Pathways to Cosmopolitanism - Collaborative Research Initiative
Pathways to Cosmopolitanism is a collaborative research initiative linking the University of Manchester and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore.
University of Manchester partners: Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC), Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC) and the Centre for Chinese Studies (CCS).
Research Themes
As a universal moral ideal and a form of cultural disposition, cosmopolitanism has been widely debated in academic literatures. More recently, there has also been a revival of the term in the social sciences and humanities that has spawned a wide range of work. Generally, scholarship has described cosmopolitanism as attitudes and sets of skills that provide actors with the capacity to understand and negotiate cultural diversity.
Yet, how is cosmopolitanism actually lived and experienced in everyday life and urban spaces by diverse groups of social actors? How might everyday cosmopolitanism depart from and even challenge conventional notions and/or celebratory accounts of cosmopolitanism often proffered by the state and market forces? As much of the research and conceptualisation of cosmopolitanism is written through the ‘Western city’ and western philosophical canon, what relevance can these approaches have to the urban cultural experiences of those in Asian cities? Do Asian cities present alternative modes of cosmopolitanism? Or, do they problematise the very universal claims inherent to the term?
The first research workshop was held in Singapore in 2008.
The second research workshop was held in Manchester in 2009.
