Gillian Brock, Global justice : a cosmopolitan account

This is a review of Gillian Brock’s new book, Global justice: a cosmopolitan account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) which sets out the central theses of the book and then offers a critical appraisal of its central arguments. My specific concern is that Brock gives an insufficiently robust account of human rights with which to define the nature of global justice and thereby leaves cosmopolitanism too vulnerable to the normative pull of local and traditional moral conceptions that fall short of the universalism that cosmopolitans should be able to embrace.

Reporting Iraq's cosmopolitan society in the Australian print media : The case of the Assyrian church bombings

A series of bomb blasts that targeted a number of Assyrian churches in Baghdad and Mosul last year were reported in the Australian media and seemed to hint at the complexity of Iraq’s cosmopolitan society. This paper seeks to compare and contrast the representation of these events in four of Australia’s leading newspapers (The Australian, The Courier-Mail, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald) by using a multi-methodological approach. The analysis reveals that Australian print coverage falls short of detailing the complexities of Iraq’s cosmopolitan society and therefore engenders an Orientalist (Said, 1978) discourse that constructs the Assyrians as powerless and anonymous victims.

Netpeace and the cosmopolitan condition : multifaith movements and the politics of understanding

The ultramodern era has been characterized paradoxically as one of great fear and great hope. Reactions to the tragic events of September 11, 2001 provide evidence of this ambivalence whereby a politics of fear and exclusion permeated Western societies, accompanied by a growing interest in collaborative cosmopolitan solutions addressing the most pressing global risks of our times. Culturally, religiously and linguistically diverse (CRALD) community experiences in the state of Victoria, Australia well illustrate this dichotomy. Drawing on this case study, I argue that the rise of multifaith and multi-actor peacebuilding networks in ultramodernity provide evidence that cosmopolitan solutions can effectively counter global risks, in this case particularly terrorism, and advance common security among diverse faith communities and across diverse sectors. In so doing I develop a new netpeace framework arguing that the politics of fear is best countered by a politics of understanding.

The multifaith movement : global risks and cosmopolitan solutions

This book documents the ultramodern rise of the multifaith movement, as mulitfaith initiatives have been increasingly deployed as cosmopolitan solutions to counter global risks such as terrorism and climate change at the turn of the 21st century. These projects aim to enhance common security, particularly in Western societies following the events of September 11, 2001 and the July 2005 London bombings, where multifaith engagement has been promoted as a strategy to counter violent extremism. The author draws on interviews with 56 leading figures in the field of multifaith relations, including Paul Knitter, Eboo Patel, Marcus Braybrooke, Katherine Marshall, John Voll and Krista Tippett.
Identifying the principle aims of the multifaith movement, the analysis explores the benefits—and challenges—of multifaith engagement, as well as the effectiveness of multifaith initiatives in countering the process of radicalization. Building on notions of cosmopolitanism, the work proposes a new theoretical framework termed ‘Netpeace’, which recognizes the interconnectedness of global problems and their solutions. In doing so, it acknowledges the capacity of multi-actor peacebuilding networks, including religious and state actors, to address the pressing dilemmas of our times. The primary intention of the book is to assist in the formation of new models of activism and governance, founded on a ‘politics of understanding’ modeled by the multifaith movement.

Gentrification and cosmopolitan leisure in inner-urban Melbourne, Australia, 1960s-1970s

Studies of gentrification in Australia have typically analysed the phenomenon through the lens of housing and residential change. This article explores how non-residential factors, including the concept of and the everyday practices associated with cosmopolitanism, offer an opportunity to analyse leisure specific to gentrification in Melbourne in the 1960s and 1970s. The article particularly explores leisure based on food and drink cultures located in restaurants, cafés and pubs. Adopting a discursive interdisciplinary approach to studies of the urban past, the article seeks to enhance our historical understanding of the interplay between gentrification and cosmopolitan leisure at a specific place and time in history, by exploring how people perceived themselves and their lifestyles in the midst of urban change.

Academic mobility, intercultural encounters and cosmopolitan knowledge creation

In this presentation, I examine contemporary international encounters and intercultural interactions in academia as a researcher and recent participant in the ever-expanding global academic mobility programs. Academic mobility is a part of the modern continuing changes in the teaching and learning processes that higher educational institutions are undergoing globally. These changes are often termed ‘internationalization of education’ and they are expressed in the transformations in both the curricula and recruitment practices of students and staff. Global scale of academic mobility opens up prosperous opportunities for intercultural knowledge interchange, knowledge creation, and knowledge enrichment, all leading to the broadening of cultural imagination and creation of shared cosmopolitan cultural meanings.