The most resounding expression of the truly unprecedented mobilizations of migrants throughout the United States in 2006 was a mass proclamation of collective defiance: ¡Aquí Estamos, y No Nos Vamos! [Here we are, and we're not leaving!]. This same slogan was commonly accompanied by a still more forcefully incorrigible rejoinder: ¡Y Si Nos Sacan, Nos Regresamos! [... and if they throw us out, we'll come right back!]. It is quite striking and, as this essay contends, not merely provocative but genuinely (...) productive to note the affinity between the crucial articulation of this radically open-ended politics of migrant presence with the similarly abject and profoundly destabilizing politics of queer presence. In a manner remarkably analogous to the slogan, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!", the dynamic enunciation of these phrases in the context of the mass mobilizations of migrants asserted an irreducible spirit of irreverence and disaffection for state power. Both gestures unreservedly and unapologetically assert not only their irreversible presence, furthermore, but also uphold the intractable challenge of their own intrinsic incorrigibility. (shrink)

The equation between the concept of society and the nation-state in modernity is known as methodological nationalism in scholarly debates. In agreement with the thesis that methodological nationalism must be rejected and transcended, this article argues that we still lack an understanding of what methodological nationalism actually is and, because of that, we remain unable to answer the substantive problem methodological nationalism poses to social theory: how to understand the history, main features and legacy of the nation-state in modernity. The (...) first section of the article reconstructs the origins of the critique of methodological nationalism in the 1970s and differentiates between its logical and historical versions. It then critically reviews the most salient critique of methodological nationalism in contemporary social theory, that of Ulrich Beck. The final part of the article assesses the thesis of social theory’s immanent methodological nationalism by demonstrating how social theory’s equivocations towards the nation-state only mirror the nation-state’s own ambivalence within modernity. It is shown that social theory’s ambivalent attempts at conceptualizing the nation-state reflect the actual ambivalence of the position of the nation-state in modernity: its historical opacity, its sociological uncertainty and its normative ambiguity. (shrink)

In popular imagery, the littorals of Sulu and Zamboanga conjure visions of pirates, terrorists, and bandits marauding its rough seas, open shores, and rugged mountains. These bleak accounts render the region nothing but a violent and peripheral southern Philippine backdoor inconspicuous to the sophisticated constituencies of the world’s metropolitan centres. Obscured from these imageries are the lasting cosmopolitan traits of openness, flexibility, and reception of local folk to trans-local cultural streams that marked Sulu and Zamboanga as a globalised space across (...) the ages and oceans. The distinctive features of these cosmopolitan sensibilities are strikingly discernible in inter-generationally shared narratives, artefacts, and performances that were continually renewed from the days when Sulu and Zamboanga served as a borderless trading and cultural enclave nestled at the crossroads of the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. These enduring cosmopolitan sensibilities are embodied in the blending, among others, of the time-honoured dance of pangalay and the pop-musical dance genre celebrated on actual, analogue, and digitally-mediated spaces of the contemporary world. Furthermore, these embodied sensibilities are evident in song compositions that proclaim the humanistic themes of hope, peace, and prosperity to their place and the world in ways that exemplify the local people’s broader sense of connections beyond the narrow association of family, community, ethnicity, religion, and identity. This mixed bag of age-old and recent imaginaries and cultural traffic evoke a sociality that link the social spaces of the troubled but once and current globalised region to continuing acts of transcendence in history, memory, and visions of the future. In these marginalized places, we can see an unyielding tradition of cultural re-adaptation and creativity made up of myriad everyday acts that are down-to-earth, pragmatic, interstitial, and practical cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

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

In this article I want to outline an argument for a New Critical Theory with a cosmopolitan intent. Its main purpose is to undermine one of the most powerful beliefs of our time concerning society and politics. This belief is the notion that “modern society” and “modern politics” are to be understood as society and politics organized around the nation‐state, equating society with the national imagination of society. There are two aspects to this body of beliefs: what I call the (...) “national perspective” of social actors, and the “methodological nationalism” of scientific observers. The distinction between these two perspectives is important because there is no logical co‐implication between them, only an interconnected genesis and history. (shrink)

The “Arab Spring” was a surprising event not just because predicting revolutions is a difficult task, but because current theories of revolution are ill equipped to explain revolutionary waves where interactive causal mechanisms at different levels of analysis and interactions between the units of analysis predominate. To account for such dynamics, a multidimensional social science of revolution is required. Accordingly, a meta-framework for revolutionary theory that combines multiple levels of analysis, multiple units of analysis, and their interactions is offered. A (...) structured example of theory building is then given by detailing how the development of world cultural models and practices challenge existing political structures, affect mobilization processes, and make diffusion more likely. A structured example of study design using qualitative comparative analysis of 16 Middle Eastern and North African countries provides support for the interaction of subnational conditions for mobilization, state-centered causes, and transnational factors, including a country’s linkage to world society, as one explanation of the Revolutions of 2011. (shrink)

The concept of the national is often perceived, both in public and academic discourse as the central obstacle for the realization of cosmopolitan orientations. Consequently, debates about the nation tend to revolve around its persistence or its demise. We depart from this either-or perspective by investigating the formation of the ‘cosmopolitan nation’ as a facet of world risk society. Modern collectivities are increasingly preoccupied with debating, preventing and managing risks. However, unlike earlier manifestations of risk characterized by daring actions or (...) predictability models, global risks can no longer be calculated or forecast. Accordingly, more influence accrues to the perception of risk, largely constructed by media representations. Cosmopolitanized risk collectivities are engendered through the anticipation of endangered futures which are, for the most part, communicated through an increasingly global media scape. While global media events produce shared exposure, risk conceptions retain distinctive political-cultural features as their respective meanings are prefigured by path-dependent pasts. Nevertheless, the promulgation of risk societies, we argue, results in a reimagination of nationhood which takes place in the context of: global norms (e.g. human rights); globalized markets; transnational migrations; global generations and their embeddedness in civil society movements; and the local interpenetration of world religions to name but a few of the global backdrops shaping new associational intersections. We develop our argument in four interrelated steps. Contrary to essentialized notions of nationalism or universal versions of cosmopolitanism, we address the cosmopolitan reconfiguration of nationhood by differentiating between presumptions of thick belonging and the actual proliferation of cosmopolitan affiliations. In a second step we overcome the territorial fixation of the social sciences by shifting our attention to temporal dimensions, with a particular focus on competing conceptions of the future. In a third step we demonstrate how these cosmopolitan transformations of nationhood are taking place in the context of a world risk society regime that marshals a set of cosmopolitan imperatives situating the global other in our midst. In a fourth step we illustrate these developments by exploring how the mediatization of risk, and concomitant notions of the future, contribute to the reimagination of cosmopolitan risk collectivities. (shrink)

This article explores the meaning and relevance of the ‘Idea of Europe’ in the context of a multicultural and multi-ethnic 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-Romantic heritage, mobilized by supporters of European integration as the bridge between diverse European national cultures. In a Europe of extraordinary cultural interchange and immigration from all corners of the world, the (...) classical Idea of Europe is strikingly exclusionary and backward looking – a poor motif for the future. The article tries to develop an alternative Idea of Europe, one based on a particular politics of the public domain and a particular ethos of belonging in Europe seen as a migrant space, rather than one based on the enduring cultural values of a body of people called Europeans. It outlines a commons, protected by appropriate EU-level rights, that can both support and bind cultural pluralism and difference, and it proposes democratic vitalism as Europe’s core political project, an idea of becoming European, read as the process of never-settled cultural invention resulting from the vibrant clashes of an equal and empowered multiple public. No myth of origin, no myth of destination, only the commitment to a plural demos. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

This paper develops a critical engagement with ‘cosmopolitanism’ and specifically the geographical imaginations it implicates. It does so in order to work through some of the geographical closures in the new cosmopolitanism literature and, further, to suggest alternative — more uncertain and speculative — spatial imaginations for modes of living together with radical alterity. The paper is written in the context of the wealth of recent literature that has sought to recuperate cosmopolitanism as a progressive political philosophy and imagination. Part (...) of the paper’s intervention, however, is to suggest that mechanisms and political imaginations for living together might in fact gain much by stepping out from cosmopolitanism’s conceptual shadow. First, the paper argues that implicated within much of the new cosmopolitan literature is a planetary consciousness that has a long historical antecedence in western thought. The paper stresses the problematic textures of the planetary geographical imaginations embedded within avowedly cosmopolitan discourse, arguing that the ‘cosmos’ of cosmopolitanism is no geographically innocent signifier. It is in fact tethered to an imperial Apollonian gaze that cannot help but rekindle ancient Greek notions of formal order and beauty, Pythagorean beliefs in a universe of harmony, and their realization in western liberalism and particularly US Cold War imperialism. Second, drawing upon postcolonial re-readings of the planet and critical geographical mobilizations of place, the paper suggests alternative, less certain, and less avowedly ‘cosmopolitan’ imaginations that have the capacity to engage difference in non-assimilatory terms. Cumulatively, the paper is an attempt to answer one simple question: what difference does it make to think geographically about cosmopolitanism? (shrink)

The discourse and practice of humanism is at a cross-road, now challenged by posthuman reflections on what it means to be human. Our understanding of human and humanism is also challenged by transformations in nation-state and citizenship. In this context, the present article explores pathways of a new global humanity emerging out of cross-cultural reflections and new intellectual and social movements.

The basis for considering the problem of the ‘gender revolution’ is the historiosophical concept developed by Rolf Peter Sieferle, who assumes that for about 200 years, Europe has been evolving from agrarian civilisation towards a new type of energy based on fossil fuels. A characteristic feature of this transformation process is the belief that man is the ‘master of forms’ – all elements of the earlier order, which were perceived as natural for generations, have been questioned. The revolution overthrew the (...) existing hierarchical feudal order, created factories, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in order to create a mass society, a welfare state and, finally, a progressive agenda. The revolutionary process also affected social roles, leading to women’s emancipation movements. At the current stage of the revolution, the natural division into two sexes has been questioned. The basic question is whether a person can really deny the idea of the natural order in such a fundamental way? The ecological crisis, caused by the first phase of the revolution, seems to confirm the doubts of those who believe that human beings are subject to external, natural limitations. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck asserts that global risks, such as climate change, generate a form of ‘compulsory cosmopolitanism’, which ‘glues’ various actors into collective action. Through an analysis of emerging ‘cosmopolitan risk communities’ in Chinese climate governance, this article points out a ‘blind spot’ in the theorization of cosmopolitan belonging and an associated inadequacy in explaining shifting power relations. The article addresses this problem by engaging with the intersectionality of the cosmopolitan space. It is argued that cosmopolitan belonging is a form of (...) performative identity. Its key characteristic lies in a ‘liberating prerogative’, which enables individuals to participate in the solution of common problems creatively. It is this liberating prerogative that forces the state from a position of political monopoly and marks the cosmopolitan moment. (shrink)

– The purpose of this paper is to anticipate the potential outcomes of efforts to promote social inclusion of youth from refugee backgrounds by considering diverse research conducted on information and communication technologies, social inclusion, and young people of refugee backgrounds. It is argued that, while social inclusion programs might be successful at the local level, it is unclear whether they might actually do more harm than good in other, transnational contexts., – Literature reporting on projects that use ICTs to (...) facilitate social inclusion is critically examined, with specific attention to identifying the foundational assumptions underlying such projects. These foundational assumptions are considered in relation to findings of research that identifies the transnational character of the experiences, expectations and aspirations of young people of refugee backgrounds., – The analysis highlights a conceptual disjuncture between the local aims of social inclusion and the transnational experiences of youth with refugee backgrounds. This conceptual disjuncture raises important questions about the potential effects of any program that aims to use ICTs to support young people from refugee backgrounds. While it is clear that a number of potentially positive outcomes are likely from using ICTs to promote social inclusion for refugee youth, several potentially negative outcomes are also apparent. It is argued that these potential harms tend to be overlooked because the foundational concepts of social inclusion assume a “local” community. One means of avoiding the potential for such harms could be to adequately recognise the extent to which individuals and groups participate in intersecting local and transnational communities, networks and flows of ideas, resources, and people., – This paper uses evidence of the significance of transnational social and cultural fields to propose an important intervention in social inclusion programs, by pointing to the possible harms that might result from the success of programs that facilitate social inclusion at a local level without appropriate awareness of its effects on non‐local contexts in which participants might also be active. (shrink)

Social media platforms have been vested with hope for their potential to enable ‘ordinary citizens’ to make their judgments public and contribute to pluralized discussions about organizations and their perceived legitimacy :60–97, 2018). This raises questions about how ordinary citizens make judgements and voice them in online spaces. This paper addresses these questions by examining how Western citizens ascribe responsibility and action in relation to corporate misconduct. Empirically, it focuses on modern slavery and analyses online debates in Denmark on child (...) slavery in the cocoa industry. Conceptually, it introduces the notion of cosmopolitanism as a general disposition of care and responsibility towards distant others, conceived as a prerequisite for the critical evaluation of corporate responsibility in the Global South. The analysis of online debates shows that citizens debate child slavery in terms of individual consumer responsibility rather than corporate responsibility. Corporations are not considered potential agents of change. As a consequence, online citizen debates did not reflect a legitimacy crisis for the cocoa industry, as debates over responsibility were overwhelmingly concerned with the agency of the Western individual, the individual agency of the speakers themselves. Participants in debates understood their agency strictly as consumer agency. (shrink)

This article argues that contemporary space exploration, in producing visual representations of the planetary Earth for terrestrial consumption, has engendered a shift in the way the Earth - as terra firma - is both experienced and conceived. The article goes on to suggest that this shift is a key, but still largely tacit presupposition, underlying contemporary discourses on globalization and cultural cosmopolitanization. However, a close reading of some of the texts that make up the canon of 20th-century European philosophy shows (...) that this idea of a ‘deterritorialized’ planetary Earth challenges some basic presuppositions of that canon: especially its use of the pre-reflective experience of terra firma as a tropic site of intological and normative grounds. This article examines the way in which contemporary Western European philosophy - and intellectual culture generally - has responded to this challenge: and offers Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the Earth as a ‘surface without territory’ as the most intellectually and ethically viable conception of the Earth in the age of ‘planetary deterritorialization’. (shrink)

This paper critically revisits the A-bomb victims’ plea for cosmopolitan commemoration that takes humanity, rather than nationality, as a primary frame of reference. To this end, I first elaborate the nature of cosmopolitan commemoration espoused by A-bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in comparison with another form of cosmopolitan commemoration pertaining to the Holocaust victims. I then analyze limitations in these cosmopolitan commemorations and explore how they can be transcended. In light of my critical analysis, I argue that genuinely cosmopolitan (...) commemoration, a prerequisite for reconciliation and world peace, will appear on the horizon if the commemorations of the two events are synthesized with the help of ‘historians’ debate’ that continuously subjects the logic of nationalism to critical reflections. This synthesis has the potential to help people envision cosmopolitan politics – cosmopolitics – where they can engage in peaceful but agonistic struggles, not as enemies but as fellow humans, in collectively governing their lives in today’s war-torn world. (shrink)

A major problem with the emerging sociological literature on cosmopolitanism is that it has not adequately theorized mechanisms that mediate the presumed causal relationship between globalization and the development of cosmopolitan orientations. To solve this problem, I draw on Bruno Latour's actor- network theory to theorize the development of three key elements of cosmopolitanism: cultural omnivorousness, ethnic tolerance, and cosmopolitics. ANT illuminates how humans and nonhumans of multiple nationalities develop attachments with one another to create network structures that sustain cosmopolitanism. (...) ANT also helps the sociology of cosmopolitanism become more reflexive and critical of its implicit normative claims. (shrink)

Right-wing parties and governments in Europe have recently expressed greater hostility towards cultural pluralism, at times officially denunciating multiculturalism, and calling for the closure of borders and denial of rights to non-European nationals. Within this context, this article argues for rethinking Europe through radically transgressive and transnational understandings of cosmopolitanism as articulated by growing transnational populations within Europe such as immigrants, refugees, and irregular migrants. Transgressive forms of cosmopolitanism disrupt European notions of borders and identities in ways that challenge both (...) liberal multiculturalism and assimilationist positions. This article explores the limits of traditional cosmopolitan thinking while offering a vision of cosmopolitanism based on everyday negotiations with cultural differences, explained using two illustrative examples or snapshots. (shrink)

This article examines how growing fears, insecurities and uncertainties during the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted an emotional distance from others. The aim is to explore how global solidarity and nationalism are challenged and constructed as collective emotional processes concerning ‘others’. Drawing on social theories of emotions during crises and emotions towards others, this study looks at policy decisions around vaccines and health services and their associated emotions in the context of Korea, which has a relatively small migrant population and a (...) short history of supporting people in lower-income countries. The study finds that the COVID-19 pandemic has strengthened nationalism, both ethnic nationalism and cosmopolitan nationalism. This points to the need to highlight global norms such as human rights and justice and cultivate foundational emotions such as empathy and compassion. This article suggests paying attention to the role of emotions in generating othering practices and developing global solidarity. (shrink)

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

Nous vivons désormais dans un monde à la fois globalisé et culturellement différencié où les questions identitaires revêtent une importance singulière. C’est sur les différentes manières dont nous pouvons conceptualiser notre identité et nos communautés d’appartenance que sera mis l’accent dans cet article. Après avoir souligné les dangers d’une interprétation « communautarienne » de la communauté qui naturalise l’identité en la pensant comme une essence, ainsi que les apories d’une conception universaliste qui l’ouvre à l’ensemble de l’humanité sans tenir compte (...) des identités concrètes et situées, nous plaiderons ici en faveur d’une appréhension « cosmopolite » de la communauté permettant de concevoir l’identité comme plurielle et ouverte à la différence. (shrink)

This paper offers two possible readings of the Earth Charter that are informed by current scholarship in the field of environmental politics. The first reading finds much in the document to suggest congruence with emerging discourses of cosmopolitanism and global environmental citizenship. The second reading, a more sceptical one, identifies aspects of the Earth Charter that seem more resonant with depoliticizing United Nations-style light green globalism than with an inclusive ethical vision of environmentalism. After setting out these two readings, I (...) argue that, although potentially undermining of its endorsability, thinking critically about problematic aspects of the Earth Charter is an exercise that may point in the direction of a cosmopolitan environmentalism that is less banal and instrumental and more dialogically open, reflexive, and democratic. (shrink)

Globalization has brought people around the world closer together in ways that have created greater uncertainty in their identity politics. This has sometimes strengthened local identities, despite attempts to create ‘universal’ forms of identity that impose one standard of appropriate conduct in the face of difference. Drawing from Dialogical Self Theory and from cosmopolitanism, we propose that adequately responding to the ethical and identity challenges presented by globalization requires having Global Consciousness: “a knowledge of both the interconnectedness and difference of (...) humankind, and a will to take moral actions in a reflexive manner on its behalf”. We argue that this approach can ground a distinctively normative psychology of globalization. We consider negative and positive aspects of the golden rule in equal and close relationships, and benevolence in unequal power relationships as behaviour guides for global consciousness, and theorize about institutional leadership that supports the provision of public goods. We offer empirical tests of this approach. (shrink)

In contrast to most literature on cosmopolitanism, which focuses on its elite forms, this article analyzes how ordinary people bridge racial boundaries in everyday life. It is based on interviews with 150 non-college-educated white and black workers in the United States and white and North African workers in France. The comparison of the four groups shows how differences in cultural repertoires across national context and structural location shape distinct anti-racist rhetorics. Market-based arguments are salient among American workers, while arguments based (...) on solidarity and egalitarianism are used by French, but not by American, workers. Minority workers in both countries employ a more extensive toolkit of anti-racist rhetoric as compared to whites. The interviewed men privilege evidence grounded in everyday experience, and their claims of human equality are articulated in terms of universal human nature and, in the case of blacks and North Africans, universal morality. Workers' conceptual frameworks have little in common with multiculturalism that occupies a central place in the literature on cosmopolitanism. We argue that for the discussion and practice of cosmopolitanism to move forward we should shift our attention to the study of multiple ordinary cosmopolitanisms. (shrink)

In contrast to most literature on cosmopolitanism, which focuses on its elite forms, this article analyzes how ordinary people bridge racial boundaries in everyday life. It is based on interviews with 150 non-college-educated white and black workers in the United States and white and North African workers in France. The comparison of the four groups shows how differences in cultural repertoires across national context and structural location shape distinct anti-racist rhetorics. Market-based arguments are salient among American workers, while arguments based (...) on solidarity and egalitarianism are used by French, but not by American, workers. Minority workers in both countries employ a more extensive toolkit of anti-racist rhetoric as compared to whites. The interviewed men privilege evidence grounded in everyday experience, and their claims of human equality are articulated in terms of universal human nature and, in the case of blacks and North Africans, universal morality. Workers' conceptual frameworks have little in common with multiculturalism that occupies a central place in the literature on cosmopolitanism. We argue that for the discussion and practice of cosmopolitanism to move forward we should shift our attention to the study of multiple ordinary cosmopolitanisms. (shrink)

In this conceptual paper, we aim to develop a much needed ethical research agenda for international Human Resource Management (HRM), given that the changing geopolitical dynamics interrogate the political role of multinational companies and the ethical stance they take in their HRM practices. To theoretically ground this agenda, we turn to cosmopolitanism and distinguish three main perspectives—political, cultural, and social—each of which implies a different understanding of the self–other relation in the context of the global world. We translate the core (...) and ethical stance of each perspective to the field of international HRM, presenting three different foci of an ethical research agenda in terms of the ethical implications for multinational companies, research focus, methodological suggestions, and inherent limitations. (shrink)

Cosmopolitan education aims to transmit cosmopolitan forms of life in order to participate morally in the world community. The primary characteristics of this cosmopolitan education are its acceptance of the shared humanity of all persons as a fact of human existence and as a motivating guide for human interaction, and the requirement of democratic inclusion in deliberations of the governance of those interactions, including morality. Such an education in cosmopolitan morality requires means that befit its core components. This paper contrasts (...) the concepts of strict and moderate cosmopolitanism, empirical and deliberative morality, and structural and dispositional cosmopolitanism to show that the moderate, inclusive and deliberative processes of deliberative dispositional cosmopolitanism are more suited to cosmopolitan education in morality than strong, empirical-focused structural cosmopolitan efforts. Though strong, structural and empirically based forms may be more likely to guarantee preferred outcomes in the learning of specific morals or the implementation of institutional norms, they are also more likely to run afoul of the core components of cosmopolitanism because they will privilege outcomes over processes, and are thus more likely to be less inclusive and more coercive. In contrast, and even though they are less certain to guarantee preferred moral outcomes or actions, moderate, deliberative dispositional forms of cosmopolitan education embody the morality they seek to inform, and are more likely to find sustained internalised support over time. (shrink)

Every time another corporate scandal captures media headlines, the ‘bad apple vs. bad barrel’ discussion starts anew. Yet this debate overlooks the influence of the broader societal context on organizational behavior. In this article, we argue that misbehaviors of organizations (the ‘barrels’) and their members (the ‘apples’) cannot be addressed properly without a clear understanding of their broader context (the ‘larder’). Whereas previously, a strong societal framework dampened the practical application of the Homo economicus concept (business actors as perfectly rational (...) and egocentric utility-maximizing agents without any moral concern), specialization, individualization and globalization led to a business world disembedded from broader societal norms. This emancipated business world promotes a literal interpretation of Homo economicus among business organizations and their members. Consequently, we argue that the first step toward ‘healthier’ apples and barrels is to sanitize the larder, that is, adapt the framework in which organizations and their members evolve. (shrink)

Every time another corporate scandal captures media headlines, the ‘bad apple vs. bad barrel’ discussion starts anew. Yet this debate overlooks the influence of the broader societal context on organizational behavior. In this article, we argue that misbehaviors of organizations (the ‘barrels’) and their members (the ‘apples’) cannot be addressed properly without a clear understanding of their broader context (the ‘larder’). Whereas previously, a strong societal framework dampened the practical application of the Homo economicus concept (business actors as perfectly rational (...) and egocentric utility‐maximizing agents without any moral concern), specialization, individualization and globalization led to a business world disembedded from broader societal norms. This emancipated business world promotes a literal interpretation of Homo economicus among business organizations and their members. Consequently, we argue that the first step toward ‘healthier’ apples and barrels is to sanitize the larder, that is, adapt the framework in which organizations and their members evolve. (shrink)

ExcerptCosmopolitan world society is a successful and widely shared political project. It is shared by decision makers pursuing liberal agendas of democratization and prosperity while prosecuting criminal and terrorist deviance. It is also shared by leading social thinkers, such as Ulrich Beck, Manuel Castells, Francis Fukuyama, David Held, and Niklas Luhmann. Even the proverbial “man on the street” shares the vision of cosmopolitan world society when (s)he refuses to interpret deviance from “universal” values in any terms other than greed or (...) insanity. Overall, the liberal vision of cosmopolitan world society runs somewhat like this. Globalization and global governance lead from…. (shrink)

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

Departing from what Levey and Sznaider (2002) in their seminal work ‘Memory Unbound’ refer to as ‘cosmopolitan memory’ that emerges as one of the fundamental forms ‘collective memories take in the age of globalization’, this article will consider the underlying ethical implications of global memory formation that have yet to be adequately theorized. Since global disseminations of local memory cultures and the implicit canonization of its traumas are intimately related to the concept of archive, I will first focus on what (...) Derrida (1996) in Archive Fever calls ‘archival violence’ and will show its inherent relation to the formation of cosmopolitan memory. Another related concept that I will use and that will problematize the transformation of living, embodied memory into archival, cultural memory upon which the formation of cosmopolitan memory depends is the witness. Using Agamben’s writing (2002) in this context that in Remnants of Auschwitz focuses on the foundational (im)possibilities of bearing witness, I will show that this transformation that determines the very possibility of cosmopolitan memory is far from unproblematic and readily accessible as Levy and Sznaider seem to assume. What will emerge as the most distinctive concern of global memory formation is the ethical material of difference as that which both makes its imperatives historically and politically exigent and that which signifies the difficulties of its unified articulation. Solidarity with the suffering of the other that mobilizes the very formation of cosmopolitan memory is also what should solicit vigilance against the universalistic ritualizations of its prerogatives. (shrink)

This paper serves as an introduction to the special section on Global Culture Revisited which commemorates the 30th anniversary of the publication of the 1990 Global Culture special issue. It examines the development of interest in the various strands of globalization and the question of whether there can be a global culture. The paper discusses the emergence of alternative global histories and the problematization of global knowledge. It examines the view that the current Covid-19 pandemic signals a turning point, or (...) change of epoch, that marks the end of peak globalization. The paper also discusses the view that global was always a limited cartographic term which failed to adequately grasp our terrestrial location on the earth. Currently, there is considerable speculation about the emergent politics of a new world order, with civilizational states set alongside nation-states, opening up an epoch of greater pluriversality, and at the same time greater uncertainty. (shrink)

The term global suggests all-inclusiveness and brings to mind connectivity, a notion that gained a boost from Marshall McLuhan's reference to the mass-mediated ‘global village’. In the past decade it has rapidly become part of the everyday vocabulary not only of academics and business people, but also has circulated widely in the media in various parts of the world. There have also been the beginnings of political movements against globalization and proposals for ‘de-globalization’ and ‘alternative globalizations’, projects to re-define the (...) global. In effect, the terminology has globalized and globalization is varyingly lauded, reviled and debated around the world. The rationale of much previous thinking on humanity in the social sciences has been to assume a linear process of social integration, as more and more people are drawn into a widening circle of interdependencies in the movement to larger units, but the new forms of binding together of social life necessitate the development of new forms of global knowledge which go beyond the old classifications. It is also in this sense that the tightening of the interdependency chains between human beings, and also between human beings and other life forms, suggests we need to think about the relevance of academic knowledge to the emergent global public sphere. (shrink)

In the paper I analyse Daniele Archibugi’s conception of the new cosmopolitanism, aimed at formulation of a theory of cosmopolitan democracy capable of facing contemporary global problems that go beyond the competences of nation-states. My claim is that the advocates of the new cosmopolitanism have yet to come up with a theoretical minimum to which all parties of the cosmopolitan debate would subscribe. I argue that the main obstacle in formulation of a viable cosmopolitanism are attempts at imposition of the (...) universalist uniformity inscribed in the traditional cosmopolitanism or, at best, a straightforward acceptance of cultural differences. In opposition to this, I outline the idea of reciprocal cosmopolitanism which, I believe, should proceed from the acknowledgement of human diversity, thus becoming a more inclusive project than its existing alternatives. (shrink)

Dissonant Voices has a twofold aspiration. First, it is a philosophical treatment of everyday pedagogical interactions between children and their elders, between teachers and pupils. More specifically it is an exploration of the possibilities to go on with dissonant voices that interrupt established practices – our attunement – in behaviour, practice and thinking. Voices that are incomprehensible or expressions that are unacceptable, morally or otherwise. The text works on a tension between two inclinations: an inclination to wave off, discourage, or (...) change an expression that is unacceptable or unintelligible; and an inclination to be tolerant and accept the dissonant expression as doing something worthwhile, but different. The second aspiration is a philosophical engagement with children’s literature. Reading children’s literature becomes a form of philosophising, a way to explore the complexity of a range of philosophical issues. This turn to literature marks a dissatisfaction with what philosophy can accomplish through argumentation and what philosophy can do with a particular and limited set of concepts for a subject, such as ethics. It is a way to go beyond philosophising as the founding of theories that justify particular responses. The philosophy of dissonance and children’s literature becomes a way to destabilise justifications of our established practices and ways of interacting. The philosophical investigations of dissonance are meant to make manifest the possibilities and risks of engaging in interactions beyond established agreement or attunements. Thinking of the dissonant voice as an expression beyond established practices calls for improvisation. Such improvisations become a perfectionist education where both the child and the elder, the teacher and the student, search for as yet unattained forms of interaction and take responsibility for every word and action of the interaction. The investigation goes through a number of picture books and novels for children such as Harry Potter, Garmann’s Summer, and books by Shaun Tan, Astrid Lindgren and Dr. Seuss as well narratives by J.R.R. Tolkien, Henrik Ibsen, Jane Austen and Henry David Thoreau. These works of fiction are read in conversation with philosophical works of, and inspired by, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, their moral perfectionism and ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

What if education were not about becoming something, making something of yourself, becoming some thing? What if we were to consider education as becoming-world? These questions are posed against the background of the current populist nationalist backlash against the consequences of globalization, along with growing anti-intellectualism and anti-democratic sentiment. How can education contribute locally and globally to fostering and safeguarding the very possibility of democratic practices against the neoliberal consecration of reified social relations? Becoming Things, Becoming-world contributes to contemporary discussions (...) in philosophy of education by developing a vision of a critical educational cosmopolitanism founded upon a renewed critique of reification. While cosmopolitan education has often been articulated in terms of an ethical and political response to globalization, this thesis proposes a different outlook. I argue that the idea of cosmopolitan education predates the onset of what we now term globalization, and that it provides a meaningful conception of education beyond the present socio-political condition. Moreover, I propose to rethink cosmopolitan education as a critique of reification, i.e. a critique of social relations taking on the character of mere things. The critique of reification helps to foreground aspects that have previously been neglected and marginalized in educational cosmopolitanism, such as its economic-material dimensions. At the same time, a critical cosmopolitan perspective is needed for a timely de-centering of critical social theory. Re-assessing the Cynic tradition and drawing on critical theorists such as Gerard Delanty and Axel Honneth as well as on New Wittgensteinian philosophers as Alice Crary, I advance a post-universalist understanding of cosmopolitanism. This is based on dynamic social relations and a broad understanding of rationality which includes imaginary aspects as well as the education of our sensitivities. Cosmopolitanism is understood as a lived practice which critically challenges reified social and cultural relations, including the strictures of particular socio-economic structures. The notion of reification is distinguished from other forms of alienation, objectification and instrumentalization and is deployed to characterize lasting distortions of our relations to each other, to the world and to ourselves. Against any idealizing take on communicative practice, I show that language, knowledge, and education do not necessarily counter-act reifying tendencies. Indeed, they themselves can become sources for enhancing processes of reification. A fresh look at the critique of reification allows us adequately to describe and understand the interrelation between contemporary capitalism, the forms of subjectivity it produces and the possibilities of democratic education and education towards democracy. Such an understanding is needed in face of the apparent impossibility of imagining a society, and envisioning an education, beyond the conditions formulated by contemporary neoliberal policies. Education as becoming-world maintains a hopeful outlook on the possibilities of our globalizing and pluralizing social reality as well as a keen focus on the tensions and challenges that this poses for contemporary educational endeavors on individual as well as structural levels. (shrink)

From the temporal perspective, this article examines shifts in the productionof sociological knowledge. It identifies two kinds of rhythms of sociology: 1) that of sociological standpoints and techniques of investigation and 2) that of contemporary academic life and culture. The article begins by discussing some of the existing research strategies designed to "chase"high-speed society. Some, predominantly methodological, currents are explored and contrasted with the "slow" instruments of sociological analysis composed of different, yet complementary, modes of inquiry. Against this background, the (...) article stresses that it is through the tension between fast and slow modes of inquiry that sociology reproduces itself. The subsequent part explores the subjective temporal experience in contemporary academia. It is argued that increasing administration and auditing of intellectual work significantly coshapes sociological knowledge production not only by requiring academics to work faster due to an increasing volume of tasks, but also by normalizing time-pressure.The article concludes by considering the problem as to whether the increasing pace of contemporary academic life has detrimental consequences for the more organic reproductive rhythms of sociology. (shrink)

Este estudio revisa el desarrollo del análisis propuesto por Michel Foucault sobre el poder político en términos de gubernamentalidad, y esboza sus características principales. Se examina el despliegue de esta perspectiva, centrándose particularmente en cómo este enfoque genealógico del análisis de la conducta de todos y cada uno ha sido acogido y desarrollado en el mundo angloparlante. Se evalúan algunas de las críticas fundamentales que han sido planteadas a la analítica de la gubernamentalidad, y se arguye en favor de la (...) productividad continua y la creatividad de estas maneras de analizar la emergencia, naturaleza y consecuencias de las artes de gobierno. (shrink)

The Haitian Revolution is not only one of the most important foundational moments in the emergence of the modern world, but also one of the most neglected within the social scientific literature. In this article, I ask what can be learnt, both from its omission from accounts of events claimed to be of ‘world historical’ significance, and from how social theory would need to be re-thought once we took such events seriously. In particular, I want to examine what is at (...) stake in such rethinking and how we might consider alternative formulations through an approach I call ‘connected sociologies’. (shrink)