Cosmopolitan Disorders: Ignoring Power, Overcoming Diversity, Transcending Borders

Abstract

The Cosmopolitan discourse on global governance invokes a global, normative ethic. It presumes a kind of shared civic identity that ignores the burdens of history, obstacles of geography and diversity of peoples, uniting all under a set of identifiable global problems. Critical scholars have moved away from such universalism by advancing their own brand of Cosmopolitan ethic, one anchored in a spatially limited and bottom-up definition of the good life. Yet critical scholars continue to emphasise individual agency, underplaying the structured nature of global inequalities. Consequently, they reinforce, rather than challenge, the current global order. I consider the implications of these models of Cosmopolitanism for issues of power, identity and agency. Any approach to global governance, I argue, must begin by analysing the relationship between identity and in security

Keywords

• Cosmopolitanism, liberalism, critical cosmopolitanism, global governance, identity, power, security.

References

1. Chris Rumford, “Globalisation: Cosmopolitanism and Europe”, in Chris Rumford (ed.), Cosmopolitanism and Europe, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2007, p. 1.
2. Brock and Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, p. ix.
3. Held, “Principles of Cosmopolitan Order”, p. 10.
4. Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent”, in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1784; Immanuel Kant, “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”, in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1795. Both cited in Anthony McGrew, “Democracy beyond Borders?”, in David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds.), The Global Transformation Reader, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2000, p. 413.
5. Boon and Delanty, “Cosmopolitanism and Europe”, p. 21. 7 Ibid.
6. Eşref Aksu, Early Notions of Global Governance: Selected Eighteenth-Century Proposals for “Perpetual Peace” – with Rousseau, Bentham and Kant unabridged, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2008, pp. 1-11.
7. Held, “Principles of Cosmopolitan Order”, p. 11. 10 Ibid.
8. See for example essays in Gilian Brock and Harry Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism.

9. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples: with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2001.
10. Indeed, many Cosmopolitans tend to view the global market as a natural ally of individualisation and value pluralism. This liberal heritage leads Ulrich Beck and others to list free trade among the core values of a Cosmopolitan outlook. See, for example, Nussbaum, Pogge, Barry, Buchanan and Appiah.
11. Charles Jones, Global Justice, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, cited in Christine Sypnowich, “Cosmopolitans, Cosmopolitanism, and Human Flourishing”, in Brock and Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, p. 56.
12. Beck and Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe, p. 13. 16 Ibid.
13. Kofman, “Figures of the Cosmopolitan, p. 239.
14. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991, London, Granta Books, 1991, p. 394, cited in Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2006, p. 112.
15. Barber, 1996, p. 34, cited in Vivienne Boom and Gerard Delanty, “Cosmopolitanism and Europe: Considerations and Contemporary Approaches”, 2007, p. 31.
16. Heidegger, cited in Dobson, “Thick Cosmopolitanism”, p. 169. Dobson borrowed it from J.A. Sholte, Globalization: A Critical Globalisation, Houndmills, Palgrave, 2000, p. 178.
17. Zygmunt Bauman, “Privacy, Secrecy, Intimacy, Human Bonds- and Other Collateral Casualities of Liquid Modernity”, The Hedgehog Review, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 20-29.
18. Martin Jacques, “The Death of Intimacy”, Guardian, 18 September 2008. 23 Ibid.
19. Sypnowich, “Cosmopolitans, Cosmopolitanism, and Human Flourishing”, p. 57. 25 Ibid., p. 58. 26 Ibid., p. 71.
20. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism.
21. Focus on human rights, human security and other individual-based normative principles has highlighted the gaps in and put a pressure on existing state institutions that fail to ensure equal and effective protection of rights. R2P puts a particular emphasis on the positive obligation of states towards the citizens as a condition of sovereignty.
22. Tara McCormack, “Critical Security Studies: Are They Really Critical?”, ARENA Journal, Vol. 32 (2009), p. 139.
23. Boon and Delanty, “Cosmopolitanism and Europe.
24. Ibid., p. 31. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., p. 32. 35 Ibid., p. 30. 36 Ibid., p. 33.
25. Ibid., p. 34. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., p. 25.
26. Rumford, Cosmopolitanism and Europe, p. 17.
27. Golden Dawn is a Greek neo-Nazi party, which received 6.92% of the vote in 2012 national election. It takes a very strong stance on immigration as a national problem and has advocated mining of borders to prevent illegal immigrants from entering Greece. “Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party maintains share of vote”, Guardian, 18 June 2012.
28. Duncan Kelly, “Multicultural Citizenship: The Limitations of Liberal Democracy”, The Political Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 1 (January 2000), p. 38.
29. Gideon Rachman, Zero-Sum World: Politics, Power and Prosperity After the Crash, London, Atlantic Books, 2010, p. 208.
30. Aksu, Early Notions of Global Governance, p. 7.
31. Jok Madut Jok, Sudan: Race, Religion and Violence, Oxford, Oneworld Publications, 2007, p. 247.