Toward a global cosmopolis? On the formation of a cosmopolitan cultural model

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Date
2012-11-01
Authors
Strydom, Piet
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SAGE Publications
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Abstract
This article offers a critical assessment of the prospects of the emergence of a global cosmopolitan society. For this purpose, it presents an analysis of the different interrelated types of structure formation in the process of cosmopolitisation and the mechanisms sustaining each. It deals with both the generation of a variety of actor-based models of world openness at the micro and meso level and with the reflexive meta-principle of cosmopolitanism forming part of the cognitive order of society at the macro level. But the focus is on the formation of an intermediate, substantive, situational, cultural model of cosmopolitanism which is on the one hand guided by the abstract principle of cosmopolitanism and on the other selectively brings together the actor models. Central to this analysis of cultural model formation is the threefold or triple contingency structure of the communication involved. The diagnosis, which takes a variety of conditions into account, is that the vital central moment of the formation of a substantive cultural model that would frame the organisation of a normative social order is deficient, which implies that the societal learning process supposed to engender it is being diverted, impeded or blocked. An explanation along the lines of critical social theory is proposed with reference to socio-structural and sociocultural causal factors.
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Cognitive order , Communication , Cosmopolitanism , Critical social theory , Culture , Mechanisms , Reflexivity , Social learning processes , Structure formation , Triple contingency
Citation
Strydom, P. (2012) 'Toward a global cosmopolis? On the formation of a cosmopolitan cultural model', Irish Journal of Sociology, 20(2), pp. 28-50. doi:10.7227/ijs.20.2.3
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© 2012, the Author. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.