Special theme introduction: methodological cosmopolitanism across the socio‐cultural sciences

The cosmopolitan sociology of Ulrich Beck has been widely recognized as making vital contributions to crosscutting conversations on globalization and transnational studies, including these debates that are being played out on the pages of Global Networks. Beck's impassioned critique of ‘methodological nationalism’ in his own discipline of sociology, in particular, has often served as a springboard for programmatic calls to attend more closely to transnational actors, issues, and processes. However, beyond the occasional acknowledgement, comparatively less attention has been paid so far to the potentialities, specificities, and practicalities of Beck's affirmative alternative vision for the socio‐cultural sciences, that of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’. Building on and extending out from research experiences obtained in Beck's East Asia and Europe‐focused Cosmopolitan Climate Change (Cosmo‐Climate) project, this special theme brings together experts from across a range of socio‐cultural research fields to discuss and critically interrogate the challenges and capacities of doing methodological cosmopolitanism.     

Staging environmental risk: a methodological cosmopolitanism approach to Chinese media events

The aim of this study is to enrich Beck's (2016) concept of methodological cosmopolitanism and digital metamorphosis from the perspective of communication researchers using a ‘media event', namely the live broadcasting of history through communication technology (Dayan and Katz 1992) as the research unit. Based on our observation of media events of environmental crises in China, we argue that digital metamorphoses are happening, albeit in a complicated form. These disruptive events that netizens evoke, participate in and resolve make a stronger and longer lasting impact on the social consensus about environmental protections than do pre‐set pseudo‐events. The effects of the digital empowerment of people are, however, case specific and the nation‐state still dominates many media events pertaining to environmental crises.     

Cosmopolitan communities of climate risk: conceptual and empirical suggestions for a new research agenda

Mitigating human‐induced climate change calls for a globalized change of consciousness and practice. These global challenges also demand a double transformation of the social sciences – first, from ‘methodological nationalism’ to ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ and, second, an empirical reorientation towards ‘cosmopolitization’ as the social force of emerging cosmopolitan realities. One of these realities is the possible emergence, locally and globally, of ‘cosmopolitan communities of climate risk’ in response to a ‘world at risk’. A key research question for contemporary social science is thus: how and where are new cosmopolitan communities of climate risk being imagined and realized? In this article, we propose and explore a research agenda formulated around this key question. We both develop a theoretical perspective and provide short empirical illustrations of case studies regarding ongoing research in Europe and East Asia on such cosmopolitan climate risk communities.     

Art,climate change and (other) eco materials: rethinking the cosmopolitanization of aesthetics and the aesthetics of cosmopolitanization with Ulrich Beck

Based on fieldwork in Japan and Hong Kong, I ask how methodological cosmopolitanism, as formulated by Ulrich Beck, may afford new and highly needed modes for grappling with climatically concerned art and aesthetic practices across geographical regions. I will argue that methodological cosmopolitanism serves as an important framework for approaching such art practices, and suggest that two overall intertwined strands concerning aesthetic practices engaged in global issues of climate change, emerge from this – the cosmopolitanization of aesthetics and, reversely, the aesthetics of cosmopolitanization. Departing from my fieldwork among farming artists in the Hong Kong countryside and in the Japanese satoyama – rural mountain – areas, I will, on the one hand, argue that art practices are ‘cosmopolitanized’ by the awareness of global risks, manifested in anticipation of the comprehensive climatic changes (in)discriminately affecting across nations and regions. At the same time, and importantly, art practices are actively attending to this ‘risky’ cosmopolitanization, giving aesthetic voice, form and ‘visuality’ to unfolding climatic issues and concerns and hereby practising what I will call an ‘aesthetics of cosmopolitanization’.     

Remapping social inequalities in an age of climate change: for a cosmopolitan renewal of sociology*

Climate change globalizes and radicalizes social inequality; it exacerbates inequalities of rich and poor, core and periphery, and at the same time dissolves them in the face of a common threat to humanity. Climate change combines with the inequalities arising from globalization, decoupling the producers and subjects of risk. Remapping inequality in the age of climate change and globalization therefore requires taking account of the unbounding of both equality and inequality, and an awareness of the end of the opposition between society and nature, one of the founding principles of sociology. The article outlines four theses of inequality, climate change and globalization, and concludes with the question: what does a cosmopolitan renewal of the social sciences mean and how will it be possible?     

Reflexive particularism and cosmopolitanization: the reconfiguration of the national

In this article we examine the cosmopolitanization of national memory cultures as a matter of reflexive particularism, referring to negotiations over ‘the national’ driven by the endogenization of European norms and discourses. Reflexive particularism emerges from a historically specific memory imperative that issues two demands – first, that national polities reckon with the Other, and second, that they engage with, critique and challenge exclusionary or heroic modes of nationalism. Our findings, based on the analysis of official discourse and 60 open group discussions conducted in Austria, Germany and Poland, suggest that reflexive particularism is manifested in an ongoing negotiation between variable modes of national belonging and cosmopolitan orientations toward the supranational or pan‐European. More specifically, reflexive particularism is expressed in co‐evolving articulations of Europeanness and shared European memory practices that include: affirmative and ambivalent perspectives; sceptical narratives about nationhood (for example those that emphasize legacies of perpetratorship); and a disposition to (ex)change perspectives and recognize the claims of Others.     

Climate riskscapes in world port cities: situating urban‐cosmopolitan risk communities via Ulrich Beck's comparative tactics

Building on empirical research into translocal connections among world port cities in addressing shared challenges of climate risk mitigation and adaptation, in this article I review two widespread tendencies in urban studies – methodological city‐ism and methodological globalism respectively – as a springboard for articulating a methodologically cosmopolitan alternative. This alternative, I argue, involves epistemological issues of how to interrogate ‘the urban’ as assemblages that constitutively draw together the near and the faraway, as well as more practical issues of mobile, multisited, and comparative urban research methods. Empirically, I compare the ways in which urban actors stage global climate risks on the waterfronts of four world cities – Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Yokohama and Copenhagen – to argue that such a comparative tactic of variable ‘riskscapes’ helps situate Ulrich Beck's notion of urban cosmopolitan risk communities more thoroughly into urban studies. In such ways, I suggest, Beck's methodological cosmopolitanism is germane to studying ongoing and far ranging transformation in world political geography, in which transurban networks, communities, and governance arrangements come to complement nation‐state centred institutions. Such conclusions must be tempered, however, by the deployment of Beck's equally strong impetus towards comparative attention to the varieties of second modernity; and doing so, I conclude, aligns well with ongoing transformations in urban studies itself.     

Life and death in Hong Kong in an age of cosmopolitanism

Recent events in Hong Kong direct attention to a disturbing trend – the neglect of (selected) life. The society is increasingly discarding its policies and practices concerning immigrant workers, foreign pregnant women and impoverished men and women, whom it deems unworthy of protection or assistance. In this article, I argue for a radical cosmopolitanism that would entail a commitment not only to preventing the taking of life and building a non‐killing society but also to the elimination of the structural conditions that disallow life to the point of death. Drawing on recent bio‐political debates in Hong Kong, I consider the sovereign right over life and death within the neoliberal state. I argue that the state predicates neoliberal sovereignty on a systemic indifference to life; it calculates its bio‐political decisions according to a bio‐arithmetic of economic productivity and social responsibility; and it allows those whom it deems unworthy ‘to die’. As a potential counter discourse, I outline the coordinates and discuss the implications of a commitment to a radical cosmopolitanism.     

Rethinking the origins of transnational humanitarian organizations: the curious case of the International Shipwreck Society

This exploration of the evolution of the International Shipwreck Society (ISS) – a previously neglected transnational humanitarian organization that by the late 1830s had branches in every continent – casts new light on three key aspects of the development of global humanitarianism. First, that there was a secular humanitarian association with a global organizational structure in the 1830s challenges widespread assumptions about the timing of internationally organized humanitarian action. Second, the influence of Chinese precedents on the ISS points to the importance of long forgotten Eastern origins of transnational humanitarianism. And third, the evaluation of the role of individuals in the development of the ISS reveals that early transnational humanitarian organizations faced leadership problems that scholars had previously neglected. In each of these respects, this article provides a new perspective on the origins of global networks.     

Transnational political action and ‘global civil society’ in practice: the case of Oxfam

The term ‘global civil society’ has taken on increasing significance within scholarly debate over the past decade. In this article we seek to understand transnational political agency via the study of a particular transnational actor, Oxfam. We argue that various schools of thought surrounding the global civil society concept, in particular the prevailing liberal‐cosmopolitan approach, are unable to conceptualize transnational political action in practice – due largely, in the case of liberal‐cosmopolitanism, to a shared normative agenda. We also assess what contribution literature on development and civil society has made to the analysis of groups such as Oxfam. In investigating Oxfam's own perceptions of its context and the meanings of its agency, we discover an anti‐political perspective derived from an encounter between Oxfam's longstanding commitment to liberal internationalism and globalization discourse. Existing scholarship has insufficiently identified the local or parochial nature of the identities of global civil society actors.     

The spatial politics of the past unbound: transnational networks and the making of political identities

In this article I consider the relations between historical and contemporary forms of transnational political networks. I contest accounts that counterpose a networked present against a more settled and bounded past, arguing that this contrast rests on a problematic temporalization of difference in the construction of political identities. I consider how this temporalization produces particular accounts of relations between space, politics and identity. Drawing on the insurgent imaginative geography of resistance in C. L. R. James's The Black Jacobins, I argue for a focus on the dynamic geographies of connection formed through transnational networks. I develop this position through a discussion of the relations of the London Corresponding Society, formed in London in 1792, to transnational routes of political activists, organizational forms and ideas. This account highlights the multiple political identities crafted through transnational political networks. I conclude by outlining elements of a ‘usable past’ for contemporary counter‐global struggles.     

A global sense of migrant places: towards a place perspective in the study of migrant transnationalism

Contemporary transnational migrants have complex social lives in that they live in a number of different cross‐border social networks at the same time. Most transmigration scholars try to grasp this social complexity of migrant transnationalism by using a network lens. In this article, I argue in favour of adding a place lens to the analytical tool kit of transmigration scholars. Although a network lens works well for studying the internal complexity of cross‐border social networks, a place lens is more useful for gaining an understanding of their external complexity, in other words the ways these networks interrelate. By drawing on geographical and anthropological literature on open and relational understandings of place, and especially on the work of Doreen Massey and Arjun Appadurai, I shall show that interrelating migrant networks are visible in place in two ways. On the one hand, migrant places are meeting places of social networks, and on the other hand they are sites (translocalities) where transmigrants can reach out to people in other places.     

Museums and the cultural politics of displaying the nation to the world

Focusing on the way nationalist imperatives and cosmopolitan ambitions fold into each other in the making of museum spaces in seven cities across the globe, Artifacts and Allegiances provides an intriguing comparative narrative of museum practices which takes into account the broader differences in social, demographic and historical contexts. Based primarily on interviews with museum professionals, academics and policymakers, the approach favours the production of meanings and representations from above, as opposed to the telling of stories from below. A consideration of multiple readings, appropriations and contestations across different scales would afford us a more dynamic view of the cultural politics that animate the ways in which museums display the nation to the world and draw the world into the nation.     

Classical sociology and cosmopolitanism: a critical defence of the social

It is frequently argued that classical sociology, if not sociology as a whole, cannot provide any significant insight into globalization, primarily because its assumptions about the nation-state, national cultures and national societies are no longer relevant to a global world. Sociology cannot consequently contribute to a normative debate about cosmopolitanism, which invites us to consider loyalties and identities that reach beyond the nation-state. My argument considers four principal topics. First, I defend the classical legacy by arguing that classical sociology involved the study of 'the social' not national societies. This argument is illustration by reference to Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons. Secondly, Durkheim specifically developed the notion of a cosmopolitan sociology to challenge the nationalist assumptions of his day. Thirdly, I attempt to develop a critical version of Max Weber's verstehende soziologie to consider the conditions for critical recognition theory in sociology as a necessary precondition of cosmopolitanism. Finally, I consider the limitations of some contemporary versions of global sociology in the example of 'flexible citizenship' to provide an empirical case study of the limitations of globalization processes and 'sociology beyond society'. While many institutions have become global, some cannot make this transition. Hence, we should consider the limitations on as well as the opportunities for cosmopolitan sociology.     

Uncertainty in the study of belief: the risks and benefits of methodological agnosticism

The study of religious and spiritual beliefs raises complex epistemological and methodological questions for interpretive social scientists concerning our ability to understand the everyday lifeworlds that belief-based communities inhabit. The primary focus of recent debates has been on the long-standing methodological insider/outsider dynamic, defined in terms of religious belief or affiliation, which intersects with other social categories such as gender or ethnicity. We contribute to this debate by considering a relatively neglected position, methodological agnosticism, which informs our study of religion and spirituality in the workplace. We argue that an agnostic position can be methodologically productive as a research strategy, but this must be counterbalanced by awareness of the fieldworker risks, which include emotional distress and identity threats. Agnosticism also encourages greater epistemological reflexivity as it implies ‘not knowing’ in relation to both metaphysics and social scientific knowledge construction. Through this, we highlight the productive nature of uncertainty in the study of belief as an epistemologically and methodologically constructive standpoint.     

Decolonial strategies in world politics: C.L.R. James and the writing and playing of cricket

Discussions of decolonizing world politics have flourished in international studies recently but few of these engage with popular culture, especially sports. In this paper, I address this gap and consider sports – specifically the sport of cricket – as a global phenomenon, useful for discussing key decolonizing strategies. This paper argues that cricket, as a form of popular culture, offers language and practices to critique oppressive sociopolitical norms and global hierarchies. It draws upon the cricket-writing of C.L.R. James, specifically his book Beyond a Boundary, as well as on the experiences of playing cricket to outline some decolonial strategies. These strategies include shifting perspectives on world politics, the role of biography and autobiography as critique, and the relevance of positionality in describing global processes and in the construction of knowledge. Overall, this paper claims that popular culture, especially those which are popular in the Global South, offers ways to rethink and rework relations between the powerful and less powerful. Cricket provides examples of ways in which these various decolonial strategies can be enacted in practice.     

Framing the Other: cosmopolitanism and the representation of difference in overseas gap year narratives

This paper engages with debates surrounding contemporary cosmopolitanism and the outcomes of cultural encounters. It considers if overseas gap years, often put forward in the UK as a way of becoming a global citizen, enable young Britons to ‘broaden their mind’. I explore representations of the people and places encountered during these periods of time out through an analysis of young people's travel blogs. Four key themes are highlighted in these narratives: the exotic place; feeling ‘out of place’; the importance and outcomes of local interaction; and the historical legacies that are implicated in constructing places as ‘different’. Gappers display a willingness to interact with and gain knowledge about their host communities. Yet as gap years are designed to be distinct from the normal course of things, they also demonstrate the ‘difference’ of places. This can often result in the reproduction of established ways of representing the Other in order to frame them as meaningful. There is a tension in the narratives between ‘globally reflexive’ and ‘globally reproductive’ representations of difference, and I suggest that we might question the development of cosmopolitan attitudes and competencies through undertaking a gap year.     

Introduction: Current routes to the study of contentious politics and social change

Theory and Society -     

Urban politics and the study of urban poverty: Promising developments and future directions

The study of urban poverty is alive and well in sociology. The study of urban politics, by contrast, has stagnated. Though scholars agree that politics shapes the creation and durability of urban poverty, analytical connections between the two subfields are rarely made explicit. In this article, I make the case for a more integrated body of research. I first illustrate how urban poverty scholars implicitly discuss politics, and conversely, how urban politics scholars implicitly discuss poverty. I then highlight recent developments in the literature and propose two paths forward—by no means the only paths forward, but two ways to jumpstart greater conversation across both subfields. For the urban poverty literature, a focus on organizations can help scholars analyze political dynamics more directly. And for the urban politics literature, an emphasis on political mechanisms rather than overarching perspectives can disrupt the current theoretical malaise. These two moves can advance both literatures while drawing them closer together.