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School of Social Sciences

Whose Cosmopolitanism?

Prof. Jackie Stacey

Launch Festival

In March 2009 RICC held an academic and cultural festival to celebrate its launch. Featured speakers included Professors David Harvey, Tariq Ramadan and Jacqueline Rose, as well as Don Flynn, Irene Khan, Sir Richard Leese, Alex Poots, and Katya Sander. All events were enthusiastically received with over 200 people attending the town hall debate and question time. Videos from the event are available. Launch Festival Programme.

Since its establishment and to this day, RICC members continued to address the question: whose cosmopolitanism? In a world characterised by an unprecedented global rescaling and accelerated speed and intensity of transnational communication, we aim to address issues that lie at the heart of the tension between local affiliations and a universal imperative.

Prof. Nina Glick Schiller, RICC Director

"Given this grim and seemingly endless bloodshed with its wake of broken bodies and shattered lives, it may seem strange to talk about cosmopolitanism. Yet, I think such a discussion is timely, particularly when it is coupled with the questions: whose cosmopolitanism and where is cosmopolitanism to be found?" Full Text

Prof. Jackie Stacey, RICC co-director

"The idea of 'an openness to difference' posits a self that is transparent, accessible and fully intelligible to ourselves and others; and 'a consciousness of world citizenship' assumes that the world is somehow graspable as a totality with which we can straightforwardly identify" Full Text

Prof. Galin Tihanov

"The question "Whose Cosmopolitanism" is also a question about the complex genealogies and dynamics of cosmopolitan discourses and practices.  It is imperative to broaden the field of theoretical enquiry and examine the origins of modern discourses of cosmopolitanism in conjunction with the origins of capitalism" Full Text

Prof. Gyan Prakash

"It is hard to speak of cosmopolitan attachment to a human community in the old sense.  Colonialism and empire, slavery and capitalist exploitation, the world wars and the Holocaust, and other such inhumanities have put paid to the Kantian ideal.  The notion that a cosmopolite was detached from local roots, or rose above them, to embrace the larger world was elitist" Full Text

Responses

Dr. Andrew Irving, RICC RCUK Fellow

Sivamohan Valluvan, RICC doctoral student

 

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