Understanding
‘cosmopolitan practices’
Prof. Dr. Steven Vertovec
Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of
Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Understanding
‘cosmopolitan practices’
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Varieties of cosmopolitanism
Attitudes and practices
Some examples: the Coopers vs. Stavros
Some possible mechanisms/processes
So what?
Cosmopolitanism as…
(1) Socio-Cultural Condition
(2) Philosophy or World-view
(3) Political Project I:
Transnational Institutions
(4) Political Project II:
Multiple Subjects
(5) Attitude or Disposition
(6) Practice or Competence
Cosmopolitanism as attitude
• Hannerz (1996: 103) – ‘…an orientation, a
willingness to engage with the other. …an intellectual
and aesthetic openness toward divergent cultural
experiences….’
• Van der Veer (2002) – yet on what terms?
Cf. colonial officers, missionaries
Cosmopolitanism as practice:
doing what?
Hannerz (1990) cosmopolitanism as
• ‘…a personal ability to make one’s way
into other cultures through listening,
looking, intuiting and reflecting’
• ‘cultural competence… a built-up skill in
maneuvering more or less expertly with
a particular system of meanings and
meaningful forms’
• ‘a mode of managing meaning’
Cosmopolitan Practice:
as consumption?
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‘ethnic’ designs
‘ethnic’ furnishings
‘ethnic’ food
‘world’ music
tourism
- ‘home-plus’ exotic
- not really ‘making way
into another culture’ or
meaning system?
Cosmopolitanism as practice:
doing what?
• ‘Cultural navigation’
• Reading, engaging, performing
actions/reactions, utterances, behaviours
• When in Rome, do as the Romans do…
• Acts/signals of and for communication
– Mutual understanding, common meaning
• For pleasure, ease, advantage, distinction
or survival?
Cosmopolitan Practice as ‘doing’:
by whom?
• Growing literature on: ‘…x cosmopolitanism’
– ‘actually existing’
– ‘everyday’
– ‘vernacular’
– ‘ordinary’
– ‘practical’
– ‘tactical’
• To distinguish from elite,
jet-set Cosmopolitanism
BBC ‘Goodness Gracious Me’
The Coopers (Kapoors) and
the Robinsons (Rabindaraths)
Cosmopolitan practice
as wolf-in-sheep’s clothing
• Conscious
• Knowledge-based
to demonstrate right thing
to do (‘I knew that’)
• Purposeful / ‘tactical’
in order to mark social
inclusion / distinction
Harry Enfield
Stavros
Cosmopolitan practice
as cultural chameleon
• Non-conscious
• Not about knowledge
but subtle communication
cues of commonality
(‘innit’, ‘or what’, ‘mate’)
• Not wanting anything
except shared meaning
Mechanisms for cosmopolitan practices?
1. Linguistic analogy
• Cosmopolitanism like bi-/multi-lingualism?
– Emphasis on communication: grammar, syntax, lexicon
• Code-switching
Berlin sei eben "the place to be", erklärt ein Banker...
– Structural equivalents, social contexts, motivations?
– Conscious or non-conscious? (cf. Stavros)
– Related to language dominance?
• Crossing
– momentary, ritualized instances of outgroup language
use to move across social or ethnic boundaries
• Pidgin and creole / creolization
Mechanisms for cosmopolitan practices?
2. Reading/enacting scripts
• Roger Schank: scripts – sets of semantic
memories stored, allow individual to make
inferences to fill in missing information
• Social scripts: adaptable to contexts
– E.g. , going to restaurant
• Capacity for pattern recognition
Mechanisms for cosmopolitan practices?
3. Multiple-cultural competence
• Swidler (1986): culture-as-toolkit, set of resources;
‘all people know more culture than they use’ (p. 277)
• Bourdieu (1977): practical improvising from
repertoire of ‘dispositions’ (acquired schemes of
perception, thought and action)
• Caglar (1994): not unlimited; embedded, conditional
• Refutes ‘between two cultures’ presumption
All begs question:
what is (cultural) difference?
To adopt ‘cosmopolitan practices’,
• What are borders/fault lines that have to be crossed?
• What is ‘package’ of meaning-carrying traits that has
to be read, engaged, performed?
• Relevant to class, locality, gender, religion, age,
sexuality, ‘sub-culture’ or ‘scene’…
Can cosmopolitan competence be
taught / fostered / instilled?
• ‘inter-cultural
competence’ courses
• Public campaigns
• Creating spaces/events
for interaction
Spaces of ‘contact’
• Workplaces, schools, markets, leisure
• SocPsych: ‘contact’ indeed reduces prejudice
• Cosmo. Practices? multiple cultural competence
– or 3rd modalities: civility, pidgin, creole
Instilling cosmopolitanism
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Knowledge?
Appreciation?
Empathy?
‘Tolerance’?
Hannerz (1990: 239) cosmo. as
‘cultural competence… a built-up
skill in maneuvering more or less
expertly with a particular system
of meanings and meaningful forms’
Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of
Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und
multiethnischer Gesellschaften
Hermann-Föge-Weg 11, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany
tel. +49/0 551 4956-0, fax +49/0 551 4956-111
www.mmg.mpg.de