The Obama effect

confronting the political and the cosmopolitics of the real

Pnina Werbner

pp. 151-173

in: Roland Robertson, Anne S. Krossa (eds), European cosmopolitanism in question, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

One of the challenges faced by scholars who write on cosmopolitanism as a philosophy and ethos of world peace, tolerance, intercultural communication and human rights, is that such visionary ideals invariably encounter deep-seated scepticism. Critical social science is grounded, on the whole, in the realpolitik of economic inequalities and individual self-interest — especially in the international realm. There are far more cosmosceptics than cosmopolitans writing on this subject, and their suspicion is that cosmopolitanism is an elitist ideology imposed by privileged intellectuals on the rest of the world; a disguised form of western imperialism, masking economic interests. A growing recognition in the literature on cosmopolitanism, however, is that cosmopolitanism can never be outside or beyond the realm of politics. In being situated, cosmopolitanism as a vision and mission is both political and often embattled (Robbins, 1998; R. Werbner, 2008). Cosmopolitans are actors in a highly contested political field. Moreover, as I have argued recently (P. Werbner, 2008), cosmopolitanism is not restricted to the West. In the developing world both elites and non-elites may foster cosmopolitan visions, and these are not simply the product of travel beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. Living in an ethnically and religiously plural society such as Nigeria, India or South Africa can make a person a cosmopolitan in her own country (Farden, 2008; Parry, 2008; R. Werbner, 2008).