Understanding ‘cosmopolitan practices’ - Home - MPI … · · 2010-02-17Understanding...
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Understanding ‘cosmopolitan practices’
Prof. Dr. Steven VertovecMax-Planck-Institute for the Study of
Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Understanding ‘cosmopolitan practices’
1. Varieties of cosmopolitanism2. Attitudes and practices3. Some examples: the Coopers vs. Stavros4. Some possible mechanisms/processes5. So what?
Cosmopolitanism as…(1) Socio-Cultural Condition(2) Philosophy or World-view(3) Political Project I:
Transnational Institutions(4) Political Project II:
Multiple Subjects(5) Attitude or Disposition(6) Practice or Competence
Cosmopolitanism as attitude• Hannerz (1996: 103) – ‘…an orientation, a
willingness to engage with the other. …an intellectual and aesthetic openness toward divergent cultural experiences….’
• Van der Veer (2002) – yet on what terms? Cf. colonial officers, missionaries
Cosmopolitanism as practice: doing what?
Hannerz (1990) cosmopolitanism as • ‘…a personal ability to make one’s way
into other cultures through listening, looking, intuiting and reflecting’
• ‘cultural competence… a built-up skill in maneuvering more or less expertly with a particular system of meanings and meaningful forms’
• ‘a mode of managing meaning’
Cosmopolitan Practice: as consumption?
• ‘ethnic’ designs• ‘ethnic’ furnishings• ‘ethnic’ food• ‘world’ music• tourism
- ‘home-plus’ exotic- not really ‘making way into another culture’ or meaning system?
Cosmopolitanism as practice: doing what?
• ‘Cultural navigation’• Reading, engaging, performing
actions/reactions, utterances, behaviours• When in Rome, do as the Romans do…• Acts/signals of and for communication
– Mutual understanding, common meaning
• For pleasure, ease, advantage, distinction or survival?
Cosmopolitan Practice as ‘doing’: by whom?
• Growing literature on: ‘…x cosmopolitanism’– ‘actually existing’– ‘everyday’– ‘vernacular’– ‘ordinary’– ‘practical’– ‘tactical’
• To distinguish from elite, jet-set Cosmopolitanism
BBC ‘Goodness Gracious Me’The Coopers (Kapoors) andthe Robinsons (Rabindaraths)
Cosmopolitan practiceas wolf-in-sheep’s clothing
• Conscious • Knowledge-based
to demonstrate right thing to do (‘I knew that’)
• Purposeful / ‘tactical’ in order to mark social inclusion / distinction
Cosmopolitan practiceas cultural chameleon
• Non-conscious• Not about knowledge
but subtle communication cues of commonality (‘innit’, ‘or what’, ‘mate’)
• Not wanting anything except shared meaning
Mechanisms for cosmopolitan practices?1. Linguistic analogy
• Cosmopolitanism like bi-/multi-lingualism?– Emphasis on communication: grammar, syntax, lexicon
• Code-switching Berlin sei eben "the place to be", erklärt ein Banker...
– Structural equivalents, social contexts, motivations?– Conscious or non-conscious? (cf. Stavros)– Related to language dominance?
• Crossing– momentary, ritualized instances of outgroup language
use to move across social or ethnic boundaries• Pidgin and creole / creolization
Mechanisms for cosmopolitan practices?2. Reading/enacting scripts
• Roger Schank: scripts – sets of semantic memories stored, allow individual to make inferences to fill in missing information
• Social scripts: adaptable to contexts– E.g. , going to restaurant
• Capacity for pattern recognition
Mechanisms for cosmopolitan practices?3. Multiple-cultural competence
• Swidler (1986): culture-as-toolkit, set of resources; ‘all people know more culture than they use’ (p. 277)
• Bourdieu (1977): practical improvising from repertoire of ‘dispositions’ (acquired schemes of perception, thought and action)
• Caglar (1994): not unlimited; embedded, conditional
• Refutes ‘between two cultures’ presumption
All begs question:what is (cultural) difference?
To adopt ‘cosmopolitan practices’,• What are borders/fault lines that have to be crossed?• What is ‘package’ of meaning-carrying traits that has
to be read, engaged, performed?• Relevant to class, locality, gender, religion, age,
sexuality, ‘sub-culture’ or ‘scene’…
Can cosmopolitan competence be taught / fostered / instilled?
• ‘inter-cultural competence’ courses
• Public campaigns• Creating spaces/events
for interaction
Spaces of ‘contact’
• Workplaces, schools, markets, leisure• SocPsych: ‘contact’ indeed reduces prejudice
• Cosmo. Practices? multiple cultural competence– or 3rd modalities: civility, pidgin, creole
Instilling cosmopolitanism• Knowledge?• Appreciation?• Empathy?• ‘Tolerance’?• Hannerz (1990: 239) cosmo. as
‘cultural competence… a built-up skill in maneuvering more or less expertly with a particular system of meanings and meaningful forms’
Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer Gesellschaften
Hermann-Föge-Weg 11, D-37073 Göttingen, Germanytel. +49/0 551 4956-0, fax +49/0 551 4956-111
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