Sociological Cosmopolitanism

Last reviewed: February 2017

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism traces its roots to ancient Greece and its defining philosophical concepts to the Enlightenment. The term has broadened so that a twenty-first century definition requires a delimiting adjective. Classical, moral, political, and ethical cosmopolitanisms are only some of the ways that designate particular perspectives on cosmopolitanism. Sociological cosmopolitanism might have begun with German sociologist Ulrich Beck who, in the early twenty-first century, declared that cosmopolitanism was an everyday empirical phenomenon, from the familial to the multinational. Sociologists have extended and defended Beck’s ideas, and others have questioned them and offered alternatives.

Overview

The term cosmopolitanism, from the Greek kosmopolites, means “citizen of the world.” Its earliest proponent was Diogenes of Sinope, a Cynic who in the fourth century BCE purportedly responded to a query about his home city with a claim of world citizenship. In the third century BCE, the Stoics advocated the idea that service through political engagement should not be limited to one’s polis but extended to wherever one’s service was needed. The Stoics’ version of cosmopolitanism with variations spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, aided by Alexander the Great's victories and the formation of the Roman Empire. Although the meaning of cosmopolitanism broadened in succeeding centuries, the association with world citizenship remained at the core.

Enlightenment thinkers renewed interest in classical cosmopolitanism. The most influential of these was Immanuel Kant, who made cosmopolitanism a moral imperative in his plan for “perpetual peace.” Kant argued for such ideas as universal republicanism, international legal authority, extension of the rights of man, and an end to colonialism. He advocated a voluntary league of nations, a federation with the authority to enforce international law as the state enforced laws with a single nation (Kirloskar, Shetty & Inamdar, 2015). Cosmopolitanism lost favor in the nineteenth century when it was incompatible with the rise of imperialism and nationalism.

The twentieth century saw some of Kant’s ideas move from utopian vision to practice as efforts to establish peace developed in response to world wars. As technological advances in transportation and communication have increased globalization, cosmopolitan theory also increased (Janoski, 2011). Early in the twenty-first century, German sociologist Ulrich Beck introduced the concept of sociological cosmopolitanism. Beck believed that cosmopolitanism was an empirical phenomenon that merited study by sociologists. He argued that cosmopolitanism was more than philosophical ideas to be explored, and insisted that in a global society, cosmopolitanism was an observable part of everyday life (Beck, 2000). Beck and his followers found cosmopolitanism so pervasive that they identified its practice in groups ranging from binational families to multinational organizations and even in global protests against globalization (Beck & Sznaider, 2006).

Beck coined the term “cosmopolitanization” to describe a transformative “multidimensional process” in which a range of phenomena from news coverage, popular culture, organizations, and legal and illegal activities questioned the limitations of nationalism (Beck, 2000; Beck, 2006). Nationalism establishes borders and contains identity within those borders; cosmopolitanism with its openness to the other makes borders transparent. Even before Beck began focusing on cosmopolitanism, he wrote about the unparalleled, transnational risks of a postindustrial society. In his first book, Risk Society (1986), published the same year as the Chernobyl disaster, Beck discussed risks that had developed from progress in science and technology. These risks (environmental hazards, pandemics, terrorism, etc.) were global and rendered the nation-state inadequate to protect its citizens. Beck’s other writings saw global risks as a major impetus in the move toward a global society. Confrontation with global risks created an enforced, inclusive, transnational public and mandated cosmopolitanism as the replacement for a society defined by national sovereignty (Saito, 2011).

Although Beck distinguishes between cosmopolitanization and globalization, Saito (2011) argues that there is little difference between Beck’s concept of cosmopolitanization and globalization scholars’ view that world society will become institutionalized through the global dissemination of thoughts, discourse, and patterns that define common humanity and through the establishment of intergovernmental agencies (such as the United Nations, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and international nongovernmental agencies (such as Amnesty and Greenpeace). Beck also views the establishment of intergovernmental agencies and international nongovernmental agencies and the promulgation of human rights as deliberate efforts to win consensus of cosmopolitanism as the normative ideal.

Beck and Sznaider (2006) acknowledge that the defining demarcation between cosmopolitanism and terms such as globalization and universalism are indistinct, but they argue that sociological cosmopolitanism can be identified by three characteristics: a critical examination of methodological nationalism; the belief that the twenty-first century is an age of cosmopolitanism; the conclusion that the divisions between the global and the local, the national and the international, and similar dualities have eroded, and new forms in need of analysis by social scientists have emerged. Other scholars support Beck’s theories. For example, Haller and Ressler (2006) emphasize the commonality of history, law, culture, and the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship (cited in Kirloskar, Shetty & Inamdar, 2015). Beck and Sznaider challenge the implicit equating of society with the narrowness of national society.

The view of cosmopolitanism as a challenge to nationalism is common among scholars interested in political/sociological cosmopolitanism. Others, however, note that nationalism is not disappearing. They posit a world community that values a common humanity and allows connections to different cultures and histories (Inglis, 2014). British sociologist Robert Fine (2009) argues for the recognition of equality and the recognition of differences. Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006), a philosopher and cultural theorist whose personal history might qualify him as an embodiment of cosmopolitanism, also argues for a two-pronged cosmopolitanism that includes accepting global responsibilities and preserving local differences. Sociologist Gerard Delanty (2012) sees extending moral and political horizons with openness to the other as a defining quality of cosmopolitanism, but he also views it as dynamic relationships involving Self, Other, and World (cited in Inglis, 2014).

Implicit with many of these arguments is the idea of cosmopolitanism as a solution. The solution potential becomes explicit at times. Saito (2011) identifies three dimensions of cosmopolitanism, He agrees with Delanty on the centrality of openness, which for Saito includes tolerance of human others (the ethic dimension of cosmopolitanism) and cultural “omnivorousness,” or openness to foreign cultural expression in fields such as art, music, and cuisine (the aesthetic dimension of cosmopolitanism). Such openness encourages the formation of a transnational public space where citizens “debate global risks” (ecological and economic risks) and engage in “cosmopolitics,” which may provide solutions (Saito, 2011).

Further Insights

Social scientists who were interested in engaging in Beck’s kind of sociological research have complained about the persistence of “methodological nationalism.” Despite changes and even the institutionalization of elements of cosmopolitanism, most empirical research in the social sciences continued to accept the nation-state as the ground of social, economic, political, and cultural processes. Beck and his colleagues faulted this method because they believed that methodological nationalism errs in its assumption of the coherence of social, political, and cultural borders as defined by the nation-state. The limited perspective of methodological nationalism cannot contain the multiple perspectives necessary to study transnational processes. Methodological cosmopolitanism rejects the dualities of the global and the local, the national and the international, us and them, and studies the process in which these dualities are seen as “interconnected and reciprocally interpenetrating principles” (Beck, 2006).

American sociologist Craig Calhoun and others have noted that nationalism is not disappearing despite the impression created in some quarters that it has been replaced by a new world order. Calhoun questions whether the differences in nationalism and cosmopolitanism are as great as some suggest (Saito, 2011). Saito points out that logically a transnational public includes humans who are connected to both foreign others and fellow nationals. Although Beck has chided others for tacitly assuming the national-international dualism, Beck himself recognized that nations and nationalism survive (Beck & Sznaider, 2006). He also acknowledged that cosmopolitanization sometimes fails to evoke cosmopolitan perspectives and instead fosters a reawakening of ethnic nationalism (cited in Saito, 2011). Beck’s recognition of what he terms “enemies” of cosmopolitanism does not weaken his conviction that cosmopolitanism offers the best solution to contemporary society’s problems.

Calhoun (2010) concedes that the emphasis on a common humanity that is at the heart of most definitions of cosmopolitanism is a “valuable ethical norm,” but he adds that cosmopolitanism has become a theme of concern in politics, the social sciences, and ethics. He cautions that meaning can be slippery for cosmopolitan, a word that carries meanings as disparate as a cocktail, a fashion, a city, or an individual ethical orientation (Calhoun, 2010). Moreover, Calhoun admits finding confusing Beck’s distinction between cosmopolitanization, the increasing interconnections of the world, and cosmopolitanism, the acceptance of these interconnections as a moral responsibility.

Calhoun (2010) cites examples, including the history of the melting pot theory, W. E. B. DuBois’s famous double-consciousness description of African Americans struggling to maintain two identities, and Salman Rushdie’s refusal to be simply Indian, to suggest that conflicts over identity have a long and ongoing history. Calhoun also describes the twenty-first century as filled with fears and anxieties that sometimes defy naming and for which immigrants have become an easy target. Britain’s vote in 2016 to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election in 2016 support Calhoun’s idea of fears prompting a resurgence of nationalism. Neither cosmopolitanism nor nationalism has all the answers for these problems, but Calhoun insists that the solidarity offered by the local, the national, and the regional are still needed even in a cosmopolitan age.

Cosmopolitanism views human rights as essential to the operation of justice in their concept of global order. According to Fine (2009), if one considers thinkers such as Kant as the founders of cosmopolitanism, human rights were always part of the cosmopolitan imagination. The declarations of rights that articulated the ideals of eighteenth-century revolutions recognized every “man” as possessing rights on the basis of his humanity. Far from universal in the minds of those who conceived the declarations, these rights nevertheless marked an extension beyond the norms of the time and laid the foundation for further extensions that would include those excluded by class, religion, race, and gender (Fine, 2009).

The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 is often cited as marking a move to a cosmopolitan concept of justice. With that document, the focus switched from states to individuals who were considered citizens in a global society. The 1948 declaration was followed by other cosmopolitan human-rights documents to which a majority of the world’s nation-states were signatories. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) addresses both the civil and the political rights of individuals, including such freedoms as religion, speech, and assembly and electoral rights and rights to due process and a fair trial. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) extended economic, social, and cultural rights such as the rights to health, education, and an adequate standard of living to an almost universal level. (As of October 2015, fewer than half of the parties to these covenants were signatories.) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two Optional Protocols are collectively known as the International Bill of Human Rights. Other well-known UN human rights documents include the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (1966), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).

Viewpoints

Sociologists who have studied cosmopolitanism as an empirical phenomenon have tended to see as desirable the expansion of ordinary practices beyond traditional national borders through the transnational flow of foreign people and cultures and the dialogue about human rights defined according to common humanity rather than nationality. From this perspective, cosmopolitanism offers solutions to global problems in politics, economics, and ecology (Igarashi & Saito, 2014). Some, however, charge that cosmopolitanism ignores the reality of people who migrate not as part of some idealized global society but from economic or political necessity (Inglis, 2014). Others see a deliberate hypocrisy in cosmopolitan idealism.

The work that resulted in the International Bill of Human Rights has been described as a cosmopolitan space, a setting in which individuals representing different cultures gathered to mediate ideas about human rights through the narratives that contain the cultures’ core values. The process has been hailed as one that allowed the representatives to arrive at common ground despite their differences (Adami, 2012). However, scholars such as Griffin (2008) and Ignatieff (2003) have pointed out that terms like dignity, reason, and consciousness mark the documents as influenced by Western ideology. According to their view, “brotherhood” suggests a link to the French Revolution, and even the word rights suggests the US Declaration of Independence (cited in Adami, 2012). Ignatieff (2003) charges that the drafting process was dominated by Western thought and that Islamic concerns were overrun, designating Saudi Arabia’s failure to vote for the article on religious freedom in the 1948 document as evidence (cited in Adami, 2012). Hence, some human-rights scholars argue that the concept of human rights needs to be renegotiated (Adami, 2012).

Robbins (2000) insists that the very word cosmopolitan connotes a privileged individual whose global citizenship is achieved through wealth, habits of luxury, and easy travel. Moving beyond simple criticism of white male privilege, Robbins suggests an uncomfortably close link between the institutions of colonialism and the brand of cosmopolitanism enjoyed by the elite (cited in Inglis, 2014). Calhoun (2002) also sees connections between the practice of cosmopolitanism and colonialism’s drive to “civilize” the colonized. He warns that Western-centered cosmopolitan ideals can be used to disguise iniquities (cited in Inglis, 2014).

Igarashi and Saito (2014) cite Calhoun (2008), Weenink (2007), and Kim (2011) as examples of critics who argue that cosmopolitanism is acquired through cultural capital and it in turn becomes cultural capital. They propose education systems as the clearest example of the Janus-face of cosmopolitanism, noting that the systems serve to make cosmopolitanism a positive characteristic of an individual participating in a global society while at the same time sanctioning the inequities in the distribution of cosmopolitanism. Meyer (2007) includes a knowledge of English, the ability to function as a “supranational” citizen, and the possession of a point of view that sees the universal in the local and national history in a list of the qualities education systems typically define as desirable (cited in Igarashi & Saito, 2014). United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization reports and recom-mendations have contributed to adding human-rights education to the list. Reports and recommendations from the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development also emphasize the need for cosmopolitan competencies (Igarashi & Saito, 2014). The international ranking of universities and the reputation of higher education in the West as superior and more cosmopolitan (thus yielding greater employment possibilities in a global economy) are key factors in the uneven ground. The inequities in the acquisition of the desired cosmopolitanism are multilayered. Those native to Western Europe or North America easily acquire the cultural capital of cosmopolitanism because their local and national academic qualifications are also viewed as global. Students who attend international schools, most of which use North American and Western European curricula, gain cosmopolitan competencies as a consequence of their multicultural experience.

Terms & Concepts

Cosmopolitanism: Links to the Greek origin of the word and its meaning (“citizen of the world”), which in contemporary contexts translates as the idea that all human beings, regardless of differences, belong to a single global society.

Cosmopolitanization: Coined by Ulrich Beck; refers to a process during which phenomena, including people, organizations, activities, and cultural artifacts, move beyond the national to become global in scope.

Cultural Omnivorousness: Introduced by Richard Peterson in 1992; refers to having broad cultural taste, crossing national boundaries, and usually encompassing both highbrow and lowbrow genres.

Globalization: A process during which international trade and investment and information technology increase interaction among people, businesses, and government to a level that weakens national boundaries and fosters a worldwide society.

Methodological nationalism: The assumption by social scientists that the study of social, economic, and political processes is tied to the operations of these processes within the nation-state.

Nationalism: A sense of identity based on shared culture, mores, and residence within defining borders; may include support for the causes and interests of one’s own nation, often to the point of disadvantage to other nations.

Bibliography

Adami, R. (2012). Reconciling universality and particularity through a cosmopolitan outlook on human rights. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 4(2), 22–37.

Arneson, R. J. (2016). Extreme cosmopolitanisms defended. Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy, 19(5), 555–573. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=116710019&site=ehost-live

Beck, U. (2000). The cosmopolitan perspective: Sociology of the second age of modernity. British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), 79–105. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=2767328&site=ehost-live

Beck, U., & Sznaider, N. (2006). Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: A research agenda. British Journal of Sociology, 57(1), 1–23. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=19892609&site=ehost-live

Calhoun, C. (2010). Cosmopolitanism and nationalism. In G. Ritzer & Z. Atalay (Eds.). Readings in globalization: Key concepts and major debates. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Fine, R. (2009). Cosmopolitanism and human rights: Radicalism in a global age. Metaphilosophy, 40, 8–23.

Givoni, M. (2016). Reluctant cosmopolitanism: Perceptions management and the performance of humanitarian principles. Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism & Development, 7(2), 255–272. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=116929091&site=ehost-live

Igarashi, H., & Saito, H. (2014). Cosmopolitanism as cultural capital: Exploring the intersection of globalization, education and stratification. Cultural Sociology, 8(3), 222–239. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=98360243&site=ehost-live

Inglis, D. (2014). Cosmopolitans and cosmopolitanism: Between and beyond sociology and political philosophy. Journal of Sociology, 50(2), 99–114. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=96010317&site=ehost-live

Janoski, T. (2011). Cosmopolitanism, human rights, and citizenship: The compromise between the Kosmos and the Nationes. Conference Papers—American Sociological Association, 1498. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=85659026&site=ehost-live

Kirloskar, P., Shetty, P. K., & Inamdar, N. (2015). Deconstructing European identity: Exploring identity through the prism of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. Global Studies Journal, 8(3), 55–67.

Saito, H. (2011). An actor-network theory of cosmopolitanism. Sociological Theory, 29(2), 124–149. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=60960111&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Bilaniuk, L. (2016). Race, media, and postcoloniality: Ukraine between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. City & Society, 28(3), 341–364. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=119951863&site=ehost-live

Delanty, G. (Ed.) (2012). Routledge handbook of cosmopolitanism studies. New York, NY: Routledge.

Fine, R. (2007). Cosmopolitanism. New York, NY: Routledge.

Inglis, D. (2014). Cosmopolitanism’s sociology and sociology’s cosmopolitanism: Retelling the history of cosmopolitan theory from Stoicism to Durkheim and beyond. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 15(1), 69–87. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=95048049&site=ehost-live

Nash, K. (2006). Political culture, ethical cosmopolitanism, and cosmopolitan democracy. Cultural Politics, 2(2), 193–211. Retrieved October 17, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=21836418&site=ehost-live

Tabak, E. (2015). Downloading plug-ins for nationalism and cosmopolitanism. British Journal of Sociology, 66(3), 401–419. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=109419384&site=ehost-live

Tyfield, D., & Blok, A. (2016). Doing methodological cosmopolitanism in a mobile world. Mobilities, 11(4), 629–641. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=119149003&site=ehost-live