Is Cosmopolitanism Still Possible: A Review of Ulrich Beck’s “Cosmopolitan Vision”

Ulirch Beck. Cosmpolitan Vision. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2006.

German sociologist and European public intellectual, Ulrich Beck, pioneer in critical cosmopolitan sociology, systematizes his decades-long study of cosmopolitanism, which he broaches as a defining feature of the era of reflexive modernity, in Cosmopolitan Vision, translated into English in 2006, two years after its original publication in German in 2004.

Though Beck’s definition of globalization as one-dimensional involving only economic integration seems rather outdated, his delineation of cosmopolitan outlook as meaning “that, in a world of global crises and dangers produced by civilization, the old differentiations between internal and external, national and international, us and them, lose their validity and a new cosmopolitan realism becomes essential to survival” (14) and of cosmopolitanization from within announce his comprehensive and qualitative approach to his topic.

Beck proceeds to a vehement dismissal of national outlook or methodological nationalism, whose limitations he first exposed in earlier books such as World Risk Society (1999), and a full endorsement of the cosmopolitan outlook or methodological cosmopolitanism which involves a clean break with the insularity of national consciousness and an overture to and internalization of the world of others. However, for the author, the former, though totally out of step with the realities of the cosmopolitan age, should not radically be erased but incorporated into the latter which is dialogical and multi-perspective. Beck’s determination to transform sociology both in theoretical and methodological terms is salient in this argument.

In his exposition of the cosmopolitan vision, Beck offers a balanced approach to theory and commentary on social, cultural, and political developments, such as the war in Kosovo or the activities of al-Qaeda, which makes the book interesting both for sociologists and general readers. He points to the necessity of a cosmopolitanism that can be sociologically operationalized, while he analyzes all the indicators of cosmopolitanization.

Beck structures his ideas in two main equal-in-length, parts, titled “Cosmopolitan Realism” and “Concretizations, Prospects.” In the first one, he minutely defines and analyzes the concepts of cosmopolitanization and cosmopolitanism, justifies his critique of methodological nationalism and his advocacy of methodological cosmopolitanism, and concludes in the necessity to “recognize – and use – the potential for a cosmopolitan consciousness in structural interdependencies (risk, technology, migration)” (96). In the second part, he further clarifies the methodological and political implications of a cosmopolitan society.

A special focus is given to the specificity of the European situation. His concluding chapter, “Cosmopolitan Europe: Reality and Utopia,” firmly defends the conception of a cosmopolitan Europe, which is “not a club for Christians” (164), and hence open to receive a country such as Turkey in the EU, a quite controversial position actually.  It is rather “a historically-rooted Europe which breaks with its history” (171), hence self-critical and future-orientated; it is “a Europe of diversity” (172) that does not follow “the American path of national multiculturalism, which Beck criticizes,” but “the principals of national, cultural, ethic and religious toleration (…) institutionally anchored” (176).

The book comes full circle and concludes on the notion of cosmopolitan realism that can accommodate the world risk society with its fair or unfair share of all kinds of risk. Beck’s final question, how horizontal cosmopolitanization be raised to public awareness, which he declares to be outside the scope of his book, could easily, though partially, be answered. Precisely, public awareness can be achieved by its very understanding, which is actually the goal of Beck’s book. Though his convoluted style and his overlapping arguments that give the impression of repetitions could put a strain on reading fluency, this volume is accessible for the general reader. A hallmark of this style is the profusion of questions that precede his arguments, which can be confusing for the reader as they cannot be answered at the same time.

Beck has been criticized for Eurocentrism yet his vision of a “global cosmopolis,” “a federal planetary system of states which is not ruled by a ‘solar’ world state but is composed of regional and continental alliances of states” (Beck 2006, 132), to a certain extent, rules out this European centrality. His criticism of Pax America, which the Ukrainian crisis has recently brought to the fore, could not be more topical. Likewise, this crisis also demonstrates that cosmopolitan realism is being cynically disregarded and makes it all the more meaningful.

It should be mentioned that Gerard Delanty’s The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory (2009), building on Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology furthered Beck’s critical cosmopolitanism by including postcolonial criticism which was found wanting in Beck’s cosmopolitan vision. Delanty’s contribution shows how Beck’s legacy opens various possibilities of recreating the social science field. Indeed, this legacy to cosmopolitan scholarship, in particular, and to sociology, in general, remains inestimable in a time of fundamental social change.

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