Cosmopolitan Disorders: Ignoring Power, Overcoming Diversity, Transcending Borders

Year 2014, Volume: 19 Issue: 1, 25 - 38, 01.04.2014

Everita Sılına

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

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• See for example essays in Gilian Brock and Harry Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism.
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• 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.
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• Boon and Delanty, “Cosmopolitanism and Europe.
• Ibid., p. 31. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., p. 32. 35 Ibid., p. 30. 36 Ibid., p. 33.
• Ibid., p. 34. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., p. 25.
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• 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.
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