Unpacking Cosmopolitan memory

• Main Author: SAITO, Hiro
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: Cosmopolitanism; memory; nationalism; Comparative Politics; Political Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3368; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4625/viewcontent/Unpacking_Cosmopolitan_Memory_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Cosmopolitanism is here to stay despite rising nationalist sentiments and movements against the forces of globalization. To be sure, some groups are suspicious of, and even hostile to, the increasing numbers of foreigners and foreign products coming into their countries, but other groups accept and embrace more opportunities to interact with foreign others and cultures. Similarly, while policies and laws continue to take the nation-state as a primary frame of reference, they have also incorporated the idea of humanity to expand rights for both citizens and foreign residents. A globalizing world is full of these contradictory forces of cosmopolitanism and nationalism. In this sense, cosmopolitanism and nationalism form a central dialectic of globalization. This dialectic also operates as a focal point for the construction of ‘collective memory’ today. Since the early 1800s, collective memory has been integral to the formation of national identity to the extent that Max Weber (1978: 903) defined the nation as a ‘community of memories.’ At the beginning of the 21st century, however, nationalism is no longer the only logic of collective memory. As Ulrich Beck, Daniel Levy, and Natan Sznaider (2009) argued, the logic of cosmopolitanism is now increasingly found in a variety of mnemonic practices, thanks to the globalization of human rights discourse and the growing sociocultural interactions across national borders.