Abstract
This contribution aims to open up the debate about national, European and cosmopolitan identity through an interpretation of Simmel’s double boundary dialectic: human beings are boundaries and only those who stand outside their boundaries can see them as such. One difficulty with defining oneself as European stems from what could be called the “double Other” (intra- and extra-European) diachronic recognition process. Exploring the possible/impossible cosmopolitan meta-synthesis can identify certain traits of the cosmopolitan experience in Europe.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
Anderson, E. (2004). The cosmopolitan canopy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 595(1), 14–31.
Arditi, J. (1994). Geertz, Kuhn and the idea of a cultural paradigm. British Journal of Sociology, 597–617.
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Bauman, Z. (1998). Europe of strangers. Working Paper No. 3, ESRC Transnational Communities Programme, pp. 1–17.
Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid love: On the frailty of human bonds. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (2006). The cosmopolitan vision. Cambridge: Polity.
Beck, U., & Grande, E. (2007). Cosmopolitan Europe. Cambridge: Polity.
Birindelli, P. (2014). The passage from youth to adulthood: Narrative and cultural thresholds. Lenham: University Press of America (Rowman & Littlefield).
Birindelli, P. (2017). The cultural experience of international students: Narratives from North and South Europe. Retrieved from http://culturalexperienceabroad.blogspot.com
Calhoun, C. (2003). The class consciousness of frequent travellers: Towards a critique of actually existing cosmopolitanism. In D. Archibugi (Ed.), Debating cosmopolitics (pp. 86–116). London: Verso.
Cicchelli, V. (2012). L’esprit cosmopolite: Voyages de formation des jeunes en Europe. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.
Cicchelli, V., Octobre, S. (2015) Sur le Cosmopolitisme Esthetique des Jeunes. Le Débat 183: 101–10109.
Cicchelli, V., Octobre, S., & Riegel, V. (2016). After the omnivore, the cosmopolitan amateur: Reflections about aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Global Studies Journal, 9(1), 55–69.
Coser, L.A. (1972) The alien as a servant of power: Court Jews and Christian renegades. American Sociological Review (37): 574–5581.
Delanty, G. (2009). The European heritage: History, memory, and time. In C. Rumford (Ed.), The Sage handbook of European studies (pp. 36–51). London: Sage.
Delueze, G. (1990). The logic of sense. New York: Columbia University Press.
Elias, N. (1991). The society of individuals. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Frank, A. (1987). Review essay. Symbolic Interaction, 10(2), 295–311.
Fromm, E. (1959). Values, psychology and human existence. In A. H. Maslow (Ed.), New knowledge in human values. New York: Harper & Row.
Gemann Molz, J. (2011). Cosmopolitanism and consumption. In M. Rovisco & M. Nowicka (Eds.), The Ashgate research companion to cosmopolitanism (pp. 33–52). Farnham: Ashgate.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hannerz, U. (1990). Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Global culture: Nationalism, globalization and modernity. London: Sage.
Hannerz, U. (2005). Two faces of cosmopolitanism: Culture and politics. Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, 107(3), 199–213.
Harrington, A. (2005). Introduction to Georg Simmel’s essay ‘Europe and America in world history. European Journal of Social Theory, 8(1), 63–72.
Inglis, D. (2014). Cosmopolitans and cosmopolitanism: Between and beyond sociology and political philosophy. Journal of Sociology, 50(2), 99–114.
Jansson, A. (2016). Mobile elites: Understanding the ambiguous lifeworlds of sojourners, dwellers and homecomers. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 19(5), 421–434.
Lamont, M., & Aksartova, S. (2002). Ordinary cosmopolitanisms strategies for bridging racial boundaries among working-class men. Theory Culture & Society, 19(4), 1–25.
Lamont, M., & Molnár, V. (2002). The study of boundaries in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 167–195.
Lasch, C. (1984). The minimal self: Psychic survival in troubled times. New York: Norton.
Latour, B. (2004). Whose cosmos, which cosmopolitics? Comments on the peace terms of Ulrich Beck. Common Knowledge, 10(3), 450–462.
Leed, E. J. (1991). The mind of the traveler: From Gilgamesh to global tourism. New York: Basic.
Levine, D. N. (1989). Simmel as a resource for sociological metatheory. Sociological Theory, 7(2), 161–174.
Marotta, V. P. (2010). The cosmopolitan stranger. In S. Van Hooft & W. Vandekerckhove (Eds.), Questioning cosmopolitanism (pp. 105–120). Netherlands: Springer.
Nussbaum, M. C. (1996). For love of country: Debating the limits of patriotism. Boston: Beacon Press.
Ossewaarde, M. (2007). Cosmopolitanism and the society of strangers. Current Sociology, 55(3), 367–388.
Rifkin, J. (2004). The European dream: How Europe’s vision of the future is quietly eclipsing the American dream. Cambridge: Polity.
Robbins, B. (1992). Comparative cosmopolitanism. Social Text, 31(2), 169–186.
Sassatelli, M. (2012). Festivals, museums, exhibitions. Aesthetic cosmopolitanism in the cultural public sphere. In G. Delanty (Ed.), Routledge handbook of cosmopolitan studies (pp. 232–244). London: Routledge.
Schütz, A. (1944). The stranger: An essay in social psychology. American Journal of Sociology, 49(6), 499–507.
Schutz, A. (1945). On multiple realities. In A. Schutz (Ed.), Collected papers I: The problem of social reality. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Seneca. (1987). De Otio (A. Padgen, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simmel, G. (1902/1964). The metropolis and mental life. In K. H. Wolff (Ed.), Sociology of Georg Simmel (pp. 409–424). New York: Free Press.
Simmel, G. (1907/1986). Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press.
Simmel, G. (1908/1950). The stranger. In K. Wolff (Ed.), The sociology of Georg Simmel (pp. 402–408). New York: Free Press.
Simmel, G. (1908/1971). The stranger. In D. N. Levine (Ed.), George Simmel: On individuality and social forms (pp. 143–149). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Simmel, G. (1910/1959). In K. H. Wolff (Ed.), Georg Simmel, 1858–1918: A collection of essays, with translations and a bibliography. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Simmel, G. (1918/1971). The transcendent character of life. In D. N. Levine (Ed.), Georg Simmel: On individuality and social forms (pp. 353–374). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Skrbis, Z., Woodward I. (2007) The ambivalence of ordinary cosmopolitanism: Investigating the limits of cosmopolitan openness. Sociological Review 55(4): 730–7747.
Slotkin, R. (1986). Myth and the production of history. In S. Bercovitch & J. Myry (Eds.), Ideology and classic American literature (pp. 70–90). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Slotkin, R. (2000). Regeneration through violence: The mythology of the American frontier, 1600–1860. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Smith, A. D. (1999). Myths and memories of the nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Szerszynski, B., & Urry, J. (2006). Visuality, mobility and the cosmopolitan: Inhabiting the world from afar. The British Journal of Sociology, 57(1), 113–131.
Turner, B. S. (2002). Cosmopolitan virtue, globalization and patriotism. Theory, Culture & Society, 19(1–2), 45–63.
Urry, J., & Larsen, J. (2011). The tourist gaze 3.0. London: Sage.
Weinstein, D., & Weinstein, M. A. (1989). Simmel and the dialectic of the double boundary. Sociological Inquiry, 59(1), 48–59.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Birindelli, P. (2018). Double Boundary and Cosmopolitan Experience in Europe. In: Caselli, M., Gilardoni, G. (eds) Globalization, Supranational Dynamics and Local Experiences . Europe in a Global Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64075-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64075-4_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64074-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64075-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)