Cosmopolitan Studies

"The German classroom presented in Nurkan Erpulat’s play Verrücktes Blut (2010) presents a challenge to contemporary German literature and society. The failed German education system vis-a-vis Turkish students has been thematized in German literature for decades, notably since Alev Tekinay’s Deutschprüfung in 1990. Two recent popularly received works, Nurkan Erpulat’s play Verrücktes Blut (2010) and Bora Dağtekin’s movie Fack Ju Göhte (2013) continue this theme in a twenty-first century context by portraying a Turkish-German teacher at the head of the classroom. These recent Turkish-German productions question the ostensible cosmopolitan space of the German classroom, a space historically framed by enlightenment ideals.
The representations of Erpulat and Dagtekin take the German teacher with Turkish descent as the new reality; however, Erpulat’s vision sees Turks caught in a circle of violence in the German classroom. Verrücktes Blut centers on the hyperbolic violence of the classroom, symbolized by a German teacher who forces her Turkish students to engage with a Schiller text at gun point. Mocking the current integration debate, the teacher screams at the students to relate the piece to their lives as well as to pronounce the words correctly. At the end of the play the students are model Germans, just like their teacher who turns out to be Turkish-German herself. Following the intellectual legacy of Adorno and Horkheimer, the playwright Erpulat sees enlightenment thinking as the foundation of the violence in his imagined classroom. The negative cosmopolitanism in this text shines light on Integration from below.
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ABSTRACT This study contributes to the growing research on everyday cosmopolitanism in diverse societies. We employ a cosmopolitan encounters framework to explore the reflexive openness people perform and the ethical reasoning they draw on to get along with each other. In particular, we look beyond pleasurable cosmopolitan pursuits to consider encounters that cause frictions or require notable efforts to bridge differences as an occasion for cosmopolitan conviviality. Based on qualitative interviews conducted in Australia, we aim to sharpen the demarcation between cosmopolitan encounters and those in which diversity is strategically negotiated by enacting practices of civility. We argue that cosmopolitanism emerges from interactions in encounters between individuals when they reflect on their positionality within unequal power relationships and their actions are guided by a cosmopolitan ethics. The ethical framework we propose is grounded in reflexive acts of sharing going beyond notions of giving and performing hospitality within a host/guest dyad.

One of the main institutional goals at a European international liberal arts college is to create graduates who are world citizens. In that context, there has been a shift towards explicit intercultural education through language and culture courses, with a foreign language requirement serving as 'a window on a different culture'. Developing intercultural communication skills demands more than living in a multicultural international environment; explicit intercultural education is needed. This paper describes a project that defined intercultural competence and translated it into intended learning outcomes for 'Language and Culture' courses at our liberal arts college. One of the intended learning outcomes is stated as: 'A student has the tools needed for the ongoing reflection on intercultural contact and the further development of intercultural skills in general'. The biggest challenge was to integrate explicit intercultural education in courses at the introductory level, where students are absolute beginners in the target language. Relevant questions were whether to use the target language exclusively or to make use of the class language (in our case English), and language proficiency would be affected if we dedicated less time to language acquisition. The model discussed was developed for the course Introduction to Italian Studies, which aimed to combine language instruction with intercultural reflection. While presenting the course design and some of the class activities that have been used the rationale behind the choices will be discussed, together with some constrains and an evaluation of the module.

This chapter investigates the idea of cosmopolitan patriotism. Since the original publication of the key reference work by Anthony K. Appiah, a fresh look at the cosmopolitanism and patriotism, if considered individually, may lead to a new, qualitatively different understanding of their respective role in the pair. A key assumption that needs to be reassessed, following Appiah, we argue, is the notion of the home, together with the idea of the "roots," and "cultural difference." Consequently, this analysis in the second part revisits both aspects: the "home" and "cultural difference" are critically approached from the perspective of patriotism and, by observing Appiah's own contribution to the field, postcolonial theory. In the third section, the findings are reexamined in light of contemporary development of transnationalism on the one hand, and xenophobic nationalism on the other, asking whether cosmopolitan patriotism still stands as a germane idea to challenge both.

This is the pre-proof version of the third chapter of my book Transnational Cosmopolitanism: Kant, Du Bois, and
Justice as a Political Craft (New York: Cambridge University Press), 2019. This chapter proposes a horizontal reading
of Kant’s cosmopolitan principles that is creative and disloyal. It centers thinkers and fora that contested the
legitimacy of European associations, and highlighted how race and empire shaped global power. Via W. E. B. Du Bois,
I propose a transfigured notion of hospitality that illuminates the transnational dimensions of cosmopolitanism.

Throughout modern world history, from the first colonial times to this day, "going native" in exotic lands has been an option for adventurers, mercenaries and even some prisoners of war or abducted Europeans. As convincingly demonstrated by J. Gil Harris in The First Firangis, such defectors to the cultural "other" do not necessarily become true and permanent hybrids, but they toss and mix identity components, whether these are complementary, merely compatible or conflictive. No role playing of this kind leaves subjects unchanged. The resulting fluid personality can be said to perform a narrative identity that is typical of the cosmopolitan experience. The present paper aims to study and interpret the mimetic desire at work in the paradoxically nativised text of a narrator situated on the border of two and more cultural worlds. Lev Nussimbaum, aka Essad Bey and Kurban Said, now better known as "The Orientalist" after the title of Tom Reiss's biography of this author, offers at least three different versions of attempted cosmopolitan formations in and through historical and geographical margins between "Asia" and "the West," and between beliefs, knowledges and ways of life respectively labelled traditional and modern: the best-known version, in Ali and Nino (1937), is tragic, the other two are respectively in the comic mode (The Girl from the Golden Horn, 1938) and pseudo-factual in the early reports and essays on Baku and the Caucasus. The four works analysed on the comparative background of other exoticist/orientalist narratives of the period between wars as well as some older and contemporary fabulations develop rhetorical strategies that anticipate postcolonial discourse almost prophetically in terms of irony, estrangement and entangled (re-)inscription. They exhibit a deep dissatisfaction with forced displacement and the global pressures that were already relegating stable outlooks, life styles and sentiments to an obsolete "museum of innocence," but, at the same time, they use this irrevocable passing as a motor of narrative meaning-in lieu of the sense that had been supposedly lost. The exiled migrating mind that tries to wend its way between a lost cosmopolitanism (previous forms of multiculturalism), and a new cosmopolitanism that would grow from the nostalgia of the old one and go global instead of native, casts a very original light on the native/national cultural unconscious as well as on the cosmopolitan unconscious in both its negative, cynical form, and its universalist, humanist intentions.

Sometime in the 1980s, two elderly people embarked on a collaboration; a collaboration that affirmed half a lifetime of political fellowship and personal friendship. The result was an English-language book Gandhi. His Gift of the Fight. The lives of Marjorie Sykes and Jehangir P. Patel gain historical timbre in the interstices of the larger tale they seek to tell. Two lives take shape in ways that unravel the binaries informing taken-for-granted assumptions about the colonial. They offer a case study of cosmopolitanisms that provincialises the European concept. These provincial cosmopolitanisms did not need to reject a sense of patriotism as a pernicious parochialism. Instead, they inscribed patriotism and nationalism into universalisms that challenged the assumed universalism of European imperialism.

Cosmopolitanism is commonly understood as a phenomenon exclusive to the city, while the suburbs are primarily identified with provincialism. Based on my research in Almere, I problematize this dichotomy and discuss the existence of cosmopolitanism in suburbia. In the paper I look beyond the bias of strictly city perspectives when discussing cosmopolitanism, and I investigate the repertoires of internationally mobile persons who find themselves in a suburban environment. The case is Almere, a Dutch new town 30km east of Amsterdam, a place that is rapidly diversifying but also demographically stagnating. In the paper I analyze interviews with international migrants who moved to Almere within the past few years, and I focus on their mobility, experiences and aspirations, alluding ultimately to anti-urban cosmopolitan repertoires.

Carnegie Mellon University

God & Apple Pie:
Religious Myths and Visions of America
Christopher Buck, PhD

November 17, 2017, 7:00 PM
Scaife Hall, Room 208

A Spirituality Development Month event

Sponsored by:
•  CMU Spirituality & Interfaith Initiatives
    (Division of Student Affairs)
•  CMU Council of Religious Advisors
•  Baha’i Community of Pittsburgh

Critical theory was always characterised by a particular attempt to develop a general theory of society on the basis of an integrative approach characterised by a combination of philosophy and sociology and of normative and descriptive approaches. In Frankfurt, the original epicentre of this particular school of thought, this has however come to an end. Contemporary Frankfurt theorists essentially have abandoned the sociological and descriptive dimension and re-casted what is left of the Frankfurt School into a subdivision of Anglo-American analytical political philosophy. As apparent from the book under review and his entire oeuvre, Hauke Brunkhorst, the last of the Mohicans of real Frankfurt style critical theory, have always resented this development. He has therefore found himself in internal exile at the University of Flensburg, the intellectual equivalent of Siberia in the German academic context, for the last decades. The exceptionally brilliance of the book under review thereby confirms the old insight, which has been illustrated again and again throughout history, that the best books tend to be written in exile. Written by authors who did not correspond with the prevailing Zeitgeist but who nonetheless choose to stick to their guns.
The book literally begins by the dawn of man and ends with an analysis of the pressing problems and challenges characterizing contemporary society. As such the book also reads as a history of the world in its entirety at the same time as the its main focus is on four revolutionary processes: The Papal Revolution of the 11th and 12th centuries, the Protestant revolution of the 16th century; The Atlantic Revolution of the late 18th century and the Euro-Asian (in particular but not only the Chinese and Russian revolutions) of the early 20th century. Finally, as a fifth wave, the global transformations which came about through decolonisation and the transitions from authoritarianism and totalitarianism to democracy and human rights in the latter half of the 20th century are analysed. Full review available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00710.x/abstract

Partiendo de la existencia de un déficit democrático global, el artículo estudia la factibilidad de una instancia política global con capacidad de imponerse a los heterogéneos focos de poder existentes. Con este fin se estudian algunas de las principales objeciones teóricas y prácticas a las que tendría que hacer frente un poder político de tal magnitud, tratando de averiguar si alguna de ellas o el conjunto alcanza la envergadura de impedimento.

This paper provides a synthesis of the scholarly literature on education for democratic citizenship (EDC) in the school sector in England since 1995. Following the publication of the Crick Report, citizenship education was introduced to secondary schools in 2002 as a statutory subject. Primary schools are also required to show, through inspection, how they are preparing learners for citizenship. The implementation of citizenship as a National Curriculum subject in England is taking place during a period of constitutional reform and was the most significant innovation of curriculum 2000. Recent parallel initiatives in EDC are taking place elsewhere in the UK, in Europe and internationally. In both established democracies and newly established democratic states, such as those of Eastern and Central Europe and Latin America, there is a recognition that democracy is essentially fragile and that it depends on the active engagement of citizens, not just in voting, but in developing and participating in sustainable and cohesive communities. The paper examines the role of EDC in responding to these political challenges, setting national policy developments in both European and international contexts and exploring the growing international consensus on human rights as the underpinning principles of EDC. It identifies some key themes within the research, such as diversity and unity; global and cosmopolitan citizenship; children as citizens; democratic schooling; students' understandings of citizenship and democracy; the complementary roles of schools and communities; European citizenship; and the practicalities of implementing EDC at school level. It identifies some gaps in the research literature and concludes by proposing an on-going agenda for research. 
Keywords: Children's rights; Democratic schooling; Diversity; Europe; Globalization; Human rights

À partir d’une première analyse d’un corpus d’environ 60 000 messages de solidarité, provenant du monde entier et recueillis à la gare d’Atocha (Madrid) depuis les attentats du 11 mars 2004 jusqu’à mars 2005, cet article présente trois registres d’expression de l’émotion en réaction à des attentats. Ce qui caractérise chacun d’eux, c’est la façon dont le scripteur définit sa relation avec les victimes, dont il répond à la question : en quoi les victimes et moi sommes-nous pareils ? Si c’est en tant qu’ils vivent ensemble à Madrid ou en Espagne, il adoptera un « registre communautariste ». Si c’est parce qu’ils appartiennent à l’humanité, il s’orientera vers un « registre pacifiste ». Si c’est parce qu’ils sont chacun des personnes singulières, sa réaction pourra s’exprimer au travers d’un « registre cosmopolitique ». Mais ce cosmopolitisme du cœur ne se confond pas avec l’universalisme de raison qui sous-tend le registre pacifiste.


Based on a first analysis of a corpus of about 60.000 messages of solidarity, from the whole world, and collected at the Atocha train station (Madrid) since the 11th of March 2004 attacks up to March 2005, this article describes three registers of expression of emotion in reaction to terrorist attacks. What characterizes each of them is the way in which the scripter defines his relation to the victims, how he responds to the question : in what respect the victims and me are alike ? If that is because they live together in Madrid or Spain, he will resort to a “communitarian register”. If that is because they belong to mankind, he will turn towards a “pacifist register”. If that is because they are singulars persons, his reaction can find an expression through a “cosmopolitan register”. But this cosmopolitanism of heart should not be mistaken for the universalism of reason, which is involved in the pacifist register.

Current literature tends to see cosmopolitan identity formation as an individual endeavour of developing a stance of openness, and transcending discourses of national and other cultural identities. This article challenges the essentialism inherent in this model by proposing a different framing of cosmopolitan identity formation that shifts the focus to how people collectively mobilize cosmopolitanism as a resource for cultural identity construction. The article is based on an anthropological study of transnational professionals who are part of a diverse expatriate community in Amsterdam. The analysis shows how these professionals draw on cosmopolitanism to define themselves as ‘non-nationals’. This involves downplaying national affiliations and cultural differences while also marking national identity categories and ‘cultural features’ to maintain the difference they collectively embrace. This, however, does not imply openness to all otherness. Boundary drawing to demarcate the cosm...

How can we imagine a society that encompasses all humanity and excludes no one? Can we theoretically develop a sociological concept of a society that goes beyond thinking of "us" and "them"? In this essay, I attempt to outline a sociological imagination of what I call, in analogy with the supercontinent Pangaea, the "Pananthropoi" - the society of all-humanity that encompasses all and excludes no one. Seven theses describe some characteristics of the Pananthropoi. Arguing that humans' capacity to crossing borders (in a metaphorical and literal sense) is greater than the desire for its opposite, I interpret the long duree of global history as a process of overall societal convergence. The asymmetry of "unsocial sociability" of the conditio humana, with sociability prevailing over the capacity to disconnect, drives humanity gradually towards one society dawning on the collective horizon of this world: the Pananthropoi.

Academic discussions of cosmopolitanism have been reinvigorated alongside contem- porary processes of globalization, transna- tional mobilities, and multicultural urban- ism, spanning a range of disciplinary approaches and debates. In this context, a growing sociology of cosmopolitanism is characterized by a concern with how cosmo- politanism is ‘‘lived’’ and expressed in every- day life. Vincenzo Cicchelli’s Plural and Shared: The Sociology of a Cosmopolitan World makes an important contribution to this emerging field by providing sociologists with conceptual tools grounded in well- established sociological approaches for understanding the cosmopolitan world we live in, as well as the ways in which people experience that world. More broadly, it con- tributes to the ongoing project of developing a ‘‘cosmopolitan sociology,’’ a term intro- duced in the text to capture ‘‘how the features of the global world might be defined from the perspective of cosmopolitanism, whose main concern is how the transnational processes intertwining individuals beyond national borders reflect, magnify, and alter our rela- tionship (as individuals, groups and institu- tions) with the Other and the world at large’’ (p. xvii).

In this commentary piece, I combine insights gained from the various contributions to this special issue with my own research and understanding to trace the (dis)connections between, on the one hand, (post-)nationalism and its underlying concept of belonging and, on the other hand, cosmopolitanism and its underlying concept of becoming. I pay special attention to the human (im)mobilities mediating these processes. This critical thinking exercise confirms that the relationship between place, collective identity and socio-cultural processes of identification is a contested aspect of social theory. In the discussion, I suggest four points to be addressed in the future if we want to make existing theories about post-national formations and processes of cosmopolitanization more robust against the huge and complex challenges humankind is facing.

Cabrera (Griffith Univ., Australia) presents an edited volume that encompasses the full range of cosmopolitan institutional concerns, from moral cosmopolitan arguments focusing on assessing global institutional practices and on reforming states and other collective institutional agents, to integrative institutional cosmopolitan arguments advocating full global political integration. The book identifies cosmopolitanism as a fundamentally universal moral approach, meaning it sees the concern as attaching equally to every person. Eleven contributors, mostly professors in political science from North America, Europe, and Australia, explore the roles that institutional rules and agents can play in a cosmopolitan approach. The book is divided in three sections. The first section advocates compatibility between sovereign state systems and the interests of humanity; the second section presents more skeptical arguments about the compatibility of the two; and the final section is primarily concerned with the compatibility of some non-state agents with cosmopolitanism. The contributors do not share the same level of conceptualization; chapters vary from formal analyses to analytical narratives, the latter as case studies or in comparative context. Visual presentations are quite rare, but some (e.g., figure 7.2, p.169) can trigger academic discussions far from the book's main subject.

Christopher Buck, Review of Udo Schaefer, Beyond the Clash of Religions: The Emergence of a New Paradigm. Baha’i Studies Review 6 (1996): 68–71. 

ABSTRACT

Beyond the Clash of Religions: The Emergence of a New Paradigm
Author: Udo Schaefer
Translator: Geraldine Schuckelt
Publisher: Zero Palm Press, Prague, 1995, 177 pages
Reviewer: Christopher Buck

Paradigm analysis is an integrative approach to the study of religions as systems. It has heuristic value (explanatory power) in disclosing the concatenating or interconnected “logics” of belief (i.e., faith, doctrine, ethos) and praxis (i.e., ritual, piety, and ethics). Precisely because it takes this approach, Udo Schaefer’s Beyond the Clash of Religions: The Emergence of a New Paradigm is an important contribution to Bahá’í studies. . . .

In the final pages of this essay, Schaefer introduces the Bahá’í Faith as offering a “new paradigm” (42) anchored in revelation, in which the will of God for the world today is apprehended and affirmed by faith, and a universal value system is offered. In contrast to “the old ecclesiastical paradigm” of Christian salvation, “the new paradigm depicts a divine economy of salvation” (46), according to Schaefer. The nature of this “economy” is paradigmatically different from traditional Christianity.

The nature of this new paradigm is developed in the second essay, “On the Diversity and Unity of Religions” (51–150). This essay begins with a “Prefatory Note on the Concept of Paradigm,” in which the author assimilates Thomas Kuhn’s definition of “paradigm” as “the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by a member [sic; read “the members” ] of a given community” (Kuhn, apud Schaefer, 55; cf. 26, n. 41). Schaefer then speaks of the “unity paradigm” central to Bahá’í belief and praxis. . . .

The concluding part of the book begins at section IX, “The New Paradigm: Progressive Revelation” (106–150). Interestingly, Schaefer speaks of the vertical and horizontal dimensions of religion. The former is “constant,” while the latter is “variable” (138). That is to say, the heart of religion—in its “vertical” relationship to the Holy—is essentially mystical and unchanging, while the “horizontal” dimension is socially referenced and thus in a state of flux, conditioned by historical exigencies.

The Bahá’í Faith is referenced to modernity. It represents a veritable “paradigm-shift” in religious history, in which all religions are viewed federally as integral to history. The Bahá’í Faith thus offers a unique, teleological theory of civilization that “makes sense” of history by defining the past in terms of the present. There is a certain acquisitive nature to revelation in that it is a “progressive” unfoldment of spiritual verities in direct proportion to humanity’s capacity for cognisance of spiritual reality. . . .

Beyond the Clash of Religions: The Emergence of a New Paradigm contributes to an emergent, extracanonical Bahá’í ethos. It is an intellectually respectable articulation of a distinctively Bahá’í world view. This book is recommended as an introduction to the Bahá’í religion for educated or intellectually-inclined audiences. More significantly, Udo Schaefer has effectively adapted Kuhn’s concept of “paradigm” and “paradigm-shift” from the history of science to the history of religion. There is every probability that Udo Schaefer’s approach will gain wide currency throughout the Bahá’í world.

This two-day international conference will be held in Paris, on October 11-12, 2017. It is organized by the pluridisciplinary programme Sociétés Plurielles (Plural Societies), the CEFAS and the Laboratory of Anthropology, Urbanity and Globalization (IIAC/LAUM). Our aim is to revisit the notion of cosmopolitanism in Gulf cities and other regional areas from a comparative perspective.

One of the main institutional goals at a European international liberal arts college is to create graduates who are world citizens. In that context, there has been a shift towards explicit intercultural education through language and culture courses, with a foreign language requirement serving as 'a window on a different culture'. Developing intercultural communication skills demands more than living in a multicultural international environment; explicit intercultural education is needed. This paper describes a project that defined intercultural competence and translated it into intended learning outcomes for 'Language and Culture' courses at our liberal arts college. One of the intended learning outcomes is stated as: 'A student has the tools needed for the ongoing reflection on intercultural contact and the further development of intercultural skills in general'. The biggest challenge was to integrate explicit intercultural education in courses at the introductory level, where students are absolute beginners in the target language. Relevant questions were whether to use the target language exclusively or to make use of the class language (in our case English), and language proficiency would be affected if we dedicated less time to language acquisition. The model discussed was developed for the course Introduction to Italian Studies, which aimed to combine language instruction with intercultural reflection. While presenting the course design and some of the class activities that have been used the rationale behind the choices will be discussed, together with some constrains and an evaluation of the module.

After a long period of suspicion towards universalism, the notion of cosmopolitanism has received a renewed interest from critical theorists in the early 2000s. In this lecture, I expose and compare Marx's and Schmitt's critiques of cosmopolitanism, as well as their legacies in critical theory. Then, I turn to Balibar’s and Derrida’s accounts of cosmopolitics and analyse their divergence on the articulation between universality, violence, and political ontology.

This text appeared in the catalogue of the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar’s exhibition at Kiasma: Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014.

It can be cited as: Teivainen, Teivo, “Cosmopolitan Pedagogy of Art: Learning from the South with Alfredo Jaar”, in Patrik Nyberg and Jari-Pekka Vanhala (eds.) Alfredo Jaar. Tonight No Poetry Will Serve. A Museum of Contemporary Art Publication, Helsinki 2014, pp. 133-138.

I possess a wide range of experience critiquing and editing academic literature including abstracts, articles, book chapters, proposals and thesis drafts. I have edited ESL work from international scholars and international PhD students from Brazil to Romania to Germany. I am currently Co-editing a Festschrift project from proposal to final manuscript, incorporating input from authors, consultants and reviewers. My editing services include copy editing, content editing, style editing and proof reading. Topics of expertise include, but are not limited to, Humanities Computing, Philosophy, History, Religion, Digital Humanities, Information Ethics, Philosophy of Information, Digital Citizenship, Global Citizenship, and Intercultural Information Ethics. Services available at www.jaredbielby.com

Asked to serve in an ongoing position as Editor for the International Review of Information Ethics, I join a team of seven editors for IRIE. "The IRIE is the official journal of the International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE). It envisions an international as well as intercultural discussion focusing on the ethical impacts of information technology on human practices and thinking, social interaction, other areas of science and research and the society itself."

As Chair for the International Center for Information Ethics, I am responsible for promoting and maintaining the founding vision of the academic community of ICIE, for managing its global-wide membership, its advisory board, and for attending to and updating global chapters, credentials, contacts, and communications.

"The literature on cosmopolitanism has mushroomed in the past decade or more as attempts are made to theorise new patterns of mobility, interactions between previously distant social groups and the emergence of institutions to manage these processes. In this paper, I build on the arguments of those who have emphasised the strategic aspects and temporal dimensions of cosmopolitan expressions and practices, (Skrbis & Woodward, 2007, Kothari, 2008, Muller, 2011), by focusing on the resources and constraints that different actors operate with, or under, and, as a result, the varying commitments they have to different ‘others’.

Using this type of grounded approach, a number of Illustrative examples from a study of social identities in England are then analysed and used to theorise cosmopolitanism, as a perspective that is periodically articulated, in relation to specific needs, contexts or prompts, rather than being an inherent property of particular individuals, groups or situations.
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