Introduction

The cosmopolitan approach is both analytical and normative; it is a statement and an aspiration, a fact and a moral concern (Holton 2009). Authors use “cosmopolitanism” as both a descriptive and a prescriptive term (Roudometof 2005). Instead of arguing for or against cosmopolitanism, we propose the use of cosmopolitanism as a specific perspective from which to understand the transnational processes shaping a global society which requires a new sociological perspective: a cosmopolitan sociology . Consequently, the question addressed in this chapter is both general and specific. It is general because it inevitably covers a number of commonalities that are shared by authors who are actively engaged in promoting cosmopolitanism as a sociological tool. It is specific because we attempt to show that there is some credibility to the view that cosmopolitan sociology is a heuristic way to understand how human individuals, communities and institutions relate to globality and its outcomes (Cotesta et al. 2013). There is certainly a revived interest in cosmopolitanism today. However, powerful and compelling as it is, the notion of cosmopolitanism should be approached with care lest it turn into an autopoietic narrative, separated from empirical evidence. Cosmopolitanism invites more controversy than consensus (Skrbis and Woodward 2013) and, even for sympathetic souls, it “poses a congeries of paradoxes” (Appiah 2006: 214).

This chapter starts from the idea that “the economic definition of globalization cannot explain why a New Haven electrician cares about the Brazilian rainforest, or how the global consciousness of this problem was born” (Chanda 2007: 9). The cosmopolitan sociology proposed here makes this reflection its own. It has at its disposal a certain number of tools, some of which have been borrowed from global studies, with which to understand the central process of our time: the fact that the fate of each person on the planet is associated with that of others, regardless of their native countries or places of residence. This approach therefore includes (1) global cultural dynamics leading to a conception of a common and pluralistic world; (2) the growing need for supranational institutions and bodies for global risk regulation; and (3) the equivocal and conflicting daily experiences of interdependence between societies.

The Ebbs and Flows of Cosmopolitanism

Set against the naïve concept of cosmopolitism as a new golden age of an open and boundless world, we abandon the idea that the path to cosmopolitanism is linear and irreversible. No-one can imagine, however, that cosmopolitanism will completely disappear from our horizon of expectation; its cyclical history proves it to be one of humanity’s long-lasting dreams. Cosmopolitanism is strongly connected to globalization: whether we like it or not, our lives are globalized to a high degree (Beck 2006; Cotesta 2012). It has been argued that globalization is a prerequisite for the emergence of cosmopolitan consciousness. Indeed, a society can be affected by globalization without being itself cosmopolitan. Even before globalization existed, as we conceive it today, certain philosophers and writers wanted to believe in universalism (Kleingeld and Brown 2006). While globalization and cosmopolitanism have historical links, they are conceptually different (Roudometof 2005). Globalization does not necessarily engender the spread of cosmopolitan attitudes, orientations and behaviors in our societies. While our reality is global, our world is not entirely cosmopolitan.

Our contemporary world is plural and shared: diversity is glorified more than ever, while humanity now shares an ever-growing number of imaginaries and cultural products. Our world is therefore characterized by broad cultural diversity , as well as by some partly shared iconographies and narratives (Cicchelli 2016). Instead of disappearing, as some scholars (Friedman 2005) have mistakenly claimed, boundaries are being reframed by the processes of globalization. In some cases, the cultural boundaries that serve to define and unite identities , social groups and communities are blurring together, becoming open and porous; in other cases, however, they are becoming increasingly closed and rigid.

People seem more open-minded and increasingly sympathetic to cultural differences and “Otherness”, and, at the same time, more closed-minded and even hostile towards living in multicultural societies. There is a disjunction between the consumption of global cultural experiences that provide exotic resources with which we can enrich and diversify ourselves, our lifestyles and self-presentations, and enhance our willingness to take moral responsibility for people far away (Kennedy 2010). While young people tend to be generally more open-minded, especially students and the upper-middle classes (Cicchelli 2012; Cicchelli and Octobre 2017), neo-populist trends of local closure and xenophobic fear of different peoples and cultures have found renewed traction among political entrepreneurs in several western democracies (Martinelli 2005). The popularity of neo-populism is indeed growing. Many populistic and xenophobic political parties have taken advantage of the crises that have recently impacted European societies to disseminate an identity-based conception of culture and nation. While some transnational phenomena encourage openness of boundaries, we are witnessing the return of the nation and the rise of xenophobic feelings and discourse, as shown by the return of antisemitism, the upsurge of Islamophobia and the rejection of immigration.

This should come as no surprise, since globalization is a mechanism that produces interdependencies between societies and favors integration as well as fragmentation, inclusion as well as exclusion. It is now well-known that large-scale transnational processes provide those who are mobile with a many opportunities for empowerment, but that among those who are not mobile, they can generate new inequalities, frustrations and forms of disillusionment or uprooting (Castells 2009). Those who perceive themselves as “losers” in the global economic competition, being excluded from wealth distribution, are often tempted to identity closure as a fallback position. It is therefore imperative to explore the contours of cultural boundaries as they open and close. This is the main contribution of cosmopolitan sociology, which operates from a perspective that cannot be defined just as idealistic and utopian or elitist and ideological.

Who is Afraid of Cosmopolitanism?

There are four major uses of cosmopolitanism in contemporary public discourse (Cicchelli 2016).

The first use is associated with some major brands of clothing and other consumer products, the so-called “global brands”. Through the influence and appeal of the international fashion and appliance industries, and through the massive flow of cultural products, the aim is to promote a certain lifestyle, especially among the middle and upper classes, in order to encourage their consumption of products.

A second use for cosmopolitanism is as a designation of the way of life of the “great minds”—intellectuals, scholars and polyglots—living in open, international circles of travelers who have traversed the roads of the world. Sometimes, this also applies to individuals who have experienced (possibly painful) exile or expatriation (Lapierre 2006).

The third use of cosmopolitanism is in publications and blogs of the political far right. In these pamphlets, cosmopolitanism is accused of threatening the very existence of European civilization, as it incorporates the principle of universal non-differentiation.

In the fourth usage—found on the far left—the discourse on cosmopolitanism centers on criticism of domination by the global elites. This domination is supposed to guarantee a world governance, which would take up the imperialist logic of yesteryear, adapted to the contemporary global society, insofar as these elites escape the counteraction of national powers.

In all four cases, what is really at stake is the idea that people have of globalization, as they are brought into contact with cultural differences, whether it may open, destroy or displace boundaries of various kinds (economic, social, cultural, psychic). In the first case given above, globalization is seen as a great opportunity to create a global market of billions of consumers of culturalized or deculturalized products, as the case may be. In the second case, globalization allows people, especially urban citizens, to build an universalistic relationship with Otherness, even going so far as to live together in culturally heterogeneous spaces. In the third case, globalization is seen as a Leviathan, a monster that would swallow up all local cultures through random and unplanned mixing as a result of transnational processes, notably through immigration but also through the homogenization of cultural industries—processes that must be fought in order to defend national sovereignty and identity . ‘Otherness’ here is considered threatening. In the fourth case, the disappearance of borders is not, in itself, seen as negative, but seems to be associated more with the deregulation of markets and the creation of new forms of inequality and domination than with an excessive focus on issues related to cultural diversity (Michaels 2006).

Thus, the thurifers of cosmopolitanism, feeling cramped in their most immediate social circles, often blame those who fight against it out of fear of seeing their identity lost and their cultural roots cut off and because they feel a form of dizziness in a world becoming too big for comfort. Parochialists, clinging to their local identities, gladly attribute to the cosmopolitans a lack of loyalty to the most local dimensions of their daily lives. The former suffer from claustrophobia, the latter from agoraphobia.

In this chapter we wish to go further than the binary opposition that structures public debates. First, because this opposition is based on a misunderstanding of what cosmopolitism is—we can cross borders without losing our roots, just as we can profess ourselves to be cosmopolitan while retaining a strong cultural anchorage (Appiah 2006). The horizon of the cosmopolitan is defined first and foremost as the “terrestrial universum” (Coulmas 1995: 11), but the tension of attraction towards the ultimate circle of sociality, humanity (Simmel 1999), does not necessarily lead to the negation of manners, cultures or particular identities . As Pascal Bruckner puts it in Le vertige de Babel (2000), between those who barricade themselves in a national identity and those who aspire only to the open sea, cosmopolitanism is a cross fertilization between the universal and the root.

A Cosmopolitan Turn

The current revival of interest in cosmopolitanism has provided a promising new framework for understanding global interconnectedness across various cultural, political and social realms. Ulrich Beck (2006) considers cosmopolitanism to be the most powerful idea of the twenty-first century, designed to provide a new understanding of globalization and its limits: on one hand, because of the intermingling of cultures and identities that is shaping the lives of contemporary individuals, and, on the other, because of the need for a global response by international regulatory organizations to current global risks . The value of a cosmopolitan outlook lies in taking advantage of global interconnectedness and going beyond general global studies by using a specific approach. As “the ‘global other’ is in our midst, mixing the ‘native’ with the ‘foreign’” (Beck and Grande 2010: 417), a cosmopolitan approach must be based on how Otherness, plurality and boundaries are handled by individuals, groups and institutions.

Hence we must use the appropriate methodological tools to determine when the cultural distance between the Ego and the Other becomes relevant, and we must also assess how boundaries between groups of people become more porous or more rigid. More precisely, the process of building a cosmopolitan relationship with the world necessitates studying (1) the place of the Other in contemporary identities and the management of plurality and cultural diversity ; and (2) the inscription of one’s own belonging into a broader horizon and the recognition of the self in a common humanity.

The scientific literature establishes cosmopolitanism with regard to the dialectic between universalism and particularism in order to differentiate the cosmopolitan turn from other trending perspectives dealing with cultural diversity and alterity. In this vein, universalism should be seen as a key analytical presupposition rather than as an “externally imposed normative outcome” of cosmopolitan approaches (Chernilo 2012: 47) or as synonymous with the most European universalizing pretensions. As an engaged project, cosmopolitanism pits itself against all iteratively regenerated forces of exclusion, including those that re-appear under the aegis of respect for difference (Fine 2003): “Cosmopolitanism emphasizes human unity as well as cultural particularities” (Antweiler 2012: 7). This perspective conveys universal concern and respect for legitimate difference, an attitude of openness and responsibility towards the plurality of humanity, the fundamental tension between moral obligations to one’s local origins and to the rest of the world. Insofar as the basic presupposition of a cosmopolitan perspective is that “the human species can be understood only if it is treated as a single subject, within which all forms of difference are recognized and respected but conceptualized as internal to the substantive unity of all human beings” (Fine 2007: X), combining the universal and the particular is indisputably the task of any cosmopolitan analysis (Cotesta 2012).

When correctly understood, universalism plays the role of an intellectual resource which, far from being opposed to the identification of specificities and particularities, creates the very framework that makes such recognition acceptable and possible (Chernilo 2012: 57). A defense of cosmopolitanism entails both a recognition of Otherness and the non-dissolution of difference into universality (Beck 2007).

Three Scales of Analysis

A cosmopolitan sociology —understood as a specific approach to globalization—should consider three different scales of observations. The first involves the analysis of the dynamics relating to the advent of a common world and an awareness of globality. This scale of observation is based on the idea that the study of the phenomena of globalization cannot be separated from that of cultural dynamics. The second scale examines the advent of post-national modes of governance of global risks , with questions regarding human rights , citizenship and cosmopolitan democracies. The analysis here centers on the operation of the supranational institutions (United Nations [UN], European Union [EU], International Monetary Fund [IMF], World Bank, International Criminal Court, European Court of Human Rights, and so on). The third scale aims to understand how individuals live in a global world, how they experience it, how they act in this world. The emphasis here is on following the outline of people’s relations with others in contemporary societies, characterized by permanent contacts with various forms of Otherness as well as by the multiplicity of cultural and identity references.

The Cosmopolitan Dynamics of Culture

On a large scale, cosmopolitan sociology should start with the analysis of cultural dynamics, which may arise from the axiom that Malcolm Waters (1995) proposes for global studies: unlike material exchanges that locate or political exchanges that internationalize, symbolic and cultural exchanges are the first to become global. Even if this theorem is difficult to implement empirically (Pieterse 2009), it nevertheless recalls the strength of non-economic dimensions in the dynamics of globalization, and it opens the way to considering the role that these dimensions have played in the design of a world both as unity and as plurality. There are even more radical versions of this approach, which contend that all of the elements that contribute to unifying the world, including at its infrastructural level, have a profoundly cultural nature (Lechner and Boli 2005). Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) studies on cultural dimensions, both symbolic and material, describe globalization as the result of interactions between different flows (or “scapes”) in which culture plays a key role. Among the five scapes he distinguishes, three have a cultural nature: mediascapes (flows of information through media, such as television or the Internet), ethnoscapes (flows of individuals through immigration, tourism and other forms of mobility) and ideoscapes (flows of ideas conveyed through consumption, the market, democracy or human rights ). Following Appadurai’s perspective, one can call the symbolic and material dimensions that compose the nature of cosmopolitanism the “cosmoscape” (Kendall et al. 2009). The flow of objects, images, practices and ideas circulating through global networks creates these scapes, which may contribute to the emergence of a cosmopolitan consciousness and eventually the building of a cosmopolitan stance.

The cosmopolitan dynamic of culture first relies on global flows of cultural contents. Indeed, through cultural flows, an ever-growing number of people are exposed to the same news broadcasts by global media networks (for example, CNN, Fox News, Euronews, Al Jazeera and BBC World); they listen to the same music, watch the same movies; they experience emotions together. Big sporting events (for example, the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup and the Rugby World Cup), wars and natural disasters (the Gulf War, the Rwandan genocide, 9/11, the Iraq War, tsunamis and earthquakes), or deaths of politicians or celebrities, sometimes sudden or premature (John Fitzgerald Kennedy, John Lennon, Diana, Princess of Wales, Michael Jackson or, Nelson Mandela), all of which trigger intense emotions, bring people together and can lead to international solidarity. Social network sites (for example, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Renren) allow individuals to get in touch “virtually” and create a world of “friends”. Moreover, the Internet provides every individual with the ability to display, share and/or modify content (news, comments, cultural content) on a worldwide scale.

But the cosmopolitan dynamic of culture also relies on imaginaries of the world. Since one cannot see the universe, the world or humanity in its entirety, the perspective of a cosmopolitan world is not “one of perceptual experience but of the imagination” (Cheah 2012: 138). In this vein, world literature, hit music, blockbuster movies, famous television series, documentaries and news broadcasts contribute to shaping our image of the world. If humans are unable to embrace, physically, more than a tiny part of their earthly planet, in their imaginations they can grasp the whole (Cosgrove 2001), and they find resources for doing so in cultural flows. For example, via pictures of the Earth taken from space and documentaries on the impact of human activities on the natural world (concerning, for example, endangered species, deforestation or the melting of glaciers) (Szerszynski and Urry 2006), we familiarize ourselves with global risks such as climate change and build a sense of common belonging that encompasses all the inhabitants of the Earth, particularly discernible during worldwide events such as “Earth Hour”. Imaginary also plays a huge role in diffusing the conception of the world as a plurality, especially in the case of cultural products, displaying soft power (Iwabuchi 2002). Asian cinema provides a relevant example, constituting an alternative mode of cinematic representation of geopolitics (Teo 2010), as it utilizes transcultural techniques of film expression and targets global audiences, aiming at featuring new narratives about countries and people—as is apparent in the recent American Chinese movie The Great Wall (2017). However, these films demand greater awareness, on the part of global audiences, of their material content, in particular the local substance which is far less familiar to them. It is in the interchange between the local and the global, between Hollywood and Bollywood, that film strives for universality (Teo 2010).

Shaped by these strong transnational interconnections, the concept of the planet as a singular unity is reinforced. But even so, we do not live in a “flat” world, as was wrongly proclaimed by compassionate flatists (Friedman 2005). First, inequalities are still affecting “individuals and families at one end of a continuum that has communities and regions at its other end” (De Blij 2009: 4). Disparities are so evident that “no flat-world or melting-pot postulations can wish them away. These differences reflect a still-pervasive power of place” (idem). Second, the global society is still made up of a great variety of languages, ethnicities, national identities , religions and civilizations. Far from eradicating cultural diversity —and as paradoxical as it might seem—the processes of globalization have even enhanced it (Tomlinson 2007b). Whatever the reasons for it might be—protection of an established cultural identity , promotion of a new cultural product or re-invention of traditions—we are witnessing both a lasting and increasing cultural differentiation. For the advocates of perduring identities, both hopes and fears of cultural convergence are exaggerated: “societies continue to display the deep-rooted imprint of cultural differences which have persisted from centuries earlier” (Norris and Inglehart 2012: 167). Other academics insist that, in a global society, cultural differences are omnipresent because they take the form of processes of cross-fertilization, mixing or hybridization across locations and identities—what Jan Nederveen Pieterse has called “global mélange” or “translocal mélange cultures” (2009: 4). Consequently, and contrary to Régis Debray’s fears (2010), it is quite unlikely that plurality, this major feature of the cosmopolitan world, will vanish in the future.

Along with the persistence of cultural diversity comes confrontation with alterity. Transnational processes are binding people together across borders more than in the past, confronting them with differences, whether ethnic, national, social, racial or gender based, and in an intersectional perspective. Because the planet now seems smaller, and the pervasiveness of global media and cultural industries is greater—what John Tomlinson has called “the global immediacy” (2007a)—sensitivity to cultural difference and diversity awareness is more acute. It is consequently true that the globalization of culture inevitably leads to increased contact with different forms and degrees of alterity. Intensifying worldwide interconnectedness means there are greater opportunities to access a wider range of consumer goods (be it high-tech products, songs, clothing or food), and more contact (albeit ephemeral) with cultures previously considered distant, exotic and peripheral. The pervasiveness of alterity is constantly experienced in our everyday lives. According to Zygmunt Bauman, this is why the fundamental question we are now confronted with is “how to live with alterity, daily and permanently” (Bauman 1997: 30). And this raises the issue of cosmopolitanism.

The Institutions of Cosmopolitanism

The cosmopolitan approach is based on the idea that globalization cannot be reduced to an economic phenomenon and to the domination of an increasingly financialized capitalism ; its analysis must not lead only to a simple criticism of neo-liberalism. Globalization is also a cultural phenomenon that deeply engages our relationship with the Other. This commitment is moral and ethical (Skrbis and Woodward 2013), and can be considered in two ways: through global governance and through the issue of human rights.

Throughout the centuries, political philosophers have debated the opportunity for and the possibility of organizing social life at a cosmopolitan level. On this point, cosmopolitan thought has undergone a deep change in the twentieth century, abandoning the detached ethos of the intellectuals and writers, i.e. the elite of the Republic of Letters, who saw themselves as the citizens of the world. Contemporary cosmopolitanism is characterized, rather, by the conscientious duty to give the global world the institutions that can govern it (Cheah 2006).

This posture is indistinguishable from a normative dimension, which is strongly present in cosmopolitan studies, whether it be in the establishment of supranational bodies of economic, political and legal regulation, or the wish for the advent of a cosmopolitan democracy and citizenship . Thus, institutional cosmopolitanism considers global society less as a fatality than as the outcome of processes that can and should be governed (Caselli 2012).

This posture presupposes a change of register: the relative exhaustion of the modes of action of the nation-state, particularly in the military, health and economic spheres, would result in an obligation to open up policy benchmarks on a scale that could never have been considered before globalization. Globalization raises the question of global governance , defined as a set of norms applying to the singular system that global society has become (Martinelli 2005). There is a discrepancy between the belief, in the foundations of political modernity, that nation-states are able to determine the future of national societies and the real and implacable constraints of the world economy, international law and military alliances which greatly reduce their leeway (Held 2005). In addition to the acceleration of interdependence, the appraisal of global institutions has been nourished by the strengthening of ethno-religious conflicts and the global extension of a sometimes unbridled financial capitalism (Kurasawa 2004).

While geopolitical relations between nation-states are still thought of in Westphalian terms, it seems to be of the utmost urgency that the international community of states should extend their development and become a cosmopolitan community of states and citizens of the world (Habermas 2012). The transfer of sovereignty from states to international bodies would therefore become necessary because of the systemic constraints of the global society. The power of international organizations would increase to the detriment of the democratic process that legitimates national states. Consequently, the only trustworthy and lasting alternative to the confiscation of national democracy by some supranational bodies would be to widen the democratic process beyond the borders of the old-fashioned nation-state (ibid.).

However, it is questionable whether systemic interdependencies necessarily lead to a feeling of requirement for international solidarity , and whether there are institutional actors able to realize this aspiration for global regulation and establish legal norms that can be universally accepted and shared.

The second ethical and moral perspective of cosmopolitanism concerns the question of human rights and their application to the test of multiple civilizations. Human rights are a fundamental element of cosmopolitanism, particularly with regard to the advent of universal citizenship (Fine 2007). As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights attests, the rights specified necessarily open up a cosmopolitan horizon. Moreover, they are resources through which to experience how far a world, crossed by conflicts of all kinds, can be inhabited and yet only thought of in terms of separations and partitioning. The progressive internationalization of human rights since the 1948 Declaration was not, however, synonymous with universalization, in the sense that the question of the universality of these rights would be undebated. At times and in certain places, these rights have been denounced as a structure of ethnocentrism and western imperialism, imposing foreign values, as objective truth, on cultures profoundly different from ours. Yet they are applied all over the world—whether in connection with Tiananmen Square, Tahrir Square or Habib Bourguiba Avenue—as a powerful tool against all forms of oppression and domination. If the universality of human rights can be questioned, they must, at least, be “universalizable” in order to be mobilized, in spite of the various trials they are subjected to. In the future, it will be necessary to examine how internationalization of such rights provokes their rejection (for example, in the name of “Asian values”) or their interpretation or reinterpretation in a culturally diverse world.

One may wonder what the purpose of formulating “human rights ” is. According to Jürgen Habermas (2012), in a highly stratified global society their role would not be limited to the moral critique of injustice. Human rights need institutional integration into a politically constituted global society. While human rights play a fundamental role in the establishment of a cosmopolitan democracy , they in return require the establishment of comprehensive institutions that can promote them.

The Socialization of the Cosmopolitan Individual

Another heuristic perspective of a cosmopolitan sociology focuses on understanding how people engage with globalization (Cicchelli 2014; Cicchelli and Octobre 2017). The impact of globalization on biographical trajectories, lifestyles, values, decisions and people’s everyday lives raises several challenging issues for social scientists. What are the links between feelings of national, transnational , local and global belonging ? What remains unknown in this new injunction to accept cultural differences in the construction of one’s own identity ? Above all, what characterizes the experience of the relationship between Self and Other in a plural world and is it a learning experience?

The most common view concerning cosmopolitanism is related to mobility. The cosmopolitan citizen is often described as a highly open-minded person who delights in and desires to consume difference, especially through international mobility, border-crossing experiences or other kinds of transnational social relations (Hannerz 1990). It is precisely through “mobility, reflexivity and an insatiable curiosity toward other cultures that this cosmopolitan acquires the competence to navigate in an increasingly diverse and hybridized global context” (Germann Molz 2005: 519). On this point, academic discourse on cosmopolitanism is often ambivalent. The cosmopolitan figure is often negatively identified with the privileged mobile elite, whose cultural curiosity reflects a lack of obligation to any community as well as a shallow concern for humanity and global issues, making them the “winners” of global competition (Calhoun 2003). Fingers are pointed at people that “embody a discredited Eurocentric and liberal ideology in a new and newly-dangerous guise” (Will 2010). The cosmopolitan figure is also seen as a mobile “voyeur”, a “parasite” or a “cultural tourist” in the “restless pursuit of experience, aesthetic sensations and novelty, over duties, obligations and social bonds” (Featherstone 2002: 1). This perspective brings to our attention the problems of reducing the analysis of cosmopolitan socialization to international mobility and highbrow culture and to members of the upper classes, and leaves aside forced emigration due to economic or political hardship among poor and/or poorly educated groups. We shall, instead, open up the analysis to include the cosmopolitanism of non-travelers (Woodward et al. 2008), lowbrow culture and members of the lower classes.

According to other research (Kendall et al. 2009), cosmopolitanism can be grasped through “ordinary”, “banal” and “everyday” behaviors among individuals who have not traveled much during their lives. Universalistic accounts have been discerned in interviews with people of the working class (Lamont and Aksartova 2002). Investigating cosmopolitanism from the perspective of individual awareness means looking at cosmopolitanism “on the ground”, as action and attitude, considering, instead of archetypal cosmopolitans (such as global business elites, refugees , expatriates, cultural connoisseurs or experts), ordinary people when they engage in ordinary cultural activities (Cicchelli and Octobre 2017). This approach, which aims to analyze varieties of cosmopolitan practices and degrees of being cosmopolitan, among ordinary people in our globalized societies sheds light on the everyday cosmopolitan socialization.

Cosmopolitan socialization is an on-going learning process, experienced by individuals regarding the transnational aspects of the world, during which they learn—or refuse—to include various forms of sociocultural proximities with the Other (Cicchelli 2016). It would be misleading to conceive of a coherently cosmopolitan socialization: it can in fact be fragile, reversible or even incoherent. It seems valuable to distinguish four forms of understanding and handling Otherness (Cicchelli 2016): aesthetic (tastes of the Other), cultural (understanding of the Other), ethical (concern for the Other) and political (living with the Other). All of these are outcomes of encounters with cultural differences and imply negotiation with plurality and reshaping of the relationship to Otherness. They function analytically at different levels. The first two forms refer especially to the plurality of the world, the others particularly to the question of a common humanity. There can be disjunctures between these four orientations of cosmopolitanism: a person may like Japanese manga, eat couscous and travel abroad while being racist and voting for a xenophobic political party; a person can cry watching television images of a natural disaster or an epidemic without changing his or her own environmental attitude and behavior or donating to a non-governmental organization. People can have cosmopolitan orientations without having a strong sense of shared belonging (Pichler 2012: 40).

Conclusion and Open Questions

The cosmopolitan approach provides sociology with a set of tools allowing a renewal of the analysis of cultural dynamics, forms of supranational institutional regulation and socialization outside of the nation-state. Nevertheless, there are still a number of issues that future research will need to discuss.

With regard to global cultural dynamics, it would be useless to seek a universal culture (Castells 2009). Indeed, the advent of the network society cannot be reduced either to the spread of a globalized capitalist spirit or to the idealistic views of philosophers dreaming of an abstract world made up of cosmopolitan citizens. What creates a link between localized cultures in the global era is people’s subscription to the idea of being able to communicate and express themselves via networks, rather than their sharing certain values that remain linked to social and historical contexts (for example, gender equality or inequality).

The question of democratic global governance must necessarily be thought of as multipolar and multiscalar (Held 2005; Martinelli 2005). There are barriers to the establishment of a post-national democracy : cosmopolitanism as the consciousness of a common human destiny cannot make us forget the negative consequences of globalization and its unfulfilled promises. On the one hand, researchers have argued that the recommendations of a cosmopolitan democracy remain wishful thinking unless an effective fight is waged against poverty and inequality. “In order for democracy to regain control of the globalized financial capitalism of this new century, we must invent new tools adapted to the challenges of the day. The ideal one would be a global progressive tax on capital, accompanied by a high degree of international financial transparency” (Piketty 2013: 835). On the other hand, the explosion of conflicts of all kinds, international terrorism and the globalization of risks fuel tensions—notably in Europe, where populist, xenophobic , sovereigntist and anti-EU political parties are enjoying a resurgence.

In connection with cosmopolitan socialization, the fact remains that cosmopolitanism is based on the assumption that when we are open to others, exchanges unfold in a peaceful, reciprocal and symmetrical fashion. Moreover, theories of cosmopolitanism often posit that intentional openness, with all its attendant virtues of goodwill, empathy, solidarity and hospitality, stems from the Ego’s effort to establish a positive relationship with the Other. Such hypotheses raise two sets of questions, however. First, to what extent does globalization encourage cosmopolitanism? Is this shift irreversible? Are all the “winners”” of globalization necessarily cosmopolitans? And do the “losers” of globalization have a chance to become cosmopolitans? Second, how can we not take into account the fact that the implicit demand for individual internal consistency across these dimensions can be overwhelming, at times leading to severe internal conflict due to contradictory impulses? These unresolved and sometimes controversial issues prompt reflection on how to develop a cosmopolitan education that is adapted to the global world and which, without rejecting globalization outright, refuses to give in to isolationist identity politics and re-examines, through the lens of deeply rooted universality, the ground rules for living harmoniously together.