Cosmopolitan Spaces

Europe, Globalization, Theory

Chris Rumford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780415896894
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134167616
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Social Sciences

Cosmopolitan Spaces: Europe, Globalization, Theory endeavors a highly innovative reading of both globalization theory and contemporary European transformations. Interpreting cosmopolitanism as a politics of space, Rumford positions his analysis at the intersection of two exciting currents in contemporary social science research: the 'spatial turn' in the social sciences and the renewed interest in cosmopolitanism. Rumford elaborates a completely new theoretical framework for understanding the contemporary social and political transformation of Europe, and takes issue with many aspects of the globalization-inspired accounts of Europeanization which remain blind to the spatial dimensions of change. In addition to its compelling reading of cosmopolitanism, Cosmopolitan Spaces: Europe, Globalization, Theory, offers a provocative critique for thinking about Europe in terms of Empire, and advances the startling claim that Europe should be considered 'postwestern'.

1
Introduction

Cosmopolitanism as a Politics of Space

This book offers a critique of various strands of globalization thinking from the perspective of what I am calling ‘critical cosmopolitanism’. At the core of this critique is the idea that globalization theories have, over a period of two decades or so, uncritically offered us a strong vision of the singularity of the world, its oneness and ‘unicity’, to use Robertson’s term, a vision which follows from the insistence that globalization makes the world into a single place (and allows us to perceive it as a single place). My revisionist intent is to demonstrate that cosmopolitanism, if it is to retain any critical edge in the social sciences, has to be centrally concerned with generating a multiplicity of perspectives, and consequently allowing for the possibility of many worlds.

As an adjunct to the core argument the book also makes the case for why ‘critical cosmopolitanism’ is best developed through a study of spaces and borders. A double argument sustains this line of reasoning. One is that cosmopolitanism is at root already a ‘politics of space’. In other words, cosmopolitanism is an approach to understanding the social and political world which problematizes, rather than assumes, the spaces with which it is dealing. A very good example of this is provided by the work of Beck (2006) for whom cosmopolitanism engenders a critical distance from what he terms ‘methodological nationalism’. In other words, it does not automatically assume that the nation-state is the only or primary unit of political organization. The other argument is that spaces and borders, especially in Europe, have been somewhat disordered by processes of globalization acting upon European nation-state space; the outcomes of this disruption to orderly nation-state existence are difficult to comprehend using conventional social science categories. Cosmopolitanism can provide us with the requisite conceptual ‘toolbox’ with which to understand the novel spaces and borders emerging in Europe.

Despite its title, this is not a book ‘about’ cosmopolitanism, Europe, political spaces, or globalization. It is a book about how all of these things are connected and why we need to study them together. In truth, I did not set out to write such a book (see below), but the process of writing has brought together a number of pressing concerns in such a way as to point me in this direction. Some time ago, I discovered that several lines of my research were tending to converge in much the same place. One line of enquiry concerned the aspatial complexion of much contemporary work on the European Union, which tends not to go beyond the idea of ‘levels’ of governance or agglomerations of pre-existing national space, which coupled with the dearth of penetrative studies on the relationship between globalization and Europe (Rumford, 2006e) seriously limits study on the changing nature of Europe’s borders. This suggested to me that a new approach to spaces, borders, and Europe was needed and that a cosmopolitan perspective could be a productive way forward. Another line of research, originally not connected to either Europe or cosmopolitanism in an obvious way, was the ways in which many contemporary configurations of borders and spaces seem to confound all models, theories, and explanations. An interest in transnational and global spaces crystallized into an investigation of Europe’s changing spatiality for which tried and tested concepts for thinking about spaces and borders did not seem to ‘work’. Again, cosmopolitanism appeared to open up the possibility of news ways of conceptualising spaces and borders which could be used to understand political and societal dynamics in Europe.

A third research interest was the relationship between cosmopolitanism and Europe, and its corollary, the misuse of (or careless application of) notions of cosmopolitanism in studies of contemporary Europe, seeing it for example as something ‘belonging’ to Europe in a way which appeared to be anything but cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitanism cannot be owned by Europe, and my version of ‘critical cosmopolitanism’ is an attempt to defend and project a cosmopolitanism worthy of the name. The final strand of research which informs the book is a concern with globalization theory, particularly its cultural strands, which have mainly emerged from sociological interventions over the past two decades or so—in my view the most significant and positive development in sociological thinking in recent times. Specifically my concern is with the way that globalization theorists, in a rare example of consensus amongst a diverse range of thinkers, see globalization as leading to ‘one world’. Cosmopolitanism, in my view, should challenge the ‘one-worldism’ of globalization theory and open itself to a multiplicity of worlds which are possible.

WHY DO WE NEED A BOOK ON COSMOPOLITAN SPACES?

The idea of writing a book on cosmopolitanism and Europe seemed like a very good one when I embarked upon this project a couple of years ago. There was little written specifically on a topic which seemed fresh and vital, the field appeared open and inviting, and academic work in the field of (what has subsequently been termed ‘new’) cosmopolitanism was beginning to take shape and make some influential contributions to thinking on political identity, post-national citizenship, social transformations, and recasting core concerns associated with the study of globalization. My initial enthusiasm for studying cosmopolitanism in the European context led me to organize a conference,¹ edit and write the Introduction for a special issue of a journal, and publish an edited collection (Rumford, 2005, 2007c) all on the theme of ‘cosmopolitanism and Europe’. I also co-authored a book (with Gerard Delanty), which concludes with a chapter on ‘cosmopolitan Europe’ (Delanty and Rumford, 2005). On the back of these projects I planned a monograph on the theme of cosmopolitanism and Europe, was fortunate enough to be offered a contract by Routledge, and settled down to the task of writing my new book.

But something has happened along the way, and it no longer seems like such a good idea to write a book on cosmopolitanism and Europe, or, more accurately, it has become impossible for me to write the book I originally planned to write. The result is that this is not the book I began work on a couple of years ago (nor exactly the book I was contracted to write, so apologies to Routledge in advance). The reason for this change of heart is that my perspective on the core themes has changed significantly during the period in which I have been engaged on this project. In just a few short years ‘cosmopolitanism and Europe’, a field of study once shinning with promise, has lost some of its sparkle, at least that is my conclusion. It is not that the field is flooded with competing titles. In addition to my own edited volume Cosmopolitanism and Europe published in 2007, there has appeared only a small number of books exploring vaguely comparable subject matter, most notably Beck and Grande’s recently translated Cosmopolitan Europe (Beck and Grande, 2007[2004]), for more on which see Chapter 6, and Delanty’s edited volume, Europe and Asia Between East and West (Delanty, 2006b), to which I contributed a chapter on ‘Borders and rebordering’.

So the field is by no means flooded. What has happened though is that the idea of applying cosmopolitan perspectives to an understanding of contemporary Europe has (in the hands of some commentators) been overtaken by a desire to install cosmopolitanism as Europe’s ‘big idea’, resurrect it as a core component of the European heritage, or parade it as a badge of European identity in dealing with the rest of the world (but mainly the United States). This tendency is most evident in the work of Habermas, but also insinuates itself in the aforementioned book by Beck and Grande, and colours the mainstream and journalistic interpretations of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and Europe—see, for example, Beck and Giddens’ newspaper article (Beck and Giddens, 2003), or the work of Rifkin (2004a, 2004b). One consequence of my reservations about the direction that cosmopolitan studies is taking is that my advocacy of cosmopolitanism is more muted than it once was, although as I outline later in the chapter I am keen to develop a more cosmopolitan form of social science.

The ‘cosmopolitan spaces’ of the title are metaphorical, in contrast to the work of Beck and Grande (2007) who look at the European Union (EU) and find a cosmopolitan reality and a ‘cosmopolitan empire’, or Daniele Archibugi who looks at the EU and sees ‘actually existing cosmopolitanism’, or the nearest thing to it. This said, the title is not really misleading, although the focus certainly falls more on attempting to understand Europe’s new and emerging spaces than their reality as embodiments of cosmopolitanism. The subtitle is more accurate. The book is centrally about the relationship between globalization, cosmopolitanism, and Europe and the way we theorize this relationship, and importantly, the way in which through theory we can better understand such relations. During the writing of the book the emphasis has shifted from the title to the subtitle. Now it is less an investigation of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and space, and more an exploration of the possibility of ‘critical cosmopolitanism’. But there is an important sense in which the book has space at the centre of its concerns. The research for this book has been stimulated by my interest in what I see as some rather unusual spatial developments which have occurred in the past few years. I attempt to capture the unfamiliarity of many spaces in the title of Chapter 5 by using the terms ‘spaces of wonder’ and the ‘globalization of strangeness’. There is a peculiar quality to contemporary political spaces and borders which I believe are not easily apprehended with the tools of conventional social science. Stjepan Mestrovic’s comment that ‘facts do not speak for themselves, and require theory to illuminate them’ (Mestrovic, 1997, 17) summarises this idea very well. The sort of spaces I am thinking of are those stimulated by processes of postwesternization (Chapter 7), which confound conventional expectations of spatial organization and bordering processes, the cosmopolitan qualities of Europe’s borders (Chapter 4), and the aforementioned ‘spaces of wonder’, including global borderlands and ‘offshore borders’. It is not that these spaces are cosmopolitan is any literal sense, it is more that they are spaces which can only be properly apprehended through a ‘critical cosmopolitanism’.

WHAT SORT OF COSMOPOLITANISM?

In studies of cosmopolitanism and Europe what characterises the current state of play then is less a concern to apply cosmopolitan perspectives to Europe in order to better understand the dynamics of social and political transformation, and more a project of bonding cosmopolitanism to Europe with the hope of making the association natural and compelling. In this sense social scientists are trying to do something the EU has never attempted; create a cosmopolitan Europe. The EU is notably reluctant to describe itself, its project of integration, and its European citizens as cosmopolitan. So despite Daniele Archibugi’s characterisation of the EU as ‘the first international model which begins to resemble the cosmopolitan model’ (Archibugi 1998, 219), the EU does not see itself in these terms. Indeed there appears to be an embarrassing mismatch between the cosmopolitanism of the European Union as perceived by political scientists and the official position of the EU. In my view there are two plausible explanations for this mismatch (for a full account see Rumford, 2007c, 4–5).

The first (partial) explanation is that while the EU possesses some cosmopolitan qualities (its role in funding humanitarian efforts, the institutionalization of post-national citizenship, and advocacy of global environmental regimes), the EU does not equate these preferences and practices with cosmopolitanism. In other words, the EU may act in a way that can be described as cosmopolitan but that this is not the interpretation or designation favoured by EU institutions, which may prefer the terms ‘humanitarian’ or ‘globally aware’. A second explanation is that, for some reason, the EU is wary of the term and deliberately avoids it. This could be because the EU does not want to promote a cosmopolitan identity or wish for Europeans to feel themselves to be cosmopolitan for fear that this will further dilute their already weak attachment to the European project. It is also possible that the EU sees a difficulty in ‘selling’ the idea of further integration to member states if European citizens perceive the EU as working on behalf of all humanity rather than promoting the interests of Europeans.

However, none of this should be taken to mean that I have become totally disillusioned with the study of cosmopolitanism and Europe. Despite my deep reservations about the trends in the ‘cosmopolitan turn’ I do believe that there is something very useful about studying cosmopolitanism and Europe, and the focus of this book falls upon the core of what I see as valuable in this enterprise. I am interested to explore the ways in which cosmopolitanism can be considered a ‘politics of space’. As I mentioned earlier, a cosmopolitan perspective contains the potential for a radical questioning and examination of political spaces and the politics of space. This is because cosmopolitanism is centrally concerned with changing relationships between individuals, their communities, and the world, and none of these components or the relationships between them can be taken for granted. Cosmopolitanism causes us to rethink the place of individuals in the world and their relation to the communities to which they may belong (or distance themselves from). The spaces occupied or transcended by these communities cannot be assumed. They may not in fact be spaces at all in any conventional sense, and may be better represented by networks, for example. Importantly, cosmopolitanism causes us to rethink the world itself, particularly the ‘oneness’ of the world (a significant contribution of globalization theorizing) versus the possibility of a multiplicity of worlds (a theme which we explore in depth in Chapter 8). Cosmopolitanism, unlike nationalism, does not come with a ready-made spatial scale attached. Cosmopolitanism presumes no ‘natural’ political spaces; looking at something from a cosmopolitan perspective implies that we investigate the spatial dimensions of politics. This seems particularly useful when studying contemporary Europe characterised as it is by changing political scales, the emergence of transnational spaces of both governance and political movements, and the changing nature of borders.

The uncertainty about the political spaces of Europe has led to a plethora of neologisms with which to understand this particular dimension of Europeanization: post-national polity, Europe of the regions, network Europe, European empire, or post-national constellation, for example. With its focus on the politics of space, this book offers both an innovative reading of cosmopolitanism and a novel approach to exploring the spatiality of Europe. What emerges is a fresh understanding of why it is good to study cosmopolitanism and Europe in conjunction. Cosmopolitanism channels us into new ways of thinking about the spatiality of Europe and takes us beyond those tired designations which rely on post-national and multi-level motifs. It does this primarily because it causes us to look at the importance of the changing nature of borders, and their impact upon the spatiality of Europe. The result is that Europe’s spatiality can be understood through its ‘cosmopolitan borders’ (Chapter 4), processes of postwesternization (Chapter 7), and even ‘spaces of wonder’ (Chapter 5).

Of course Cosmopolitan Spaces also has something to say about cosmopolitanism, particularly what a cosmopolitan social science can achieve and indeed why we should be interested in developing social science in a cosmopolitan direction. Other contemporary approaches to cosmopolitanism are directed to questions such as whether people can identify with cosmopolitan ideas and/or acquire a cosmopolitan identity, whether it is meaningful to talk of cosmopolitan citizenship, whether cosmopolitanism can be institutionalized and a world level of governance become a reality, and whether international institutions (such as the EU) can develop a cosmopolitan policy agenda. These are not my concerns in this book. In fact, I think it doubtful that there will ever be significant numbers of individuals who identify themselves as cosmopolitans (or at least who do this and agree what they understand to be cosmopolitanism). I think that the quest for cosmopolitan institutions is misguided (and gives a far too normative complexion to social science), and I think it is naïve to think that the EU will ever endorse a cosmopolitan agenda. Indeed, as far as I am concerned these questions are largely irrelevant. What is much more important, and certainly more practical, is that we move towards a cosmopolitan social science, one which is genuinely pluralist, multi-perspectival, and not framed by European priorities and preoccupations. The real value of cosmopolitanism lies in its ability to transform the way we think about the world, formulate new research questions, and do social science better. The book is intended as a modest contribution to this task.

CRITIQUES OF THE ‘NEW’ COSMOPOLITANISM

I am concerned that mechanical attempts to associate cosmopolitanism with Europe will both blunt attempts to develop cosmopolitan critiques of developments in Europe and turn people off to anything that sounds like a cosmopolitan approach. I am also worried that if the EU can be thought to be cosmopolitan (by accident or design) then cosmopolitanism will become seen as something internal to the integration project (a quality of the EU) and social scientists will be able to obtain no analytical purchase b...

Table of contents

• Routledge Advances in Sociology
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 From a Sociology of the EU to a Social Theory of Europe
• 3 The Borders and Borderlands of Europe
• 4 Europe’s Cosmopolitan Borders
• 5 ‘Spaces of Wonder’
• 6 Empire and the Hubris of the ‘High Point’
• 7 Postwesternization
• 8 The World is Not Enough
• 9 Concluding Thoughts
• Notes
• References
• Index