Starting somewhere different: methodological cosmopolitanism and the study of world politics

In this article, I contribute to the debate on Ulrich Beck's idea of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ from a political science perspective. How fruitful is Beck's idea for the study of world politics? How can a political science perspective turn ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ into a more transdisciplinary subject of debate? Guided by these questions, I speak to two audiences. First, I offer political scientists a distinct strategy for empirical ‘cosmopolitan political science’ research. At the heart of this strategy is a novel object of research, the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, understood as a discourse that breaks with the ‘national outlook’ to open possibilities for a world beyond ‘reflexive modernization’. With that, I shift the perspective from structure to discourse and broaden the normative grounds on which to assess cosmopolitan reality. Rather than just considering the emergence of normative cosmopolitan ideals, I build into cosmopolitan research the normative, empirical question of whether we see an emergence of a world beyond reflexive modernization. Second, I address scholars outside the field of political science who are interested in methodological cosmopolitanism by offering the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ as a novel object of study that could also be explored from other disciplinary perspectives and by proposing they put the question of the purpose of methodological cosmopolitanism centre stage. This question can, I argue, constitute grounds for substantial debates on methodological cosmopolitanism not already precluded through disciplinary premises and concerns. Contributing to such a transdisciplinary debate, I distinguish between the long‐term and immediate purpose of methodological cosmopolitanism, the former being about the development of a cosmopolitan language and grammar and the latter about empirical explorations of the reality of the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, eventually and in a collective and transdisciplinary endeavour building up to contribute to the former.     

Subaltern cosmopolitanism: concept and approaches

‘Cosmopolitanism is back’, proclaimed David Harvey presciently in 2000 (Harvey, 2000: 529). In the face of injustice, inequality and violence emerging from globalization processes, the last decade has witnessed a cascading interest in the vision of a world community in which sameness and difference are harmoniously dealt with. Across the humanities and social sciences, there have emerged multiple ways of understanding what exactly cosmopolitanism means for research. To push this concept to greater rigour, scholars have tried to demarcate its conceptual boundaries by underlining its conjunctural nature (Werbner, 2006). Thus we have such notions as rooted cosmopolitanism, working‐class cosmopolitanism, discrepant cosmopolitanism, ethnic cosmopolitanism, and vernacular cosmopolitanism. Of all these conjunctural terms, subaltern cosmopolitanism has gained noteworthy attention of late. In one of her articles published in 2010 about the old baggage and missing luggage of cosmopolitan theory, for example, Glick Schiller claims that the possibilities of strengthening cosmopolitan theory lie in ‘a further development of a subaltern cosmopolitanism’ (2010: 414). In this Viewpoint, I will first present an overview of how subaltern cosmopolitanism has been deployed by scholars, and then evaluate its particular purchase in cosmopolitan studies, and finally suggest fortifying the critical sinew of this concept by drawing on conversations about other weighty issues that concern the humanities and social sciences of today.     

Class,place and mobility beyond the global city: stigmatisation and the cosmopolitanisation of the local

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on a multi-sited qualitative study of youth in regional Australia to explore the contemporary relationship between class, place attachment, and the imperative towards mobility and cosmopolitanism. The paper shows how local classed identities shape how young people situate themselves and their localities in relation to the rest of the world, and how experiences of mobility produce classed attachments to place. Here, place is made meaningful within the broader cultural politics of inequality in neoliberalism, in which the moral denigration of figures of the working class come to stand for the disadvantage currently associated with regional places. However local classed histories offer some young people the capacity for resistance, whilst others are unable to reframe their localities in positive terms. Moreover, whilst cosmopolitanism is a mode of classed distinction across the two research sites, this can be enacted either through practices of mobility, or through the repositioning of the local in cosmopolitan terms through the identity practices of middle-class youth. The paper therefore reveals new ways in which local social and economic histories offer young people different ways in which to relate to notions of mobility as well as to reconstruct the meaning of their home.     

Cosmopolitics: towards a new articulation of politics,science and critique

This paper explores how Ulrich Beck's world‐risk‐society theory (WRST) and Bruno Latour's Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) can be combined to advance a theory of cosmopolitics. On the one hand, WRST helps to examine ‘cosmopolitan politics’, how actors try to inject cosmopolitanism into existing political practices and institutions anchored in the logic of nationalism. On the other hand, ANT sheds light on ‘cosmological politics’, how scientists participate in the construction of reality as a reference point for political struggles. By combining the WRST and ANT perspectives, it becomes possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of cosmopolitics that takes into account both political and ontological dimensions. The proposed synthesis of WRST and ANT also calls for a renewal of critical theory by making social scientists aware of their performative involvement in cosmopolitics. This renewal prompts social scientists to explore how they can pragmatically support certain ideals of cosmopolitics through continuous dialogues with their objects of study, actors who inhabit different nations and different cosmoses.     

Cosmopolitan stance negotiation in multicultural academic settings

Our analysis of an informal event involving Chinese and Spanish students and lecturers displays the cumulative nature of stance negotiation in multicultural settings. It also highlights the role of sociocultural and ideological elements in stancetaking, not only in relation to the positions adopted by the participants, but also in the successive redefinition and reframing of the stance objects. Sociocultural and ideological elements are also crucial for the collective construction of intersubjectivities, particularly among mobile citizens. The way in which our international students managed to overcome misalignments, the values and ideologies evoked within the interaction, reveal nuances of cosmopolitanism that point to a globalization of tastes triggered by multiculturalism and the worldwide expansion of capitalism. Sharing a cosmopolitan orientation, however, did not prevent ideological contradictions among the participants. An analysis of how these were voiced and negotiated allows grasping the remarkably wide spectrum of cosmopolitanism(s) today.     

BETWEEN COSMOPOLITANISM AND THE NATIONAL SLOT: CUBA'S DIASPORIC CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

Although cosmopolitanism used to be associated with Western, elite practices, it has in recent years been used to describe a wider array of practices by non-elite and non-Western groups. This article explores the cosmopolitanism of Cuba's “children of the revolution” living in Spain. They are those now young adults who were born in Cuba after the revolution and who were brought up to become the socialist New Man. Theirs was a world of socialist cosmopolitanism, which simultaneously was infused with commitment to a national, territorially-based political project: an independent, socialist Cuba. However, some of these New Men and New Women now embrace ideals of cosmopolitan individualism rather than the patriotic socialism with which they were inculcated as children. Yet the cultural tools that the children of the revolution make use of in their practices and narratives of cosmopolitanism paradoxically point back to revolutionary Cuba. The article argues that cosmopolitanism as a lived practice owes to experiences within the Cuban socialist-national project and is in effect a response to the ineffectiveness of this project, not necessarily a substantive opposition to it. Social capital and habitus deriving from Cuban socialism gave the children of the revolution the desire to attain cosmopolitanism as part of their life-projects. This finding suggests that the relationship between nationalism and cosmopolitanism needs further rethinking.     

Going global and staying local: nation-building discourses in Singapore's cultural policies

Utilizing the ‘Singapore Story’, this study will explore cultural policies implemented and aimed towards cosmopolitanism, and how these policies have affected the international arts scene, which has led to a polarization within the community by excluding the elderly and disadvantaged members of the population from participating. Singapore's cultural policy has served the function of nation-building and at the same time goes with globalisation and thus calls for constructing a cosmopolitan yet patriotic citizen in terms of identity. This article considers the role of nationalism as a guide to the understanding of cultural policy discourses and argues that a top-down cosmopolitan construction of national identity in cultural policy discourses lacks representation of people's daily life.     

Contested Cosmopolitanisms: Global Meetings and Local Mobilizations

This article analyzes the ways that Pittsburgh anarchist activists, politicians, and journalists framed the 2009 G‐20 meetings and protests through a content analysis of newspaper articles and activist documents. Our analysis found that cosmopolitanism was a central discourse, but it was also contested. Pittsburgh anarchists introduced an open‐community cosmopolitanism that prioritizes the local over the global as a site of struggle and also embraces expansion of rights and commitment to diversity and inclusivity. Somewhat unexpectedly, this open‐community cosmopolitanism was successfully transmitted beyond activist discourse into the public and the local media. The anarchist activist open‐community framing challenged Pittsburgh residents to question whether increased global corporate investments were best for Pittsburgh and, in doing so, fostered connections between local anarchist activists, local journalists, and local Pittsburgh residents. To reflect on the ways that activists contribute to ideas of cosmopolitanism, this article presents a theoretical model that incorporates individual and collective dispositions and multiple ideological standpoints. We also show how movement groups may strategically draw on these shared cosmopolitan dispositions to expand their movement base, communicate their messages, and challenge the hegemony of global capitalism.     

“I Don't Go By Sean Patrick”: On-Line/Off-Line/Out Identity and SeanPatrickLive.com

Web cams are cameras that are attached to a computer in order to send continuously updated pictures over the Internet. SeanPatrickLive is a Web cam site that documented the life of Sean, a gay man living in the Washington, D.C. area. This essay is the result of ethnographic interviews with Sean Patrick. It discusses Web cams within the context of the cyberqueer, examining how sexuality is presented on-line, using the Internet and the Web cam as a form of gay/queer politics, and performing identity on- and off-line.     

Disability and the Dialectics of Difference

This paper re-theorises disability by asking the following question: within what historical, social, economic and political conditions does disability as an analytic of difference get constructed in a dialectical relationship with gender, class, caste and race? To respond to this question, I will first offer a materialist reading of the category of disability. I will then situate this discussion in an ethnographic study of a voluntary organisation in South India which provides residential as well as rehabilitational services for disabled children. Finally, I will discuss the politics of gendered 'caring work' and its implications for the continued production of marginalised difference. In doing this, I will thus demonstrate how disability can be re-understood as an ideological condition which is also structured by the same exploitative material conditions of capitalism as are race, caste, class and gender.     

Maya cosmopolitans: engaging tactics and strategies in the performance of tourism

Maya heritage is embraced throughout Yucatán as a crucial component of tourism promotions. This, coupled with an emphasis on multiculturalism, makes the state itself a local actor in the marketing of Maya identity through the creation and funding of community-based tourism projects. This article discusses the shifting role of the state in shaping these communities, referencing a Maya village in the Mexican state of Yucatán as the context. The aim is an understanding of the articulation of local tactics to conceal cosmopolitanism while remaining competent in the eyes of funding agencies and the strategies employed by the state that reinforce the importance of performance for tourists. The desire on the part of state creates situations in which individuals are expected to exist in concurrent states of authenticity and modernity, as both traditional and cosmopolitan.     

Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision: Executive Summary

What ages desire? As the body ages do experiences and expressions of desire change in tandem? Or do the dynamics of desire run more freely and communicate unrestricted by the body's temporal location? Clinical and personal vignettes are developed to explore these questions and to consider how, for gay men in particular, erotic desire associates to experiences and memories related to “coming out.”     

Cosmopolitan China? Lessons from international collaboration in low-carbon innovation

Cosmopolitanism is the focus of much current debate. This literature, however, is marked by a relative paucity of detailed research that examines the impact of cosmopolitanism as a social force within different societies. In particular, two topics that have received little attention despite their utter importance for current global challenges are the scale and impact of cosmopolitanism in China and the significance of ‘cosmopolitan innovation’. This paper explores both on the basis of evidence from over 70 interviews with parties involved in low‐carbon innovation, a field that may be considered to be particularly propitious for cosmopolitan motivation. We argue that there is distinct evidence of cosmopolitanism in China but that this is a relatively fragile and elite development, despite China's increasingly deep integration into global networks and flows. Furthermore, the cosmopolitanism in evidence is a distinctly Chinese version, thereby offering important lessons regarding the nature of cosmopolitanism per se and the reciprocal challenge of China to the existing cosmopolitanism of the global North.     

Ethnic Minority Families and Minority Gays and Lesbians

Attitudes toward sexuality differ within the diverse ethnic and racial communities that exist in the U.S., and the cultural values and beliefs surrounding sexuality play a major role in determining how individuals behave within their sociological context. The family unit is the domain where such values and beliefs are nurtured and developed. An individual's value system is shaped and reinforced within the family context which usually reflects the broader community norms. Disclosure of a gay or lesbian sexual preference and lifestyle by a family member presents challenges to ethnic minority families who tend not to discuss sexuality issues and presume a heterosexual orientation. For ethnic minority gays and lesbians the "coming out" process presents challenges in their identity formation processes and in their loyalties to one community over another. Ethnic gay men and lesbians need to live within three rigidly defined and strongly independent communities: the gay and lesbian community, the ethnic minority community, and the society at large. While each community provides fundamental needs, serious consequences emerge if such communities were to be visibly integrated and merged. It requires a constant effort to maintain oneself in three different worlds, each of which fails to support significant aspects of a person's life. The complications that arise may inhibit one's ability to adapt and to maximize personal potentials. The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction and processes between ethnic minority communities and their gay and lesbian family members. A framework for understanding the process of change, that occurs for the gay or lesbian person as they attempt to resolve conflicts of dual minority membership, is presented. Implications for the practitioner is also discussed.     

BACKLASH, THE MATRIX OF DOMINATION, AND LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS

This article focuses on Log Cabin Republicans, gay members of that political party who reject "queer' politics and "leftist' projects among lesbian and gay activists. We show that members' social class, race, age, and gender are as central to an understanding of Log Cabin politics as is their nonnormative sexuality. The case of the Log Cabin Republicans illustrates how the matrix of domination is reaffirmed in backlash rhetoric and related so-ciopolitical practices. It also shows that the gay community comprises multiple, divergent subgroups that make the boundaries between lesbigay and straight politics more or less ambiguous and fluid. Put differently, the Log Cabin Republicans illuminate the practical limits of identity politics.
Early in the twentieth century, a gay white middle-class male observed:
Not till our whole commercial system, with its barter and sale of human labor and human love for gain, is done away, and not till a whole new code of ideals and customs of life has come in, will women really be free. They must remember that their cause is also the cause of the oppressed laborer over the whole earth, and the laborer has to remember that his cause is theirs. (Carpenter 1911, p. 60)     

Conditional Families and Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, and Queer Youth Homelessness: Gender,Sexuality, Family Instability,and Rejection

Existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth homelessness identifies family rejection as a main pathway into homelessness for the youth. This finding, however, can depict people of color or poor people as more prejudiced than White, middle‐class families. In this 18‐month ethnographic study, the author complicates this rejection paradigm through documenting the narratives of 40 LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. The author examines how poverty and family instability shaped the conditions that the youth perceived as their being rejected because of their gender and sexuality. This rejection generated strained familial ties within families wherein the ties were already fragile. Likewise, the author shows how being gender expansive marked many youth's experiences of familial abuse and strain. This study proposes the concept of conditional families to capture the social processes of how poverty and family instability shape experiences of gender, sexuality, and rejection for some LGBTQ youth.     

Redefining Sex and Intimacy: The Sexual Self-Images,Outlooks, and Relationships of Gay Men Living with HIV/AIDS

This paper examines how gay men living with HIV disease come to terms with the profound sexual implications of their illness. Based on interviews with 25 gay men diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, this paper highlights (a) the disruptions that these men experience in their sexual feelings and self-images as a result of their illness; (b) the challenges they encounter in negotiating and sustaining sexual relationships; (c) the declines they experience in their sexual attractiveness, desire, and capacities as their illness advances; and (d) the changed meanings they give to sex and self as they come to terms with the erotic implications of their illness and try to preserve valued, intimate identities. In focusing on these themes, this paper offers an “insider's view” into key dimensions of the moral experience of gay men with HIV/AIDS. It also illustrates how the moral experience of these men shifts over the course of their illness, especially in response to the changes and challenges that arise in their intimate relationships and subcultural networks. On a broader, analytic level, this paper addresses a research question that has been neglected in previous studies of the experience of illness—that is, how does serious illness affect the sexuality of diagnosed individuals, particularly their construction of sexual and intimate identities? Through examining this question, this paper contributes to and extends the growing interactionist literature on the consequences of illness for self.     

Schulman's Urban Lesbian: A HoboSexual Pedestrian Rhetoric

The following article reads the protagonist in Sarah Schulman's Girls, Visions and Everything as not only lesbian, but as hobosexual—a concept representative of anti-capitalist practices in both sex and labor. The hobosexual is developed as an extension of the lesbian flâneur, as a concept that requires reading Schulman's urban lesbian at the intersection of class and sexuality. Lila Futuransky's sexual identity is suspended and complicated through an emphasis on her desire for queer mobility; her urban movements connect her to hobo history, but also expose the effects of capitalism that thwart her urban movement.