Cosmopolitanism and Tomlinson

According to Tomlinson is necessary to think about cosmopolitanism “as a cultural resource that needs to operate in a peculiarly unconvivial institutional context” (1999: 184). The condition of citizenship is very implicated in the global politic sphere, so it is important to analysis the concept of cosmopolitanism. Being citizen of the world entails having a wide cultural disposition beyond of the local limits, recognizing the global belonging and applying this condition into everyday life acts and thoughts. To reach this goal it is necessary that cosmopolitans are freed from the boundaries and predjudices of their local culture and open to the diversity of global cultures and to be disposed to be nourished and affected by the cultural perspective of the other. But Tomlinson warns that mor importantly is the need to have a sense of belonging to a world where , in terms of “environmental threats requiring lifestyle adaptation, there is no other” (1999: 186)

Tomlinson addresses the definition of cosmopolitanism through the UN report of 1995 published by the Commision on Global Governance. In this report the globalization becomes the core of the analysis of change of the world since the foundation of this organization in 1945. Tomlinson stresses the metaphor idea of the world as a Global neighborhood where the people is connected by proximity and not by communal ties. The real reason of this proximity is, according to the Tomlinson anlysis of the UN report, the fact that the shrinking of distance and complex interdependence of the globalization process produced the “enforced proximity” (1999: 181). It means that people can have expanded horizons and co-operation in political terms but on the other hand we don’t choose our neighbors and it can be problematic. This report make Tomlinson tho ask himself how people address in their everyday life the fact of belonging part to a global neighborhood, of being a literally a “citizen of the world” (according to the greek etymology of “cosmopolitan” kosmos=world, polis=city).

The author also finds some ideological problems, some related to the connotation in some cultures of “citizen of the world” and “man of the world”. The women has been traditionally isolated to local environment instead of men privileges of interacting in public life. The second problem is related to the western figure of cosmopolitan, influenced by first world countries and finally the third is linked to the bias of the cosmopolitan life belongs to elites and metropolitan life, lead for the affirmation that socio-economic advantage creates moral superior agents.

For Tomlinson the cosmopolitan cultural disposition needs to be universal and plural, cosmopolitan people can not act rejecting of one of this features. The problematic connotations of cosmopolitanism can be solved if the cosmopolitan has “an active sense of belonging to the wider world” (1999: 194), of being able to experience an identity that is not totally circumscribed by immediate locality, that “embrace a sense of what unites us as human beings, of common risks and possibilities, of mutual responsibilities ”and he have also to have an “awareness of the world as one of many cultural others. In other words, a cosmopolitan people must be ready to be reflexive and open to questioning their cultural background. Tomlison refers to the main characteristic of a human being, a “sad monkey” that continuously ask to himself “why”, “who”, “how”, “what” about his environment. (1999: 194)

Cosmopolitan is a identity not opposed to the local. According to the author a cosmopolitan people is “someone who is able to live - ethically, culturally- in both the global and local at the same time” (199: 195). The main feature of cosmopolitanism is the capacity -supporting by their own local background and respecting it- to negotiate at the same level with other people with their own cultural background. But, with make special to this kind of identity is also the capacity to transcend the local ambit when it is time to make decisions, considering both global and local consequences and, in Tomlinson’s words, “ be able to enter into an intelligent relationship of dialogue with others who start from different assumptions, about how to promote these interests.

One of the issues that Tomlinson address is the capacity of media of generating this kind of cosmopolitanism among people. He assumes that the penetration of the homes by media and communication technology inter alia “ hold the promise of vital aspects of the cosmopolitan disposition: the awareness of the wider world as significant for us in our locality, the sense of connection with other cultures and even, perhaps, an increasing openness to cultural difference” (1999: 200) and this influence of media entails the emergence a new type of “aesthetic cosmopolitanism” that make possible a seed for openness of people for contrasting between societies. Media like television, make a quasi experience on people, “it provides a different kind of cultural experience which is probably not morally sustaining in the same way that the proximate experiences and personal relations close to the core of the lifeworld are”, he continues with the conclusion that “ because of these limitations it is implausible that media experience alone will furnish us with a sense of global solidarity” (1999:202)

Likewise, Debra Spitulnik address this issue in her research Mobile Machines and Fluid Audiences: Rethinking Reception through Zambian Radio culture rejecting the assumption that “the audience” is a unified aggregate that receives a fixe message. In relation to the words of Tomlinson, Spitulnik establishes the necessity of address the reception studies from a more ethnographic point of view in the anthropological sense of that term. The author of this interesting article use the example of the radio reception in Zambia, where this device is the main important in the whole country in terms of ways of information and entertainment. Spitulnik demonstrates that according with “the circulation of radios in communities rests on other cultural processes familiar to anthropologists: the construction of status and the reproduction of reciprocal social ties through exchange relations” (Appadurai 1986; Mauss 1967 in Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod & Brian Larkin 2002: 339), that the economic and social factors shape Zambian’s experiences of radio, which differ dramatically from patterns of media use in more affluent societies. Factors like the price of the devices, the batteries, the work environment, the rural or urban condition define the different use of radio. Globalization of media clash against the local customs of everyplace. Spitulnik shows us through the example of being antisocial in Zambia to remain inside the dwells during the day unless the weather or domestic work (2002: 343).

This new condition of the citizens, that appears as consequence of globalization, can be easily seen in the fiction audiovisual products like cinema. According to Elsaesser (2009) the cinema can contribute its own crisis of representation in the sense of rupture that entails the “double occupancy”, a term that Elsaesser uses to force a reflection on powers and politics even in the field of culture, and “it may serve as a historical reminder that Europe is a continent, whose two or three thousand years history has been, a relentless catalogue of migrations, invasions, occupations, conquest, pogroms, expulsion and extermination” (Elsaesser, 2009) The author address the problem of cosmopolitanism from the point of view of the need to differentiate “diversity” and “multiculturalism” from “double occupancy”. Elsaesser uses the case of the European Union to show us the problem of creation of a identity. The European Union, according to the auhor, has practically ignored the term cultural identity preferring to speak of “multi-cultural competence” as a desirable goal. The lack of cosmopolitanism in Europe is creating a feeling of rejection, it is important politics like Erasmus program based in flow of people (students) from one country to other to emerge a European Cosmopolitanism Feeling based in the sense of belonging to a wider organization but always with a local background. As Tomlinson says it is important to remember that our neighbors haven’t been chosen by us, hence the process of creation of a identity in the globalization age goes by increases the cosmopolitan feeling.

REFERENCES

- Tomlinson, John, (1999). Globalization and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press

- Elsaesser, Thomas, (2009). Real Location, Fantasy Space, Performative place: Double occupancy and mutual interference in European Cinema. In Christensen, Miyase and Nezih, Erdogan (2009) Shifting Landscapes: Film and Media in European Context. UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

- Spitulnik, Debra, (2002). Mobile Machines and fluid audiences: Rethinking Reception through Zambian Radio Culture. In Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod & Brian Larkin, 2002. Media worlds, anthropology on new terrain. London, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press