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After the Omnivore, the Cosmopolitan Amateur Reflections about Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism VINCENZO CICCHELLI, SYLVIE OCTOBRE, AND VIVIANE RIEGEL

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After the Omnivore, the Cosmopolitan Amateur: Reflections about Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism Vincenzo Cicchelli, GEMASS/University of Paris Sorbonne/CNRS, France Sylvie Octobre, DEPS/Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, France Viviane Riegel, ESPM-SP, Brazil Abstract: Contemporary aesthetic cosmopolitanism studies have focused on the comprehension of the consumption both of exotic and ordinary products, and are sometimes connected to a possible consciousness of the individuals regarding the Other. Considering that the aesthetic cosmopolitanism is ambivalent and does not necessarily produce an ethical, moral or political consciousness of living together, we propose the discussion around the new figure of a cosmopolitan amateur. Our aim is to develop a discussion on the emergence of cosmopolitan consciousness, practices, as well as imagination, from the perspective of cultural participation and consumption, as examples of the so-called “ordinary cosmopolitanism” that complete the approach in terms of omnivorousness.

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Keywords: Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism; Omnivore; Amateurship, Global Culture

ince World War II, cultural products have become one of the most circulated goods among nations. 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). This phenomenon has reached an extensive scale for young people, with the supremacy of the mass media, cultural industries, and the Internet (Donnat and Levy 2005; Pasquier 1999), leading to the development of changes in cultural consumption, analyzed mostly in terms of omnivorism (Peterson and Kern 1996). In a cosmopolitan world, the analysis of cultural facts may start from the axiom that Malcolm Waters (1995) proposes for global studies. Unlike the material exchanges that locate or the political exchanges that internationalize, the symbolic and cultural exchanges are the first ones to become global. This theorem is difficult to implement empirically (Pieterse 2009), nevertheless it recalls the strength of non-material dimensions in the dynamics of globalization, and it opens the way to considering the role that these dimensions have played in the design of a world both as unity and as plurality. There are even more radical versions of this approach, which pretend that all the elements that contribute to unify the world, including its infrastructural level, have a profoundly cultural nature (Lechner and Boli 2005). Considering the economic perspective of globalization, we emphasize that the expansion of capitalism on a world scale has great impact over several cultural issues (Robertson 1992; Robertson and White 2007). Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) studies on cultural dimensions, both symbolic and material, describe globalization as the result of interactions between different flows (or “scapes”) in which culture plays a key role. Among the five scapes he distinguishes, three have a cultural nature: mediascapes (flows of information through media, such as television or Internet), ethnoscapes (flows of individuals through immigration, tourism, and other forms of mobility) and ideoscapes (flows of ideas conveyed by consumption, the market, democracy or human rights). Following his work’s perspective, we can call “cosmoscape” the symbolic and material dimensions that compose the nature of cosmopolitanism (Kendall, Woodward, and Skrbis 2009). Flows of objects and ideas through global networks create the gathering of spaces, images and practices, which may contribute to the emergence of a cosmopolitan consciousness and eventually the building of a cosmopolitan stance. We propose an approach that seeks to find traces of the great abstract principles of cosmopolitanism in the little things of everyday life (Skrbis and Woodward 2013), in the experience lived on a daily basis by social actors. Our aim is to develop a discussion on the The Global Studies Journal Volume #, Issue #, Publication Year, ww.onglobalization.com, ISSN 1835-4432 © Common Ground, Vincenzo Cicchelli, Sylvie Octobre, Viviane Riegel All Rights Reserved, Permissions: [email protected]

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emergence of cosmopolitan consciousness, practices, as well as imagination, from the perspective of cultural participation and consumption, as examples of the so-called “ordinary cosmopolitanism” (Lamont and Aksartova 2002; Kendall, Woodward, and Skrbis 2009), that complete the approach in terms of omnivorousness. Whereas omnivorism is concerned with patterns of consumption (rather in volume or tastes) and its ability to map groups in the social hierarchy, we are more concerned with the emotions, knowledge, imaginaries and relations derived from globalized cultural products. Of course, we: a) do not undervalue the social variation of cosmopolitan dispositions and the cosmopolitan capital in the contemporary social reproduction (Weenink 2008; Higarashi and Saito 2014); b) are aware that the social injunctions to live as cosmopolitans and perform cosmopolitanism cannot be the same for global elites, highly educated expatriates, international travelers, forced migrants, and desperate refugees. Therefore this paper aims to propose the emergence of a new specific figure of cosmopolitan: the cosmopolitan amateur. As we will see, it is possible to employ the concept of aesthetic cosmopolitanism in order to analyze globalization as a transnational cultural process, which does not erase local cultures and transmutes the sentiment of “national cultural uniqueness”, through the emergence of an aesthetic sentiment. This sentiment that arouses, thanks to hybridization and the “global mélange” of cultural elements from diverse horizons, has been emancipated from an earlier, rigidly locally oriented framework (Pieterse 2009). Investigating cosmopolitanism from the individual awareness perspective means to look at cosmopolitanism “on the ground,” as action and attitude, considering ordinary people instead of archetypal cosmopolitans (such as global business elites, refugees, expatriates, cultural connoisseurs, or experts), when they engage into ordinary cultural activities (Cicchelli and Octobre 2015). Accordingly, our approach, which aims to analyze varieties of cosmopolitan practices and degrees of being cosmopolitan, among ordinary social actors in our globalized societies, is based on a cosmopolitan socialization that takes place on an everyday life basis (Cicchelli 2016).

1. The Place of Aesthetics in a Global World 1.1. The Emergence of Aesthetic Shared Imaginaries The “cosmoscape” is nurtured by the aestheticization and culturalization of everyday life and identities (Featherstone 1987; Giddens 1990; Martuccelli 2010). The aestheticization of everyday life can be defined as the importance acquired by cultural consumption in the process of definition of the self (May 2011), through the explosion of creativity (or the illusion of it) permitted by the vast spread of amateur practices and the dissemination of cultural goods and forms of cultural participation. Culturalization was shaped by and has favored the return of exotism, through the vulgarization of cultural acquisitions, and through the development of mobility, either physical (tourism for instance), mental (through imaginaries nurtured by international cultural consumption, and new global media) or virtual (social networks, etc.). The internationalization of a part of ordinary cultural consumption has strongly contributed to the constitution of common or shared imaginaries of alterity and cultural identity. The omnipresence of the products of globalised cultural industries—that is to say of standardized products juxtaposed with local productions—produces, maintains and recreates a sentiment of familiarity with images from elsewhere. The Obelisk of the Place de la Concorde creates a familiarity with ancient Egypt in the very heart of Paris, the Elgin Marbles exhibited in London do likewise for ancient Greece. Certain monuments have become cultural emblems, from the Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty, to the Great Wall of China. Certain museums are spreading across the world, such as the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, the Guggenheim in Bilbao and Venice. Works of art move from museum to museum and multiply in derivative products (e.g., the Mona Lisa reproduced in diverse materials and in a variety of formats). All this contributes to the

CICCHELLI ET AL.: AFTER THE OMNIVORE, THE COSMOPOLITAN AMATEUR

construction of a repertoire of cultural references that are accessible and compatible to people from all over the world. Being built not through organized knowledge, but on the accumulation of moments of banal and/or traveling encounters and common experiences (Cicchelli 2012)—sometimes both ephemeral and partial—organized as representations, the nature of this connection with alterity is aesthetic in a first instance (Cicchelli and Octobre 2013): on Facebook, one “likes” (or not), one comments (or not), one shares (or not), one feels something about it (or not). This phenomenon has its roots in the intergenerational transformations of societies: rising levels of youth mobility (academic, touristic or professional), significant proportion of young people with immigrant backgrounds, change in the relation with the labor market that implies a rise of leisure recognition demands (Chauvel 1998; Donnat and Levy 2007; Octobre 2014). It also shows how cultural and aesthetic turns are sociologically embodied in youth and are shaping the first generation that is deeply engaged to the cultural globalization. Which young person does not know what “bushito” (the samurai code of honor) is, thanks to movies, mangas and novels? And which of them, setting foot on the North American territory for the first time, is not struck by a strange sense of déjà vu, thanks to Hollywood movies and American series?

1.2. After the Omnivores: the Aesthetic Cosmopolitans? Through omnivorism, cultural snobs (Bourdieu 1979) turned into cultural omnivores (Peterson and Kern 1996), and a single and one-dimensional homology between social and cultural stratification could no longer explain all individual behaviors or choices (Lahire 2004), because hierarchies seem more and more complex and intricate. If identities are less determined by social status in post-modern societies, and cultural hierarchies are less likely to be monolithic (Glévarec 2009), new questions arise, distinguishing and reconnecting information and knowledge, education and culture, experience and representation—especially among young people (Octobre 2014). In this case, aesthetic cosmopolitanism can offer a complex prospective on modernity. It could reflect the ideology of an elite perspective on the world (Calhoun, 2002) and “embody a discredited Eurocentric and liberal ideology in a new and newly dangerous guise” (Will 2010, 9). It could also be considered a phenomenon focused on the privileged mobile elite whose cultural curiosity reflects a lack of obligation to any community, with the figure of the mobile “voyeur,” a “parasite” or a “cultural tourist” in the “restless pursuit of experience, aesthetic sensations and novelty, over duties, obligations and social bonds” (Featherstone 2002, 1). Yet, it could offer a different view on cultural consumption after omnivorism too, reshaping the link between cultural capital and social boundaries, as well as the link between social stratification and cultural “foreign” consumption. Omnivorousness, then, can be defined as primarily based on the breadth of activities, voracity of consumption and diversity of cultural tastes (Katz-Gerro and Jaeger 2013). Indeed the rise of aesthetic cosmopolitanism significantly transforms the construction of cultural capital in mediatic contexts, by their transferability and their articulation with other forms of capital—notably informational and relational. Peterson and Kern suggest that the transition from snob to omnivore “can thus be seen as a part of the historical trend toward greater tolerance of those holding different values” (1996, 905). Is this figure of aesthetic cosmopolitanism a new marker of status, and thus of distinction? Does it obey the same laws of structural homology between economic status and cultural capital that is the structural basis of cultural consumption? We know to what extent the link between lifestyle and socioeconomic status has been modified, on the one hand by the importance of mass media and the cultural models that they offer and contribute to disseminating, and on the other by the structural changes that have affected populations from European societies: 1) a shift in demographics (the population is ageing); 2) a shift in education (populations are better educated, study for longer periods of time


and more often during the life course); 3) a shift in the labor market (decrease on industries and increase on services); and 4) a shift in gender (more women are educated, work, and consume culture) (Donnat 2005; Octobre 2005). In this context, the hypothesis of aesthetic cosmopolitanism reformulates that of the omnivore in several ways because: 1) it more clearly reintroduces the weight of social capital (which, for Bourdieu, is secondary and which sometimes tends to be confused with informational capital) in an age of social networks and global media; and 2) it clearly insists on the dimension of reflexivity (the sole consumption of foreign products is not sufficient to capture the building of imaginaries). As the cultural field increasingly comes to distinguish regimes of information and learning, of notoriety and knowledge, of amateurism and expertise, it is necessary to understand that consumption and cultural practices also produce symbolic representations of alterity and of identity, which at times may be intimate and non-transferable, but, on the contrary, may be generalizable as well. When the snob elites, followed by the omnivores, are replaced by aesthetic cosmopolitans, the hierarchies of legitimacy (cultural/social/economic) detach themselves, notably among the young generation in a regime of mediatized and digital consumption. Aesthetic cosmopolitanism can thus be considered either as the cause or result of a blurring of boundaries between cultural contents and practices with varying degrees of legitimacy, or, again as the sign of the appearance of a new cultural regime of value.

1.3. Cosmopolitan Omnivores or Aesthetic Cosmopolitans? Must we therefore consider that these cultural consumers are “cosmopolitan omnivores” (Kendall Woodward and Skribs 2009, 109)? For Motti Regev (2011), a set of cultural competencies can be found in individuals that belong to the middle and upper classes with high educational capital. He considers the music festivals as rituals through which “cosmopolitan omnivores” glorify and stage what for them is the aesthetic standard of good contemporary taste. In their case, the openness to other cultures becomes a distinctive mark. Other works on cultural practices have also insisted that this “ostentatious openness to diversity” (Fridman and Ollivier 2004, 109) is socially situated. This openness “more closely reflects the cultural resources of educated classes, as long as it presents desirable attitudes that are more easily accessible to them, because of the great diversity of their cultural repertoires” (ibid.). The cosmopolitan is delineated as a highly mobile, curious, open and reflexive subject who delights in and desires to consume difference, especially at the occasion of international mobilities, border-crossing experiences or other forms of transnational social relations (Hannerz 1990; Urry 1995; Mau, Mewes, and Zimmermann 2008, Wagner; 2010). 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 apanage 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; KatzGerro and Jaeger 2013). It would then be some sort of last offshoot of a lineage which shifts from the snob to the eclectic or to the omnivore, through a series of historical and socio-technical transformations in which young people are the principal actors. If there are indeed omnivorous elements in the aesthetic cosmopolitan orientation, the latter cannot be reduced to omnivority, unless we demonstrate: 1) that the genesis of tastes for foreign products and imaginaries based on those tastes are the apanage of omnivores; 2) that there is no possible “cosmopolitanism” in univore consumption patterns (the opera fan, knowing every single interpretation of a master piece, from all over the world can develop a cosmopolitan outlook); and 3) that cosmopolitanism serves strategically—even unconsciously—as a social marker of status and thus as a barrier between groups involved in power relations or struggle. If the cosmopolitan virtues of openness do not prevent omnivores to accumulate cultural capital associated with mechanisms of distinction, both figures would not overlap. Richard


Peterson himself, the inventor of the concept of omnivority, rejects this hypothesis, advancing the idea that the cosmopolitan is a particular figure of the omnivore. “Even if cosmopolitanism refers to a taste that transcends national boundaries, the word omnivority seems more appropriate because it implies tastes that cross not only the boundaries of nations, but also of social class, gender, ethnicities, religions, ages, or other similar boundaries” (2004, 159). Consequently, the notion of aesthetic cosmopolitanism breaks with the elitist mechanical character of omnivorism to propose a reconsideration of the place of minorities and their tastes. The cosmopolitanism of migrants, who use several languages and sometimes mix them in their communicative practices, but also in their practices of consumption (television, internet, listening to recorded music and attendance at concerts or festivals, and so on) is not “in itself” inferior to that of the cosmopolitan elites. The “most” cosmopolitan people could even be migrant populations, once we consider all forms of cosmopolitanism as equivalent—otherwise it would be necessary to reintroduce a measure of legitimacy of cosmopolitanism (that of the traveling polyglot elites against that of the mass migrants, that of the North against the one of the South, etc.). There is also a second (and major) difference between the omnivore and the cosmopolitan approach. While the former concentrates on consumption patterns (volume of consumption, time and frequency, quantity of tastes, social distance between tastes and combinations of those distances into omnivore or univore repertoire), the latter, referring to a perspective about the Self and the Other, also sheds light on the reflexive process nurtured by cultural consumption, through the building of imaginaries (Beck 2006). In a globalized world, the accumulation of consumption of cultural products provides experiences of contact with other cultures or hybrids. These experiences serve as resources for the individual construction, both conscious and unconscious, for identity purposes (self-definition, self-presentation, etc.). Individuals articulate these experiences, as interests or disinterests, moving beyond the initial emotion of consumption.

1.4. Aesthetic Prolegomena for a Cosmopolitan Outlook Still, it is necessary to distinguish this aesthetic cosmopolitanism from other manifestations of cosmopolitanism—and notably from the Kantian cosmopolitanism of the enlightenment. Academic discourses on being cosmopolitan are often reductive and ambivalent. Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is often reduced to global cultural industries and to the consumerist perspective, as tourism and leisure, or to the familiarity with different cultures then considered as “superficial and cosmetic” (Sassatelli 2012, 235). Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is probably the most current and least discussed of the cosmopolitan dimensions, although everyday life provides many examples of it. The aesthetic and cultural dimensions of cosmopolitanism are sometimes accused of locking the Other in an exotic relationship, of reducing the connection with alterity to goods consumption by urban and jaded consumers that are eager to ephemeral cultural encounters and cheap products. This academic debate, often passionate, highlights the implicit hierarchy within cosmopolitanism’s dimensions (Gemann Molz 2011), which opposes a higher form of cosmopolitanism to another more reduced, or an authentic form to another more superficial. Yet, the debate remains open on the contribution of the aesthetic dimension to cosmopolitanism. For those who underestimate the scope of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, there are no other perceptions than those of an aesthetic nature: there is no guarantee that the extension of cultural backgrounds, the development of hermeneutic and culturalist skills will necessarily lead to the emergence of a sense of responsibility towards the cosmopolitan world (Tomlinson 1999). For other authors, nevertheless, the introduction of the aesthetic dimension marks a significant change in the way we can consider cosmopolitanism, before mostly conceived as a political and ethical abstraction and apprehended now as a lifestyle associated with consumption. The issue of global citizenship not only rotates around the political and civil participation commitment, but also around cultural communities, based on shared cosmopolitan tastes, styles and imaginaries


about the Self (or the Same) and the Other, which nurtured identities and belongings (Germann Molz 2011, 37). Nikos Papastergiadis is convinced that ethical and political sentiment toward the Other cannot be born without a minimum interest in the culture of the latter. Accordingly, aesthetic cosmopolitanism is fundamental, because it is based on the individual and collective ability to build a picture of the world (2012, 94): it is not a way to represent the truth of the world, but a tool to imagine the reality of it.

2. Toward an Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism 2.1. Definition Globalised cultural products circulate and shape new aesthetics: Indian cinema provides stars for young Moroccans, the most famous of them being the actor Shah Rukh Khan, while Shakira, a Colombian singer, turned into a star in the United States and lent her voice to the official song of the 2010 Football World Cup held in South Africa. Mobilities and migratory flows have never been so numerous. Many countries have indeed become more multicultural, seeing the coexistence of diverse cultural and religious traditions within a single territory. With an unprecedented rapidity, global media exposes us to an uninterrupted flow of cultural contents of diverse origins that create and maintain what John Tomlinson calls “a global immediacy” (2007) at the very heart of daily life. Real or virtual contact with this content, in different degrees and effects, deserves our attention, once it modifies the framework for the acceptance of tastes, formerly considered distant, exotic or peripheral. How do we grasp the cultural mutations engendered by the rise in the power of consumption of cultural products, which mixes or even employs foreign cultural codes? What are the references, the new criteria of appreciation that are engaged, and how do they construct new aesthetics, even a renewed cultural capital? Does this permanent contact with cultural products of transnational circulation modify the relation with real or imagined alterity? Responses to these questions require the understanding of the concept of aesthetic cosmopolitanism: we could define it, on one hand, by a strong attraction and curiosity with respect to cultural practices and exotic products from elsewhere, having or not having localised references—authentic or reinvented ones, and on the other hand, by its hybridization with national cultural forms or with localized individual appropriations. We should add a third dimension to this definition: the development of a self-assertion that is linked to the desire to understand the Otherness, to better understand oneself. For example, the consumers interviewed in Starbucks and Second Cup coffee shops by Bookman (2012, 252) indicated that the presence of coffees from around the world, the “rich and earthy” colors used in café decor, the sounds of “world” music, and images of coffee growers elicited a cosmopolitan “cool.” To resume this definition, aesthetic cosmopolitanism should imply these five characteristics: 1) First, a comparison between “national” cultural products (or what they see as national) and foreign products and the recognition of national differences, using some stereotypes as well as personal experiences; 2) Second, a shaping and reshaping of aesthetic criteria (e.g., Asian aesthetic of manga reshapes Belgian-French or American comics criteria of reception) without automatic hierarchization on a single value scale; 3) Third, the building of judgements and hierarchies about the quality of national versus non-national products (better/worse);


4) Fourth, the development of competences in the manipulation of these different aesthetic codes through a process of familiarization; 5) And, fifth, a post-hierarchical interest toward other cultures (“because they are Other”) characterized by an intentionality towards the Otherness. These characteristics depend on the consumer’s repertoire and social trajectories, considering that the amount of previous cultural experiences has a great impact on aesthetic cosmopolitanism, which can reshape the social stratification. This is also not a linear path, some people go through some of these steps but never achieve the whole process. This process develops a set of capabilities: reading, understanding, deciphering cultural codes, reshaping taste and distaste, and bearing the risk of novelty. All those skills may lead to the facilitation of living in a global world.

2.2. Consumption and Cosmopolitan Consciousness In his work, Mica Nava (2007) analyzed the ways in which London middle-class women from the early twentieth century were able to express a diffuse cosmopolitan consciousness (“a cosmopolitan structure of feeling,” 89) through the consumption of international fashion and design. Focusing on practices of a “global modern everyday life” (ibid.), the historian reveals the emergence of a new modern consciousness, characterized by a mental, social and visceral willingness to contact with novelty and difference. These emotions continue to be considered essential components of the aesthetic cosmopolitanism orientation. They are found in all the examples related to the consumption of exotic products (Holt 1998). Considering the work of Ulf Hannerz (1990) or of John Urry (1995), aesthetic cosmopolitanism can be seen as a structure of feelings, sensations, emotions, a set of cultural skills and abilities, an ordinary dimension of the everyday life (Germann Molz 2011). Motti Regev (2011) distinguishes between inadvertent and advertent aesthetic cosmopolitanism. The first is related to the circulation of industrial products on cultural markets, and to the hybridization of contents, between music trends, artistic, culinary world and the persistence and even reinvention of traditional forms of local expressions. This inadvertent aesthetic cosmopolitanism does not imply any form of awareness. When people engage consciously with global cultural products and the encounter of Otherness, when they assume a reflexive approach, then their aesthetic cosmopolitanism is advertent and they may cross the conventional boundaries of their own ethnic or national cultures. Indeed, the aesthetic cosmopolitan is often delineated as a highly open-minded person who delights in and desires to consume difference, especially at the occasion of international mobilities, border-crossing experiences or other forms of transnational social relations (Hannerz 1990). However, there is no single path from the consumption of foreign or hybrid products to a consciousness of the Other: the transnational circulation of cultural products can cultivate cosmopolitan emotions, but it can equally fail to generate interest towards Others or any real engagement with them. One may profess values of openness and reveal oneself to be intolerant; adore mangas and Japanese products and yet never have any desire to visit Japan; eat couscous, spend one’s holidays in Morocco but offer political support to a xenophobic party, and so on. In most cases, aesthetic cosmopolitanism is ambivalent and does not seem to produce an ethical, moral or political consciousness of living together, even though globalised cultural elements sometimes may become platforms for political protest. Thus a headline in Le Monde on July 3, 2014 proclaimed: “The rallying sign used by Katniss Everdeen has been adopted by Thais demonstrating against the coup d’état.” And the article continued: “The outstretched arm, threefingered salute, the thumb and little finger folded back: this signal, thus described by Katniss Everdeen, heroine of the science fiction trilogy The Hunger Games, plays a key role in the


intrigues of the best-selling series. And, increasingly, in the unfolding protests against the coup d’état in Thailand, where demonstrators have adopted it as a rallying call.”1

2.3. Cosmopolitan Amateurship This way of relating to culture, that mixes emotions, shared feelings, snatches of knowledge, imaginaries, practices and consumption of national, hybrid and foreign products, gives birth to the figure of the cosmopolitan amateur. This amateurship differs from the previous ones, insofar as it implies particular and ephemeral engagement in cultural frames, as it is not strictly defined by education (as in Bourdieu’s model), and linked to a horizontal socialization (through networks, and peer groups). It functions as a resource for identities and self-construction (Flichy 2010) and dismisses the apprehension generated in the 19th century of industrial production and massive circulation of goods, around new forms of distraction and automatic forms of attention (Benett, 2013), and around the routinization of perception, which “no longer related to an interiorisation of the subject, to an intensification of the sense of selfhood” (Crary 2001, 79). In this amateurship, 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. The observation of contemporary culture shows us that this new amateurship is able to nurture cultural innovation and creativity, from new musical genders and images´ patchworks. As Bennett puts it, analysis often concentrates on “critiquing not only the distraction of attention associated with earlier entertainments but also the flagging forms of perception associated with earlier artistic movements that, while once innovative and able to provoke new forms of perceptual self-reflexiveness, have since atrophied into routine conventions” (Bennett, 2013, 29). Asian cinema provides a relevant example to this phenomenon. It constitutes an alternative mode of cinematic representation (Teo 2010), it utilizes transcultural techniques of film expression and its films reach audiences globally. However, “these films demand greater awareness on the part of global audiences of the material content, in particular the local substance which are far less familiar to them. It is in the interchange between the local and the global, between Hollywood and ‘Bollywood,’ that films strive to be universal” (427). This amateurship then functions as a tool kit (Swidler 1986), playing a role in structuring strategies and agency in different fields from cultural to political, moral and ethical. In order to analyze the mechanism of this tool kit, we should focus on sentiments as well as connections, as a central element of the pluralist and multicultural imaginary within and between groups or communities, as they either try to preserve their cultures, customs and identity, or are encompassed within a mosaic of hybridized cultures. It also implies to distinguish between real or objective knowledge of an individual with respect to others, based on an opening up of frameworks of reception, and representations and affects (Cicchelli 2014). This amateurship begins at the early stages of life and lasts all life long, but primary stages can deeply shape (or even program) habitus (Octobre and Mercklé 2010; Cristin 2011) and have a long lasting effect on the ability to deal with new experiences.

2.4. Cultural Truth and Likelihood: Emotions and Cosmopolitan Amateurship The example of migrants helps us towards the understanding of this cosmopolitan amateurship (Cicchelli and Octobre 2015). The rupture of the link with the nation of origin and its transformation into feelings rather than connections is a central element of the pluralist and multicultural imaginary of America, within which, groups of immigrants are encouraged to preserve their culture and identity, while remaining completely encompassed within a mosaic 1

Le Monde.fr, 03.06.2014


America (Schiller, Basch, and Blanc 1995). The same objective applies to Australia, the quest for national unity in diversity, whereby extra-national affiliations or ethnological specificities are accepted as long as they do not threaten unity, harmony and democracy. Moreover, numerous studies have shown how global media can accelerate this transnational turn, including “assimilated” communities (Karanfil 2009), between “avid” cultural identification that leaves its mark on several generations (not only that of the migrants, but equally on the second generation in their quest for identity), and a rejection of what television presents us of the “modern” country (and largely standardised in the media) that no longer coincides with the fixed elements that the community maintains on the basis of its original culture (culture, practices, representations, rites, etc.). Nor is it a question of describing the contours of what one might consider one’s culture and, by implication, the culture of the other. The circulation of cultural references, in addition to the growing number of collaborative works in the fields of contemporary artistic, industrial or other production, renders nationality identification more difficult. This is even truer from the point of view of their reception, notably by a growing percentage of the younger generation, which indeed no longer seeks to define their “cultural uniqueness” through exclusivity, isolation and specific aesthetic forms and contents. With digital technologies, cultural elements are mixed, hybridised in their products, and form chains of contents and values, which, for certain transnationals, become generational markers: we are witnessing the emergence of a “co-produced ethno-culture” (Garcia Canclini 2001). If the nation remains the subjective framework for the construction of our identities and belongings, including the most banal daily acts, this national framework no longer provides the body of cultural contents that young people consume and that constitutes their cultural repertoires, including forms of national pride. It is therefore necessary to analyse the individual and the social morphology of this cosmopolitan aestheticism: individual in its mobilisation, it is constructed “in the singular folds of the social” (Lahire 2013) by socialisation and experiences, and may be defined as “a cultural disposition involving an intellectual and aesthetic stance of ‘openness’ towards peoples, places and experiences from different cultures, especially those from different ‘nations,’” (Szerszinski and Urry 2002) or, indeed, a taste “for the wider shores of cultural experience” (Tomlinson 2009).

3. Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism Studies: Limits 3.1. A Mask for Social Inequalities or a New Political Commonality? Does the cosmopolitan turn (Beck 2006) mask social inequalities? The culturalization of everyday life in consumer societies, embedded in a theory of “individuals,” has been accused of hiding inequalities (age, class, race, generation, gender, etc.) as well as being the very place of reproduction of those inequalities. The ethnicization of our societies leads, for some authors, to an almost disqualification of social movements, as if they were outdated (Amselle 2012). In the United States, Walter Benn Michaels (2009) indicates the excess of the glorification of cultural diversity, a mask for social inequalities. He made clear that civil and cultural rights should not be conquered to the detriment of economic justice, neither should cultural diversity serve as an illusory argument. Walter Benn Michaels therefore sheds light on the cultural ideology transforming material differences into cultural differences, making them ethnically based more than economically based. The same applies in France, when observers make clear how socioeconomic inequalities can be masked by cultural claims (Dubet et al. 2013). The social mobility’s interpretation of cultural consumption within the national space, either in the United States (DiMaggio 1982) or in France (Coulangeon 2011), or the cultural mobility of re-hierarchisation (Glevarec 2009), as well as the figure of the prosumer (Ritzer 2004) and of a


western-centered analysis (Connell 2007), all question the need for a critical approach in terms of social stratification or cultural hierarchies recombination. Moreover, the culturalization of everyday life implies a culturalization of politics (from intercultural to multiculturalism and cultural diversity), which probably supposes a depoliticization of the cultural field (counter-culture are less and less obvious in a consumerist world) at least in some countries such as France. Indeed, the deployment of the modern cultural disciplines (literature, aesthetics, art history, folk studies, heritage studies, cultural sociology, cultural studies, global studies, cosmopolitanism) has given birth to a distinctive field of government—as it can be understood from the example of some cultural institutions’ management that have been developing an intercultural government (Dias 2008, Llyod 2014)— in museums, libraries, cinema, broadcasting, heritage sites, etc.

3.2 From the Center to the Periphery The foundation of cosmopolitanism remains culturally situated. The ethnocentrism of cosmopolitan thinking is obvious. Since globalization is polycentric—a well-documented phenomenon—cosmopolitanism as a specific theory of global processes should abandon its Western-centrism and itself become plural (Pieterse 2006). Cultural globalization forces us to wonder if those frameworks can also catch on with non-Western and southern realities, where demographic trends, labor market transformations, historical trajectories (post-colonial), education and gender issues, strong regional disparities, political institutions are very different. If aesthetic cosmopolitanism is defined by the access to a metropolitan cultural diversity, how would it be possible to consider genuine non-Western local ways of life? This ambition entails the recognition of certain virtual impossibilities, an oxymoron that condenses what Angela Prysthon (2002) called peripheral cosmopolitanism. To develop a comparative study between different realities, in Western, Eastern, Northern and Southern countries, researchers need to be aware of the differences in the cultural contexts and the comparative framework for analysis. For example, considering a comparative study between European and Latin-American countries can be a challenge, both for the cosmopolitan perspective and the cultural issues. In the case of Latin America, according to Néstor Garcia Canclini (1998), the regional culture is hybrid by nature. Hence, the contemporary Latin American culture is fundamentally marked by an intense “multitemporal heterogeneity.” Attempts at applying the theoretical, conceptual, and empirical formulae of research in nonwestern and southern societies accentuate the mismatch between a framework that was envisioned in western and northern societies and is now enforced in another context. This mismatch is due to country-specific particularities such as the effect of historical-cultural conditions. These challenges can also be understood on cultural consumption studies in developing countries, with strong regional disparities. It means that significant changes in popular culture, with the advent of new music genres, or the evolution in television watching habits through innovative technology and the internet, change the perspective of cultural consumption comparative analysis.

3.3. Opens Questions and Further Operationalization Contemporary aesthetic cosmopolitanism studies have focused on the comprehension of the consumption both of exotic and ordinary products, and are sometimes connected to a possible consciousness of the individuals regarding the Other. Considering that the aesthetic cosmopolitanism is ambivalent and does not necessarily produce an ethical, moral or political consciousness of living together, we propose the discussion around this figure of a cosmopolitan amateur. The “cosmopolitan amateur” is understood as the figure of globalized cultural consumption and cultural expertise, is a way to understand the contemporary socialization to alterity, the


contemporary cultural socialization as well as the emergence of a new generation (Cicchelli and Octobre 2015). But, how would it be possible to operationalize the figure of the cosmopolitan amateur we have argued for? The empirical research on socialization, within studies of cosmopolitanism, is still not consolidated, thus we know little about the ideal and normative characteristics of cosmopolitan amateurship. Therefore our questions to this matter arise: 

Regarding the construction of this amateurship: Does aesthetic cosmopolitanism favor contacts and encounters? Or do encounters and contacts favor aesthetic cosmopolitanism? Does aesthetic cosmopolitanism favor a general attitude of openness towards alterity? Or does such an attitude favor a curiosity of tastes?



Regarding the socialization within this amateurship: Does aesthetic cosmopolitanism come from family, school or biographical trajectories? The question of transmission of open-mindedness is still undocumented.



Regarding the social effects of this amateurship: What kind of inequalities does it nourish? Is cosmopolitanism a new form of distinction that combines with or replaces cultural legitimacy? Even if the opportunities of confronting global imagination are bigger than they were in the past, cosmopolitan participations such as speaking a foreign language, traveling and studying abroad, or consuming foreign cultural products are still the prerogatives of a few. Does it mean that this figure nurtures a new form of domination?



Regarding the link between the cultural field and other social fields: What are the links between aesthetic cosmopolitanism and other forms of cosmopolitanism (political and ethical)? Is it certain or uncertain, linear or reversible, strong or fragile, socially determined or widespread?

Addressing these questions also leads researchers to a certain number of methodological difficulties. Measuring knowledge about foreign culture is not enough. The mixing of foreign products into the national range of goods offers a challenge to research that aims to analyze consumption within the contemporary context. Moreover, knowledge does not lead to attachment: taste is a mix of information and likes. And belonging is a mix of taste and reflexivity, nourished by an imaginative process through which one builds his/her own relation to the world. It would therefore be useful to address several levels of analysis—aesthetic knowledge, aesthetic taste, aesthetic belonging—to inform the imaginative work that shapes the sense of the relation to Otherness. In the future, research should propose a methodological pattern and explore empirically some recurrent theoretical perspectives on aesthetic cosmopolitanism. This is the challenge research should take up in the future in order to displace the aloof, globetrotting bourgeois image of cosmopolitanism, as Vertovec and Cohen asked for (2002).

Final Considerations While focusing on banal and ordinary experiences of everyday life, especially about cultural consumption, which strongly contributes to the construction of identity in post-modernity, we have tried to discuss the emergence of a cosmopolitan amateurship, which provides insights on the effect of cultural globalization from an aesthetic cosmopolitan perspective. Instead of restlessly trying to capture the “pure” model of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, we have claimed that there is the coexistence of various manifestations of an “impure” model of cosmopolitanism


(Beck 2011). We have shed some light on the features of this amateurship that relies on knowledge, as well as on emotion, imaginaries, experiences, learnings and consumption. The cosmopolitan aesthetical amateurship can be defined as a learning process that is permanent, sinuous, reversible, sometimes even contradictory and incoherent, which brings together the moment of contact, reflexivity and intentionality, as a process of acquisition of a state of mind, rather than the deployment of a disposition or of a characteristic acquired once and for all. Thus, there are degrees in that cosmopolitan aesthetical amateurship, from an inadvertent stance to an advertent stance of the passionate. We may wonder if the desire and the voracity (Sullivan and Katz-Gerro 2007) in the consumption of cultural and artistic events of the Other are themselves ways to create cosmopolitan openness. This voracity may lead either to forms of addiction or to long-term indifference to products that have become familiar, and equally may build relationships with alterity that engage reflexivity. Our reflections about aesthetic cosmopolitanism open different possibilities of studies concerning the figure of the cosmopolitan amateur, considering both social inequalities and central/periphery contexts in the global sphere. Therefore, ambivalences and paradoxes must be the pillars of further aesthetic cosmopolitanism studies.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Vincenzo Cicchelli: Researcher, GEMASS/University of Paris Sorbonne/CNRS, Paris, France; Lecturer, University of Paris Descartes, Paris, France Sylvie Octobre: Researcher, DEPS/Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Paris, France; GEMASS/University of Paris Sorbonne/CNRS, Paris, France Viviane Riegel: Researcher, PPGCOM, ESPM-SP, São Paulo, Brazil

The Global Studies Journal is devoted to mapping and interpreting new trends and patterns in globalization. This journal attempts to do this from many points of view, from many locations in the world, and in a wide-angle kaleidoscopic fashion. Intellectually, the journal takes three steps: the ﬁrst is a “this-worldly” step, mapping the details and extrapolating to big picture analyses in order to interpret what is at times challenging, dangerous and excitingly positive about the “New Globalization”. The second step is to set this New Globalization in the context of earlier globalizations – what are the continuities, and what is genuinely new? The third step is to re-examine and redeﬁne the very concept of globalization – in theoretical, anthropological and philosophical terms. The journal works between fastidiously empirical and profoundly generalizing modes of engagement, analyzing one of the central phenomena of our contemporary existence. The Global Studies Journal is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

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