Gavin Kendall

Locating Cosmopolitanism Between Humanist Ideal and Grounded Social Category

The emerging interdisciplinary body of cosmopolitanism research has established a promising field of theoretical endeavour by bringing into focus questions concerning globalization, nationalism, population movements, cultural values and identity. Yet, despite its potential importance, what characterizes recent cosmopolitanism research is an idealist sentiment that considerably marginalizes the significance of the structures of nation-state and citizenship, while leaving unspecified the empirical sociological dimensions of cosmopolitanism itself. Our critique aims at making cosmopolitanism a more productive analytical tool. We argue for a cosmopolitanism that consists of conceptually and empirically identifiable values and outlooks. While there has been some progress made in this direction in the recent literature on cosmopolitanism, most writing still considers cosmopolitanism as something so delicate that it cannot be measured. Furthermore, in order to appreciate the full currency of the concept, we argue that researchers must not only agree on some common determinants of cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan dispositions, but also ground their analyses of cosmopolitanism in the context of enduring nation-state structures.

The Sociology of Cosmopolitanism:Globalization, Identity, Culture and Government

The dream of a cosmopolitical utopia has been around for thousands of years. Yet the promise of being locally situated while globally connected and mobile has never seemed more possible than today. Through a classical sociological approach, this book analyses the political, technological and cultural systems underlying cosmopolitanism.

Community Participation, Rights, and Responsibilities: The Governmentality of Sustainable Development Policy in Australia

This paper explores how participative democratic principles, specifically, ideas of community participation in decision-making processes, are framed as community rights and/or responsibilities in sustainable development policy at different levels of government. In doing this, the paper examines the contribution of the governmentality perspective to an understanding of the nature of relationships involved in regulation through community. The paper first briefly reviews key tenets of ‘Third Way’ politics and the alternative view proffered by critiques from the governmentality perspective. It then turns to an analysis of how techniques of rights and responsibilities are implicit in the language of sustainable development policy at three levels: global (Agenda 21), national (Australian national policy-Australian national strategy for ecologically sustainable development), and regional (Queensland regional policy—Draft South East Queensland Regional Plan). Finally, we consider some implications of our application of a governmentality perspective for how we understand government, community and community participation, and sustainable development. In doing so, we argue that neither community, nor sustainable development, can be separated from the techniques of rights and responsibilities that enable ‘government at a distance’.

ePortfolios and eGovernment: from technology to the entrepreneurial self

Abstract We analyse the electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) in higher education policy and practice.While evangelical accounts of the ePortfolio celebrate its power as a new eLearning technology,we argue that it allows the mutually-reinforcing couple of neoliberalism and the enterprising self to function in ways in which individual difference can be presented, cultured and grown, all the time within a standardised framework which relentlessly polices the limits of the acceptable and unacceptable. We point to the ePortfolio as a practice of (self-) government, arguing that grander policy coalesces out of a halting, experimental set of technological instruments for thinking about how life should be lived.

The textures of globalization: biopolitics and the closure of xenotourism

In this paper, we explore the tensions around a recent controversial development in medical tourism: xenotourism in Mexico. We take this bioendeavor – now ceased – to be emblematic of the global character of contemporary biomedicine, providing insights into the production and operation of scientific knowledge. We explore this through what we call the “textures of globalization”: the anxiety regarding the extent to which Mexico was understood as an (in)appropriate venue for the generation of novel knowledge on xenotransplantation, and as a location for xenotourism. These tensions, which oscillated between calls for individual freedom (choice) and global regulation (standardization), ultimately led to the closure of xenotourism in Mexico.

THINKING THE UNTHOUGHT : TOWARDS A MOEBIUS STRIP PSYCHOLOGY

Abstract This paper sketches an alternative to two of the key polar perspectives in contemporary social psychology, namely cognitive psychology and rhetorical psychology. In contrast to the ‘closed fist’ of the former, and the ‘open hand’ of the latter, we counterpose the ‘invisible arm’ of the unthought. By this, we mean that prior to these modes of thought, respectively individualist and socially embedded, are non-rational modes of thought. We explore this third mode with reference to the work of Heidegger on ‘shattered thought’, Foucault’s ‘thought from the outside’, and Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomics. After considering the usefulness of the Gibsonian notion of affordance, we examine how recent work in the sociology of science on human/non-human assemblages variously known as hybrids, cyborgs or monsters might be brought to bear on the issue of the unthought. In particular, we suggest that the ideas currently being developed by the likes of Latour and Haraway (and theorised by us through the metaphor of the Moebius strip) can be used to locate the irruption of the unthought in both the internal (mental) and external (the technologised world), entailing both the material (corporeal) and semiotic.

Commentaries on Hook, ‘Genealogy, discourse, ‘Effective History’: Foucault and the work of critique’

This article is one of the four commentaries published as Commentaries on Hook, ‘Genealogy, discourse, ‘Effective History’: Foucault and the work of critique’ in the journal, Qualitative Research in Psychology [Taylor and Francis

Bruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a Hybrid World

focuses on the players’ different forms of subjectivity. Based on qualitative interviews, Chapter Six discusses the specific skills needed to succeed as a professional poker player. Employing Slavoj Zizek’s analytical triad, Chapter Seven introduces three ideal-typical approaches to poker. Corresponding to each order of the triad respectively, Bjerg introduces ‘‘the Sucker,’’ ‘‘the Grinder,’’ and ‘‘the Player.’’ The first type plays the game as if it were a game of pure chance, the second is aware of the element of probability and is very calculating in their approach, and the third is an apt reader and manipulator of their opponents. Chapter Eight discusses the issue of problem gambling in poker. Using qualitative data, the chapter introduces four different types of problem gamblers in poker. Part Four, containing Chapters Nine–Eleven and the conclusion to the book, covers the basic theme of the book: the significance of poker in relation to capitalism. Chapter Nine introduces Baudrillard’s view of games, a ‘‘parodic simulacrum,’’ as a way of conceptualizing this relationship. Similar to high finance, poker is presented as an economic activity with players driven purely by profit motives: ‘‘Poker without real money is not poker’’ (p. 200). Chapter Ten shows that the evolution of poker from Flat poker to Texas Hold ‘Em corresponds to the evolution of different paradigms of capitalism. The emergence of poker at the beginning of the nineteenth century in New Orleans represented a particular mentality (cheating and bluffing) corresponding to the expansionist phase of capitalism from the Eastern to the Western United States. New Orleans was the place where the capitalist East met the Western frontier with its vast, untapped resources. Successive innovations in the game of poker between 1830, 1850, and 1875 paralleled key structural features of capitalism. Similar to capitalism’s structural mechanisms that work to distribute wealth in favor of the capitalist class, the strategic introduction of new elements in poker resulted in a decrease in the chance element and an increase in strategic elements that skewed the game in favor of better and richer players. Of key importance here was the move from 20 to 52 cards which allowed richer players with knowledge of probability an advantage. Chapter Eleven shows that the circulation and distribution of value in No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em simulate the same processes as post-industrial capitalism: increasing fragmentation, fluctuation, and risk. In general, this book falls squarely within the genre that for the past two decades has been looking at the phenomenon of gambling. However, it dispenses with the usual ‘‘gambling-as-a-social-problem’’ line of argument and, instead, discusses it as a set of social relations shaped by the economic system. As such, it is both refreshing and significant to the field of gambling research. It is methodologically sound, but it could benefit from more historical data (especially Chapter Ten). Innovations in poker are said to occur, but the innovators remain unexplored. Were these innovations intentional or unintentional? How exactly did capitalism influence these innovators? Overall, this is an engrossing book that in the end makes the case for the points it set out to make. It is a highly accessible and enjoyable read for anybody interested in the world of gambling.

Ritual, reason and animals

Animal performances, broadly defined, are those activities enacted by animals and staged by humans for public display. The performative as an aspect of animal enactments is central to the complex interrelationship between humans and animals in society, as are the ways in which these interrelations are integrated into public performances. It is further argued that particular dimensions of this performance can be explored within the contexts of time and space, social and spatial regulation, and issues of power. Such performances are shaped by the opportunities and constraints against which reciprocal human-animal interaction occurs, and are informed by the symbolic meanings and spatial organization surrounding such interactions. Having proposed that spaces and places constitute stages, it is suggested that the form of space, its organization, materiality, and aesthetic and sensual qualities can influence the kinds of performances that animals exhibit, although not in any predictable and deterministic fashion. Keywords:animal performances; human-animal interaction; spatial regulation

The Cosmopolitan Symbolic Universe and Communities of Sentiment

This chapter investigates a fundamental dilemma related to the structural composition of contemporary cultural cosmopolitanism. The argument we develop here combines perspectives on global networks with research into cultural consumption and social status. These are distinct, important ways of dealing with cosmopolitanness, but they are infrequently considered together as part of the same structural network. Theories of global object networks fail to consider questions of reception and consumption by audiences and users; researchers into cultural consumption generally ignore the nature of the global flows which disseminate and enrol consumers. The nature of the contemporary global architecture is that there are increasingly diffuse networks of human and non-human innovators, carriers and icons of exotic and polyethnic cosmopolitan difference. This is a fact of contemporary global life, which we understand to be a form of globally spatialized, material-symbolic exchange. Yet, this diffusion, whilst putatively global and potentially cosmopolitan in nature, can frequently have the unintended consequence of promoting social status systems and cultural relations founded on uncosmopolitan values (or, to use the language of Chapter 4, spectral cosmopolitan values) such as cultural appropriation and status-based social exclusion.