Cultural capitals and cosmopolitanism in eighteenth-century Italy: the historiography and Italy on the Grand Tour

This article reviews the most recent body of literature in the English language that revisits cultural developments of eighteenth-century Italy in light of the internationalism of the peninsula in that period. In particular, it seeks to show how a consideration of the rhetorical strategy of the Grand Tour has both generated a discrete field of study as well as informed the work of a broad range of cultural historians seeking to identify and account for those innovations unique to Italy's eighteenth century.     

The interweaving of sacred and secular: metaphysics,reform and enlightenment in the rivalry between Dom Deschamps and Claude Yvon, 1769–1774

ABSTRACT

The Benedictine Dom Léger-Marie Deschamps and the philosophical Abbé Claude Yvon may indeed be minor eighteenth-century figures, and they both may be considered to have emerged from the Catholic side of something Helena Rosenblatt has dubbed the Christian Enlightenment, but neither of these figures is neatly “conservative” (as Mark Curran defines it), nor are they fully “radical” (in the sense of having contributed to the Radical Enlightenment). Rather, Deschamps and Yvon are among a number of eighteenth-century figures who do not fit neatly into the expected parameters of Catholic, Christian, Religious or Radical Enlightenment. This article argues that the entanglement of both heterodoxy and orthodoxy, and of sociopolitical progressivism and conservatism, is characteristic of Yvon’s and Deschamps’s particular engagement with what Vincenzo Ferrone describes as the cultural revolution of the eighteenth century. This study of these under-examined Catholic scholars further suggests that conventional and tidy scholarly narratives of the history of Enlightenment should be further problematized.     

Cosmopolitan nationalism and the cultural reach of the white British

ABSTRACT. In recent years, strong claims have been made for the breakdown of national boundaries and the reformation of national identities in an increasingly interconnected global world – driven in large part by the possibilities and limitations that emerge from an increasingly global media world. It has been argued that new postnational, cosmopolitan subjectivities accompany, enable and feed off globally oriented forms of cultural consumption. This article examines these claims in the light of unusually comprehensive data on the tastes of the white British population collected in a large national sample survey, in‐depth interviews and focus groups. By identifying and analysing the geographical spread of the cultural referents of the tastes of the white British we make an empirical assessment of the claims for cosmopolitan identities. We argue that if white British identities are being reformed by processes of globalisation it is, paradoxically, in an increasingly Anglophone direction.     

Religion and the Enlightenment: A Review Essay

Recent studies of the Enlightenment suggest that its relationto religion is far more complex than a simple process of increasingsecularization. The book by Sheehan shows, by examining translationsof the Bible into English and German in the Enlightenment, howreligion was reshaped, leading eventually to the dogma-freeChristianity proposed by Matthew Arnold. Israel's book arguesthat alongside the relatively cautious mainstream Enlightenmentthere was always a radical Enlightenment, heavily indebted toSpinoza, that was rationalist, atheist, and libertarian, andanticipated the dominant liberal values of the present day.Neither of these important studies, however, considers two areasthat remain under-researched: the popular Enlightenment (‘Volksaufklärung’),that is to say, the diffusion of Enlightenment thought amonguneducated people; and the Catholic Enlightenment which flourishedparticularly in Italy, Austria, and south Germany.     

The politics of education for globalisation: managed activism in a time of crisis

Since the 1990s, governments of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have begun to promote their foreign aid politics domestically via global education. This policy remit has its origins in civil society and has been combined with a stated aim on the part of governments to prepare populations for globalisation, but also to convince populations of the need for increased aid spending in the context of various challenges, including calls for aid effectiveness, large-scale protest by the metropolitan left and rising parochialisms that diminish cosmopolitan world views. In the context of the apparent spontaneity of political mobilisation globally, this article seeks to qualify the optimism of the political sociology and social movements literature on the network society by comparing two OECD government remits for global/development education in the UK and Australia, which are attempts to manage or socially engineer civic activism and engagement. The problem which this article addresses is that, on the face of it, state funding of ‘global education’ appears to be a success of the activism of educators combined with the networked advocacy efforts of development non-governmental organisations, except that it has occurred in tension with international drivers to use education to further global economic competitiveness and governments' desire to promote their own foreign aid spending in a climate of falling legitimacy. This phenomenon of state funding for global education might be considered an elaboration of network politics, but this article argues that it must equally be read, via Gramsci, as a hegemonic contest in the struggle for subject production appropriate to the global knowledge economy.     

The Problems of Utilizing ‘Direct Experience’ in Geography Education

In response to the various calls for sustainable development, a range of activities has been initiated by central and local government, business, NGOs and other institutions. In this paper, the authors focus on the important learning context of higher education. They review the agenda established at Rio and, through a critical examination of developments within the UK, comment on issues and challenges facing the sector.     

The French Enlightenment attempts to create a philosophy without reason: the case of Diderot and the effect of Helvétius

It is a well-worn, yet astonishingly resilient, cliché that the Enlightenment was the “Age of Reason”. By focusing on Diderot and Helvétius this paper shows that, rather than proceeding in the name of reason, key figures within the progressive philosophy of the French Enlightenment were in fact extremely suspicious of abstract reasoning and attempted to construct a philosophy which purged the faculty of reason entirely from its philosophical anthropology and reduced the mind’s functions to the single faculty of sensation and so to the passions. It is in this sense that philosophy of the French Enlightenment attempted to produce a philosophy without reason. This paper reconstructs this attempt. In doing so it again engages critically with the idea that the philosophy of the Enlightenment was dogmatically rationalist, it provides a historical case study of a period in which philosophy pushed against the limits of its own identity, and it uses this attempt to reflect on the mythological not historiographical service which the cliché of Enlightenment Reason plays for the philosophical identity.     

Negotiating belonging and perceptions of citizenship in a transnational world: Singapore,a cosmopolis?

The complex mappings of inflows and outflows of people, capital, images and ideas in global city spaces create particular challenges for nation-states that are deeply embedded in the international circuit of capital. Through an empirical study of Singapore, an aspiring global city-state, I offer an analysis of how the state-sponsored cosmopolitan project is contested by Singapore citizens. I also present evidence to highlight the contradictions of belonging and citizenship in a transnational world, with particular reference to the postcolonial racial and nationality dynamics that inflect these discourses.

Négocier l'appartenance et les perceptions de la citoyenneté dans un monde transnational: Singapour comme ville cosmopolite?

Les mappages complexes des mouvements des personnes, du capital, des images et des idées à travers les espaces urbains mondiaux posent un défi particulier aux états-nations qui sont très fortement intégrés dans le circuit international du capital. Singapour, ville-état mondiale en croissance, est le sujet d'une étude empirique dans laquelle je présente une analyse du projet cosmopolite soutenu par l'état et comment ce projet est contesté par les citoyens de Singapour. Je présente également des éléments de preuve pour faire ressortir les contradictions entre l'appartenance et la citoyenneté dans un monde transnational, en précisant entre autres les dynamiques qui touchent aux identités raciales et nationales postcoloniales qui pèsent sur ces discours.

Mots-clefs: appartenance, citoyenneté, mobilité transnationale, cosmopolitanisme, Singapour.

La negociación de pertenencia e ideas de ciudadanía en un mundo transnacional: Singapur, ¿un cosmópolis?

Los complejos mapeos de la entrada y salida de personas, capital, imágenes e ideas en los espacios de ciudades globales crean desafíos particulares para naciones-Estados, los cuales están estrechamente vinculados al circuito internacional de capital. Por un estudio empírico de Singapur, que aspira a ser reconocido como ciudad-estado global, ofrezco un análisis de cómo los ciudadanos de Singapur contestan este proyecto cosmopólito patrocinado por el Estado. También presento pruebas para destacar las contradicciones inherentes en las nociones de pertenencia y ciudadanía en un mundo transnacional, con referencia particular a la dinámica racial y de la dinámica de nacionalidad poscolonial que salpican estos discursos.

Palabras claves: pertenencia, ciudadanía, movilidad transnacional, cosmopolitanismo, Singapur.