The global 'cosmopolitan' tiger, as opposed to the local 'Sundarbans tiger', has become the rallying point for urbanites' concerns for wildlife protection globally. In this piece, I look at two different representations of tigers in recent history, one colonial and the other national. This so as to highlight how representations, even of wild animals, are ultimately linked to power. This leads me to argue how today's Western-dominated ideas about tigers (a view I call 'cosmopolitan') ultimately act to the detriment of 'other' tigers because these do not allow for an engagement with alternative ways of understanding animals and wildlife. Such images, I try to show using Descola's arguments about nature and understandings of it, in turn perpetrates the coercive and unequal relationship between, in this case, those who partake of the 'cosmopolitan' tiger view versus those who live with 'wild' tigers.
Search Results
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 544 items for :
- "COSMOPOLITANISM" x
- Refine by Access: All content x
- Refine by Content Type: All x
In Nature and Culture
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 25–40 (16 total)
Stephen Welch and Ruth Wittlinger
The aim of this paper is to offer a critique of the proposal of “methodological cosmopolitanism“ in theoretical terms and to substantiate this critique by providing an account of the dynamics of collective memory and identity in postunification Germany. In the first part, we look at the arguments about methodological cosmopolitanism and their derivative, the idea of cosmopolitan memory, illustrated by the case of Holocaust memory. In the second part we look at the case of Germany: firstly at its postwar experience of the attempted construction of “postnational“ identity, and then at more recent trends, contemporaneous with the Berlin Republic, towards a “normalization“ of national identity in Germany. The Holocaust plays a crucial, but different, role in each phase, we suggest. In the conclusion we return to more general themes, asking what the German case tells us about the cosmopolitanization thesis more generally.
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2011
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 38–54 (16 total)
Arjun Guneratne
This paper examines the emergence in Sri Lanka of transcultural thinking about environmental issues as well as the activism it engenders by examining the role of the Anglophone Sri Lankan elite as the chief protagonists historically of environmentalism in the country. It also examines one of Sri Lanka's leading NGOs, Environmental Foundation Ltd. (EFL) as an example of the activism of this class. EFL's perspective on environmental issues has its origins in the transformations wrought by colonialism in the country's class structure and in the introduction of European ideas of nature to the country's newly emergent middle-class. Modelled on the Natural Resources Defense Council of the United States, EFL was a new kind of environmental organization in Sri Lanka and a response to globalization and Sri Lanka's increasing integration into the global economy. Unlike the handful of environmental NGOS that existed in the late seventies, which were essentially pressure groups, EFL was conceived, on the model of NRDC, as a public interest law firm, and drew on international models to frame its arguments about the application of the law in the cause of environmental protection. This paper examines how these various factors—the social class of the activists and the processes of institution building—shaped a cosmopolitan environmental discourse in Sri Lanka whose roots lie in urban Sri Lankan middle class culture as it emerged and was transformed during colonial rule and in the various discourses of globalization that have been drawn on by Sri Lankan activists to craft their own arguments.
In Nature and Culture
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 98–114 (17 total)
James Koranyi
While Ulrich Beck and Natan Sznaider advocate cosmopolitanism as a way of freeing ourselves from grand narratives and putting the subject back on the agenda of research, this article illustrates that such uses of cosmopolitanism can create more problems than they propose to solve. In the case of the Romanian Banat, the recent revival of a cosmopolitan past based on the legacy of the German and other minorities has been intricately tied up with existing cultural hierarchies. Romania has therefore utilized this past as a way of showing its “western face.“ In the Serbian Banat, by contrast, such a development has not taken place due to the absence of a dialogue with the West. As such, this article demonstrates that cosmopolitanism has become normative in its use and has created problems for both Romanian and Serbian societies.
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2011
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 97–114 (17 total)
Ravi K. Raman
Through a case study of an anti-cola struggle in a south Indian village, this paper promotes the conceptual treatment of subaltern cosmopolitanism in the contemporary context of anticorporate social movements. In this situation the multiple issues raised by a local movement, such as livelihood, sustainability, and human rights, sensitize each of the new social agencies involved, within and outside the borders of the local state, and help forge a solidarity network across borders with their universally relevant concerns of environmental ethics and livelihood rights. It is further suggested that it is precisely the new politics of ecology and culture articulated by the subalterns that constructs an enduring and viable future for social movements.
In Nature and Culture
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 82–97 (16 total)
Mark Johnson and Suzanne Clisby
Cosmopolitans are frequently characterized as living and perceiving the world and their environment from a distance. Drawing on ethnographic work among a small group of Western migrants in Costa Rica, we complicate this portrayal in a number of ways. First, we demonstrate that these people think in similar kinds of ways as social theorists: they too are worried about living at a distance from place and are seeking what is, in their way of reckoning, a more engaged relationship with their surroundings. Second, however, we explore the social context and corollaries of these migrants' attempts to bring together a putatively "modern/cosmopolitan" way of relating to place and a "traditional/place-based" way of relating to surroundings. Specifically, we demonstrate how migrant claims to transcend the differences between "tradition" and "modernity" create new forms of social exclusion as they, both literally and figuratively, come to claim the place of "the other."
In Nature and Culture
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 63–81 (19 total)
Katja Sarmiento-Mirwaldt
This article considers Germans' relationships with other nations from a perspective of methodological cosmopolitanism. It examines the claim that everincreasing contacts with members of different nations can bring about a sense of trust in these nations. Using data from a 2006 opinion poll, it analyzes Germans' contact with and trust in six other nations. The study suggests that Germany as a whole is too large as a level of analysis. Germans' transnational relationships are better examined at a subnational level such as political districts. It is shown that transnational contact is particularly likely to occur in border regions and in parts of Germany with a high proportion of foreign residents. The two types of contact, however, have a differential effect on Germans' trust in other nations. Cross-border contact appears to be influenced by Germany's long-standing relationships with its western allies, since such contact has a positive effect on trust in western nations but not eastern ones. Conversely, multicultural contact with immigrant communities has a generally positive effect on levels of trust in other nations.
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2011
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 55–72 (17 total)
Roland Axtmann
The notion of cultural plurality and the idea of intercultural dialogue have been central to the discussion of cosmopolitanism in both political philosophy and social theory. This point is developed in an exposition of the arguments put forward by Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt and through a critical engagement with Ulrich Beck's social theory of cosmopolitanism as a “social reality.“ It is argued that Beck's analysis fails to convince as a sociological extension of a long philosophical tradition and that instead of Beck's macrostructural analysis it is more promising to formulate an actor-centred sociological theory on the transnationalization of social spaces and the formation of a “cosmopolitan“ consciousness or awareness of transnational actors.
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2011
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 20–37 (17 total)
When Cosmopolitans Get Ahead
W. T. Eady's I.D.B. or The Adventures of Solomon Davis (1887)
Danielle Kinsey
“cosmopolitan,” she did invoke its ancient Greek definition, “citizen of the world,” and many took this speech to be at once an attack on cosmopolitanism and a diagnosis of some of the animus that fueled the pro-Brexit vote. Cosmopolitanism theorist Kwame
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 78–90 (13 total)
Cosmopolitan Justice
Education and Global Citizenship
Penny Enslin and Mary Tjiattas
Darrel Moellendorf argues that duties of justice have global scope. We share Moellendorf’s rejection of statism and his emphasis on duties of justice arising out of association in Cosmopolitan Justice. Building on Moellendorf’s view that there are cosmopolitan duties of justice, we argue that in education they are both negative and positive, requiring redistribution of educational resources and transnational educational intervention. We suggest what kinds of intervention are justifiable and required, the kinds of international structures that could regulate them, and a conception of cosmopolitan citizenship to underpin education for global citizenship.