice and ideology severely restricted civic forms of
expression. Returning to some of the arguments in the European peace movement
before the revolutions of 1989 the article reflects upon the notions of civil
society that emerged from these conversations. Here I shall mainly focus upon
the writing of E.P.Thompson and other intellectuals
who sought to develop more ‘cosmopolitan’ forms of dialogue across the bloc
system. In the next section, I argue that cosmopolitan arguments depend upon a
related but transformed notion of civil society. The potential emergence of a
Global/European civil society being dependent the development of what Habermas has called a ‘cosmopolitan consciousness’. However
I argue this is likely to be a contested term in the context of the ambiguous
development of both media and militaristic cultures in the European context.
Here I look at contemporary cultural debates in respect of questions of
‘indifference’ and feminist concerns about the link between militarism and
masculinity. Finally, I look at some of the arguments that seek to rethink
Luke Martell,
This paper examines debates on globalisation in
relation to their specific applicability to
Victor Roudometof,
Mapping the Cosmopolitan - Local Continuum
In current debates by European theorists, the EU is
often hailed as the very prototype of cosmopolitanism in political and cultural
matters. This line of thinking rests on a rather naïve juxtaposition of
cosmopolitanism and localism and fails to divorce the philosophical advocacy of
cosmopolitanism from the presence of cosmopolitan attitudes among the European
public. A more fruitful strategy for understanding cosmopolitanism and localism
is to view them as attitudes borne out of the increasing strength of transnational networks and the "internal
globalization" or "glocalization" of
social life. Is the European integration bound to produce greater levels of
cosmopolitan attitudes among the European public? While theorists often imply
that, this paper argues that it is necessary to turn this issue into an
empirical question. Hence, the paper sets out the following proposition:
greater levels of transnationalization (and the
deepening of European integration), lead to a bifurcation of attitudes, whereby
individuals are compelled to adopt one of two different postures. First,
individuals can adopt an open, cosmopolitan attitude with respect to transnational interactions & the globalization of
individual biographies. Second, they can adopt a closed, defensive, or local
attitude. Unlike their popular conceptualization as discontinuous variables,
the two concepts should not be viewed as rigid constructions, for it is
unlikely that individual attitudes will conform to such stereotypes. On the
contrary, the two ideal types of cosmopolitan and local provide the two ends of
a continuum where individuals' attitudes might range in strength depending upon
specific dimensions. The paper develops an operationalization
of the cosmopolitan-local continuum & discusses the specific dimensions
where it is expected that each group's attitudes would diverge. The
cosmopolitan - local continuum includes the following dimensions: first, the
degree of attachment to a locality; second, the degree of attachment to a state
or country; third, the degree of attachment and support toward a local culture;
and finally, the degree of support toward economic, cultural and institutional
protectionism.
Paul Hopper, Globalization, Cosmopolitanism
& European Identity
Natalia
Chaban, EU: View from Down Under: Images of Europe
in
The
paper is broadly concerned with the pivotal role of communication and
information in the processes of globalization.
It intends to trace which factors of the foreign news coverage in
national media can facilitate or obstruct the establishment of interco
Syed
Hamidullah, Globalization – European experiences.
The collapse of
Francis
Cheneval, Procedural
cosmopolitanism and multilateral democracy – normative foundations of the
(not exclusively) European polity-process
The
paper’s methodological approach is foundational in the political sense. In
other words, it is constitutional. (1) Its underlying assumption is that the
basic structural conditions of politics, i.e. the territorial state and the
international system of states, are undergoing a process of profound
transformation. This process is characterized by the “unbundling” of territory,
by cultural globalization and by the functionally differentiated reconstitution
of territorial hierarchies through cooperation between states. We live in a
dynamic world of overlapping, territorially incongruent political
organizations, of functionally differentiated networks of communication and
trade. This new socio-political setting calls for a dynamic and transformative
concept of the constitutional basis of politics. (2) The paper proposes a
normative principle of this dynamic constitutional process in the concept of
“procedural cosmopolitanism”. The latter is justified by an “original position”
which, unlike the rawlsian models, does not
presuppose but construct the basic structure of politics (for details cf.
infra). The result is not any definite political ontology characterized by
substantive basic structures and a system ruled by traditional international
law. This is only seen as the point of departure of a process in which
democratic nation-states seek functionally differentiated integration following
a process-guiding principle of an ever greater realization of individual
liberty and democratic autonomy. (3) The consequence of this normative approach
and analysis of the “postmodern” structures of
politics is that the EU ca
n Two what extent do Europeans limit generalised social
trust to their compatriots only? Or do they trust people from other EU
countries in the same way they trust their fellow countrymen. In other words:
How permissive is the “mental border” drawn between nationals and Europeans.
n In a time perspective, is there a clear trend towards
growing trust in other Europeans? Or has the “mental border” between own
nationals and other Europeans remained stable over the past 20 years?
n Are national and transnational
trust friends or foes? Is this relationship changing over time, and if so, in a
direction indicating an Europeanisation of social
cohesion and solidarity?
n Which of the several enlargements of the European
Union have increased and which have decreased the overall level of cohesion
among Europeans? Which impact is foreseeable for eastward enlargement, and why?
Andreas
Pollma
My contribution will be about
German prospective teachers’ identifications with Europe.There
is relatively little empirical research on the topic
of European identity that goes beyond a secondary analysis of Eurobarometer studies. Moreover, considering that the (at
least partial) influence of formal education on the formation of cultural
identities is widely acknowledged, it surprises that there is hardly any
empirical data on
Ramona
Samson,
Maurice
Roche, Cosmopolitanism’
and international sport culture:
This
working paper draws
from my work on the sociology of citizenship, popular culture and cultural
policy (particularly ‘mega-events’ and sport), and more generally from work in
progress on European society and culture. It aims to provide some material from
which to
reflect on meanings and uses of the concept of ‘cosmopolitanism’ both in
general and in relation to
Architecture has been a
relatively overlooked area in social theory, but this paper suggests that it
has the potential to become an important component of expressions of the
pluralized, post-national identities that are emerging in some European
societies. Although cosmopolitanism has been a significant discourse for those
wishing to conceptualise democracy and identities beyond the nation-state,
finding suitably diverse and relevant symbols to give substance to such
identities has been problematic. Official EU attempts to codify such an
identity are illustrative of this tension, with many suggesting that such
efforts are part of the politicised project of an institution bereft of
legitimacy and in search of a cultural identity.
Here I argue that architecture has the
potential to serve as a focus for disparate identity debates of many kinds,
perhaps particularly so for the pluralized and reflexive identity discourses
emerging in the contemporary European context. From this perspective it is not
so much the style of landmark buildings that is significant for the
reflection and creation of identities, but rather the capacity of these
large-scale architectural projects to provide a focus for a wide range of
debates pertaining to national and post-national identities. Drawing on some
illustrative examples from the contemporary European context, I argue that it
is the primarily discursive nature of architectural medium that provides the
potential for diverse discussions on a range of identities. Social theory
should engage with the increasing politicisation of landmark architecture in
The process of Europeanization has been subjected to multiple
theoretical efforts designed to account for its social impact in
The
people of
Marek Jeziński, Cosmopolitanism, national identity and the European Union: the hopes and fears. The case
of Polish political discourse at the eve of the EU accession
In
the paper the issue of cosmopolitanism is discussed as the idea opposing the
quest of national identity in the political discourse of the post-communist
states at the eve of the EU accession. Political discourse is suppose to
reflect broadly understood set of cultural values prevailing in given society
and such problems as political conformism, national agreement and maintenance
of the basic values are perceived as the cultural basis providing stability and
predictability for the whole system, including the quest for efficiency of the
political arena. From this perspective cosmopolitanism is viewed as a threat to
national identity and basic cultural values as it is manifested in the
political discourse presented by the political class. The problems are examined
in the context of the pro- and anti- European Union attitudes of contemporary
political elites in
This paper seeks to relate
core themes in contemporary European migration to a broader debate about
evolving forms of citizenship and membership. To being with it assesses key
elements of European migration as a backdrop for discussions of citizenship and
membership. It will focus on four key trends (i) a geo-political widening of
migration to include new migration countries (ii) a conceptual widening of
migration to include new forms of migration and types of state response (iii) a
temporal reconstruction of the policy response to include an intensified
European dimension and (iv) a temporal reconstruction of the policy response
with attempts to reconstruct at a temporal distance from past guestworker and post-colonial ecruitment
patterns new forms of 'positive' labour migration policies. These developments
will then be used as a backdrop for discussions of EU developments insofar as
they relate to migrants and minorities. The paper will address EU measures
providing for the rights of third country nationals, the evolving concept of
'civic citizenship' within the EU for third country nationals, and the
development of EU
anti-discrimination
legislation. The paper's main aim is to place ideas and practices
of European citizenship and membership in the context of contemporary European
migration dynamics and to evaluate these in relation to notions of
cosmopolitanism.
Jonathan
Seglow, Immigration, Sovereignty and Human Rights: Fortress
The
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, adopted in 2000, states
that the EU is founded on the values of 'human dignity, freedom [and] equality'
and yet also should 'respect the diversity of the cultures and traditions of
the peoples of
Ebru Ogurlu, Multiculturalism
in
Multiculturalism aiming the achievement of equal rights and recognition
for ethnic, racial, religious, or sexually defined groups has been one of the
most controversial intellectual and political movements in contemporary Western
democracies. The world is experiencing a transitional period in which nation
states have been losing their status as being the major focus of political
actions. Thus, the homogenous societies and the absolute unitary structure of
nation states built on the concepts of a single language, religion, ethnicity,
nation; a common land and a single state conjoined to each other in a perfect
ma
Filipe
Carreira da Silva, Deliberative
Democracy in the EU and the Challenge of Multilingualism
My starting assumption is
that more work on the political projects in the process of European integration
would be of value. In particular, the assessment of the future evolution of the
European Union (EU) and especially the prospects for its democratization
demands an analysis of the character and power of the institutions, actors and
forces associated with each project for change. In the proposed paper, I would
focus my attention on the case of the deliberative democratic political
project. The human ability to ‘take the attitude of the other’ is central to
this conception of politics. The coexistence of a plurality of national
languages in the EU (multilingualism), however, raises a formidable challenge
since it undermines the very medium through which mutual understanding is
supposed to take place. There is no European demos as such, conceiving itself
as a unity, recognizing interdependence between social groups, promoting a
unitary civil society and developing a forum for debate. My goal is, then, to
work out the implications of the lack of a European community of communication
in a world where globalization usually implies anglicization.
In democratic politics, language is power. In a plurilingual
polity such as the EU, the language issue becomes a crucial source of inequality.
The construction of a European-wide community of communication that allows all
to take part in the civic life of the polity thus emerges as an essential
condition for political equality. Language rights assume, from this
perspective, a pivotal importance. How can the fundamental democratic right to
use one’s language be reconciled with the plurilinguistic
nature of the EU polity? And to what extent does the process of political
deliberation suffer from the absence of a European public sphere? The answers
to such questions lie, I shall try to show in this paper, in a political
project that recognizes the centrality of the conflict between cultural
identity and political citizenship.
Peter A.
Kraus, Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Identity in the Making of a European
Public Sphere
Institutional
attempts at creating a common political identity among Europeans have recently
culminated in the drafting of a constitution for
Beathe Due and Christina Mörtberg,
Nordic e-strategies – a continuous Exctacy?
Nordic
IT-strategies and action plans, both on a national and transnational
level are based on visions to shape an information society or a knowledge
society for all. The policies emphasizes
that the Nordic countries seems to have requirements to put the aim into
practice since citizens’ to a high degree use the technology The Nordic
countries have, furthermore, a long tradition to involve the citizens’ in the
development of society. Both access to technology and citizen’s participation is a prerequisite in order to
create a democratic technology, but in what way are do they participate, who
and how do they participate? When we consider transformations do we also
discuss what kind of society we want? Launching these questions we want to
focus upon what is understood as to be a citizen in our contemporary context.
What is the concept of the citizen based on? In launching political actions an
imagination of the users, of the citizens are constructed. They are defined
through categories such as gender, age, level of education, region, ethnicity,
income, political preferences, class etc. Assumptions are made on how the users
will act or behave, then is used in the documents political rhetoric. Categorising
means that meanings stabilize in specific forms and not in others. A
consequence of classifications is that categories create boundaries and
intervene in our way of thinking. How the citizens’ are constructed by
classifications is problematic within a national region, but what are the
consequences when the same categorisations and pictures of the citizens are
used within a global network? How do we picture the citizens? Do we consider
citizens as actors or consumers? Within a changing field of tensions, how is a
vision of an information and knowledge society for all to be dealt with? Are we
(re)conceptualised and (re)constituted citizenship or do we reproduce stereotypes?
Matthew
Ca
The emergence of the Transmanche Euroregion provides
an opportunity to study the impact of Europeanisation
on subnational governance in three EU member
states. The central governments of the
Dora
Horvath, Europe ’s New Actors and the Vision of Cosmopolitanism – Conflicting Ideas
A
number of analysis argue that the evolution of EU
represents a potential for change towards a cosmopolitan citizenship, identity
and community in
In a series of articles
written in the post-1989 period, Habermas has argued
that the challenge posed by the catastrophes of the twentieth century, the
violence of nationalism and the social consequences of globalisation, has given
new impetus to the idea of cosmopolitan justice first expressed by Kant. He
affirms that, if we are to grapple with the complexities of present-day
problems, we should take up the challenge posed by Karl-Otto Apel: to ‘think with Kant against Kant’ in reconstructing
the cosmopolitan idea. What follows in this paper is a critical assessment of Habermas’ response to this challenge. We focus on the
dilemmas he faces in grounding his normative commitment to cosmopolitan
politics and in reconciling his cosmopolitanism with the ideas of
constitutional patriotism and deliberative democracy he developed within a
national framework. The paper concludes by addressing Habermas's
approach to
‘Language loyalty’ is
well-established in the inventory of basic sociolinguistic concepts and is
typically applied in the description of language choice in language contact
situations and, in monolingual contexts, to the study of socially and
contextually conditioned preferences for standard or non-standard speech forms.
In this paper, however, I would like to explore the ideological nature of the
concept by analysing discourses of language and citizenship in
M.R.R. Ossewaarde, Cosmopolitanism
and patriotism in
Several contemporary
philosophers, such Nussbaum and Habermas, argue that
world citizenship and/or supranational regimes are more likely to succeed in
dealing with global risks, promoting economic development. There seems to be a
general agreement that cosmopolitanism, that is, cosmopolitan political
institution building, is a condition sine qua non for safeguarding democracy in
This paper seeks to give a substantial critique of cosmopolitanism
in
André Utzinger, Paving the Way for a Cosmopolitan
Identity
The present debate about
European integration makes it plain that the notion of identity has achieved
paramount importance. This is because a common European identity is widely
being regarded as an essential prerequisite for the EU to become a postnational democratic community. I do not subscribe to
this point of view for the following reasons. First, the above assumption
misses the unique structure of the EU, namely its cosmopolitan character.
Second, the conception of identity supporting this popular argument is
inappropriate as it considers identity to be a primordial cultural homogeneity.
In the proposed paper I would like to put forward an account of identity that
draws attention to the general process of identity-building rather than to the
particular content of a possible European identity. According to this approach,
people seek identification in order to meet truly fundamental needs, such as
security and belonging. This leads to the insight that the relation between the
identity of a people and its political institutions is not established in the
way that cultural homogeneity precedes democratic institutions. Conversely, it
is the functionality of institutions that fosters a common identity. This is
the reason why a congruity between patterns of identity and structures of
polity is usually found. As regards the EU, it is thus neither necessary nor
possible that a European identity is prior to the political institutions. It is
only by means of transnational rights and the status of union citizenship that
a common identity emerges. Moreover, European identity should be understood in
a cosmopolitan sense and not as a kind of national identity on a higher level.
A cosmopolitan identity finds its expression to a lesser degree in cultural
homogeneity – it is multiple and multileveled as is the structure of the postnational polity.
Levent Kırval, Convergence
of European Political Cultures: Reality or Myth?
The paper examines the challenges of enlargement for European Integration
by focusing on the political cultures of Europe’s five main regions and
particularly evaluates the EU candidates’ adaptability to West European
Political Culture writ large. In this context, the paper intends to examine the
salient aspects of major political cultures and their level of convergence in
Europe. The investigation will focus on the following five groups of countries;
‘Continental Europe’ (especially Benelux countries, Germany and Austria),
‘Northern Europe’ (Denmark, Sweden and Finland), ‘Britain and Ireland’,
‘Euro-Mediterranean Countries’ (France, Spain, Portugal and Italy) and
‘Southeastern and East-Central European’ countries (especially Greece, Turkey,
Cyprus, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and
Romania). On the whole, the challenges as well as possibilities of creating a
European Citizenship and Identity with the present level of diversity in
political cultures will be explored. Moreover, the European Union institutions’
policies that are directly related to the creation of European citizenship and
convergence of political cultures will be identified and assessed. Paper will
also dwell upon the current European Convention discussions and the limits of a
supranational legal framework to converge the political cultures of the
European Union countries and solve the legitimacy problem of the EU
institutions. Possible resistances to such supranational legal and political
demands of Brussels by the Enlargement countries will also be commented upon.
Larry
Backer, Cosmopolitan Judicial Constitutionalism and the Ideal of a European
Union.
Since the 1950s the
European Court of Justice has championed a vision of a European metropolitan
cosmopolitanism that focuses on
Alessandra
Beasley, Public Discourse and Cosmopolitan Political Identity:Inventing the European Union Citizen
As the European Union
reaches out internationally as an i
J.C Rosas, How Cosmopolitan is
European Citizenship?
My purpose in this paper is
to present European citizenship, or citizenship of the European Union, as a
case-study for the wider debate on the possibility of cosmopolitan
citizenship. I submit that European citizenship is an example that both friends
and foes of cosmopolitan citizenship should be able to refer to. Both schools
of thought should be able to understand what's going on with the formation of
European citizenship and making sense of it in their arguments. My central thesis is Janus-faced. I ca
Alexander
Svetlov, Paradoxes of Post-Socialist Regionalization
The
fall of communism in 1989 raised great enthusiasm
towards creating a new
Daniele
Archibugi, The Language of Democracy: Vernacular or Esperanto?
Will
Kymlicka has titled his latest collection of essays
Politics in the Vernacular. He argued that “democratic politics is
politics in the vernacular. The average citizen only feels comfortable debating
political issues in their own tongue. As a general rule, it is only elites
who have fluency with more than one language, and who have the continual opportunity
to maintain and develop these language skills, and who feel comfortable debating
political issues in another tongue with multilingual settings”. Does it imply
that democratic politics is impossible in a multi-linguistic community, being
it at the local, national, regional or global level? This paper challenges
this assumption and argues that democratic politics should imply the willingness
of all players to make an effort to understand each other. This effort to
understand each other demand the willingness to accept diversity in terms
of religion, culture, and values as well as in language. The idea that political
communities should be linguistically homogeneous is as dangerous as the idea
that they should be religiously homogeneous. The thesis of the paper, on the
contrary, is that democratic politics imply the willingness to overcome the
barriers to mutual understanding, including the linguistic ones. Any time
that there is a community of fate, a democrat should
search the methods to allow deliberation according to the two key conditions
of political equality and participation. If linguistic diversity is an obstacle
to equality and participation, some methods should be found to overcome it.
Jan van Tatenhove , Rethinking European Governance: Cosmopolitanism and
the Art of Policy-Making in the European Union
The rise of the vocabulary of European governance is
indicative of a shift away from the well-established notion of politics and
power of the traditional institutions of the nation-state. The diversity of
forms of governance, such as network governance, multi-level governance,
deliberative governance, etc. are expressions of the shift in focus and locus
of politics, from hierarchical and well institutionalised (territorial) forms
of ‘government’ towards less formalized forms of governance. Until now the
debate on European governance focussed on governance and policy-making within
the ‘territory’ of the EU, i.e. between the EU-institutions, member state
institutions, the subnational level and the diversity
of more or less informal arrangements, varying from committees, regulatory
agencies, epistemic communities to networks, based on ‘best practices’. In this
debate, transformations as a result of cosmopolitanism have been underexposed.
Recently Beck presented a new ‘cosmopolitan manifesto’. The cosmopolitan
perspective moves beyond the nation-state society and beyond the dualism
between the nation-state and the international. Cosmopolitanization
not only changes the interco
The process of polish
integration into European Union touched the identity transformation problem
among the polish citizens. From the one side
Oleg
Reut, Cherishing The Dichotomy
between National and INOST-National
Mental maps are just as
important as real (and digital) maps, and just as prone to change from time to
time. During the Cold War, the West saw
Barrie
Axford and Richard Huggins, Crossing the Digital
Divide: E-Society policy in the EU and models of Cosmopolitan Citizenship
This
paper analyses the nature of information society policy in the European Union
in relation to overcoming the “digital divide”. It examines the implications of
various policy interventions for the concept and experience of what may be
called a practical citizenship, capable of being promoted through digital
means. Such a notion goes further than the important, but limited notion of the
digital divide as simply identifying differentials in access to ICTs, to examine the ways in which Information Society
policy promotes and inhibits the capacities to act and to claim, that are the
very stuff of citizenship. It also takes up the intriguing, but vexed question
of how, if at all, trans-European virtual networks may be said to instantiate a
form of trans-national or even a cosmopolitan citizenship. The analysis points
up tensions in both the conceptualisation of the Information Society and its
implementation as a vehicle of social change, for the promotion of social and
cultural capital and “informal” cosmopolitanism .
Maria
Rovisco, Conceptualising space and identity in the
debate on cosmopolitanism: collective belonging and boundaries in the EU
Discussions on
cosmopolitanism have generally argued for a universalistic foundation of all
cultures (e.g. Delanty, 1999). At the same time they have emphasised the need
for a reflexive distance from both one’s national or local culture and other
cultural contexts and values (Turner, 2002). In the European context, however,
it is the case that political boundaries, which are commonly the result of some
sort of international agreement, are often at the root of ethno-cultural
cleavages and conflicts. This paper stresses the need for a more detailed
consideration of the links between space and identity in sociological
theorising on cosmopolitanism. It is primarily intended as a critique of a good
deal of the postmodernist literature which generally claims that globalisation
led to a deterritorialization of identity. The
cornerstone of such literature is that there is no need for people to belong to
a specific place in a world where mobility and displacement became dominant
forms of human existence. I shall argue that there is a co
Sobrina Edwards,
EUropean Identity: A postnational
future?
From the early 1970’s,
academic and institutional debate has
continually focused upon the idea of a EUropean
Identity - as a possible source of legitimation for
the institutions of the former European Community and the now European
Union. More recently, prominent social
and political theorists have joined this debate, advocating the idea of a EUropean postnational
identity. This has been presented as a
possible future for the European Union that avoids both the potential conflict
with and the possible exclusionary politics of national identity. Embraced as a companion to EUropean postnational
citizenship, theorists such as Habermas, Tassin and Delanty have advocated the rejection of cultural
belonging as a fundamental repository of EUropean
Identity. My focus will be on the dynamics of identity between both
institutions (the European Union) and citizen (the EUropean). It will bring together two forms of potential
critique for the EU postnational discussion of
identity; both empirical and normative. This will involve asking - what are the
actual possibilities of postnational identity
emerging within the EU institutional and wider European social and political
framework – but also what are the moral and ethical implications for a EUropean identity and more specifically a postnational identity emerging.
Luis Garzón,
Phil Harington, Cosmopolitanism
and the Professions; an appraisal from the antipodes
As the quest for cosmopolitanism seeks to negotiate space
for distinct civic identities it has significant implications for the practice
and legitimacy of professions. Often subsumed and complicit in the social
policy and resource control of the state, professions too can be construed
as having failed to deliver the emancipatory influences
they have promised. The movement to invigorate civic society contains a significant
an expectation to renegotiate the role and focus of professions seeking to
reconstruct their role as transformative agents. The 'cosmopolitanism debate'
however takes a different form in one of its colonial expressions. The formation
of a debate on civic identity in
The interaction of the economic and social approaches to cosmopolitism results
in an integrated view that encourages cultural diversity, appreciates multicultural
mélange and promotes cross-border economic freedom.
Cosmopolitanism, in economic terms, can serve as an effective measure for
rethinking the Western Balkan economic and social area into a region that
would promote co-operation between states in fields of common interest such
as capital and labor movement, trade, ecology, culture and science. The concept
of regionality can contribute to the distancing of the states from the ideas
of national identity and bring them closer to a regional alliance by cultivating
a common economic market with free trade and limited political involvement.
This would enhance the fluidity of the region as it strives to enter the EU
and meet its economic and social standards.
Cosmopolitism, in terms of social identity, can be seen as a particular form
of social representation that mediates the relationship between citizen and
social world. This underwrites mutual commitments of the countries in the
region, through regional projects, to provide an ambience in which their citizens
are submitted to the processes of socialization (primary and secondary) and
that seek to exclude nationalism and ethnic and religious divisions.
This paper explores the ways in which activities at the intersection of the
two approaches such as the Euroregions, regional infrastructure projects and/or
cultural manifestations, can support a cosmopolitan identity in the Western
Balkans region.
Cosmopolitanism has the long tradition. However just only nowadays the cosmopolitan
dimensions of social change can become important factors in the processes
of integration and globalization. It is due to networking (what transforms
social contacts, relations, communications, politics, work, culture etc. -
see e.g. Castells) and to the globalizing of human and social spaces, identities
etc. (see e.g. Giddens). What is specially crucial is the human context orientation
of cosmopolitanism. This orientation can be not only an important supplementing
component of the emerging techno-economic Weltanschauung but also a guiding
criterion of the real processes of integration and globalization.
Cosmopolitanism may be perceived as a set of values, attitudes and approaches
- different than nationalistic and globalistic (in the sense of the present
neoliberal project of economic globalization).
Cosmopolitanism - intellectually - promotes transdisciplinarity, future-orientation
and the "death of distance". It may have "more natural" influence on people
and their newly constructed organizations (be it info societies, e-societies,
epistemic communities, global netizens etc.). Transcending often contradictory
ideologies cosmopolitanism may constitute a commonly accepted basis for EU
policy and for global governance (and polity).
Melinda Rankin, Crisis in East European Transformation:
Lessons from the East Asian Financial Crisis
This paper provides a comparative analysis between East Asia's financial integration
experience in contrast with Eastern Europe's more formal integration into
the European Union (EU). In light of the lessons learnt from the East Asian
financial crisis of 1997-98, it finds that globalisation has presaged the
transformation of the state, reconceptualising the nexus between the national
sovereignty and the world financial system. While East Asian economies implemented
an aggressive liberalisation process, they failed to acknowledge their implicit
role in creating transnational space and in doing so effectively manage the
forces of globalisation. This meant that it was no longer possible to protect
the national economy from the external world financial system, but rather
states needed to reconfigure politico-financial power as the modern states
increasingly demands the division of power among a plurality of agents. One
of which was to divide the state's role into independent prudential regulator
to secure the stability and functioning of the economy at the local level
thus ensuring that non-state private actors themselves implemented adequate
risk management against global markets. The paper argues that the quality
of leadership affected the ability of Southeast Asian states to implement
legitimate legal structures to regulate the financial economy. Moreover, that
the prospect for a 'new' Southeast Asian's financial economy was curtailed
by a general failure to account for globalisation as political project that
impacts on every domain of national policy. After a survey of financial integration
trends in Eastern Europe, the paper concludes that impending Eastern Europe
states must actively define themselves in terms of transnational space. By
learning from the mistakes of the East Asian financial crisis impending EU
states will make an effective transition from national state to transnational
actor throughout the EU enlargement process.
The paper discusses cosmopolitan themes in European social thought of the
inter-war period, concentrating mostly on German writers active in the 1920s.
I look at these writers from the standpoint of two sets of contemporary issues:
first debates about the cultural and intellectual presuppositions of the idea
of an emergent European polity, and, second, debates about 'multiple modernities'
in comparative historical sociology. The centre-piece is Ernst Troeltsch's
conception of 'Europaeismus', which I interpret as a more culturally particularized
reworking of Max Weber's thematization of occidental rationalism. I compare
this conception with similar statements in the work of Max Scheler, Alfred
Weber, Karl Mannheim and Karl Jaspers and some French writers. The overall
argument is that many early twentieth-century social theorists are not as
objectionably Eurocentric as some post-colonial critics maintain and further
that these theorists still have much to offer in helping us define the precise
sense in which European intellectual legacies both do and do not possess 'universal
significance and validity'.
David Hirsh, Cosmopolitan lawlessness and the 'war against
terror'
Many approaches to the 'war against terror' rely on ideas of humanitarian
intervention and the bolstering of human rights against state sovereignty.
The 'war against terror' may be understood as a genuine expression of a cosmopolitanism:
as an intervention by the world community against regimes that show little
respect for humanity. This understanding is mirrored by left critics such
as Costas Douzinas, when they argue that the concept of human rights should
be centrally understood as a means, employed by the powerful, of legitimating
their own rule over the powerless and that therefore the 'war against terror'
is, in this sense, an authentic expression of human rights. When Kant first
proposed his theory of cosmopolitanism, he anchored it securely to a conception
of cosmopolitan law. It is this anchor that is absent from the cosmopolitan
rhetoric of the current American regime. It is also a conception of law as
something potentially independent of power that is missing from the accounts
of human rights and cosmopolitanism provided by the left critics. This paper,
therefore, explores the centrality of conceptions of law to the cosmopolitan
project in this context.
Venera Zakirova, Russia: Ethno-Political Processes
and Ethnic Intermarriages in Post-Soviet Russia
It is well known that the Russia is a young democratic society. Still the
problems of ethnic relations from the point of ethnic intermarriages remains
understudied.
The Bashkortostan Republic is a central and multinational region of the Russian
Federation. Interethnic relations in the Republic have developed over a long
time. More than 4,2 million people live in the Republic of Bashkortostan,
comprising more than 111 nationalities. In national terms the most numerous
are: Ethnic Russians (Russkie) (40 %), Tatars (29 %), and the title nation
- Bashkirs (22 %). Bashkortostan is known as a region where Muslims peacefully
coexists alongside Christians. Peaceful cohabitation and multiculturalism
have a long tradition in the region. However the unreasoned national politics
of the Soviet period, the phenomenon of separatism, and mistakes in national
policy during the contemporary period have seriously worsened interethnic
relations, and further aggravation can lead to interethnic clashes. Modern
changes of the Russian society, the influence of processes of globalization,
and intensive intercultural interaction, form the new ethno-national phenomenon
- modern state-personal identification " I'm Russian" "Ia - Rossiyanin", based
first of all on the membership of the state named the Russian Federation.
The major factor, in the author's opinion, in the given process is the development
of an Institute of Ethnic Intermarriages (family), intercultural education
and public policy. New identities may now emerge that do not rest on one culture
or one language, but on a complex interaction with the elements presents in
a country or region. Recent years have been characterized by the increasing
tendency of growth of ethnic intermarriage. Interethnic families are the important
factor of ethnic tolerance formation. The knowledge of internal laws of development
and functioning of interethnic families, a degree of their influence on the
various sides of a public life, especial on formation of interethnic and interreligious
mutual understanding, plays an important role in democratization of modern
Russia.
Ramin Kaweh, Switzerland: Living Cosmopolitanism: exploring
definitions of cosmopolitan individuals
Who is a cosmopolitan individual? The paper offers a conceptual analysis of
the definition of cosmopolitanism. It gives different categories of cosmopolitans
and examines those ideas as applied by cosmopolitan individuals. Complementing
the theoretical analysis of cosmopolitanism, the paper explores some concrete
cases of who cosmopolitan people are. The aim of the paper is to provide a
better understanding of the lives of cosmopolitan individuals in the present
times, and to apply some action research on the concept of cosmopolitanism.
Overall, the paper attempts to portray those human beings with a sense of
a "cosmopolitan identity", and hence examine cosmopolitanism in a pragmatic
manner, as lived by individuals. The methodology of the paper relies on empirical
observations of relevant groups of individuals. The paper argues that only
a small group of people are truly cosmopolitans. The majority of individuals
have diverse sets of identities, and fall short of a global identity. In order
to understand the concept of cosmopolitan individuals, the research first
illustrates what a cosmopolitan is not, and identifies several categories.
The second and main part of the paper deals with definitions of the different
kinds of cosmopolitans. Third, cosmopolitanism or rather cosmopolitan individuals
are further studied and examined by their behaviours, character and sets of
norms. In this context, some tangible empirical indicators are proposed for
the qualitative assessment of the level of cosmopolitanism for individuals.
In conclusion, and after the illustration of the different kinds of applied
cosmopolitanism, the paper provides a short comparative analysis between Europeanness
and Americanness, based on the definitions of cosmopolitans. Europe and America
are used to illustrate two examples of identity-formation towards the cosmopolitan
ideal.
Paul Kennedy, Manchester Met; Transnational professionals
and 'actually existing cosmopolitanism'
Transnational professionals, 'actually existing cosmopolitanism' and some
possible consequences.
As more and more professionals across Europe - and the world - find themselves
working and living for fairly extended periods of time in countries other
than their own so it is likely that cross-national friendship as well as business
and professional networks will become established while once nationally-based
professional work cultures may become increasingly complex and entangled.
Drawing on an exploratory research project concerned with transnational professionals
working for large companies in the building-design industry - two thirds of
whom were European nationals - this paper first asks whether some of the more
conventional definitions of the cosmopolite, as someone who seeks cultural
encounters with the 'other' or takes on some kind of ethical responsibility
for world affairs, are likely or possible. It then considers what form cosmopolitanism
may feasibly take in such circumstances and with what possible consequences
(a) for the emergence and consolidation of regional/global as against national
cultures and (b) the personal identities and lives of those who become transnational
professionals.
Will Leggett, Birmingham: Alternatives to the neoliberal
modernisation of Europe: is democratisation enough?
Critics of the Third Way have presented it as a neoliberal project which seeks
to undermine European social democracy under the guise of modernisation. Recent
years have seen electoral setbacks for modernising European social democrats
and the stalling of New Labour's Third Way programme. The European centre-left
is seeking a new narrative that continues to associate social democracy with
modernisation, but which no longer identifies the market as the sole means
of delivering modernising objectives. The theme of democratisation is pointed
to by a number of theorists and strategists as having the potential to fulfil
such a role. Advocates argue that democratisation can make decisions about
economic and social policy once again the subject of political debate, rather
than being treated as a fait accompli on the terms of the market; that democratisation
avoids the unresponsiveness and top-down statism of 'old' European welfare
models; and that democratic mechanisms are sensitive to the increasing complexity
and diversity of contemporary European societies. This paper argues that while
democratisation is certainly a necessary precondition of opening up spaces
from which to challenge commodifying processes, it does not in itself constitute
a left alternative to them. Theories of democratisation need to be supplemented
by more traditional left concerns if they are to offer an alternative to the
neoliberal modernisation of Europe.
Alexa Robertson, Sweden: Cosmopolitanism and Television
News Images of Europe
In the interconnected world of the 21st century, the concept of cosmopolitanism
is central to a field of debates about how people engage with social and cultural
entities beyond their homelands, and develop an awareness of humanity as a
whole. Thompson's term 'mediated worldliness' expresses the notion that our
sense of place in the world beyond the reach of personal experience is increasingly
shaped by mediated symbolic forms. Precisely how this shaping occurs, however,
and with what effects, is far from clear. One point of entry is to explore
the role played by the news media in the fostering of an everyday "banal cosmopolitanism";
the everyday sense of being a part of the world in general and Europe in particular.
The study which is the focus of the proposed paper investigates whether a
cosmopolitan worldview is more embedded in some media cultures than others.
One component analysis seeks to establish whether different sorts of audiences
(international and domestic) are told different sorts of stories about Europe,
and how such differences could relate to the preconditions for cultivating
"banal cosmopolitanism". Two sets of news broadcasts are analysed, keeping
the nationality of the reporting culture constant while varying the "imagined
audiences": a) BBC World (produced for an international audience) compared
with BBC News at Ten (public service, produced for a domestic audience), and
b) Deutsche Welle (international) compared with German television's Heute
(public service, domestic). Another component analysis investigates whether
different national media cultures foster different degrees of cosmopolitanism-
whether differences in the narrative techniques deployed by journalists in
three countries (the UK, Germany and Sweden) can be related to 'thicker' and
'thinner' cosmopolitan worldviews.
The aim of the proposed paper is to contribute to the discussion of cosmopolitanism
and cultural identity in a European setting with reference to preliminary
findings.
