towards cosmopolitan learning

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Towards cosmopolitan learningFazal Rizvi aa Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois,1310 S Sixth Street, Champaign, IL, 61820, USAPublished online: 30 Jun 2009.

To cite this article: Fazal Rizvi (2009) Towards cosmopolitan learning, Discourse: Studies in theCultural Politics of Education, 30:3, 253-268, DOI: 10.1080/01596300903036863

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Towards cosmopolitan learning

Fazal Rizvi*

Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois, 1310 S Sixth Street,Champaign, IL 61820, USA

In recent years, the idea of cosmopolitanism has variously been explored as apolitical philosophy, a moral theory and a cultural disposition. In each of thesecases, this new interest in cosmopolitanism is based upon a recognition that ourworld is increasingly interconnected and interdependent globally, and that mostof our problems are global in nature requiring global solutions. In this paper,I argue that this recognition demands new resources of learning about how ourlives are becoming re-shaped by global processes and connections, and how wemight live with and steer the economic, political and cultural shifts thatcontemporary forms of global connectivity represent. In the context of theseglobal shifts, learning itself needs to become cosmopolitan. This requires thedevelopment of a new approach around the old idea of cosmopolitanism,interpreting it not so much as a universal moral principle, nor as a prescriptionrecommending a particular form of political configuration � nor indeed as atransnational life-style � but a mode of learning about, and ethically engagingwith, new social formations.

Keywords: cosmopolitanism; globalization; neoliberalism; cultural encounters;learning

Introduction

In recent years, much has been said and written about the idea of cosmopolitanism.

In popular discourse, cosmopolitanism has come to refer to various elite modes of

living made possible by the global mobility of capital, people and ideas, resulting in

inter-cultural encounters of various kinds. In academic literatures, it has been used to

articulate a set of principles with which to interpret and respond to the

contemporary conditions of globalization. The idea of cosmopolitanism has

variously been explored as a political philosophy, a moral theory and a cultural

disposition. In each of these cases, this new interest in cosmopolitanism is based

upon a recognition that our world is increasingly interconnected and interdependent

globally, and that most of our problems are global in nature requiring global

solutions.

In this paper, I want to argue that this recognition demands new resources of

learning about how our lives are becoming re-shaped by global processes and

connections, and how we might live with and steer the economic, political and

cultural shifts that contemporary forms of global connectivity represent. In the

context of these global shifts, I want to suggest, learning itself needs to become

cosmopolitan. This, in my view, requires the development of a new approach around

*Email: [email protected]

ISSN 0159-6306 print/ISSN 1469-3739 online

# 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01596300903036863

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Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education

Vol. 30, No. 3, September 2009, 253�268

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the old idea of cosmopolitanism, interpreting it not so much as a universal moral

principle, nor a prescription recommending a particular form of political config-

uration � nor indeed a transnational life-style � but a mode of learning about, and

ethically engaging with, new social formations. My argument is that if global

connectivity has become a pervasive socio-cultural condition, then attempts to

understand the dynamics of intercultural relations should no longer be aligned

entirely to local and national requirements and prejudices, but should instead seek to

become cosmopolitan. In the context of educational practice, this focus on

cosmopolitan learning should involve efforts to develop in students a set of epistemic

virtues. This does not mean ignoring local issues, but to understand them within the

broader context of the global shifts that are reshaping the ways in which localities,

and even social identities, are now becoming re-constituted. Such a cosmopolitan

understanding, I want to argue, is necessary, if we are develop ways of ethically

steering the direction of global�local relations, instead of allowing them to be shaped

simply by the dictates of global corporate capitalism.

Historical cosmopolitanisms

There is, of course, nothing new about the idea of cosmopolitism. In a highly

influential paper, Martha Nussbaum (1996) notes, for example, the enthusiasm some

ancient Greek philosophers displayed towards the notion of a globally inter-related

moral order. For the Stoic philosophers, the term, ‘cosmopolitan’ stood for ‘citizens

of the world’ � those who considered humankind as more important than their own

state or native land. The Stoics were opposed to the views of their contemporaries,

such as Plato, who considered citizens to have a duty to identify themselves first and

foremost as citizens of a particular polis or city, help defend it from attacks, sustain

its institutions of justice, and contribute to its common good. In contrast, according

to Nussbaum (1996, p. 11), the Stoic philosophers regarded any attempt to accord

one’s own traditions ‘special salience in moral and political deliberations’ as ‘both

morally dangerous and, ultimately subversive of some of the worthy goals patriotism

sets out to serve’: morally dangerous because this reinforced the unexamined

assumption that one’s own preferences and ways of acting were somehow natural

and perfectly rational and subversive because it overlooked the fact that, in the

longer term, even our most local of interests are tied to the broader concerns of

others.

For the Stoics, cosmopolitanism did not, however, mean giving up local

affiliations in order to be citizens of the world, but to recognize that while local

traditions could be a source of great richness in the world, they could also produce

much conflict, especially if they were celebrated in an uncritically partisan fashion.

Indeed, the Stoics developed their view of cosmopolitanism against the backdrop of

regular wars and on-going conflict between city-states. Their philosophical case for

cosmopolitanism was thus based not only on a set of moral dictates but also on a

particular understanding of how the interests of city-states were economically and

politically related. Indeed, their moral principles evolved out of an empirical

understanding of the nature and causes of political disputes. For the Stoics,

education had an important role to play in disseminating this understanding linked

to certain convictions about how such disputes could be resolved with a genuine

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belief in a common humanity that transcended differences in cultural traditions and

political configurations.

In the nineteenth century, various concepts of cosmopolitanism similarly

emerged within a historical context of wars and on-going conflict among European

states. Indeed, Kant’s famous essay, ‘Perpetual Peace’ (1795/1960), was written

during a period of considerable inter-state turmoil in Europe, around the time of the

French Revolution. Kant saw the attainment of a cosmopolitan order as the greatest

challenge facing humanity, even greater than the achievement of a coherent legal

system within nation-states. He insisted that as ‘fantastical’ as the notion was, a

cosmopolitan order was essential if the human race was not to consume itself in wars

between nations and if the power of the nation-state was not to overwhelm the

freedom of individuals. Kant objected to the Hobbesian view that conflict was

inimical to human nature, and was also critical of the ways in which European

powers treated foreigners as enemies and continued to treat their colonies as if they

were ‘land without borders’. In this way, Kant resisted growing nationalistic currents

in his own times, expressed in France as ‘enlightened’ and in Germany as ‘romantic’.

As an Enlightenment philosopher, Kant was committed to a set of universal

moral precepts. He viewed the world in terms of an integrated moral order, based on

the promise of science as a language of universal laws that was applicable to the

entire world, natural as well as social. Kant’s conception of cosmopolitan order was

thus based on his ‘formula of universal law’, the highest of moral principles � the

categorical imperatives. This politico-legal order consisted of rules that prescribed ‘a

lawful external relation among states’ and a ‘universal civil society’. These rules were

designed to constrain states’ power, but not their freedom. Kant intended such rules

to guarantee the right of ‘hospitality’, a universal right of ‘humanity’ to all

individuals. His view of cosmopolitanism thus implied a particular form of moral

education, designed to teach students the universalism of his moral theory, an

understanding of the formal codification of individuals’ fundamental rights

irrespective of their nationality, ethnicity, race, social status of religious beliefs,

and a moral disposition to act in demonstration of respect for human dignity and

universal rights (Kant, 2003).

Over the years, the Kantian view of cosmopolitanism has not of course been

uncontested. Even during Kant’s own times, many German philosophers favored a

romantic nationalism, while others favored contrasting conceptions of cosmopoli-

tanism. Pauline Kleingeld (1999) has noted that there were a number of different

versions of cosmopolitanism in late eighteenth-century Germany. She lists these as:

moral cosmopolitanism; proposals for reform of the international political and legalorder; cultural cosmopolitanism, which emphasizes the value of global culturalpluralism; economic cosmopolitanism, which aims at establishing a global free marketwhere all humans are equal potential trading partners; and the romantic cosmopolitanideal of humanity as united by faith and love. (1999, p. 506)

Kleingeld notes that these kinds of cosmopolitanism are by no means mutually

exclusive and are even related to each other. However, what her list indicates is that

the idea of cosmopolitanism has not only been highly contested over the ages, but

that its different versions are grounded in different accounts of the ways in which the

world is interconnected, accounts that foreground different aspects of this

connectivity. As social and political conditions change, new ways of thinking about

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cosmopolitanism become necessary, as it becomes important to reconcile the moral

demands of cosmopolitanism with emerging historical realities.

For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, support for cosmopolitanism

in Europe had to come to terms with, for example, developments in capitalism, and

also with the emergence of ideologies of colonialism. Under colonialism, notions of

cosmopolitanism had to be taken beyond abstractions, into more substantive realmsof social, economic and political practice. During the nineteenth century, for

instance, globally integrated markets and financial systems emerged, as it became

possible to transport goods across vast distances, and as people were able to remain

in touch with each other using new communication technologies, such as the

telegraph. As Scholte (2000, p. 70) notes, it is the incipient global communications,

markets, money and finance in the late nineteenth century that encouraged the

formation of international organizations to regulate cross-border movement of

goods, money and people. These connectivities were not, however, restricted to the

economic sphere, they also led to the development of a popular consciousness, as

people wished to find out more about the countries with whom they traded, as well

as the peoples and cultures they colonized.

As Edward Said (1985) points out, the colonial consciousness was above all a

mode of thinking, a system of knowledge with which to exercise power over

colonized people, which contradicted many of the key tenets of Kantian universa-

listic cosmopolitanism. It represented a new way of describing and interpreting the

global connectivity, a calculation that was able to justify colonial expansion and

exploitation, without abandoning a sense the colonizers had of themselves asmorally correct. In this new hegemonic view of cosmopolitanism education had to

play a major role in the dissemination of colonial ideas, designed not only to buttress

the exercise of power, but also to make it appear legitimate to the colonized and

colonizing populations alike. In this way, the main aim of ‘orientalism’ (Said, 1985)

was the development of a global consciousness consistent with the economic and

political interests of the colonial powers.

Not surprisingly therefore both Britain and France invested heavily in creating

educational systems in the countries they colonized. Schools were established to

educate the masses, and universities were created to develop a local administrative

elite beholden to colonial powers. The ethos and structure of the emerging colonial

systems of higher education mirrored those of the colonial centre. The universities in

far-flung parts of the British Empire, for example, followed the same curriculum, and

examined students in the same manner. Universities in both Britain and the colonies

encouraged students to imagine the British Empire as a seamless entity, built around

a core set of values and interests that were often viewed as ‘cosmopolitan’. Students

were encouraged to learn the languages and cultures of the Empire, even if this

knowledge was constructed in a particular way, which portrayed the native as simple,exotic or inferior, in need of ‘civilizational’ development.

Contemporary global connectivities

What these brief historical observations show is that the notions of global

connectivity and interdependence have always been both located within particular

historical contexts and informed by various political interests. This is true equally of

our own age, in which global connectivity is experienced and interpreted in a range

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of new ways. The revolutionary advances in technology have enabled people living in

different countries to not only become more inter-connected than ever before but

also develop a distinctive consciousness about the challenges and possibilities of

inter-cultural encounters. People have now become much more mobile, with global

mobility perhaps becoming one of the defining characteristics of our age. And even if

many, perhaps most, people are not able to travel extensively, they are constantly in

touch with friends and colleagues who live and work around the world: their lives are

increasingly shaped by the social imaginaries of what Craig Calhoun (2002) calls the

‘frequently traveled’ and what Zygmunt Bauman (1998) refers to as ‘tourists’.

Contemporary accounts of global connectivity hence differ markedly from earlier

historical constructions. They are different from the colonial constructions, for

instance, in that they do not assume a political center from which economic and

political activity across the world is controlled and coordinated. They suggest rather

that the major advances in information and communication technologies have

converted the world into a single world system. According to Albrow (1991, p. 9),

‘the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single society, global society’. As a

result of time-space compression, Robertson (1992, p. 8) argues, ‘cultures and

societies are being squeezed together and driven towards mutual interaction’, within

various social, economic and political networks that no longer presuppose linearity

and homogeneity.

So, while in various religious doctrines, the notion of global inter-connectivity

represented a spiritual aspiration, and while in its colonial construction it was a

political project designed to legitimize territorial conquests, in the contemporary era,

it describes an empirical reality resulting from the ease with which goods, finance,

people, ideas and media are now able to flow across the world, leading to a radical

shift in our understanding of space and time. It places great emphasis on the role

people themselves play in forging and sustaining conceptions of global connecti-

vity. In this way, global connectivity is neither systematic nor structured around

some central locus of power, but is defined through popular consciousness, a form of

social imagination (Taylor, 2004). It is produced organically through the shift-

ing subjectivities of people. Tomlinson (2000, p. 2) refers to this as ‘complex

connectivity’, consisting in ‘the rapidly developing and ever-densening networks of

interconnections and interdependences that characterize modern social life’. This

form of connectivity, he argues, implies proximity as a social-cultural condition. It

suggests a kind of cultural awareness that has itself become ‘global’. In this way, the

idea of globalization does not only refer to new practices of economic exchange but

perhaps more significantly ‘the intensification of consciousness of a world as a whole’

(Robertson, 1992, p. 8).

As Arjun Appadurai (1996, p. 11) points out: ‘globalization is not simply the

name for a new epoch in the history of capital or in the biography of the nation-state,

but is marked by a new role for imagination in social life’. In relation to the various

ways in which global processes now work � through the flows of people, capital and

information, as well as ideas and images found in the media � Appadurai is surely

correct in arguing that imagination has become ‘a critical part of collective, social,

everyday life and is a form of labor’ (1996, p. 11). A global imagination now plays a

crucial role in how people engage with their everyday activities, consider their

options and make decisions within the new configurations of social relations that are


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no longer confined to local communities but potentially span, either directly or

indirectly, across national boundaries.It is now abundantly clear that no community is entirely unaffected by global

processes, because even if people do not recognize their effects, it is hard to see how

their subjectivities can remain unaltered by global shifts, produced by increasing

amounts of travel, access to the global media, the changing nature of work, and the

shifting modes of social imagination. People often experience these transformations

as social disruption, but do not always recognize how the sources of this disruption

do not necessarily lie within their own communities but in the massive changes

taking place in the wider world. These changes shape the lives of both ‘the tourists’

and ‘the vagabonds’, as well as those who are not mobile, in a manner that is

dialectical, as Bauman (1998) has so clearly demonstrated. They represent various

shifting dynamics of connectivity, produced in many different ways, displaying

modalities that are uneven and disproportional.

Contemporary global connectivities are generating intricate demographic pro-

files, economic realities, political processes, media and technologies, cultural facts

and artifacts and identities. There people are now ‘on the move’ more than ever

before, for a whole range of reasons � migration, work, tourism, education and the

like. New dynamics of immigration are transforming the cities around the world,

making them ‘global’ (Sassen, 1991). Communities are now transnationally

networked, with new patterns of communication and ideological links, configured

in a range of diverse and complicated ways. The ‘new diasporas’ (Cohen, 1997) are,

for example, no longer reluctant to exercise political power in the communities they

have left. All communities are exposed to global media and popular culture as never

before. Cultural products are now globally produced, distributed and consumed. The

nature of work is constantly changing, and is often organized in a manner that

stretches across the world. In short, goods, capital, technologies, people, knowledge,

images, crime, beliefs, fashions and desires all readily flow across territorial

boundaries.

While recent globalization theories have struggled to understand these new

realities, the appeal of the idea of cosmopolitanism is in its suggestions about how

best to live with them in a morally coherent fashion. In this way, the notion of

cosmopolitanism has the potential to bring together both the facts and the values

associated with complex connectivity. While the facts of rapidly developing and ever-

densening network of interconnections can no longer be denied, it is less clear how

particular communities and people experience and are affected by global connectiv-

ity, how they interpret its various expressions and how they utilize this under-

standing to forge their sense of belonging, and their social imagination. These

questions clearly require detailed empirical research that has now begun to be

conducted by historians, sociologists, anthropologists and cultural theorists alike

(see, for example, Burawoy, Blum, George, & Gille, 2000). But these are not merely

empirical questions, they are also normative. They relate to the issues of how we steer

these global transformations to forge better futures. And if indeed these transforma-

tions affect everyone, albeit in ways that are highly differentiated and unequal, then

the question arises as to how we develop a conception of cosmopolitanism that is not

only empirically informed but also ethically grounded.

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Corporate cosmopolitanism

In recent years, many theorists have sought to develop such a conception of

cosmopolitanism, to address questions relating to the contemporary dynamics of

global connectivity. Some have sought to revive Stoic and Kantian ideas, located

within debates in traditional moral theory. However, a more implicit view of

cosmopolitanism has also emerged, and has perhaps become hegemonic. It is

associated with an ideology that sees the world as a single global sphere of free trade

and economic exchange. It assumes cosmopolitanism to be a natural outcome of

market economy in which national borders inevitably become less significant, and in

which individual freedom has the potential not only to produce greater mobility and

innovation but also result in greater cultural tolerance. This corporatist view of

cosmopolitanism is based on a social imaginary that brings together, under a very

broad conceptual umbrella, a range of economic, political, and cultural ideas, that

are widely referred to as ‘neoliberal’.

Fundamental to these ideas is an emphasis on individual freedom. In economic

terms, neoliberalism implies the promotion of the instrumental values of free trade,

competition and economic efficiency. As Peck and Tickle (2002, p. 394) argue, as a

constellation of ideas, neoliberalism promotes and normalizes a ‘growth-first

approach’ to economic policy, relegating social concerns as secondary. It rests on

a pervasive naturalization of market logics, justifying them on the grounds of

efficiency, and even ‘fairness’. It highlights the importance of global trade and modes

of production, unconstrained by national regulatory regimes. Politically, neoliber-

alism involves an emphasis on the idea of a minimalist state, underscoring notions of

‘lean’ government, privatization and deregulation. These economic and political

ideas are, however, also supported by a moral vocabulary based on the idea of

individual choice, enabling people to pursue their own interests, unconstrained by

the dictates of the state, as well as of national borders.

The idea of cosmopolitanism based on these neoliberal premises thus suggests

that the market, as a single global sphere of free trade, has the potential to promote

greater intercultural understanding and peace. Such a view assumes the self-

regulative capacity of the market and takes all human beings as equal potential

trading partners. Its ideals are couched in terms of ‘natural human rights’, expressed

in terms of property rather than personal rights (Bowles & Gintis, 1985). Since the

fall of the Soviet Union, this view has been widely celebrated, not only by many

governments but also political scientists such as Francis Fukuyama (1992), who

wrote of ‘end of history’ to mark what he saw as the inevitable triumph of capitalism

and liberal democracy over socialists and nationalist regimes. In his highly optimistic

view, he predicted the people of the world coming together, overcoming the

structural barriers that prevented inter-cultural understanding. Fukuyama argued

that the global portability of ideas, people and finance would inevitably lead to the

development of cosmopolitan sensibilities, within a global potpourri of cultural

forms and practices.

Bruce Robbins (1998, p. 3) refers to this as ‘actual existing cosmopolitanism’, a

view that suggests that transnational economic and cultural flows have produced an

emergent cosmopolitanism, by virtue of the facts of ‘the detachment from the bonds,

commitments, and affiliations that constrain ordinary nation-bound lives’. The new

cosmopolitans, he suggests, are indifferent to where they live, viewing themselves to


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either have multiple attachments or be habitants of the whole world. Their

calculations about sense of belonging are often strategic and de-centering. They

view themselves as worldly, exhibiting a culturally open disposition and an interest in

continually engaging in diversity. In another paper, I (Rizvi, 2005) have shown how

the contemporary market-based practices of international education are based

within this logic, and how the cosmopolitanism of many international students

consists in their participation in an economic exchange, in which they are lessconcerned with the moral and political dimensions of global connectivity than with

education’s strategic economic possibilities. As a result, their cosmopolitan outlook

is framed by the role they believe international education to play in better

positioning them within the changing structures of the global economy, which

increasingly prizes the skills of intercultural experiences and a cosmopolitan

outlook.

Aihwa Ong (1999) has similarly sought to understand the cultural aspects of this

global world-view. She argues that, in the era of globalization, mobile individuals are

able to develop flexible notions of citizenship as strategies to accumulate capital and

power. The contemporary logic of capital accumulation is to ‘induce subjects to

respond fluidly and opportunistically to changing political-economic conditions’

(Ong, 1999, p. 21). Powerful incentives exist for individuals to emphasize practices

that favor ‘flexibility, mobility and repositioning in relation to markets, governments

and cultural regimes’. She illustrates her general thesis by referring to Hong Kong

Chinese immigrants to the USA, who ‘seem to display an elan for thriving inconditions of political insecurity, as well as in the turbulence of global trade’ (Ong,

1999, p. 24).

What this discussion indicates is that globalization does not only describe a new

global economic and political architecture, but more significantly implies the

development of a new form of subjectivity. It valorizes cosmopolitan subjects who

are culturally flexible and adaptable who are able to take advantage of the global

processes that paradoxically are portrayed as objective and historically inevitable.

But that these processes are neither objective nor historically inevitable can be

demonstrated by showing how they privilege a particular interpretation of global

connectivity, designed to steer the subjective or phenomenological awareness of

people. It not only encourages a particular ‘reading’ of recent changes in the global

economy but also presupposes a set of values attached to that ‘reading’, which

directs us towards a consciousness of the world as a single space constituted through

a set of economic configurations and social networks. As Cohen and Kennedy argue,

such an account is associated with a set of value preferences � ‘changes associated

with globalization so that they are now incorporated into our emotions and our waysof thinking about everyday life’ (2000, p. 58).

The corporatist view of cosmopolitanism is arguably based on this ‘reading’ of

global connectivity. It celebrates individuals who are able to take advantage of global

mobility, negotiate linguistic and cultural diversity, and have the class-consciousness

of the transnational elite (Sklair, 2000). It encourages values that are associated with

global economic exchange, social entrepreneurialism and cultural adaptability. Freed

from the constraints of national regulations, it views economic exchange as flexible

and dynamic. It considers cultural exchange as necessarily productive of new hybrid

forms that are increasingly global in character. They are facilitated by the unifying

potential of global telecommunications and digital information systems to drive a

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new global culture of consumption. This approach to cosmopolitanism thus

underscores the positive, socio-culturally and politically transformative meanings

of the term (Zachary, 2000).

Beyond corporatism and universalism

However, the promise of this transformation is inherently contradictory, since it pulls

people in the direction of cultural flexibility, on the one hand, and cultural

uncertainty and confusion, on the other. The corporate cosmopolitanism of the

global elite moreover masks the various contradictions of new capitalism, for while it

involves a genuinely de-centering move that recognizes multiple identities working

across complex and diverse experiences, it fails to show how the complex tensions

and interactions between nationalist and global forces in the contemporary period

might be resolved and how new forms of transnational solidarity might be forged.

Corporate cosmopolitanism’s faith in globalization opening up new emancipatory

possibilities seems hopelessly unrealistic in view of the overwhelming evidence of

persistent, even growing inequalities (Ray, 2007).

As Craig Calhoun (2002) puts it, this new cosmopolitanism � the cosmopolitan-

ism of the ‘frequent travelers’ � is inevitably contradictory in its articulation of thepossibilities of solidarity across cultural and national differences. At a time when

identity politics has seemingly put an end to the possibility for genuine global

solidarity, corporate cosmopolitanism promises a democratic means of dealing with

politics of difference and of resolving cultural conflict. But such an approach seems

unaware of its own potential collusion with global capitalism. It assumes global

markets to provide the mechanism for cultural integration, but appears to overlook

the fact that markets do not operate in a politically neutral space. On the contrary,

with capital flows becoming more and more global, transnational corporations

acquire an inordinate amount of power, creating conditions in which the subaltern

groups of people are further marginalized. In this way, corporate cosmopolitanism

serves only to extend the power of the transnational elite, reproducing asymmetries

of power, both within and across national boundaries.

In the contemporary context of globalization, other views of cosmopolitanism,

based, for example, on Kant’s moral theory are equally hard to sustain, not least

because they are based on a universalism that neither acknowledges cultural diversity

as a permanent feature of modern life nor seriously addresses the historically

inherited inequalities in power relations. Kant’s view of cosmopolitanism is builtupon the Stoic ethical sensibilities, guiding them into the domain of actual political

process and juridical organization (Hayden, 2005, p. 22). However, common to both

the Stoics and Kant is a universalism that assumes a set of moral convictions that

emerge out of a metaphysic of common humanity. They embody a humanism that

presupposes that all cultural groups share similar moral outlooks. Accordingly, each

of these views imply the need for the state to be neutral with respect to the

particularities of any culture, except in preserving the rights of individuals associated

with humanity.

However, as Stuart Hall (2002) asks, whether this universalistic framework is the

only and the best possible shell for understanding cosmopolitan modernity.

Practically, he notes, there are all kinds of problems associated with the actual

operations of such a system in guaranteeing either freedom or equality to all the


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citizens regardless of their background. Conceptually, Hall notes, a cosmopolitanism

based on universal principles assumes a fixed notion of moral tradition as already

constituted in authority, as well as a view of culture as static, and not as something

that is continuously changing, responding to the new circumstances in which it is

embedded and encountered.

Such a universalism also assumes a world that is segmented in terms of specific,

well-bounded, tightly knit, organic communities, now having to interact with others

as never before. But, as Hall insists, this is not the world we live in anymore. In the

current context of globalization, groups, while they are culturally marked, are not

entirely separated from each other, and are constantly re-shaped by cross-cultural

encounters. While cultural traditions might be important to them in terms of their

self-understanding, most groups have wider lateral connections that are not only

located within nation-states but potentially span the globe.

Hall suggests that the globally ‘open’ spaces in which we now live require a kind

of ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ that

is aware of the limitations of any one culture or any one identity and that is radicallyaware of its insufficiency in governing a wider society, but which nevertheless is preparedto rescind its claims to the traces of difference, which make its life important. (2002, p. 30)

What this suggests is that local and national attachments remain important in the

new era, but in ways that are crucially dynamic, articulated in new ways, against

conditions in which our problems and their solutions are inter-connected and

transcend national boundaries. In this context, the nature of the polity within which

moral claims are best addressed is itself open to question and political elaboration.

A philosopher who has sought to develop a view of cosmopolitanism consistent

with these requirements is Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006). Appiah rejects both

corporatist and universalist conceptions of cosmopolitanism. Properly conceived, he

argues, cosmopolitanism does not contradict patriotism, but nor does it assume

global connectivity can be described in some absolutist terms � a universalism in

disguise. Appiah stresses that while individuals and communities can be different,

and have their foibles that shape interests and values, they can also learn. In his view,

it is possible to genuinely engage with ways of other societies without approving, let

alone adopting them. Appiah suggests that if people with vastly different religious,

sexual, and political attachments are to live together without violence they must

master the arts of conversation. Ultimately, Appiah believes that cosmopolitanism is

best conceived as an ethical attitude towards global connectedness.

This attitude is different from the currently hegemonic view which views

globalization as ‘a pre-given thing, existing outside of thought’ (Smith, 2001,

p. 21) with its own developmental logic. To assume that it is the case is to pay little

attention to the subjectivities of people, how these are formed, and how various

discursive communities develop their own sense of global connectivity and

interdependence. It is to ignore the salience of political agency, and to the fact

that global processes are ever-changing products of human practices, and that they

cannot be interpreted simply as expressions of the deeper logic of economic

imperatives. It is to fail to come to terms with the ‘situatedness’ of people,

communities and nations alike. Time-space compression, for example, does not

occur independently of the ways people experience their social location and relations,

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and cannot therefore be treated simply as a product of some deeper structural

imperatives.

If the facts of global connectivity are thus neither self-evident nor politically

neutral then we cannot develop an ethical understanding of globalization, without

reference to the actual actors who are shaping its hegemonic forms, on the one hand,

and those who are contesting them, on the other, as well as the moral traditionswithin which they are located. In developing such an understanding, education has a

major role to play in helping students to realize that each experience of connectivity

has a specific history from which it has emerged, and that global connectivity is a

dynamic phenomenon, politically and historically changing � and that it is not only

experienced differently, but is also interpreted differently in different contexts. Such

an education involves a critical hermeneutical politics, a particular way of learning

about cultural encounters and about sources of conflict � and to imagine alternative

futures.

Cosmopolitan learning

In such a context, the relationship between cosmopolitanism and education needs to

be re-thought. If the views of cosmopolitanism based on universalism, on the onehand, and on the actual existing practices of globalization, on the other, are both

flawed and inadequate, then we need an alternative, which while it recognizes the

facts of global connectivity and interdependence does not assume the inevitability of

the ways in which they are structured. I believe that cosmopolitanism can be a

worthy goal, but only if it is historically informed and open to the diversity of moral

and political traditions that are now inevitably involved in cross-cultural encounters.

Cosmopolitanism is only worth pursuing if we are able to use it as an instrument

of critical understanding and moral improvement. In this way, issues surrounding the

cosmopolitan possibilities of education are at once empirical and normative.

Empirically, they relate to the need for greater clarity over how global transforma-

tions are re-shaping our lives. Normatively, we need to ask how we should work with

these transformations, creatively and in ways that are potentially progressive. And if

indeed these transformations affect everyone, albeit in ways that are highly

differentiated and unequal, then the question arises as to how education should

respond to these shifts so that globalization does not further reproduce social

inequalities. In other words, how should education be framed so that it provides

students both an empirical understanding of global transformations, but also anethical orientation towards them?

At a practical level, attempts to realize the cosmopolitan possibilities of

education face the highly entrenched traditions of educational policies and practices

that remain largely locally defined, even if they are influenced by many external

sources. The immediate issues we have to deal with are invariably local. If this is so,

then, I believe that our approach to teaching about global connectivity should begin

with the local, but must move quickly to address issues of how our local communities

are becoming socially transformed through their links with communities around the

world and with what consequences. In this way, I want to stress the relationalities that

lie at the heart of any thinking about the dynamics of change. I believe that our focus

ought to be on understanding the nature, scope and consequences of global

transformations, rather than on some generalized principles of cosmopolitanism,


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global citizenship, or indeed the skills required in the global economy. In this way,

learning about connectivity itself needs to become cosmopolitan.

In developing this view of cosmopolitan learning, I draw heavily on both Appiah

(2006) and Said (1994, 2004), especially Said’s insistence upon the importance of

contingency in both theoretical and political deliberations and his rejection of

dualisms such as universalism and particularism, global and local, and empirical andnormative. Said argues that a particular conception of humanism is essential in

realizing cosmopolitan possibilities, but insists on viewing it as provisional.

Responding to his critics (e.g., Clifford, 1997), Said maintains that: ‘it should be

possible to be critical of humanism in the name of humanism’ (2004, p. 10). Said

refuses to view social theory in its narrow sense, but insists that it needs to be

grounded within a political struggle that is spatially and historically specific. For

him, intellectual work must always be viewed as tentative and strategic, working

against the illusions of dualities and certainties.

The same applies to learning, especially in relation to understanding the

emerging conditions of global connectivity. I want to propose therefore a view of

cosmopolitanism that defines it as a particular way of learning about our own social

identities and cultural trajectories, but always in ways that underscore their

connectivity with the rest of the world. In this way, I want to emphasize the

dynamic nature of our identities and cultures, now changing more rapidly and

intensely than ever before, mostly as a result of their interactions with identities andcultures that potentially span the world. Unlike multiculturalism that highlighted

learning about other cultures within the nation-state, I want to argue that the sources

of cosmopolitan learning are more diverse and extensive, and can no longer be

contained within the borders of the nation-state.

If learning about global connectivity is to become cosmopolitan then it must have

the potential to help students come to terms with their situatedness in the world �situatedness of their knowledge and of their cultural practices, as well as their

positionality in relation to the social networks, political institutions and social

relations that are no longer confined to particular communities and nations, but

potentially connect up with the rest of the world (Said, 1983). Much of the

traditional learning about other cultures and cultural interactions has been

nationally defined. Cosmopolitan learning, in contrast, represents an aspiration

that seeks to develop a different perspective on knowing and interacting with others

within the changing context of the cultural exchanges produced by global flows and

networks.It is based on a different view of culture as dynamic and creative, viewed as

always in the state of becoming as a result of interactions of various kinds, rather

than something that is entirely inherited within clearly definable boundaries and

norms. It envisages cosmopolitan learning not in terms of an abstract universal

moral law, but in efforts to develop in students a set of epistemic virtues with which to

both understand current discourses and practices of global connectivity and to

develop alternatives to them. I use the term epistemic virtues deliberately (as

opposed to values) to highlight those habitual practices of learning that regard

knowing as always tentative involving critical exploration and imagination, an open-

ended exercise in cross-cultural deliberation designed to understand relationalities

and imagine alternatives, but always from a position that is reflexive of its epistemic

assumptions.

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Such epistemic virtues are, of course, best developed collectively, in transcultural

collaborations, in which local problems can be examined comparatively, linked to

global processes. But even when such collective learning is be possible, it is

nonetheless possible to help students to interrogate how things are done differently

in different places, how they might express particular histories of intercultural

encounters. Such interrogation is clearly necessary if we are going to help students to

develop a different social imaginary about their lives and life options in themateriality of their collective and interlinked circumstances � that is, if we wish to

help them to consider how things could be otherwise. With greater access to the new

media, it is now possible to do this kind of pedagogic work through networks, both

formal and informal, bringing together students from different backgrounds, with

the objective of encouraging them to think outside their own parochial boundaries

and cultural assumptions, helping them to reflect on how global processes affect

communities differentially and to examine the sources of these differentiations and

inequalities and what could be done about them.

Thus, instead of learning about cultures in an abstract manner, cosmopolitan

learning involves pedagogic tasks that help students explore the criss-crossing of

transnational circuits of communication, the flows of global capital and the cross-

cutting of local, translocal and transnational social practices. Such learning

encourages students to consider the contested politics of place making, the social

constructions of power differentials and the dynamic processes relating to the

formation of individual, group, national and transnational identities, and theircorresponding fields of difference.

It should be noted that this kind of learning is impossible within an emphasis on

criticality. This is so because cosmopolitan learning necessarily challenges the

prevailing orthodoxies both about education and about cultural formations. More-

over, it contests the hegemonic social imaginaries of globalization and is implicitly

directed towards the goal of global relations that are more just, democratic and

humane. Current attempts at the internationalization of curriculum highlight the

importance of intercultural experiences, through such programs as study abroad, but

do not seriously address how such pedagogies might produce a critical under-

standing of the new global configurations of economic and cultural exchange.

Cosmopolitan learning of the kind I have in mind, in contrast, encourages

students to examine the political meaning of intercultural experiences, seeking to

locate them within the transnational networks that have become so much part of the

contemporary era of globalization. It is not enough to state that globalization drives

cultures towards mutual interaction; it is perhaps more important to examine howcultures are transformed by these interactions, and how our social imagination plays

a central role in these transformational processes. If this is so, then, one of the major

goals of cosmopolitan learning should be the development of a critical global

imagination, based on a recognition that we all have ‘elaborate interests and

capabilities in constructing world pictures whose very interaction affects global

processes’ (Appadurai, 1996, p. 11).

Such an approach clearly demands the de-parochialization of the processes of

learning and teaching, highlighting the importance of ‘grassroots’ global networks

capable of interrogating dominant social imaginaries that are no longer adequate for

negotiating the complex global realities we now confront. In this sense, cosmopolitan

learning is not so much concerned with imparting knowledge and developing


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attitudes and skills for understanding other cultures per se, but with helping students

examine the ways in which global processes are creating conditions of economic and

cultural exchange that are transforming our identities and communities; and that,

unreflexively, we may be contributing to the production and reproduction of those

conditions, through our uncritical acceptance of the dominant ways of thinking

about global connectivity.Indeed, it should be in our collective power to develop an alternative imaginary

of global connectivity, one which is informed not by the universalizing logic of the

market, or by the romanticized notions of global citizenship, but by our

determination to develop a different conception of global relations, which views

all of the world’s diverse people and communities as part of the same moral universe.

Such an imaginary requires the development of a sense of moral responsibility

among students directed not only towards their families and nations, but also

towards humanity as a whole.

Cosmopolitan learning, thus, demands a new way of learning about other

cultures and intercultural exchange. It requires the development of intellectual skills

to examine the ways in which we create knowledge about others and use it to engage

with them. In this way, it highlights both the cognitive and ethical dimensions of

intercultural learning. It suggests that learning about others requires learning about

ourselves. It implies a dialectical mode of thinking, which conceives cultural

differences as neither absolute nor necessarily antagonistic, but deeply intercon-nected and relationally defined. It underscores the importance of understanding

others both in their terms as well as ours, as a way of comprehending how both our

representations are socially constituted.

This suggests the importance of understanding intercultural exchange histori-

cally, in ways that show how no cultural tradition � no set of cultural values and

practices � can be understood without reference to the historical interactions that

produced it. This has always been the case, but in a world in which social networks of

money, technologies, people and ideas increasingly shape life options and chances,

thinking historically about global connectivity is indispensable. This is so because

networks too have histories, without an understanding of which we cannot fully

comprehend how people’s sense of their collectivity � as solidarity in its positive

manifestations and as marginalization in its negative � is forged within power

configurations that are often asymmetrical. The past is linked to the present and

plays an important role in imagining the future. As Edward Said (1993) pointed out,

it is only through this realization that we recognize that our identities are forged in

histories of contact between groups of people, where knowledge and resources aretraded, borrowed, improved upon, fought over and passed on to others.

The notion of a pure culture, located within its own territory, has always been a

myth because all cultures result from their encounters with others. If this is so, then,

relationality must be regarded as crucial for any attempt to internationalize

curriculum through cosmopolitan learning. If we cannot learn about cultures in

their pristine and authentic form, then, our focus must shift to the ways in which

cultural practices become separated from their ‘homes’ and are converted into new

forms in their new contexts, and on how this transforms both the places people leave

and the places they come to inhabit. In a world in which flows of information, media

symbols and images, and political and cultural ideas are constant and relentless, new

cultural formations are inevitable, and can only be relationally comprehended.

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Therefore, this focus on relationality must replace approaches that treat ‘other’

cultures as entirely separable from our own. Cultural formations can only be

understood in relation to each other, politically forged, historically constituted and

globally interconnected through processes of mobility, exchange and hybridization.A relational understanding of global connectivity also points to the importance

of another element of cosmopolitan learning: reflexivity. Reflexivity (Beck, 2000)

requires people to become self-conscious and knowledgeable about their own

perspective and how it is subject to transformation as a result of its engagement

with other cultural trajectories. Reflexive individuals are able to challenge their own

taken-for-granted assumptions that are often linked to official and popular

discourses of cultural difference. They are able to reflect upon the politics of their

own representations of others, and point to the ways in which this politics ishistorically constituted. Such reflexivity cannot then be achieved without a critical

recognition of our own cultural and political presuppositions, and the epistemic

position from which we speak and negotiate difference. This must involve realizing

that knowledge about cultures is never neutral and that our efforts to learn about

and engage with others take place within asymmetrical configurations of power. This

realization, however, needs not prevent us from continuing to explore, engage and

learn from other cultural trajectories in an effort to transform our own.

In the contemporary era, the volume and speed of intercultural exchange hasincreased at an unprecedented rate, creating greater possibilities of trade, transfers of

technology, cultural cooperation and skirmishes, and even war, than ever before.

Never before has there been a greater need of intercultural understanding and

communication. But if this understanding is predicated on essentialist conceptions of

culture, rather than within a pedagogically open framework that explores the

dynamics of cultural interactions in an on-going fashion, then no amount of

intercultural education is likely to be helpful. New ways of thinking about economic

and cultural exchange are clearly necessary in which conceptions of others andourselves are defined relationally, as complex and inherently dynamic products of a

range of historical processes and the contemporary cultural economies of global

connectivity. Epistemologically, all cultural understanding is comparative because no

understanding of others is possible without self-understanding. If this is so, then, not

only is it important to emphasize historicity, criticality and relationality, but also

reflexivity in all our attempts to imagine and work towards better futures.

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