Cosmopolitanism and the Nation-State

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Cosmopolitanism and the Nation-State
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Cosmopolitanism

• An ideology and/or movement for universal
  community
• Need not be fully conceived - enough that it
  maintains a spirit of deepening and extension
  that is universal
• This encompasses both cultural and political
  cosmopolitanism
• A personal cultural ideal as well as a political
  project

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Contested Definitions

• Chris Brown, IR theorist cosmopolitanism is the
  'refusal to regard existing political structures
  as the source of ultimate value.' (Political
  definition)
• Our definition is wider, in that it considers as
  cosmopolitan
• a) open-ended trans-national and supranational
  projects
• b) those who seek a universalist, trans-ethnic
  community within the boundaries of a particular
  state
• c) actors who would accord existing political
  structures some value, albeit less than their
  transcendent project.

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Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism

• Cosmopolitanism seeks to transcend ties of space
  (soil) and time (blood/history)
• Nationalism also seeks to transcend ties of clan
  and village - but stops at the national boundary
• So cosmopolitanism and nationalism work well
  together at first, but then come to oppose each
  other
• Nationalism seeks security in space (land) and
  time (history/ancestry)

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The Origins of Cosmopolitanism

• Cosmopolitanism The World is my City
• Stoics and Cynics, c. 300 BC - figures like Zeno
  of Cintium and Cicero in Rome
• Link to Empire of Alexander Roman Empire

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Ancient Cosmopolitanism

• During periods of imperial expansion,
  universalism becomes more attractive
• Desire to have rational, universalistic, single
  law
• Accompanied by universal commonwealth (Cicero)
• Emphasis on human reason - what unites us
  together across differences of particular culture

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Religious Cosmopolitanism

• Also the idea of God's kingdom on earth as prior
  to local cultures and polities
• St. Peter's 'Jew nor Greek' passage
• Papacy struggled to assert this-worldly universal
  authority against princes and kings of Europe
• Dark Ages and Medieval periods a high point of
  universalistic claims (300 - 1300 AD)

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Cosmopolitan Revival

• Renaissance revival of Stoic ideals Holy Roman
  Empire pretensions, 1400s-1600s
• In Europe, by 17th c., modern cosmopolitan
  political theory
• World federalist ideas Emeric Cruce, French
  monk, early 1600s. Called for a permanent
  assembly of princes (inc Sultan of Turkey) or
  their delegates to arbitrate international
  disputes Sully's 'Grand Design' envisions more
  permanent federation
• Penn's 'European Plan' and those of other 17th c
  Quakers
• Most plans harked back to universality of
  Christendom or the Roman Empire

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Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism

• Mid-18th c. ideas of Paine, Voltaire, Kant
• Viewed religious enthusiasm as backward
• View patriotic attachments as a barrier to
  universal reason
• Paine 'my country is the world ' and 'my
  religion is to do good'
• Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795) unlike Paine or
  Rousseau, favoured a world government a
  constitution and executive body for the family of
  nations

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The Cosmopolitan Cultural Ideal, c. 1750

• An elitist ideal
• Competence
• Experience
• Aristocracy of taste
• Access to exotic luxuries
• Not available to native plebeians or parvenus
• Grand Tour, Parisian fashions, Salons, 'Republic
  of Letters'
• Already there is a cultural centre (Paris), so
  cosmopolitanism is inflected and not truly
  neutral (same claim today with American
  universalism)

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French Revolution

• Ideas of the Revolution backed by many liberal
  cosmopolitans like Paine, Cloots
• Declaration of the Rights of Man is universal
• But counter-revolutionary forces generate
  nationalism which turns on cosmopolitanism,
  1792-4
• Foreigners expelled, Cloots, a Prussian
  francophile and atheist, is executed
• Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism can they be
  reconciled in a democratic age?

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19th Century the Age of Dualism

• Most writers waxed eloquently about both
  cosmopolitanism and nationalism
• Logical contradictions were glossed over
• Mazzini Young Italy, Young Europe
• Kant World Government, but importance of the
  state for freedom
• Novalis (1807) 'Germanity is cosmopolitanism
  mixed with the most powerful national
  individuality'
• Meinecke (1907) 'The best German national
  feeling also includes the cosmopolitan ideal of a
  humanity beyond nationality'

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Dualism in the United States

• Religious figures felt that immigration would
  bring the peoples of the world together in
  America in fulfilment of God's plan prior to the
  Second Coming
• Secular writers looked to the Enlightenment
  cosmopolitan idea and America's fulfilment of it
• But while most saw the US as a universal nation,
  they also felt it to be a more Anglo-Saxon and
  Protestant nation than England

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Emerson and 'Double-Consciousness' in American
Identity, c. 1846
'The asylum of all nations...the energy of Irish,
Germans, Swedes, Poles and Cossacks, and all the
European tribes, of the Africans and Polynesians,
will construct a new race...as vigorous as the
new Europe which came out of the smelting pot of
the Dark Ages'   'It cannot be maintained by any
candid person that the African race have ever
occupied or do promise ever to occupy any very
high place in the human family...The Irish
cannot the American Indian cannot the Chinese
cannot. Before the energy of the Caucasian race
all other races have quailed and done obeisance'
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Socialist Dualism

• Dualism pervaded even the Socialist
  International. Second International up to 1917
  favoured colonialism and racist assumptions
• Most American socialists assumed that immigration
  of 'backward' peoples would retard the onset of
  socialist revolution
• In WWI, workers sided with their nations against
  their class, to the disappointment of many
  socialist intellectuals

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The Eclipse of Dualism

• By the first decade of 1900s in USA Liberal
  Progressives
• Ecumenical Movement in Protestantism - especially
  in USA
• WWI pacifists. War affects intellectuals
• Union of Democratic Control liberal historians
  attack nationalistic history writing

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The Rise of Cosmopolitan Anti-Nationalism

• Surrealism in modern art supersedes Futurism,
  1920s
• Most modernist intellectuals move left and the
  Left become cosmopolitan during inter-war period
• Marks the beginning of cosmopolitan
  anti-nationalism
• Two reasons reflexivity and war

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Interwar Politics, US

• US intellectuals and religious elite struggles
  against Anglo-Protestant nationalism
• Immigration restriction
• Klan
• Prohibition

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Interwar Cosmopolitan Politics, Europe

• Growing peace movements advocate European unity
  in 1910s
• French pro-European associations have 100,000s of
  members in 1920s
• Paneuropa formed in Austria, led by
  Coudenhove-Kalergi, early 1920s. HQ provided by
  Chancellor Seipel of Austria
• Draws on older European Idea
• Peace, cosmopolitanism and European Idea linked

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Interwar Cosmopolitan Politics, Europe

• Kalergi has links with French officials like
  Aristide Briand
• French foreign minister and pan-European Briand,
  mid 1920s
• French premier Herriot 'United States of
  Europe', 1925
• Pushed initiatives on both world peace (Geneva
  Protocols) and European federalism
• Briand's Memorandum on a United Europe, 1929.
  Presented to League of Nations and sent to
  European leaders for discussion

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Postwar Developments

• US emphasises 'nation of immigrants' idea and
  statue of liberty. Bar on nonwhite immigrants
  relaxed
• Europe moves toward European unity spearheaded
  by Paneuropean groups with pre-war links
• Leaders often have background in these
  organisations (i.e. Spinelli, de Gasperi- EEC
  commissioner)
• EEC forms from 1950s. Idealism of European
  Commission partly driven by cosmopolitan-pacifist
  motivations ('avoiding war')
• US cosmopolitanism is cultural, that of Europe is
  political

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Postwar Internationalism

• World Federalists and Ecumenical Protestants in
  US strongly back UN as they did the League of
  Nations. Opposed by many at home
• New UN human rights legislation. International
  law begins to come of age

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Cosmopolitanism as a Successful 20th c. Movement

• Many nationalist movements have been successful
  at taking power. What about cosmopolitan
  movements?
• The idea of a permanent assembly of states and of
  a European Union were dreams that lay unrealised
  for centuries, why the change?
• The dream of a universal nation in the US
  remained a fiction for centuries. Why the change
  in the 20th c.?

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Main Reasons for Intellectual-Political Success

• Intellectual evolution of liberal-cosmopolitan
  logic during 1900-14 which began to regard
  nationalism as reactionary
• Impact of mass warfare during 1914-45 which
  accelerated the antinationalist tendency within
  cosmopolitan thought
• Increased societal reflexivity expanding and
  intensifying networks of conceptual exchange
  sharpen contradictions between nationalism and
  cosmopolitanism

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Recent Period

• Expansion of Higher Education and national
  electronic media
• Peace and prosperity of 1945-73
• Major attitude changes in US among 'baby boom'
  generation on issues of race, national identity,
  1965-73
• Rise of a 'postmaterialist' culturally-liberal
  cohort of university-educated cosmopolitans that
  are pro-immigration and pro-Europe
• New 'Cosmopolitan Democracy' advocates in IR and
  Theory Held, Giddens, Beck, Nussbaum
• Beck's 'Cosmopolitan Manifesto', LSE c. 2000

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Growing Cosmopolitanism in Europe?
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Growing Cosmopolitanism in Europe
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Cultural Cosmopolitanism in US
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Education and Cosmopolitanism
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Education and Cosmopolitanism USA
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Cosmopolitanism vs Universalism

• Some (ie David Hollinger) assert that
  cosmopolitanism emphasises cultural diversity as
  opposed to universalist uniformity
• Cultural richness and hybridity as opposed to
  sterile universalism
• Nationalists/ethnics argue that hybridity leads
  to universalism, and that both reflect the same
  culturally-neutral tendency
• Nationalists/ethnics also contend that all
  cosmopolitan projects have certain biases at
  their core and are cultural imperialisms (ie
  Greek, Roman, Russian-Soviet, French-Napoleonic,
  Turkish-Ottoman, American-'globalisation')

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Modernisation can be Cosmopolitan or Nationalist
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Conclusion

• Cosmopolitanism a long history, much longer than
  globalisation
• Can be political or cultural
• Cosmopolitan ideas gained ground in the 20th c
• Became anti-nationalist due to ideological
  evolution and war
• Political success is linked to both world war and
  intensifying/extending intellectual exchanges
• Carried by higher-educated, 'postmaterialist'
  elites and middle class