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Grigory Minenkov
attitudes follow the same logic and lead to violence towards each other. It also concerns
the so-called socialist internationalism which simply declares separate national interests
to
be universal, proceeding from the principle of “class solidarity”.
New cosmopolitanism
poses itself a problem of overcoming both narrow particularism and abstract universal-
ism.
In this connection it is important to understand the established by Beck connection
between the world cosmopolitization and “the dialogical imagination” as the basis of mu-
tual interpretation of cultures. In fact, national imagination is monologic. Cosmopolitan-
ism offers alternative imagination or imagination of alternative ways of life and rationali-
ties which include the otherness of Another. Consideration and discussion of inconsistent
cultural experience move into the center of activity. According to Beck, methodological
cosmopolitanism revolutionizes social science, its principles, methods and concept, offer-
ing instead of the principle “either – or” the principle “both this and that” (for example,
“a cosmopolitan patriot”).
Beck connects cosmopolitanism with the theory of reflective modernization the key
indicator of which is the pluralization of borders. This moment is fundamental for the un-
derstanding of cosmopolitan identity. In particular, we are talking about the pluralization
of borders between the nations-states or “implosion of dualism of the national and the
international”. Borders collide in the language of methodological nationalism and merge
in the language of methodological cosmopolitanism. In other words, Beck emphasizes
that borders are no longer determining factors, they can be chosen (and interpreted) and
simultaneously be redrawn and legitimized anew.
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It completely denies former practices
of identity exclusion, not entered in the accepted borders. It is natural then that in con-
nection with this Áåê insists on the distinction to be made between cosmopolitization
and cosmopolitanism. Beck believes that the latter is more likely to
represent an artificial
ideological construction while cosmopolitization is the structure of reference for the em-
pirical research of globalization from within, or internalized globalization. Simultaneously
cosmopolitization strengthens the meaning of ethical measurement of social life. It is also
necessary to pay attention to how, according to Beck, cosmopolitanism eliminates the
exclusiveness claims of European modernism.
The cosmopolitan prospect is connected, thus, with the imagination of alternative
ways of life and rationalities, including the otherness of Another. According to U. Hannerz,
“cosmopolitanism is the attitude to the variety itself, to the coexistence of cultures in an
individual experience. Cosmopolitanism is, first of all, its orientation and aspiration hav-
ing accepted another. It is an intellectual and esthetic openness to the divergent cultural
experience, the search for shades rather than uniformity. Simultaneously, it can be a ques-
tion of competence in a general and in a more specialized sense meaning the condition
of readiness, the ability to accept a different culture on the basis of listening, watching,
penetrating and understanding. It is a question of cultural competence, i.e. the skills of
comprehension of a special system of senses and semantic forms”
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. Beck calls it “cosmo-
logic” or thinking and life in the language of inclusive contrasts. Such thinking within “the