Discourses of Cosmopolitanism and Boundary Work at an International, High-Quality University

• Applicant: Dr. Eunike Piwoni
• Subject Area: Sociological Theory ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: Funded in 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 245184023

The research project is situated in transnationalism studies as an increasingly important field within German sociology. It will seek to contribute to a strand within this literature which conceives of cosmopolitanism as a practical category and focuses on vernacular forms of inclusive thinking and acting. By understanding cosmopolitanism as a discourse and by exploring the unintended consequences of this discourse, the project opens up a new perspective and comes up with empirically grounded answers to the following questions: How is cosmopolitanism as a discursive practice related to structures of societal power and inequality? To what extent is cosmopolitan discourse a discourse on morality? What are the symbolic and social boundaries established by this discourse and what are the socio-political problems systematically obscured? In order to answer these questions, the project will draw on a series of in-depth interviews with students at one of the world's most international universities, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a thorough analysis of the data in the tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The results will be interpreted against the backdrop of recent studies on symbolic boundary-work, the changing character of solidarity under global conditions and recent claims of political philosophers for a cosmopolitan civic education.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Host: Monika Krause, Ph.D.