Discourses of Cosmopolitanism and Boundary Work at an International, High-Quality University
Empirical Social Research
Final Report Abstract
Against the backdrop of a growing interest in the concept and empirical phenomenon of cosmopolitanism, my study builds on the strands of literature that treat cosmopolitanism as a grounded category and study “cosmopolitanism in practice”. Specifically, I am interested in examining the (unintended) consequences of “cosmopolitanism talk” in terms of boundary drawing and with respect to notions of solidarity and equality. To realize this research goal, I studied cosmopolitanism in a setting where it is an ideal constantly referred to: the student body at an international, high-quality university. I chose one of the most international universities in the world, the London School of Economics and Political Science. In total, I conducted 24 semi-structured interviews with students from a broad spectrum of study programmes and countries of origin. I asked my interviewees such questions as: When you think about LSE, do you have the feeling that this is a cosmopolitan institution? Do you have the feeling that particular obligations come with being a cosmopolitan or with being [the student’s nationality]? When you think about globalization and inequality, do you have the feeling that cosmopolitanism has anything to do with this? What do you consider most important in your life, taken as a whole? In contrast to the widely shared assumption that self-declared cosmopolitans tend to ignore the social conditions of their own discourse and the privileged culture these views are embedded in, the students I interviewed reflected rather extensively on their own position and did not use cosmopolitanism as a means of disdaining other people’s “parochialness” or “thick attachments”. Some of them were, however, very concerned with differentiating “false” from “true” cosmopolitans. Thus, cosmopolitanism was used as a means of drawing symbolic boundaries among the students themselves. All the students I interviewed perceived cosmopolitanism as a morally superior discourse which none of them was able to “escape”. They differed, however, in their strategies for coping with this paradigm. Whereas one group deconstructed manifestations of this discourse, thereby drawing on idealized visions of what a “proper” cosmopolitanism should look like, others elaborated on their commitment to cosmopolitanism as a moral guideline for their personal lives. The latter group strived to operationalize the values implied by the concept and drew satisfaction from “doing the right thing”. For them, cosmopolitanism functioned as something of an “invisible religion”. With regard to these young transnational cosmopolitans’ notions of solidarity, I found that feelings of solidarity were primarily expressed towards their own families. Although some of them were planning on returning to their native countries, their motivation was not to “give something back” but, rather, they felt they could make more of their talents and “do something good” in an environment familiar to them—their native nation-state. Against the backdrop of a literature that has studied notions of solidarity mainly with respect to the nationstate (and has lamented its gradual vanishing in the age of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism), this is a striking result as it indicates the parallelism of transnational solidarities and a return to the most primordial unit of all: the family. Thus, I conclude that we need to take familial bonds more seriously into account when studying phenomena of elite transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. Overall, my research sheds light on the “workings” of cosmopolitan discourse and aspires to relevance beyond the specific case studied. It addresses, first, how people cope with the increasing dominance of cosmopolitanism discourse, and, second, how transnational cosmopolitans organize their solidarities, duties and feelings of responsibility.
