{"id":132,"date":"2018-07-18T06:41:02","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T06:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socp2.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=132"},"modified":"2019-05-03T11:55:26","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T11:55:26","slug":"many-modernities-cosmopolitan-theory-ulrich-beck","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp2\/chapter\/many-modernities-cosmopolitan-theory-ulrich-beck\/","title":{"rendered":"Many Modernities Cosmopolitan Theory: Ulrich Beck"},"content":{"raw":"
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1.\u00a0<\/strong>Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

In the paradigm of the first age of modernity, globalization is interpreted within the territorial compass of state and politics, society and culture. This involves an additive conception of globalization as indicated by interconnectedness\u2018. In the paradigm of the second age of modernity, globalization changes not only the relations between and beyond national states and societies, but also the inner quality of the social and political itself which is indicated by more or less reflexive cosmopolitization as an institutionalized learning process.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

2. About the Author\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Ulrich Beck, born in 1944, is one of the front-runners of trans-national theories of recent times. He is a Professor of Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich and at the London School of Economics and Political Science.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Ulrich Beck\u2018s understanding of the modern world is co-temporal with Ronald Robertson, Arjun Appadurai and Saskia Sassen. The primary focus of his study is on globalization, changing face of world society, changing conditions of work in a world of increasing global capitalism, declining influence of unions and flexibilization of the labour process, concept of global risk society and a new theory rooted in the concept of cosmopolitanism. Beck has also contributed a number of new words in German sociology, including \u2017cosmopolitan theory\u2018, \u2017risk society\u2018, \u2017second modernity\u2018, \u2017reflexive modernization\u2018 and \u2017Brazilianization\u2018.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

His books include: \u2017Conversations with Ulrich Beck\u2018 (2004); \u2017What is Globalization?\u2018 (2000); \u2017World Risk Society\u2018 (1999); \u2017The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order\u2018 (1997); \u2017Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order\u2018 (1995, with Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash); \u2017Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society\u2018 (1995); \u2017Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk\u2018 (1994); and \u2017Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity\u2018 (1992).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

3. Main Theories \u00a0and Concepts<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

One of the most important of Beck\u2018s theories is his coinage of the term \u2017cosmopolitanism\u2018. Here we will discuss the term elaborately; touching upon at the end on \u2017risk society\u2018 \u2013 another term closely associated with his theory of cosmopolitanism.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

3.1 Cosmopolitan Theory\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

The term \u2017cosmopolitanism\u2018, according to Immanuel Kant is being a citizen of two worlds \u2013 \u2017cosmos<\/em>\u2018 and \u2017polis<\/em>\u2018. There are five different dimensions to this, distinguishing between external and internal otherness (Beck 2002). Externally it means:<\/p>\r\n \r\n

(a)\u00a0 Including the otherness of nature<\/em>;<\/p>\r\n

(b)\u00a0 Including the otherness of other civilizations and modernities<\/em>; and<\/p>\r\n

(c)\u00a0 Including the otherness of the future<\/em>;<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Internally it means:<\/p>\r\n

(d)\u00a0 Including the otherness of the object<\/em>; and<\/p>\r\n

(e)\u00a0 Overcoming the (state) mastery of (scientific, linear) rationalization<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n \r\n

The central defining characteristic of a cosmopolitan perspective is the \u2017dialogic imagination\u2018. The dialogic imagination corresponds to the coexistence of rival ways of life in the individual experience - clash of cultures and rationalities within one\u2018s own life, which makes it a matter of fate to compare, reflect, criticize, understand and combine contradictory certainties (Beck 2002). As Friedrich Nietzsche suggested, various cultures of the world would interpenetrate each other, until ideas of every culture would be side by side. The cosmopolitan perspective is an imagination of alternative ways of life and rationalities, putting the negotiation of contradictory cultural experiences into the centre of activities: in the political, the economic, the scientific and the social.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n3.1.1 What Cosmopolitan Theory is NOT ?\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

At the very onset, it is important to note what is not <\/em>about cosmopolitan theory. According to Beck, cosmopolitan theory needs to be distinguished from the following concepts and any direct association with them:<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Interconnectedness<\/em><\/strong>: As expressed in the work of David Held and his colleagues in \u2017Global Transformations\u2018 (1999), idea of interconnectedness somehow still presupposes the territorial unit of states and state societies, that are becoming more and more interconnected and networked. And, keeping in mind global inequalities, \u2017interconnectedness\u2018 is a semantic euphemism.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Fluidity<\/strong>- The new metaphor of the fluid that flows<\/em>: Neither boundaries nor relations mark the difference between one place and another. Instead, sometimes boundaries come and go, while relations transform themselves without fracture. Social space behaves like a fluid (Mol and Law 1994). But the very suggestiveness of the powerful metaphor of the \u2017fluid\u2018 begs the question of whether \u2017networks\u2018 and \u2017flows\u2018 as social processes can be so independent of national, transnational and political-economic structures that it could enable, channel and control the flows of people, things and ideas. In other words: there is a lack of institutional (power)-structures, sometimes even an anti- institutionalism involved in the powerful cultural research and theory about \u2017fluids\u2018 and \u2017mobility\u2018 (Urry 2000).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Cosmopolitanization<\/em><\/strong>: Cosmopolitanization has to be clearly distinguished from cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is a large, ancient, rich and controversial set of political ideas, philosophies and ideologies. It remains in part an ideological construct, and as such it has the abstract, even artificial atmosphere that Heinrich Heine described as the \u2017kingdom of the air\u2018. Cosmopolitanization, on the other hand, is a frame for empirical exploration for globalization from within<\/em>, globalization internalized<\/em>. It is a kind of class analysis after class analysis, which takes on board globalization. Like class analysis (as Marx proposed it), it combines a descriptive analysis of social structure with the assumption that this analysis gives us a key to understand the political dynamics and conflicts of globalized social worlds.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

But cosmopolitan sociology does imply more than a new transnational sensitivity for empirical research (Therborn 2000).<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n3.1.2 Cosmopolitan Theory and \u2018Reflexive Modernization\u2019\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

One central operational thesis, a basic indicator of reflexive modernization, is the pluralization of borders<\/em>. This is supposed to be true for such fundamental dualisms as the border between nature and society, subject and object and life and death. If one focuses on globalization from within the pluralization of borders it means the pluralization of nation-state <\/em>borders or the implosion of the dualism between the national and the international<\/em>: how far is there a multitude of non-identical borders emerging, within which themes and dimensions and with what effects (strategic opportunities of action for whom? In terms of methodological nationalism these borders coincide; in terms of a methodological cosmopolitanism these borders diverge (Beck 2002). \u2017Globalization from within\u2018 thus stands for dissonance in drawing of borderlines \u2013 the axiom of the incongruity of borders<\/em>. In other\u00a0words: borders are no longer pre-determined, they can be chosen (and interpreted), but simultaneously also have to be redrawn and legitimated anew. There is both an increase in plausible ways of drawing new borders and a growing tendency to question existing borders in all different fields.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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When cultural, political, economic and legal borders are no longer congruent, contradictions open up between the various principles of exclusion. Inner globalization, understood as pluralization of borders, produces a legitimation crisis of the national morality of exclusion: on which principles are the internal hierarchies of unities or states based (Beck 2002)? And it produces questions as to the distribution of global responsibilities: why do we have to recognize a special moral responsibility towards other people just because, by accident, they have the same nationality? Why should they be free of any moral sensibility towards other people for the sole reason that they happened to be born on the other side of the national fence? What loses any legitimacy is the fundamentally dubious assumption that such responsibilities are absolute within a border, while their absence is equally absolute outside this border. In that light, cosmopolitan theory opens up discussions to include groups which have previously been excluded, redistributes the burden of proof and excludes some principles as illegitimate, or questions their legitimacy (Beck-Gernsheim 2000).<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n3.1.3 Coinage of \u2018Cosmopolitanism\u2019: Historical Context\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

As often in history, cosmopolitanization is being experienced and reflected upon as crisis <\/em>\u2013 \u00a0a threefold crisis: crisis of cosmos <\/em>(nature), crisis of polis <\/em>(paradigm of nature-state politics) and crisis of rationality and control<\/em>. One has to recognize and act upon a new global market risk, which is highlighted by the Asian crisis in 1998 and which demonstrates the social and political dynamics of the economic <\/em>world risk society. The global market risk is a new form of \u2017organized irresponsibility\u2018, because it is an institutional form so impersonal as to have no responsibilities, even to itself. Enabled by the information revolution, global market risk allows the near-instant flow of funds to determine who will prosper and who will suffer. Today, one can illustrate the components of global market risk by the experience of the Asian crisis as one could illustrate the basic aspects of global technological risk with the experience of Chernobyl in 1986. In that light, the Asian crisis is the \u00a0economic Chernobyl <\/em>(Beck 2002).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The cosmopolitan crisis is not only about a crisis of cosmos and nature, a crisis of polis, and a crisis of rationality and control; it is also to a great degree about profound contradiction between a time-based consciousness of a globally shared future without <\/em>adequate forms of institutionalized action and a past-based national memory without <\/em>a globally shared collective future (or, to be more precise, with a past-based shared hostility <\/em>towards the future). For the purposes of social analysis, therefore, it is necessary to distinguish systematically between the national manifestation <\/em>on the one hand and the cosmopolitan reality <\/em>of \u2017global flows\u2018, currents of information, symbols, money, education, risks and people, on the other. This internal<\/em>, involuntary and often unseen cosmopolitanization of the national sphere of experience is occurring, however, as a concealed \u2017side-effect\u2018 of economic globalization, that is, with the power and autonomy of digital capitalism.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n3.1.4 Key Concepts of Cosmopolitan Theory\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

The key question is to what extent the transnational sphere of experience will dissolve or overlap the national sphere of experience \u2013 whether the former will swallow up the latter or vice versa. To what extent, therefore, the transnational sphere of experience will be overlaid, filtered off and broken down by nation-state institutions and identities \u2013 and with what resulting explosions.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nThese questions can be answered with the delineation of the following concepts:\r\n\r\n \r\n

Space-Time In the struggles over belonging, the actions of migrants and minorities are major examples of dialogic imaginative ways of life and everyday cosmopolitanism. We normally only look at the transnationalizaton of capital and not so much at more restricted transnationalization of cheap labour.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n \r\n

As Saskia Sassen (2000) has shown, there are combined strategies of relocation to the periphery and the use of immigrant, ethnic and female labour pools in highly segmented labour markets in the core. So, to discover a kind of transnational anomie as a source of social action and capital might, indeed, be a paradoxical discovery to be made by the salutary experience of migrants and their dramatically disadvantaged situation. Not mobility but the transformation of localities itself is the key impact of cultural globalization. The idea of de-territorialization is of major importance. It means: loosening and transforming the ties of culture to place. It thus becomes possible, for people who live isolated from their neighbours in one place simultaneously to be tied into dense networks stretching across continents. In other words: the sphere of experience, in which we inhabit globally networked life- worlds, is glocal, has become a synthesis of home and non-place, a nowhere place. So the other side of de-territorialization is cosmopolitanization: the digital cosmopolitan architecture of the most local and private centres of everyday life. A cosmopolitan sociology should investigate not only presence and absence, but also \u2017<\/span>imagined presence<\/em>\u2018 (Urry 2000).<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nIdentity<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

This has important consequences for identity: not all, but an increasing number of people nowadays trade internationally, work internationally, love internationally, marry internationally, do research internationally, and their children are growing up and are being educated internationally. These children are not only bi-lingual; they move through the non-place of television and the Internet like fish through water. So why do we expect that political loyalties and identities will continue to be tied\u00a0exclusively to a nation? Two consequences of crucial importance: community life will no longer be determined solely or even primarily by location; and collective memory is losing its unity and integrity. Although, there has been a great deal of thought about the globalization of space and location, but much less has been discussed about the globalization of time and of memory (Levy and Sznaider 2001). The very suggestiveness of transnational socioscapes, networks and identities, to some extent, pushes aside the political economy of time-space compression and gives the misleading impression that everyone can take equal advantage of mobility and modern communications, and that transnationality has been liberating for all people (Beck 2003).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Instead, a cosmopolitan sociology has to ask: what are the mechanisms of power that enable the mobility as well as the relocation of diverse populations within these emerging cosmopolitan social structures? How are cultural flows and the dialogic imagination conditioned and shaped within the new forms of production and global inequalities?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Production Paradigm<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Methodological nationalism corresponds to the specific interrelationship between production, social classes, \u00a0political \u00a0power \u00a0and \u00a0territoriality. \u00a0The \u2017third \u00a0wave\u2018 \u00a0technology \u00a0undermines \u00a0this \u00a0historic territoriality: Territoriality and production are no longer bound together. What is involved here is a paradigm shift from territorial production, which was oriented towards a local or national market, to de-territorialized forms of production, which are oriented towards several national markets or the world market (Beck 2002). The market has become transnational, along with the companies. Consequently this globalization of trade is not restricted to flows of goods and capital, but includes the globalization of decision-making frames. \u2017International\u2018 trade is being transformed into \u2017intra- firm trade\u2018, in which nothing is bought or sold, but, rather, products are pushed back and forth within a \u2017firm\u2018 operating transnationally.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Class and Power\u2017Class\u2018 or \u2017social strata\u2018 are still located, researched, organized within the nation-state paradigm. This is becoming ever more unreal for a number of reasons, not least because, within <\/em>all sections and sectors of nation-state institutions and political and corporate organizations, new kinds of splits are emerging between active globalizers, who act transnationally and nationally at the same time, and those taking up a national position against transnationality, who act only in the national frame. So de- territorialized \u2017class struggle\u2018 is at least a two-frames-of-reference game. The globalizers are located in a different frame of meaning than their counterparts. Who and where are the workers whom the globalizing \u00a0managerial \u00a0class \u00a0has \u00a0to \u00a0refer \u00a0to \u00a0and \u00a0feel \u00a0responsible \u00a0for \u00a0as \u00a0\u2017their\u2018 \u00a0workers? \u00a0De-\u00a0territorialized capital and territorialized labour do not have a common frame of reference to be positioned in. In fact, which frame of reference \u2013 the national or the transnational \u2013 has to be adopted in the conflict is becoming a central issue of the conflict itself.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n3.1.5 Dilemmas of Cosmopolitanism\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Living in an age of side-effects, we have to ask very early: what are the unseen and unwanted consequences of the new rhetoric of \u2017global community\u2018, \u2017global governance\u2018 and \u2017cosmopolitan democracy\u2018? What are the risks if the cosmopolitan mission succeeds?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Universalist\u2013pluralist Dilemma<\/strong>: <\/em>The most significant question in this regard is that if there is a single <\/em>cosmopolitanism or several <\/em>cosmopolitanisms? Universalist cosmopolitanism, that dream of \u2017a worldwide community of humankind\u2018, as Immanuel Kant, but also Karl Popper and many others, dreamed it, is open \u2013 like all other universalisms \u2013 to the accusation of imperialism (Hacohen 1999). There is not one language of cosmopolitanism, but many languages, tongues, grammars. The emerging significance of cosmopolitanism is about a plurality of antagonisms and differences. Cosmopolitanism, indeed, is another word for disputing about cosmopolitanisms. But where there are many cosmopolitanisms - perhaps none is left, because there are no generalizable characteristics which allow it to be clearly distinguished, for example, from multiculturalism.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nThe concept of dialogic imagination is important in this case to investigate the issue of universalism- pluralism, as it suggests:\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\na.\u00a0 the clash of cultures within one\u2018s own life;\r\n\r\nb.\u00a0 globally shared collective futures (as opposed to past-based forms of action);\r\n\r\nc.\u00a0 a sense of global responsibility in a world risk society, in which there are \u2017no others<\/em>\u2018;\r\n\r\nd.\u00a0 a commitment to dialogue and against violence; and\r\n\r\ne.\u00a0 a commitment to destroy faith in the supposedly natural artifice <\/em>of \u2017society\u2018 and stimulate\r\n\r\nthe self-reflexivity of divergent entangled cosmopolitan modernities.\r\n\r\n \r\n

To sum up, three characteristics, globality, plurality and civility, that is, the awareness of a global sphere of responsibility, the acknowledgement of the otherness of others and non-violence are as defining features of a \u2017de-territorialized\u2018 concept of cosmopolitanism.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Ethnic Dilemma<\/em><\/strong>: The basic values of these cosmopolitanisms appeal to a higher amorality. This denies a belief in the superiority of (one\u2018s own) morality and provides an encouragement no longer to damn those with other beliefs and opinions (while not forcing anyone to love mankind). All attempts to open up the ethnic ghetto, to play down or extinguish ethnicity and racism, only appear to reinforce them. Indeed, to feel oneself as part of a cosmopolitan community and to declare one\u2018s position publicly can be turned into its opposite by others\u2018 violent ethnic definitions of what is alien.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Global\u2013local Dilemma<\/em><\/strong>: Cosmopolitanisms throw up the diaspora question \u2013 how will being-at-home far away, being-at-home without being-at- home, be possible? This question has often been misunderstood in such a way that social tension and division arise between cosmopolitans <\/em>and locals<\/em>. The former are rooted in no <\/em>place, the latter in one <\/em>place. But as John Tomlinson (1999) argues, the cosmopolitan cannot be opposed to the local in terms of ideal types. Cosmopolitan forms of life and identities are ones that are ethically and culturally simultaneously <\/em>global and local. They symbolize an\u2017ethical glocalism\u2018 or a rooted cosmopolitanism (Beck 2002b). The difference between purely local and cosmopolitan forms of life is that cosmopolitans experience and \u2013 if necessary \u2013 defend their place as one open to the world.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

M<\/em>ulticultural Dilemma<\/em>:<\/strong> What \u00a0distinguishes\u00a0 the world\u00a0 of ideas \u00a0of cosmopolitanism from that \u00a0of \u2017multiculturalism\u2018? Multiculturalism of a world of variety and of the principle of plurality, fosters a collective image of humanity in which the individual remains dependent on his cultural sphere. He (or she) is the product of the language, the traditions, the convictions, the customs and landscapes in which he came into the world and in which he grew up, so that this \u2017home-land\u2018 is regarded as a\u00a0closed, self-sufficient and sacrosanct unity, which must be protected against every possible threat. In this sense, multiculturalism is at loggerheads with individualization (Beck 2002). According to the multicultural premise, the individual does not exist. He is a mere epiphenomenon of his culture. Cosmopolitanism argues the reverse and <\/span>presuppose<\/em>s individualization. The idea that this process could continue to the point where, under the banner of political democracy and of the recognition of human rights and of individual freedom, national particularisms dissolve into a comprehensive and varied world civilization, has perhaps become a little more tangible since the end of the Cold War.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Constructivism\u2013Realism Dilemma<\/em><\/strong>: \u2017Cosmopolitan perspective\u2018 is an anti-essentialist perspective. The conception of cultures as homogeneous unities of language, origin and political identity, as maintained by methodological nationalism, is the exact opposite of the cosmopolitan self-conception. Characteristic of the latter are concepts like transnational, transcultural, hybrid, diaspora, etc. In other words: the fundamental conviction of constructivism \u2013 the idea, that collective identities are historically invented and constructed imagined communities \u2013 is central. This compels a rigorous anti- essentialism without a privileged link to ethnicity, gender, class or cultural tradition. However \u2013 whether intended or not \u2013 by simply talking about \u2017Blacks\u2018, \u2017Jews\u2018, etc. a residual essentialism or \u2017as- if essentialism\u2018 inevitably slips in. In the current climate of prescriptive anti-essentialism, this dilemma cannot be easily resolved.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

International Law\u2013Human Rights Dilemma<\/em><\/strong>: Human rights, which are also asserted in international law i.e. against the sovereignty of individual states, are a kind of civil religion of modern cosmopolitanism. On the other hand, this transnational humanism can easily turn into a military humanism<\/em>, \u00a0which \u00a0not \u00a0only \u00a0provides \u00a0the \u00a0Western \u00a0nations \u00a0and \u00a0Allied \u00a0states \u00a0with \u00a0a \u00a0kind \u00a0of cosmopolitan mission\u2018, also with legitimation for military crusades under the banner of human rights. This dilemma can ultimately be resolved in the spirit of Kant by a transnational legal order, which, among other things, excludes the possibility of interventions being decided and carried out unilaterally by the hegemonic military power and its allies.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n3.2 Risk Society\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

The concept of cosmopolitan theory and cosmopolitan society remains incomplete without any reference to another crucial and closely-related concept of Beck i.e. \u2017Risk Society\u2018. The term was coined by Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens during the 1980s. According to them, traditional industrial class structure of modern society is breaking apart. Globalization creates risks that concerns people from all different classes; for example, radioactivity, pollution, and even unemployment. Under such circumstance, Beck points out that risks are also socially constructive and some risks are perceived as more dangerous because they are discussed in mass media more frequently, such as terrorism. Risk society leads to analysis of risks, causing prejudgment.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The concept of risk is a modern one. It presupposes decisions that attempt to make the unforeseeable consequences of civilizational decisions foreseeable and controllable. The novelty of the risk society lies in the fact that our civilizational decisions involve global consequences and dangers, and these radically contradict the institutionalized language of control that is radiated to the global public in the event of catastrophe (as in Chernobyl, and also in the terror attacks on New York and Washington). Precisely this constitutes the political <\/em>explosiveness of the risk society. This explosiveness has its centre in the mass mediated public sphere, in politics, in the bureaucracy, in the economy, though it is not necessarily contiguous with a particular event to which it is connected. The other side of the admitted presence of danger is the failure of the institutions that derive their authority from their purported mastery of such danger. In this way, the \u2017social birth\u2018 of a global danger is as much unlikely as it is a dramatic, indeed traumatic, world-shattering one. In this regard, Beck insists upon a term global risk society\u2018. The term global risk society\u2018 (Beck 2002) should not be confused with a homogenization of the world, because all regions and cultures are not equally affected by a uniform set of non-quantifiable, uncontrollable risks in the areas of ecology, economy, and terrorist networks. On the contrary, global risks are per se unequally distributed. They unfold in different ways in every\u00a0concrete context, mediated by different historical backgrounds, cultural and political patterns. In the so-called periphery, global risks appear not as an endogenous process, which can be fought by means of autonomous national decision-making, but rather as an exogenous process that is propelled by decisions made in other countries, especially in the centre.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n4\u00a0 Criticisms of Cosmopolitan Theory\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Cosmopolitan theory seeks to undermine the development of three crucial concepts of modern times \u2013 nationalism, globalism and democratic authoritarianism.\u00a0detraditionalization\u2018.<\/span>Beck\u2018s view of \u2017cosmopolitan society\u2018 is essentially catastrophic; we are living on the \u2017volcano of civilization\u2018 in which exceptional conditions threaten to become the norm \u2014 it is as if Chernobyl, or perhaps a worst-case scenario of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the UK, exemplifies his understanding of cosmopolitanism. Beck talks of a catastrophic cosmopolitan society in which the scale and magnitude of the risks are such that civilization is permanently and seemingly ineluctably under threat. Beck has strong grounds to warrant his chosen focus of concern, but is this sufficient to recast our view of society? To put it another way, is it not also the case that environmental problems and other impending dooms encompass less than the globally catastrophic? Those more mundane, low level, small-scale, local and less than life-threatening concerns are also very much the stuff of environmental discourse. This more quotidian involvement with the environment, and its perpetual representation within, indicates a more complex and nuanced relationship between people and Beck\u2018s idea of civilization of threat. This point is in sympathy with Lash and Urry\u2018s championing of their view of \u2017aesthetic reflexivity (Lash and Urry 1994). Though certainly under-researched, the role of local media in environmental communication and involvement within local processes of environmental awareness and concern suggests that people may be responding to Beck\u2018s \u2017civilization of threat\u2018 in more complex, and possibly locally and culturally contingent ways (Burgess 1990). This is not to say, however, that Beck fails to acknowledge the geographical reach \u2014 from the local to the global \u2014 of the mass media or, following his interest in overarching themes of \u2017individualization\u2018 and<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n5 Conclusion\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Beck\u2018s novelty lies in his conceptual innovation and linkages. According to him, there are three concepts that undermine the importance of \u2017cosmopolitan theory\u2018. He calls them the \u2017enemies of cosmopolitanism\u2018.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nNationalism\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

If the nation-state paradigm of societies is breaking up from the inside, then that leaves a space for the renaissance and renewal of all kinds of cultural, political and religious movements. What has to be understood, above all, is the ethnic globalization paradox<\/em>. At a time when the world is growing closer together and becoming more cosmopolitan, in which, therefore, the borders and barriers between nations and ethnic groups are being lifted, ethnic identities and divisions are becoming stronger once again. In every corner of the world ethnic groups are fighting for recognition of the \u2017right to self- determination\u2018 (Beck 2002). It must also be added that globophobia, whatever the specific motivation, is ultimately grist to the mill of ethnic reaction. Beyond the revived \u2017old\u2018 nationalism there can also be observed worldwide, something approaching a postmodern romance in the treatment of nationalist and ethnic ideas and ideologies. <\/em>This has its origin in the identity politics espoused by various minorities in the United States \u2013 blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, etc. Noteworthy is the postmodernity of this identity construction: relativism and fundamentalism \u2013 which would appear to be mutually exclusive \u2013 are combined. It is assumed, for example, that only <\/em>the members of a minority group can know the \u2017truth\u2018 about the group, that is, know about the oppression suffered. Only those who belong have, given their origin, privileged access to what constitutes the cultural and\u00a0political identity of this group. In this way, on the one hand, a postmodern relativism is asserted, namely, that a specific history of oppression is the property of those who \u2017belong\u2018 by virtue of skin colour, gender, etc. On the other, this truth, inaccessible to outsiders, is fundamental and determines the cultural and political existence of every individual.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nGlobalism<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Cosmopolitan theory does not consider the importance of technological revolution that has been happening worldwide. In order for markets to function, now and in the future, computers and all kinds of communications and information technologies must reshape the economic landscape (Beck 2002). An unintended side-effect of this development is the erosion of state control of information and the empowerment of citizens. This in turn forces governments, which want economic growth and affluence, to tolerate, sooner or later, political freedoms. This evolutionary optimism flies in the face of the facts: first of all, another reminder of the continuing importance \u2013 indeed return \u2013 of nationalism and of ethnic movements of self-determination. But historical experience also speaks against it. There is a noteworthy difference between the ideologies of the 20th century \u2013 socialism, Fascism, Communism \u2013 and the ideology of globalism, which is dominant today. The former possessed an inspirational force, which globalism lacks. This is an ideology which does not motivate and mobilize the masses.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Democratic AuthoritarianismIt would be a serious mistake to underestimate the degree to which the modern state has been weakened with respect to its material room for manoeuvre and its democratic qualities, but at the same time has been newly empowered with respect to authoritarian possibilities of action. The potential \u00a0for \u00a0achieving consensus \u00a0in a \u00a0democratic \u00a0manner \u00a0is \u00a0diminishing. \u00a0However, \u00a0the state\u2018s capacity to enforce decisions \u2013 the combined operation of force, law and information technological control internally <\/em>\u2013 is being modernized and increased. In other words, it has become possible to compensate for the loss of democratic power by authoritarian means \u2013 while preserving the democratic facade. That is what is meant by democratic authoritarianism (Beck 2003). The political seductiveness \u00a0of this democratic authoritarianism is\u00a0 due to its compatibility with modernization.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Globalization transforms politics and democracy into zombies \u2013 why keep on whining about cosmopolitan democracy? Morality is determined by the technologically possible. Not the other way round. This kind of realism eases the pangs of conscience. In the wake of the gold rush mood, stimulated, for example, by developments in human genetics, the burden of proof is reversed as if it were the most natural thing in the world: remaining moral scruples have to justify themselves and not the loss of moral inhibitions.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The combination of ethnic nationalism and democratic authoritarianism adds up to a severe attack on liberty. A politics must be invented for the Global Age, which is a challenge for political theory and, in pragmatic terms, for political organization as well. \u2017The Communist Manifesto\u2018 was published 150 years ago. Today, at the beginning of a new millennium, it is time for a \u2017Cosmopolitan Manifesto\u2018 (Beck 1998).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The key idea for a \u2017Cosmopolitan Manifesto\u2018 is: we live in an age that is at once global, individualistic and more moral than we suppose. Now we must unite to create an effective cosmopolitan world politics. There is a new dialectic of global and local questions, which do not fit in to national politics; but only in a transnational framework can they be properly posed, debated and resolved. For this there has to be reinvention of politics, a founding and grounding of the new political subject: that is \u2013 cosmopolitan parties. These represent transnational interests transnationally, but also work within the arenas of national politics. They thus become possible, both pragmatically and organizationally, only as national-global movements and cosmopolitan parties.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

To conclude, Beck delineates four tasks that need to be accomplished to take the theory of cosmopolitanism forward:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

    \r\n \t
  1. Revealing and naming the forms and strategies used to render cosmopolitan realities visible.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Criticising national circularities i.e. uncovering the fact that neither the nationalization nor the ethnicization of negotiation perspectives can justify the methodological nationalism of the social sciences (Beck 2006).<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Overcoming the ahistorical perpetuation of social science concepts and research routines by fostering the creation of alternative concepts and research strategies.<\/li>\r\n \t
  4. Stimulating and \u00a0contributing \u00a0to \u00a0the \u00a0re-imagination \u00a0of \u00a0the \u00a0political \u00a0i.e.\u00a0\u00a0 making \u00a0and experimenting with the difference between the national viewpoint of political actors and the cosmopolitan perspective of the political and social sciences<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

    6\u00a0 Summary<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n