Performing cosmopolitanism: The context and object framing of cosmopolitan openness

This chapter addresses the question of how to conceptualise cosmopolitanism for empirical research and focuses on the notion of openness as a principal discourse of contemporary cosmopolitanism studies. It explores the application of performative and qualitative approaches to researching cosmopolitanism as a form of openness to cultural difference. The chapter specifies cosmopolitanism through traditional social scientific models deploying a variable-centred model of inquiry and discusses the additional relevance of a performative theory. It argues that a performative approach is well suited to exploring cosmopolitanism as an emergent, relational dimension of social life rather than a stable feature of identities or social types. Cosmopolitanism can be conceptualised as a flexible, available set of cultural practices and outlooks which are selectively mobilised depending on social and cultural contexts. Accordingly, the idea of cultural 'openness' has been a fountainhead for general conceptions of cosmopolitanness as an outlook or, disposition.