InicioGlobal Culture and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism

InicioGlobal Culture and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism

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Publicado el jueves 12 de febrero de 2015

Resumen

The “Global Culture and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism” International Conference will discuss the meanings of cultural globalization, its mechanical and hybridizing effects, and its cosmopolitan consequences, from the perspective of global culture and its injunctions through various mediums and objects of cultural consumption (music, TV, books, video games, movies, series, newspapers, comics, blogs, social media, festivals, national heritage). In particular, the conference intends to explore and specify the aesthetic features and foundations of cosmopolitan and translocal cultures. How and under what conditions do the aesthetic conditions of production and reception matter for building cosmopolitan cultures?

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Argument

The “Global Culture and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism” International Conference will discuss the meanings of cultural globalization, its mechanical and hybridizing effects, and its cosmopolitan consequences, from the perspective of global culture and its injunctions through various mediums and objects of cultural consumption (music, TV, books, video games, movies, series, newspapers, comics, blogs, social media, festivals, national heritage). In particular, the conference intends to explore and specify the aesthetic features and foundations of cosmopolitan and translocal cultures. How and under what conditions do the aesthetic conditions of production and reception matter for building cosmopolitan cultures?

We are inviting proposals for papers dealing methodologically and empirically with a broad scope of issues related to global culture and aesthetic cosmopolitanism, with the global spread and localization of popular cultural products (such as films, television series, reality TV formats, or contents of the social media).

At an epistemological level, we shall address the following question: Once social sciences have been successively thrilled by a linguistic turn, a global turn, a cultural turn and a material turn, what would the claim for a cosmopolitan turn imply in terms of disciplinary cross-fertilization, theoretical imagination and methodological inventiveness?

Within this general theme, we particularly welcome papers focusing on four thematic streams:

  1. The place of culture in a global world
  2. Cultural dynamics: between universalism and particularities
  3. Towards an aesthetic cosmopolitanism
  4. Aesthetic cosmopolitan socialization and amateurship

You will find below on each one of these streams some of the questions we propose for this discussion:

The place of culture in a global world

The questions that we propose for the discussion of this stream are: What kind of dispositions are nurtured by this global spreading of cultural products? What kind of cosmopolitan outlook is developed through international cultural consumption? Are cultural diversity politics producing cosmopolitanism?

Globalization is a set of historical trends and forces inextricably linked together that extends its sway over the world. For its complexity, it cannot be reduced to a two-faced process, determined first by economics and second by an increase of inequalities. It has also cultural forces that involve both a variety of standard-setting instruments and the heterogeneity of local symbols. It means that once we are witnessing a lasting and increasing cultural differentiation, global culture may be assumed to be a driver of cosmopolitan ways of being. The circulation of cultural goods has increased to a dramatic point: some products can be found everywhere on the planet (such as Hit Music, TV series, blockbuster movies or books, etc.), spreading a sense of common knowledge (Riegel, 2014). These changes are meant to nurture and diffuse a cosmopolitan outlook, based on cultural consumption and participation mostly through the development of global media and/or entertainment industries.

Cultural dynamics: between universalism and particularities

The questions that we propose for the discussion of this stream are: How shall we deal with the tension between universalism and particularities in cultural dynamics?  How do we cope with the interplay of gender, race, age, generation, status, mobilities, etc.? How does institutional regime of practice (from museum, libraries, festivals, brands, etc.) transform beliefs, customs, habits, etc.? 

The culturalization of everyday life in consumer societies, embedded in a theory of “individuals”, has been accused of hiding the inequalities (age, class, race, generation, gender, etc.) as well as been the very place of reproduction of those inequalities. Walter Benn Michaels (2009) shed light on the cultural ideology transforming material differences into cultural differences, making them ethnically-based more than economically-based. The social mobility interpretation of cultural consumption, in a national space (DiMaggio, 1982), or the cultural mobility of re-hierarchisation (Glevarec, 2009) as well as the figure as the autonomous prosumer (Ritzer, 2004), or the western-centered analysis (Connell, 2007) all question the need for a critical approach. As did Beck in his critique of methodological nationalism (Beck, 1997), the one-dimension analysis, misses the point of the dynamics of change in a globalized world. Moreover, the culturalization of everyday life implies a culturalization of politics (from interculturality to multiculturalism and cultural diversity), which probably supposes a de-politization of the cultural field (counter culture are less and less obvious in a consumerist world).

Towards an aesthetic cosmopolitanism

The questions that we propose for the discussion of this stream are: What is the link between taste and knowledge in the global circulation of cultural products? What is the connection between aesthetics and culture? How do aesthetic tastes affect political, ethical or moral judgment on otherness?

Among the different aspects of cosmopolitanism, aesthetic cosmopolitanism is probably the most current and least discussed one (Sassatelli, 2012), although everyday life provides many examples of it. Individuals engage with globalization through cultural goods consumption and this may produce a feeling of cosmopolitanism regarding interests, attachments and imaginaries. Living in a globalized world does not, however, imply adopting the cosmopolitan outlook toward the world or advocating the realization of its aspirations. Still, most people are able to develop an aesthetic cosmopolitanism, disclaiming the idea of one single definition for cosmopolitanism. As Beck (2011) says, instead of restlessly trying to capture its "pure" model, scholars should pay attention to the various manifestations of an "impure" model of cosmopolitanism. Whilst a strong stance for cosmopolitanism, as opposed to a parochial outlook, is often seen as a positive attitude, it is also considered as the ‘appanage’ of the winners in the global competition for resources and power, or, in the sociology of culture’s words, of the upper class snobs (Bourdieu, 1979) or educated omnivores (Peterson, 1992; Katz-Gerro, 2013). In order to go beyond the limits of a strong/narrow/aristocratic/archetypal and a weak/extended/democratic/ordinary definition of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, it will be crucial to assess the interplay between global and local tastes, as well as hybridized tastes, cultural consumption and participation, to find the degree and consistency of universalistic accounts and to make sense of the divergence between different forms or degrees of cosmopolitanism.

Aesthetic cosmopolitan socialization and amateurship

The questions that we propose for the discussion of this stream are: How can we define and study this aesthetic cosmopolitan socialization? How to describe and understand the new figure of amateurs? Does the power of aesthetic emotion erase the question of cultural knowledge within this new category? What are the new aesthetic scales of belonging, the new criteria of reception and understanding of cultural contents? Are ordinary forms of creativity based on the aesthetic cosmopolitanism? How is this socialization embedded with gender, race, age, generation, status, mobility, etc.?

The globalization process seems to lead to an important cultural turn: the cosmopolitanization of aesthetic taste and cultural behavior. There are emerging cosmopolitan consciousness, practices, as well as imagination that derive from people’s everyday live, the so-called ordinary cosmopolitanism (Kendall, Woodward, Skrbis, 2009). Investigating cosmopolitanism from the individual awareness perspective means to look at cosmopolitanism « on the ground », as action and attitude, taking into account the narratives of ordinary people instead of archetypal cosmopolitans. The consumption of foreign cultural goods and its combination with local consumption shapes and reshapes the aesthetic taste and the relation to the taste of others (and to the otherness). The effect of globalization on cultural socialization changes the relation to the otherness, especially among young people whose cultural behaviors and tastes are more and more tied with globalized cultural industries, while living in more and more composite societies. The question is not to measure the degree of effective knowledge about the other given by transnational cultural products, but to analyze the ways in which the representation of the otherness (and sameness) is affected by the growing circulation and appropriation of cultural products that either come from abroad or mix cultural references from different cultures. Aesthetic cosmopolitanism then appears to be able to function as a tool kit, playing a role in structuring strategies and agency in different fields (political, moral, etc.), as cultural choices have taken more and more space in modern and post-modern societies, from political topics to individual strategies of allegiance (Cicchelli and Octobre, 2015).

This call for papers aims at encouraging the encounter of scholars coming from different areas, disciplines and countries in order to investigate the reality and dynamic of the cosmopolitan approach of the sociology of culture in a globalized world.

Timetable

  • 1st June 2015 : Submission deadline

(Title, affiliations, abstract (3000 characters, 5 key words) to aestheticcosmo.brasil2016@gmail.com

  • 30th October 2015 : Deadline for refereeing process and acceptance
  • 30th June 2016 : Submission deadline for completed papers for presentation
  • The conference will be held in Sao Paulo in 2016. 

Conditions

Completed paper shall be submitted, under penalty of exclusion, by the 30 of June 2016.

Organizers

  • Vincenzo Cicchelli, Gemass, Paris Sorbonne/CNRS, University Paris Descartes
  • Sylvie Octobre, French Ministry of culture and Communication, Gemass, Paris
  • Viviane Riegel, Goldsmiths College London, ESPM, Sao Paulo

International Board

  • Ian Woodward, Griffith University Centre for Cultural Research/University of Southern Denmark
  • Tally Katz-Gerro, University of Haifa
  • Angèle Christin, The New School for Social Research, Princeton University
  • David Inglis, University of Exeter

Lugares

  • ESPM
    São Paulo, Brasil

Fecha(s)

  • lunes 01 de junio de 2015

Palabras claves

  • aesthetic cosmopolitanism, global, local, cultural consumption, cosmopolitanism, hybridization, periphery, omnivorism, taste

Contactos

  • Sylvie Octobre
    courriel : sylvie [dot] octobre [at] culture [dot] gouv [dot] fr

Fuente de la información

  • Sylvie Octobre
    courriel : sylvie [dot] octobre [at] culture [dot] gouv [dot] fr

Licencia

CC0-1.0 Este anuncio está sujeto a la licencia Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

Para citar este anuncio

« Global Culture and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism », Convocatoria de ponencias, Calenda, Publicado el jueves 12 de febrero de 2015, https://doi.org/10.58079/rz9

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