Wine Globalization : Longer-Term Dynamics and Contemporary Patterns

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Cosmopolitanism : Roots and Diversities

This chapter concerns the roots and increasing diversification of cosmopolitan social thought and the research it inspires. It shows that cosmopolitan matters now constitute central topics for research, debate, and controversy across the social sciences. Having begun as a sense of non-national affiliation – declaring oneself to be a ‘citizen of the world’ rather than of any specific polity – it now encompasses a much wider range of issues. Cosmopolitanism today simultaneously refers to a scholarly field, a set of research agendas, a series of substantive phenomena, moral and ethical norms, ideals and practices, and ways of thinking, both socially and politically, as well as in more purely academic terms of analysis and research procedures. Running through all these is a common theme: the limits of nation-states and national frames of reference, and the need to think and act beyond these. This is a scholarly area directed towards developing non-Western-centric, post-universalistic, multi- and inter-disciplinary inquiry, rendering ideas of cosmopolitanism more open, flexible, and multiple, especially as regards becoming more cognisant of forms of difference and plurality in the world. The overarching intellectual tendency over time has been to cosmopolitanise cosmopolitanism itself.Peer reviewe

Cosmopolitanism and Classical Sociology

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Durkheim, l’‘Europa’ e la Brexit

When the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was asked what he thought were the main consequences of the French Revolution, he is alleged to have replied that it was too early to tell. The same response may be given today as to what the eventual ramifications of Brexit will be. It will take many decades for these to play out, both for the UK, for the EU and the wider world. Yet consideration of some strands of Émile Durkheim’s sociology - reading these either in the manner Durkheim intended, or somewhat against the grain - allow us to look forward in time and make some plausible predictions. This essay considers what the ideas of one of the most major classical sociologists, Émile Durkheim, can illuminate about both Brexit and the entity that the United Kingdom is leaving, the European Union. I will attempt to show that the phenomena which Durkheim pointed to in terms of the emergence of pan-European social integration - in other words, what he said about Europe as a single social and cultural entity - can be used to identify some elements of Brexit, which might otherwise not be as apparent or as precisely identifiable as they would be without a Durkheimian thematization of them

Classical Sociology and Brexit : The Continuing Contributions of Durkheim and Elias for the Sociology of 'De-Processes'

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The Clash of Cosmopolitanisms: The European Union from Cosmopolitization to Neo-Liberalization

It is clear that the European Union (EU) is currently in the worst crisis situation it has ever been in. The forms of social solidarity, inter-national cooperation, and trans-national structures and processes that many commentators have seen as the basis of ‘cosmopolitan’ Europe’ are under severe strain. Dec-ades of apparent cosmopolitization - of political bodies, economic networks, social connections and the patterns of everyday life - seem to be rapidly going into reverse, being pulled apart or self-destructing. If the last several decades could be understood as involving the increasing appearance and strength (albeit unevenly and in contested ways) of cosmopolitan features both within the EU as an entity and ‘inside’ its external borders, then today the tearing fabric of ‘European’ life seems to point in the opposite direction. This paper poses the question: how ‘cosmopolitan’ really was the EU before the current set of crises, and how have the latter undermined what cosmopolitan features there were? The argument proposed is that the EU was from the very beginning ambivalently cosmopolitan, for it was structured around a liberal-economic, market-based cosmopolitanism, as well as a rights-based conception of citizenship and democ-racy, a kind of legal-political cosmopolitanism. Both forms of cosmopolitanism existed up until recently in a highly ambivalent relationship with each other. But as over time, and especially from the late 1970s, liber-al-economic cosmopolitanism mutated into neo-liberal cosmopolitanism, then the tensions between the two cosmopolitanisms now stand out very starkly, and have reached breaking point. The nature and con-sequences of this situation are diagnosed

Book Review: Decolonizing Sociology

Book review. Reviewed work: Decolonizing Sociology / Ali Meghji. - Cambridge : Polity, 2021. 202 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4195-9 (pbk).Peer reviewe

Review of Alexander, J. C. et al (eds) Populism in the Civil Sphere

Book review. Reviewed work: Populism in the Civil Sphere / Jeffrey C. Alexander, Peter Kivisto & Giuseppe Sciortino (eds.). - Cambridge: Polity, 2021. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4474-5 (pbk), 316 pp.Non peer reviewe

Towards a Sociology of Wine : The Power of Processes

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