Locating cosmopolitanism - Between humanist ideal and grounded social category

The emerging interdisciplinary body of cosmopolitanism research has established a promising field of theoretical endeavour by bringing into focus questions concerning globalization, nationalism, population movements, cultural values and identity. Yet, despite its potential importance, what characterizes recent cosmopolitanism research is an idealist sentiment that considerably marginalizes the significance of the structures of nation-state and citizenship, while leaving unspecified the empirical sociological dimensions of cosmopolitanism itself. Our critique aims at making cosmopolitanism a more productive analytical tool. We argue for a cosmopolitanism that consists of conceptually and empirically identifiable values and outlooks. While there has been some progress made in this direction in the recent literature on cosmopolitanism, most writing still considers cosmopolitanism as something so delicate that it cannot be measured. Furthermore, in order to appreciate the full currency of the concept, we argue that researchers must not only agree on some common determinants of cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan dispositions, but also ground their analyses of cosmopolitanism in the context of enduring nation-state structures.

The Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje: The convergence of Croation nationalism on her apparitions

This article concerns the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in one of the most popular, 'active' apparitional sites in the world: Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The connection between nationalist discourse and apparitions has often been observed and noted in the literature on nationalism; however, the examples of this connection are scattered in the literature and the question why the apparitional phenomenon so easily lends itself to co-option into nationalist discourse has never been addressed. This article explores this question by showing that what binds the two phenomena together is the idea of 'chosenness' and 'specialness', which in turn can be theoretically linked to discussions about national election in the literature on nationalism. This article illustrates the convergence of nationalist and apparitional discourses by drawing on a selected number of examples of how the apparitions in Medjugorje have been appropriated by Croatian nationalist discourse.