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Full-Text Articles in Sociology

Affective Cosmopolitanisms In Singapore: Dancehall And The Decolonisation Of The Self, Orlando Woods Mar 2021

Affective Cosmopolitanisms In Singapore: Dancehall And The Decolonisation Of The Self, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper advances a new understanding of cosmopolitanism; one that is rooted in the affective potential of the body. It argues that whilst the self is often projected onto the body, so too can the body play an important role in (re)imagining the self. As such, the body can decolonise the self from the mind, from the expectations of society and culture, and from the normative epistemological underpinnings of academic knowledge production. I validate these theoretical arguments through an empirical focus on the practice of dancehall in Singapore. Dancehall is an emancipatory cultural movement that emerged in Jamaica in the …


Empirical Correlates Of Cosmopolitan Orientation: Etiology And Functions In A Worldwide Representative Sample, James H. Liu, Robert Jiqi Zhang, Angela K. Y. Leung, Homero Gil De Zúñiga, Cecilia Gastardo-Conac, Vadym Vasiutynskyi, Larissa Kus-Harbord Jan 2020

Empirical Correlates Of Cosmopolitan Orientation: Etiology And Functions In A Worldwide Representative Sample, James H. Liu, Robert Jiqi Zhang, Angela K. Y. Leung, Homero Gil De Zúñiga, Cecilia Gastardo-Conac, Vadym Vasiutynskyi, Larissa Kus-Harbord

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Psychology has begun contributing to social theory by providing empirical measures of actually existing cosmopolitanism that complements more purely theoretical conceptions of the construct common in philosophy and sociology. Drawing from two waves of research on representative adult samples from 19 countries (N = 8740), metric invariance was found for the three factors of cosmopolitan orientation (COS): cultural openness (CO), global prosociality (GP), and respect for cultural diversity (RCD). In terms of etiology, among Wave 1 measures, the personality factor of agreeableness was the best predictor of the cosmopolitan factors of GP and RCD at Wave 2, whereas openness …


Being Environmentally Responsible: Cosmopolitan Orientation Predicts Pro-Environmental Behaviors, Angela K. Y. Leung, Kelly Koh, Kim-Pong Tam Sep 2015

Being Environmentally Responsible: Cosmopolitan Orientation Predicts Pro-Environmental Behaviors, Angela K. Y. Leung, Kelly Koh, Kim-Pong Tam

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Much research has examined individuals' values and beliefs as antecedents or correlates of pro-environmental behaviors (PEB). We approach this question from the novel perspective of individuals' cosmopolitan orientation (CO). We define CO as made up of three essential qualities. First, cultural openness captures individuals' receptiveness to immerse in and learn from other cultures. Second, global prosociality denotes a sense of collective moral obligation to universally respect and promote basic human rights. Third, respect for cultural diversity concerns high tolerance of and appreciation for cultural differences. Across two studies, we validated the Cosmopolitan Orientation Scale (COS) with theoretically related criterion measures …


Historians As Rooted Cosmopolitans: Their Potentials And Limitations, Hiro Saito Apr 2015

Historians As Rooted Cosmopolitans: Their Potentials And Limitations, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the 1990s, the so-called 'history problem' began to escalate in East Asia as the result of mutually reinforcing nationalist commemorations in Japan, South Korea and China. In response, historians from the three countries organized joint historical research and textbook projects. In this article, I examine the extent to which these joint projects succeeded in promoting the cosmopolitan logic of historiography that challenged nationalist commemorations. Specifically, I compare governmental and non-governmental projects and illustrate structural and dispositional mechanisms that facilitated the cosmopolitan logic of historiography. However, at the same time, I show that the joint projects have had only a …


The A-Bomb Victims' Plea For Cosmopolitan Commemoration: Toward Reconciliation And World Peace, Hiro Saito Jan 2015

The A-Bomb Victims' Plea For Cosmopolitan Commemoration: Toward Reconciliation And World Peace, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper critically revisits the A-bomb victims' plea for cosmopolitan commemoration that takes humanity, rather than nationality, as a primary frame of reference. To this end, I first elaborate the nature of cosmopolitan commemoration espoused by A-bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in comparison with another form of cosmopolitan commemoration pertaining to the Holocaust victims. I then analyze limitations in these cosmopolitan commemorations and explore how they can be transcended. In light of my critical analysis, I argue that genuinely cosmopolitan commemoration, a prerequisite for reconciliation and world peace, will appear on the horizon if the commemorations of the two …


Cosmopolitanism As Cultural Capital: Exploring The Intersection Of Globalization, Education, And Stratification, Hiroki Igarashi, Hiro Saito Sep 2014

Cosmopolitanism As Cultural Capital: Exploring The Intersection Of Globalization, Education, And Stratification, Hiroki Igarashi, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In recent years, sociological research on cosmopolitanism has begun to draw on Pierre Bourdieu to critically examine how cosmopolitanism is implicated in stratification on an increasingly global scale. In this paper, we examine the analytical potential of the Bourdieusian approach by exploring how education systems help to institutionalize cosmopolitanism as cultural capital whose access is rendered structurally unequal. To this end, we first probe how education systems legitimate cosmopolitanism as a desirable disposition at the global level, while simultaneously distributing it unequally among different groups of actors according to their geographical locations and volumes of economic, cultural, and social capital …


Competing Logics Of Commemoration: Cosmopolitanism And Nationalism In East Asia's History Problem, Hiro Saito, Yoko Wang Jun 2014

Competing Logics Of Commemoration: Cosmopolitanism And Nationalism In East Asia's History Problem, Hiro Saito, Yoko Wang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Recent studies in collective memory point to the emergence of cosmopolitan commemoration that takes humanity, rather than nationality, as a primary frame of reference. But these studies have yet to specify how cosmopolitan commemoration emerges and articulates with existing nationalist commemoration. To solve this problem, we examine the “history problem” between Japan and South Korea by focusing on how relevant political and civic actors negotiated cosmopolitanism and nationalism in commemorating Japan’s past colonial rule and wartime atrocities. In light of our historical analysis, we argue that a synthesis of theories of institutional logics and social movements is useful in illuminating …


Actor-Network Theory Of Cosmopolitan Education, Hiro Saito Jun 2010

Actor-Network Theory Of Cosmopolitan Education, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the past, philosophers discussed cosmopolitanism as a normative ideal of allegiance to humanity as a whole. A debate among social theorists, however, has examined cosmopolitanism as an incipient empirical phenomenon: an orientation of openness to foreign others and cultures. This paper introduces actor-network theory to elaborate the social-theoretical conception of cosmopolitanism. In light of the actor-network theory of cosmopolitanism, the paper proposes cosmopolitan education that aims to foster in students three dispositions: to extend attachments to foreign people and objects; to understand transnational connections in which their lives are embedded; and to act on these attachments and understandings to …