cosmopolis
Democratizing Global Economy and Culture
Friday 2 - Saturday 3 June 2000
University of Helsinki, Finland
As we prepare to cross the millennium, the idea of cosmopolitanism is
attracting increasing interest. For some the term holds out the prospect
of global democratization. The hope that cosmopolitan groups will be in the
forefront of establishing values, institutions and lifestyles which are less
directly embedded within nation-state societies. For others the
cosmopolitan is a figure to be reviled as it has become associated with 'the
revolt of the elites,' the inability of upper and middle class groups to
sustain a sense of responsibility towards the growing numbers of the
excluded around the world. These mobile elites who enjoy the freedom of
physical movement and communication, stand in stark contrast to those who
are confined to place, whose fate is to remain located.
Equally harsh in its judgement of cosmopolitanism is the perspective which
presents the cosmopolitan as dabbling rootlessly in a variety of cultures.
This view of the cosmopolitan as voyeur, parasite, or some sort of cultural
tourist, again emphasizes this incapacity to form lasting attachments and
commitments to place and others, the inability to participate in a community
to which one feels obliged to make sacrifices. This restless pursuit of
experience, aesthetic sensations and novelty over duties, obligations and
social bonds, is allegedly something which best fits anglophone societies,
such as the United States and Britain, in which the market values of the
trader, who looks, deals and moves on, are often seen to be key formative
features of the current world-view.
This raises two related questions. Firstly, the extent to which
cosmopolitan dispositions are closely associated with cities. Cities have
long been the sites for markets and the mixing of people, commodities, ideas
and cultures. They have been the homes of a wide range of intellectual and
artistic, social and cultural movements and institutions. Secondly, if
cosmopolitanism in the arts was associated with modernism in cities such as
Paris, London and New York, which now become centres of cultural heritage
tourism, how far do more recently developed global cities such as S“o Paulo,
Singapore and Bombay manifest similar processes of transnational cultural
exchange and mixing? This points to a more fundamental question: while
cosmopolitanism may well be a Western project and projection, how far have
varieties of cosmopolitanism avant la lettre, been present outside the West?
What equivalent forms of cosmopolitan experiences, practices,
representations and carrier groups developed, for example, in China, Japan,
India and the Islamic world? What were the characteristic forms of civility
and civic virtues, urbanity and urbane conduct, and how were notions of
travel, exploration and innovation valued?
If we look at the origin of the term cosmopolis, it refers to the links
between cosmos, the order of nature or the universe, and polis, the order of
human society. While many cultures have assumed there is a direct link
between the order of nature and the order of society, the dream of Western
modernity was that science and technology would eventually discover and
exploit the principle forms of order at work in both realms. Technology
would implement these findings to tame and control both external nature,
along with the inner nature and social life of human beings. Yet the
tragic, or dark side of modernity emphasised the sacrifice of all previously
existing forms of order through the pursuit of progress. At the end of the
second millennium, we are only too well aware of the dangers and risks of
this process, of the finitude of nature as a living space for human beings
and other life forms, along with the infinitude of our potential to develop
culture, to weave narratives around this process. The cosmopolitan was
meant to be someone who in principle could know everything, who would learn
how best to act from the accumulation of knowledge. Yet this technological
potential for the archiving and data-basing of cultures does not offer any
easy recipes on how to make adequate practical judgements, especially when
we globalise the scope of our actions beyond the site of our accustomed set
of identifications.
In terms of Western notions of practice, the cosmopolitan political ideal
derives from the Kantian tradition and entails some notion of a polis
extending around the globe. This implies some form of world-state, or
federation of states, which would involve the development of cosmopolitan or
supra-national law and forms of citizenship and governance. The
compatibility of this vision with the continuing impact of global
marketization, along with the de-globalizing reactions of identity politics
and balkanization, and the persistence of civilizational and cultural
traditions, is an open question. At the very least, if global
democratization is to move forward it can be argued that it must not merely
be the project of a Western centre, but become gradually assembled from a
range of cross cultural dialogues.
Mike Featherstone Theory, Culture & Society Centre
Heikki Patom”ki Network Institute for Global Democratization
John Tomlinson Centre for Research in International Communications &
Culture
Conference Programme
The first day will explore cosmopolitan spaces and representations from a
largely theoretical perspective, whereas the second day will focus on more
concrete, topical political issues under the rubric of democratic reforms of
cosmopolis. Many of the perspectives of the second day have been directly
stimulated by the Network Institute for Global Democratization, a
Helsinki-based NGO working alongside the Theory, Culture & Society Virtual
Institute for Global Culture. Both are experimental projects designed to
explore the politics of global citizenship and the new information
technologies and have aims which are as much practical-political as
academic.
Aims and Outcomes
The conference has both academic and ethico-political aims. With respect to
the academic aim, we intend publishing a selection of conference papers in a
special issue of the journal Theory, Culture & Society. We also intend
launching a series of 'travelling seminars' in conjunction with the TCS
Virtual Institute for Global Culture and the Network Institute for Global
Democratization (NIGD) to further explore the practical implications of
global democratization and public sphere activities. The main
ethico-political aim, then, is to open up a public and multicultural
discussion on the meanings of cosmopolitanism and their relation to global
reform.
The special issue of Theory, Culture & Society will be built around a
selection of the conference papers, and will come out in the year 2001. The
travelling seminar will be developed out of the work of the conference. The
idea is simple: to organise working seminars on strictly delimited topics
and with both an academic and a practical-political intent. Based also on
the relations and arrangements of the NIGD and TCS Virtual Institute, the
travelling seminar will function as a node in a network of academic and
political activities, with the aim of not only helping to work towards the
solution of practical issues, but also feeding new, theoretically informed
ideas and interpretations into practices. The travelling seminar strives to
empower cosmopolitan political actors, particularly those excluded or
marginalized, as well as contributing to finding more adequate, democratic
responses to the problems of the crisis-ridden global economy and culture.
There is also a further and more abstract ethico-political aim to this
conference as well. By bringing together different voices on
cosmopolitanism, the idea is to further a more wide-ranging and
participatory discussion of the potential for democratizing global economy
and culture. Hence, we would like to invite both sceptics and advocates
from a range of different cultures to become involved in a dialogue on the
philosophical and practical possibility of cosmopolitan global reforms.
Organizing Committee
Mike Featherstone Katarina Sehm Patom”ki
Heikki Patom”ki John Tomlinson
Liisa Laakso Pauline Eadie
Alison Pancoe Terry McSwiney
Advisory Committe
Stephen Chan Teivo Teivainen
Bryan S Turner Jan Nederveen Pieterse
Eleonore Kofman Couze Venn
Scott Lash R B J Walker
Turo Virtanen Colin Mercer
Information, Fees and Paper proposals
Email: [log in to unmask]
Fax: +44 (0)115 8486331
Conference Fee
£150 before 15 April 2000 (£190 thereafter)
Theory, Culture & Society Centre
Faculty of Humanities, Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane, Nottingham NG11 8NS, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)115 948 6330 / 6332
Fax: +44 (0)115 948 6331
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://tcs.ntu.ac.uk
Forthcomimg TCS conferences:
Inhabiting Technologies, ICA, London 10-12 March 2000
Cosmopolis, University of Helsinki, Finland 2-4 June 2000
Theory, Culture & Society Centre
Faculty of Humanities, Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane, Nottingham NG11 8NS, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)115 948 6330 / 6332
Fax: +44 (0)115 948 6331
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://tcs.ntu.ac.uk
Forthcomimg TCS conferences:
Inhabiting Technologies, ICA, London 10-12 March 2000
Cosmopolis, University of Helsinki, Finland 2-4 June 2000
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