Globalization not only increases the inter-political and political elites, but also promotes transnational political communication from that can generate cosmopolitan imagination, as observed, for example in the world-wide anti-Vietnam war movement during the 1960s. This course examines (a) possibilities and limitations of the public sphere that cuts across national borders and (b) the role of cosmopolitanism for enhancing our global, national and local societies. As such, students want to learn about the political and social theory of the global public sphere and cosmopolitanism along with ideas of diffusion, networks and mobilities that enable the emerging and sustaining of transnational interaction and communication. The course wants to explore specific empirical cases, both from western and non-western regions, including the European public sphere and post-colonial cosmopolitanism, as well as the historical case of the global Sixties movement to the present post-2011 global protest wave. As a reflection, we also want to touch upon the recent populist-nationalist movements that are emerging world-wide, in part, as a backlash towards the cosmopolitan ideal of these past fifty years.
- Lehrende(r): Kei Takata