(SCL8) Ordinary Cosmopolitanisms

Organizers: Sonia Bookman, University of Manitoba, Mark Hudson, University of Manitoba, Mara Fridell, University of Manitoba

Presentations

Mark Hudson, University of Manitoba; Shayne St. Denis, University of Manitoba

CSR, ESG, and Financial Cosmopolitanism: Bank constructions of responsibility

This paper situates the cosmopolitan constructions of transnational banks within the longer history of corporate contestation over “social responsibility.” Swinging back and forth between highly restrictive and more expansive understandings of corporate responsibility, banks—as key, perhaps even hegemonic, members of capitalist policy networks—actively engage with questions about who they are responsible to, and for what. Through a critical content analysis of documentation from 5 transnational banks, the paper characterizes banks’ ongoing settlement of their own cosmopolitan responsibilities, and places it in this longer historical context.

Sonia Bookman, University of Manitoba; Benjamin Ayamga, University of Manitoba

Configuring Ordinary Cosmopolitan Cultures: Ethical Branding, Cosmopolitan Affordances, and Consumption in a Canadian Context

Academic discussions of cosmopolitanism have been reinvigorated in the context of contemporary processes of globalization, transnational mobilities, and multicultural urbanism, resulting in a substantial literature reflecting a range of disciplinary approaches and academic debates (Rovisco and Nowicka 2011; Inglis 2014). We situate our paper within an emerging sociology of cosmopolitanism, characterized by a concern with the ways in which cosmopolitanism emerges in everyday life, including through market processes and practices of consumption in contemporary consumer culture.

With the “moralization of markets” (Stehr, 2008) and widespread adoption by companies of corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy, global brands are now prominent platforms where individuals encounter images of cultural diversity, principles of global social and environmental responsibility, and opportunities to engage cosmopolitan practices. Yet, little academic attention has been paid to investigating the ways in which cosmopolitan consumption is articulated and supported by such market cultural forms as well as how consumers engage their cosmopolitan affordances.

Exploring connections between global brands, cosmopolitanism, and consumption, this paper draws on material from an extensive qualitative study conducted over three years (2020-2023), in a Canadian context. Focusing on H&M, Amazon, and McDonald’s, case study research involved documentary study, textual and visual analysis of brand communications and environments, as well, qualitative interviews were conducted with consumers of the brands (n=49) in the city of Winnipeg, Canada.

Providing a multi-level analysis, the paper outlines: 1) how the brands mediate and support cosmopolitan consumption in Canada through the implementation of market practices of corporate social responsibility; and 2) how Canadian consumers engage such brand-based cosmopolitan affordances (e.g. purchasing clothing made with recycled materials), and the meanings they make of such activity.

The paper will mainly consider how diverse consumers engage and negotiate the cosmopolitan “frames of action” (Arvidsson, 2006) assembled by these brands, paying attention to the ways in which consumer engagement is refracted through cultural, gender, and class boundaries. It will compare and contrast the cosmopolitan cultures that surface on the platforms of the brands, delineating differences in emphasis (aesthetic versus moral cosmopolitan orientations), extent of consumer involvement (passive acceptance versus active use of the brand to perform cosmopolitan ideals), and meanings expressed, while drawing attention to their ambivalence, tensions, and limitations. In this way, the paper contributes a nuanced understanding of the particular kinds of cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan practice that surface in the dynamic interplay of consumption, branding activity, and everyday life.

Tyler Correia, University Canada West (UCW)

Complicating Banal Nationalism Through Sociological Exploration of Cosmopolitanism: The Trace and Dissemination

Contemporary sociological research has decisively challenged ideas around ‘societies’ as stable and internally consistent social forms akin to national communities at least since Nina Glick-Schiller and Andreas Wimmer (2003) coined the term methodological nationalism. In tandem, sociologists and social scientists have taken a particular interest in understanding the empirical conditions that ground social life within a global society (Agier 2016; Appadurai 1996; Bayat 2013; Beck 2007, 2008; Castells 2009; Cheah and Robbins 1998; Diouf 2002; Kaldor 2003; Mignolo 2000; Urry 2007; Volkmer 2014). This movement departs from conventional discussion around cosmopolitanism, which often centers normative or philosophical debate, as well as questions around institution-building (especially at the transnational level) (see: Correia, forthcoming). Using theoretical concepts derived from the work of Jacques Derrida and other post-phenomenological thinkers—the trace and dissemination—this paper outlines preliminary findings for an ethnology of banal nationalism (Billig 1995) that also problematizes the construction of national symbols, identities and ideals in terms of their borrowings from other cultures and traditions. Through this analysis, I conclude that often even the most quotidian nationalisms are already complicated by their importation of national symbols, and reliance on a global economy for their circulation. To better situate banal nationalisms within a wider context of global socio-economic and political dynamics, I introduce the concepts of the trace and of dissemination to characterize the sociologist as detective —where the task of the sociologist is to uncover deeper and wider relations and circuits through exploration of manifest social practices. The trace indicates the relationship between a manifest social practice or material symbol with an implied—but as yet concealed—set of social processes that condition its existence in space and time, while also being indecipherable without reference to other social milieux or global networks. The sociologist as detective is responsible for uncovering the traces of a global society lurking within the most unexpected of clues. As a compliment to this, dissemination refers to how an economy of traces circulate within those global networks, binding one society to another through their borrowings. Contrary to sociologies of global cultural diffusion, dissemination implies that there is no stable ‘origin’ from which forms of cultural production emerge before they circulate, but that their circuits are the origins of cultural practices more manifestly. In other words, the traces binding national cultures to global social processes also demonstrate that a cosmopolitan society comprised of the circulation of information, establishment of global publics, and harmonization of normative assumptions, already exists. This further entails that nationalist discourses must be understood in light of their incorporations of other (transnational) nationalist discourses. These methodological insights are grounded in a preliminary ethnological analysis of social identity and nationalist symbols in Mission, British Columbia. This includes the circulation of far-right iconography (displaying a decal of the Canada flag on a lifted truck, where the maple leaf also depicts a mirror image of an assault rifle on one side). I argue that our capacity to decipher these cultural images requires a method that is attentive to the circulation of nationalist imagery from ‘elsewhere’—not only the United States, where assault weapons have a particularly strong cultural symbolism, but around the world. In turn, both the cultural elements of nationalist assumptions—beliefs and values, symbols and cultural artifacts—and the material economies—circulating commodities—implies that even the most assertive ‘national’ societies are meaningfully composed of global traces.