Cosmopolitanism and Global
Citizenship:
the Rhetoric of Moral Agency
Peter Dahlgren
Lund University
Rhetoric in Society 4
University of Copenhagen Jan. 15-18, 2013
Overview
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Global civil society and alternative politics:
setting the scene
Cosmopolitanism: ways of seeing and being
The mediapolis: a new kind of public sphere
Towards civic cosmopolitanism
Contingencies of the web habitus
Global civil society and alternative politics
A new era
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Democracies experiencing long-term trends of declining
participation
 Yet also opposite trend: impressive rise in alternative,
extra- parliamentarian political activities
 Very heterogeneous; tend to address broader range of
issues, more opportunity for participation, less
hierarchical, more inclusive
 Many involved in transnational issues
 Global civil society – new phases in history of democracy
The cosmopolitan context
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Globalization – a familiar and contested phenomenon
Almost in its wake, the notion of cosmopolitanism has
become a new buzzword in the last decade
Growing academic literature; a ‘discourse’ emerging
Surprisingly, says little about media
Also, tends to be oddly removed from ideas of political
practice
Global issues and activism
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Transnational civic actors: many goals and strategies
Many forms of organization: INGOs, social movements,
activist networks, etc.
Some mainly ‘civic’ - humanitarian, others cultural,
religious (eg, diasporias)
Others more explicitly political; alter-globalization
movements (eg, WSF)
Most display democratic instincts; some anti-democratic
(and thus ‘uncivic’)
The perspective of political agency
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Issue of participation: needs a ‘civic identity’, political
sense of self (declines and re-emergences of
participation…)
Civic cultures nourish such identity – knowledge,
values/ideals, practices/skills
Thus offering socio-cultural foundations of empowered
political agency
Political practice: must feel meaningful; social, collective
contexts
Today, use of digital media technologies essential for
civic agency
Agency as discursive practice
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At bottom politics enacted via communicative practices
 Ex: arguing, promoting, recruiting, lobbying, mobilizing,
running a meeting, etc,
 All are manifestations of rhetoric, involve performative
skills ( Arendt; Mouffe).
 A constructionist view; impact of contingencies (enabling
and constraining)
 The subject, and identity, emerge in part via discourses
 (Themes for another occasion: Why deliberative
democracy is over-rated…)
Uh oh: excursus on rhetorical vs.
discursive horizons (a few signposts…)
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Conceptually a good deal of overlap; constructionist
premises
 Critical discourse analysis/theory: the inexorability of
power relations
 Discourses are constitutive; builds on theories of
subjectivity, identity, social relations
 Meaning is inherently unstable, contingent, contested
 Subjects inherently de-centered (the Unconscious, etc.)
 Subject positions/identities can be ‘overdetermined’ –
contradictory – via incompatible discourses
Good grief, still more excursus…
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Discourses embody systems of knowledge, modes of
cognitive and normative perceptions
They are manifestations of (collective) social practice
Analysis: dynamics between text, discursive practice,
and social practice/structures.
(Fairclough; T.van Dijk; Wodak; Laclau & Mouffe;
even Foucault, etc.)
Back on track: the basic enigma at hand
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Cosmopolitanism: strongly moral discourse
Yet global activism tends to fall outside; not relevant?
Cosmopolitanism needs to connect with agency, with
media, with the political
Thus: how might we conceive of ‘civic cosmopolitanism’?
Cosmopolitanism: moral ways of seeing and being
Old concept, new package
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Socrates, Kant (who seldom left Köningsberg)…
Globalization: brings the Other closer
Offers varying analytic frame for issues about social
perceptions and relations with distant others in the world
Helps us to illuminate the normative grounds for such
practices
Multiple voices: a rhetoric
of moral agency
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One version offers vision of a more just and democratic
world order
Cosmop. as the only way forward for global issues (eg,
D. Held, Archibugi)
Others focus on citizenship, rights, inclusion; EU
(Habermas, Benhabib)
Still others: moral and political philosophy (Nussbaum)
Also: socio-cultural conditions for its realisation (Beck;
Appiah)
Many variations, but lots of moral admonishment
High demands on how to be
cosmopolitan
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Required: self-reflexion on own cultural context, origins,
and values
Scepticism towards the ‘grand narratives’ of modern
ideologies
Critical distance about the ultimate authority of one’s
own culture
Predicated on routine encounters with those significantly
different from oneself
Involves a considerable degree of cultural capital
Yet, quest for some mythic ‘new cosmopolitan subject’ is
a dead end
Troublesome empirical investigations
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Notions of ‘everyday cosmop.’ have been studied
Sobering results - often not too encouraging…
Popular discourse about attractive affordances of
globalisation, such as travel and culinary diversity
Also discourses about ‘cultural loss’ and ‘dilution of
national culture’ circulate…
A practical link: human rights
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B. Turner: Cosmop = pacifist values that preclude
violence, promote agency and dignity
Opposition to human suffering transcends and unites
different cultures and epochs
Vulnerability of the human body a starting point for
commonality and compassion
UN Declaration of Human Rights obviously a very
cosmopolitan document
Yet: this is ‘uncomplicated’. What about minority
cultures, etc.?
Some critical voices
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A lot of lofty idealism; charged with political naïveté
Utopian tendency - a new world of tolerant and
responsible citizens
Yet offering little analytic insight on major global divides
Few authors see a confrontation with neoliberalism
(exceptions: Delanty, Harvey)
Delanty claims that conflicts around ‘difference’ are less
about culture and more about social and economic
questions with political implications
Intersections: post-colonialism
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History of colonialism raises questions of power,privilege
Post-colonialism sensitive to how culture and production
of meaning always bound up with relations of power
Ex: patterns of cultural influences, images of the other,
identity processes, integration/assimilation, language
use, institution-building, etc.
Cosmopolitanism can’t be reduced to power, yet power
can’t be ignored
An essential tension
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Universalism (one size fits all?) vs. the local/national
One or many cosmopolitanisms?
Cosmopolitanism as expression of multiple empirical
realities in the world
OR:, as a unitary global ideal, with universalist virtues
Yet universalist claims vulnerable to critiques of
ethnocentrism: an expression of a camouflaged
manoeuvre for cultural power
The mediapolis: a new kind of public sphere
Some media connections
The theme of news media and ‘distant suffering’
(Boltanski, Chouliaraki)
 Touches lightly on cosmopolitanism
 Does TV news make viewers more cosmopolitan?
 Pivotal text: Sliverstone’s Media and Morality:
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On the Rise of the Medialpolis (2006)
 Media central to late modernity and cosmopolitanism
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The core concept: mediapolis
‘Mediapolis’: the chaotic, cacophonic space of global
media
 Resides beyond logic, rationality; efficacy always
uncertain
 Multiple voices, inflections images, and rhetoric
 ‘Post-Habermasian’, ‘post-deliberative’ (even poststructural)
 Media as ‘environnments’, dense symbolic ecologies
 Power relations/imbalances shape media industries and
media cultures
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The moral argument
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Silverstone in line with other cosmop. Theorists; more
detailed
Media put us in contact with global others; this evokes
moral responsibilities
Between producers, journalists audiences/receivers
Moral demand for reflexivity, recognition of cultural
difference
Moral response via thinking, speaking, listening; and
acting (but how…?)
Useful rhetorical/moral idea: ‘proper distance’ within
mediapolis
From morality to the political
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Despite its messiness, the mediapolis can still provide
resources for judgement: cognitive, aesthetic, and moral
He underscores inequities of representation,
mechanisms of exclusion
Ideological and prejudicial frames of reporting; us and
them
Says action and meaning contingent on people’s
circumstances
Silverstone’s is a big step forward, but problems remain
Does not really connect with political agency
Towards civic cosmopolitanism
The impasse
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Silverstone admits we face difficult questions
The public as such does not have a strong meaningful
status
Empirically it is not politically very efficacious
Thought, speech, and action are disconnected and
compromised by absence of context, memory, and
analytic rigour
Increasingly, also by the absence of trust
From morality to the political
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And yet: sees mediapolis as a site for not only moral
response
But also: potential for practice, enacting agency
Yet, the connections remain fuzzy
Moral engagement is a pre-requisite – but we must avoid
sidelining politics by incantations of universal morality
(Dallmayr)
Civic cosmopolitanism: a first sketch
So how do we envision ‘civic cosmopolitanism’?
 Global civil society: thin structures for democratic
procedures
 For most citizens, any hope of political agency involves
the web in some way
 (Though not need not be limited to online contexts)
 The web can enable communicative – and political practices
 The affordances offer historically unprecedented tools
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Contingencies of the web habitus
The web and democracy: pro
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Many factors shape the use, non-use, and
consequences of the web
Huge literature on why or why not the web serves
democracy well
Easy access, interactive, ‘produsers’ – creative practices
Network logic: horizontal civic communication
Natural interface with everyday life
Can give political engagement a good social anchoring
…and con…
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Political economy, net architecture: centralized corporate
control
Issues of surveillance, privacy, etc. – Google, Facebook
Politics far down on the list of uses; instead:
consumption, fun, sociality..
Problems of ‘cocoons’ and ‘echo chambers’, ‘babel’, lack
of civility…
Many issues compounded when we go global…
The online habitus
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Zizi Papacharissi uses Bourdieu’s notion of habitus
Links social structures with agency; people’s daily micromilieu
Taken for granted template for values, norms, tastes
Durable social dispositions and practices, ‘commonsense’
Connects the individuals in specific ways to the broader
‘fields’ that comprise their worlds
Online habitus as a discursive – or
rhetorical – ‘nudge/wink’
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Affordances + constraints + patterns of practices solidify
expectations/norms
The web as experiential daily environment: cultural ‘pull’
Attributes: for ex: searchability, shareability, permanent
novelty, reflexivity, connectivity, self presentation,
expression, revelation….
Markers of identity, (self-)sort people into recognisable
categories
Facebook: eg, the ‘like button’ – but no ‘dislike button’
Seductions of the solo sphere
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Patterns of personalised visibility, self-promotion and
self-revelation
A new habitus of political engagement: cozy private
digital setting
A retreat into an environment many people have more
control over
Intertwined with consumption, entertainment, sociality
The initial civic impulse morphs into an ironic mode of
narcissism
Pitfalls – but also potentials
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The privatized, consumerist online individual congruent
with the neo-liberal order…
‘Mundane cosmopolitanising acts’ (Chouliaraki) – click
and make a donation
When compassion fatigue, etc., sets in: just click to
ebay…
Nonetheless: the web habitus permits countless forms of
political agency Discursive political acts – that can participate in global
civil society
Two regimes of journalism
within the mediapolis
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-Modernist, mass mediated: claims to objective
reporting/accuracy (despite shortcomings)
Distinction between facts and emotionality; allows for
judgment and moral response
Yet, the subject position of spectator is largely cemented
-Late modernist, interactive media: claims to experiential
witnessing, etc.
Allows for networking, potential practice, participation
‘Objectivity’ gives way to a stream of many voices –
often emotional
Who can we trust on the web…? Manipulation very easy
Conclusion: the online mediapolis and
civic cosmoploitanism
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Civic cosmopolitanism can be understood as the
potential for political agency,
Anchored in the global environment, informed by
democratically oriented moral horizons
This potential can be actualised via the affordances of
the web – and limited by its constraints
This is the online sector of the mediapolis.
The web must be understood (and analysed) in relation
to its shifting contingencies,
Not least the attributes of habitus that it promotes.