Ian Woodward

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 ambivalence of ordinary cosmopolitanism: Investigating the limits of cosmopolitan openness

Despite diverse understandings of cosmopolitanism, most authors agree that cosmopolitans espouse a broadly defined disposition of ‘openness’ toward others, people, things and experiences whose origin is non-local. It is argued that such an attitude is expressed by an emotional and ethical commitment towards universalism, selflessness, worldliness and communitarianism, and that such values should be identifiable in the practices, attitudes and identifications of individuals. By using data generated through qualitative focus group research, this paper extends the development of Lamont and Aksartovas (2002) category of ‘ordinary cosmopolitanism’. The participants in this study saw themselves as beneficiaries of an increasingly interconnected world, and they generally expressed cosmopolitan sentiments by referring to easily accepted opportunities associated with globalisation (eg. travel, cuisine, music) rather than the more difficult aspects of openness such as showing hospitality to strangers, or accepting human interest ahead of perceived national interests. Their positive views were counterbalanced, however, by sentiments of ‘dilution of national culture’ and ‘culture loss’. We argue that cosmopolitanism is a set of structurally grounded, discursive resources available to social actors which is variably deployed to deal with issues like cultural diversity, the global, and otherness. Ironically these discourses, which are the basis of the everyday accounts we describe, mirror academic debates on globalisation, suggesting the immersion of theorists in these discursive webs of meaning that structure responses to things global.

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.

Attitudes towards globalization and cosmopolitanism: cultural diversity, personal consumption and the national economy

One of the widely accepted consequences of globalization is the development of individual outlooks, behaviours and feelings that transcend local and national boundaries. This has encouraged a re-assessment of important assumptions about the nature of community, personal attachment and belonging in the face of unprecedented opportunities for culture, identities and politics to shape, and be shaped by, global events and processes. Recently, the upsurge of interest in the concept of cosmopolitanism has provided a promising new framework for understanding the nexus between cosmopolitan dispositions and global interconnectedness across cultural, political and economic realms. Using data from a representative social survey of Australians this paper investigates the negotiation of belonging under the conditions of globalization. The data tap into attitudes and behaviours associated with a broad gamut of cosmopolitan traits in the domains of culture, consumption, human rights, citizenship, and international governance. They show how cosmopolitan outlooks are shaped by social structural factors, and how forms of identification with humanity and the globe are fractured by boundaries of self and others, threats and opportunities, and the value of things global and local.

Cosmopolitanism: Uses of the Idea

Preface Introduction Identity Citizenship Ethics Networks, Cosmoscapes and Encounters Mediated Cosmopolitanism Ordinary Cosmopolitanism Conclusion

Divergent Narratives in the Imagining of the Home amongst Middle-Class Consumers Aesthetics, Comfort and the Symbolic Boundaries of Self and Home

Sociological research on consumption has typically emphasized the social ‘work’ done by consuming things, showing how consumption expresses social identities, symbolizes class and status, and assists in delineating cultural boundaries and networks. In contrast, there are relatively few studies that explore consumption from the viewpoint of actors, seeking to expose the strategies, narratives and accounts that literally constitute the consumption act. Using interview data collected from a sample of middle-class Australian householders on practices of home decoration, this article explores the way consumption practice is linked to imagination and narrative. While the style and design features of the home have been a site for frenetic commodification within Australia, these data demonstrate that people’s desires with regard to how their home is presented and understood differ markedly, with some respondents emphasizing conspicuousness and style, and others comfort and relaxation. These narratives are interpreted as markers that socially mediate symbolic boundaries of self.

From aesthetic principles to collective sentiments: The logics of everyday judgements of taste

Abstract Contemporary research into the sociology of taste has, following Bourdieu (1984), primarily emphasised the role of taste judgements as mechanisms of social and cultural power, as distinctive markers of social position, or more broadly as implicated in the reproduction of social inequality. We argue that although important, such a preoccupation with the social distribution of objectified tastes—for example in music, literature, and art—has been at the expense of investigating the everyday perceptual schemes and resources used by actors to accomplish a judgement of taste. Our argument is traced using a range of classical and contemporary literature which deals with the personal/collective tension in taste, aesthetics and fashion. We use data from a recent national survey to investigate how a sample of ordinary actors understand the categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste. The analysis shows a strong collective strand in everyday definitions of taste, often linked to moral codes of interpersonal conduct. Also, taste is largely defined by people as a strategy for managing relations with others, and as a mode of self-discipline which relies on the mastery of a number of general principles that are resources for people to position their own tastes within an imagined social sphere. The paper proposes a schematic model which accounts for the range of discriminatory resources used to make judgements of taste.

The vinyl: the analogue medium in the age of digital reproduction.

Recent discussions of music listening practices have given priority to the digitalisation of sound and the role of digital music players in changing the form, medium and possibly even the content of listening. While such an emphasis is warranted given the rapid uptake of digital music consumption, it is also the case that vinyl records are currently the fastest growing area of music sales. Moreover, within particular music listening circles, the vinyl record is approached as an auratic object. In this paper, we explore the vinyl’s persistence on the market and its rekindled cultural prominence. Using the frameworks of cultural sociology, combined with insights from material culture studies and cultural approaches to consumption within business studies and sociology, we explore the reasons why vinyl records have once again become highly valued objects of cultural consumption. Resisting explanations which focus solely on matters of nostalgia or fetish, we look to the concepts of iconicity, ritual, aura and the sensibility of coolness to explain the paradoxical resurgence of vinyl at the time of the digital revolution.

Seeds of cosmopolitan future? Young people and their aspirations for future mobility

Mobility across space is an exemplary characteristic of the global era and an important aspect of the cultural experience of many people in advanced industrialised nations. Mobility evokes powerful images that effectively counter any illusion of stationary life and provide a break from the insularity of the local and parochial. High levels of mobility are simultaneously a fact, a necessity and a cultural aspiration. In recent times, debates about mobility in social theory have considered the relationship between mobility and cosmopolitan culture and identities. Against this backdrop, this paper also draws on some of the more recent discussions about the emergence of globalised and cosmopolitan identities among young people. Using data from a longitudinal study of young people in Queensland, this paper provides an insight into young peoples aspirations about future mobility. The data affirm Skeggs’ comment that mobility is an unequal resource, and demonstrate that aspirations of future mobility reflect numerous social, economic and cultural realities of young peoples lives. This inevitably leads us to problematise the established, and often abstract, nexus between cosmopolitanism and mobility in contemporary debates about cosmopolitanism.

Investigating consumption anxiety thesis: aesthetic choice, narrativisation and social performance

Wardes (1994) theoretical analysis of possible anxieties provoked in the act of consumption synthesises a large body of contemporary literature on uncertainty, social change and consumption. In doing so, it offers a predominantly structural model of the anxiety provoking tensions and forces individual consumers may be exposed to. Drawing on the work of contemporary figurehead theorists of social change, and proposing his own application of Durkheims model of suicide to the problem of consumption anxiety, Warde presents a model of how anxieties and their mitigation are embedded within configurations of contemporary consumer culture. Though Wardes analysis illustrates the structural, theoretical context of potential consumption anxieties for particular social groups, it is unable to specify how such anxieties are manifested and managed – or performed – by individuals within specific social and consumption settings. This paper takes an interpretive approach, conceptualising consumption anxiety as a discursive, narrative phenomenon likely to surface within particular social settings that are conducive to generating expressions of anxiety. The paper also considers the relation between narrativisation and objects, arguing that the cultural capacity of objects must be understood within local settings where objects are afforded a capacity to act through various discourses. The argument is drawn using selections of face-to-face interview data collected from a sample of middle-class householders on the practice of home decoration.