WCSA Interactions

PANEL: Citizenship between cosmopolitanism and globalization

September 12^th, 2018

According to Beck, cosmopolitanism is a “Global sense, a sense of boundarylessness. An everyday, historically alert, reflexive awareness of ambivalences in a milieu of blurring differentiations and cultural contradictions. It reveals not just the ‘anguish’ but also the possibility of shaping one’s life and social relations under conditions of cultural mixture. It is simultaneously a skeptical, disillusioned, self-critical outlook”    (Beck U. 2006, Cosmopolitan Vision, Cambridge, and Polity Press).  In other words, a cosmopolitan way of life is the necessary consequence of a globalized world, where the Lebenswelt more and more depends on immaterial and disembedded (Giddens, The consequences of modernity, 1991) processes. In such a context, more and more individuals are developing self-representations and life-styles characterizing by weak local ties and high rates of mobility, both geographical and professional. Also due of the growing flows of migrants and refugees, the need is strong for supranational norms (such as the case of European Union) that grant the opportunity for individual to move across different areas of the world, beyond national legislations. This entails deep changes in the notion of citizenship, whose traditions link with nation-states sounds more and more anachronistic. This panel welcomes theoretical reflections, case studies, empirical research or scenario analyses on law-making and policy modelling processes related to the evolution of the norms on citizenship into a cosmopolitan and global direction. It aims to analyze some social changes derivatives on globalization process, their interdependence and global consequences. More in details, the focus will be the concept of citizenship and its evolution since the Call of the Berlin Wall. The processes of definition of citizens are always more dependent on models, patterns relationships and situations that occur in distant places with respect to the physical space within which their biography is materially lived.

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RC51 – Sociocybernetics

Systemic Science and Multidisciplinarity: New Tools for facing complex problems

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RC12 – Sociology of Law

Towards a global citizenship

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RC07 – Futures Research

Technological and social change: For a multi-disciplinary approach to innovation policies

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Tanto rumore per nulla? L’UE tra alleanze globali e turbolenze interne

Al di là di alcuni segni di contestazione locale che potrebbero lasciare pensare, ad un primo sguardo, ad una certa instabilità, l’Union Europea (UE) ha stipulato alleanze globali sempre più strategiche come quelle con Canada e Giappone e sta negoziando nuovi trattati ad esempio col Mercosur, in un contesto in cui altri Global Players stanno facendo altrettanto ad esempio sul Transpacifico o tra Canada e Mercosur sotto gli auspici dell’Organizzazione per la Cooperazione e lo Sviluppo Economico (OCSE) e della World Trade Organization (WTO). In sintesi, uno scenario sempre più aperto e globale, in cui contestazioni locali sembrano restare rumore esterno senza assurgere a dignità di mutamento sistemico. Ripensare lo sviluppo socio-economico in relazione all’espansione, prima degli spazi di libera circolazione e poi di estensione della cittadinanza, sembra essere la cifra dello scenario dei Global Players in cui la UE sta collocandosi, tra alleanze globali e turbolenze interne. Anche laddove un certo antagonismo tra Global Players sembra essere una causa importante delle turbolenze interne, queste stesse scompaiono con l’alleanza globale: tanto rumore per nulla.

Schuman Day Program

RN15 – Global, transnational and cosmopolitan sociology

Towards global citizenship

This work analyzes some social changes derivatives on globalization process, their interdependence and global consequences.  More in details, the focus of this paper is the concept of citizenship and its evolution.  The processes of definition of citizens are always more dependent from models, relationships and situations that occur in distant places with respect to the physical space within which their biography is materially lived. The privileged audience of our citizenship narratives is not necessarily placed in the contexts of our material life and it nor constitute part of networks of our direct relations. Instead, it can be reached in mediated ways and  can be part of a virtual or a spatially imaginative context of reference. The growing interdependence and the contemporary erosion and multiplication of boundaries make it possible to think of oneself as freed from local ties, in constant motion, immersed in global flows that enable remote relationships, the rapid transition from one context to another and the ability to overcome and establish distinctions. They allow individuals to recognize themselves within a cosmopolitan outlook, which could mean: “Global sense, a sense of boundarylessness. An everyday, historically alert, reflexive awareness of ambivalence in a milieu of blurring differentiations and cultural contradictions. It reveals not just the ‘anguish’ but also the possibility of shaping one’s life and social relations under conditions of cultural mixture. It is simultaneously a skeptical, disillusioned, self-critical outlook” (Beck U., 2000)

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