Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda

Abstract

Abstract This article calls for a re‐conceptualization of the social sciences by asking for a cosmopolitan turn. The intellectual undertaking of redefining cosmopolitanism is a trans‐disciplinary one, which includes geography, anthropology, ethnology, international relations, international law, political philosophy and political theory, and now sociology and social theory. Methodological nationalism, which subsumes society under the nation‐state, has until now made this task almost impossible. The alternative, a ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, is a contested term and project. Cosmopolitanism must not be equalized with the global (or globalization), with ‘world system theory’ (Wallerstein), with ‘world polity’ (Meyer and others), or with ‘world‐society’ (Luhmann). All of those concepts presuppose basic dualisms, such as domestic/foreign or national/international, which in reality have become ambiguous. Methodological cosmopolitanism opens up new horizons by demonstrating how we can make the empirical investigation of border crossings and other transnational phenomena possible.