Cosmopolitan Mediation

Since the end of the Cold War mediation in international conflict has risen to the top of the international agenda. This book takes a look at the Oslo Accords using recent developments in political and international theory.

‘Post-Multicultural Writers as Neo-Cosmopolitan Mediators’ is the first book to bring together global debates in neo-cosmopolitanism over the last decade and Australian minority writers, linking them to globalisation and transnationalism in cultural studies.

The Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Haiti earthquake are only some of the recent examples of the power of new media to transform journalism. Some celebrate this power as a new cosmopolitanism that challenges the traditional boundaries of foreign reporting, yet others fear that the new media simply reproduce old power relations in new ways. It is this important controversy around the role of new media in shaping a cosmopolitan journalism that offers the starting point of this book. By bringing together an impressive range of leading theorists in the field of journalism and media studies, this collection insightfully explores how Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are taking the voice of ordinary citizens into the forefront of mainstream journalism and how, in so doing, they give shape to new public conceptions of authenticity and solidarity. This collection is directed towards a readership of students and scholars in media and communications, digital and information studies, journalism, sociology as well as other social sciences that engage with the role of new media in shaping contemporary social life. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

Globalization has been contested in recent times. Among the critical perspectives is cosmopolitanism. Yet, with the exception of normative theory, international relations as a field has ignored cosmopolitan thinking. This book redresses this gap and develops a dialogue between cosmopolitanism and international relations. The dialogue is structured around three debates between non-universalist theories of international relations and contemporary cosmopolitan thought. The theories chosen are realism, (post-)Marxism and postmodernism. All three criticize liberalism in the international domain, and, therefore, cosmopolitanism as an offshoot of liberalism. In the light of each school's respective critique of universalism, the book suggests both the importance and difficulty of the cosmopolitan perspective in the contemporary world. Beardsworth emphasizes the need for global leadership at nation-state level, re-embedding of the world economy, a cosmopolitan politics of the lesser violence, and cosmopolitan political judgement. He also suggests research agendas to situate further contemporary cosmopolitanism in international relations theory. This book will appeal to all students of political theory and international relations, especially those who are seeking more articulation of the main issues between cosmopolitanism and its critics in international relations.

l volume presenta un'ampia varietà di prospettive teoriche e di ricerca sull'eduzazione interculturale, di tipo linguistico pedagogico e sociologico. Questi contributi evidenziano anzitutto che gli atteggiamenti etnocentrici sono ancora diffusi in molte realtà educative europee e che quindrichiedono interventi efficaci per favorire un'educazione interculturale efficace. In secondo luogo, sottolineano tre aspetti particolarmente rilevanti nel rendere efficace l'educazione interculturale: le azioni dialogiche da parte dei docenti e esperti, la promozione della partecipazionew attiva dei giovani e la creazione di condizioni di adattamento effettivamente interculturale. Il volume spega come la molteplicità delle narrazioni e la varità dei linguaggi possano essere costruite nell'interazione tra docenti e studenti, e fornisce suggerimenti per un uso attento del linguaggio, che permetta di mediare tra le diverse prospettive culturali e linguistiche.

‘Post-Multicultural Writers as Neo-Cosmopolitan Mediators’ argues the need to move beyond the monolingual paradigm within Anglophone literary studies. Using Lyotard’s concept of post as the future anterior (back to the future), this book sets up a concept of post-multiculturalism salvaging the elements within multiculturalism that have been forgotten in its contemporary denigration. Gunew attaches this discussion to debates in neo-cosmopolitanism over the last decade, creating a framework for re-evaluating post-multicultural and Indigenous writers in settler colonies such as Canada and Australia. She links these writers with transnational writers across diasporas from Eastern Europe, South-East Asia, China and India to construct a new framework for literary and cultural studies.

With the majority of the world's population now living in cities, questions about the cultural and political trajectories of urban societies are increasingly urgent. Media and the City explores the global city as the site where these questions become most prominent. As a space of intense communication and difference, the global city forces us to think about the challenges of living in close proximity to each other. Do we really see, hear and understand our neighbours? This engaging book examines the contradictory realities of cosmopolitanization as these emerge in four interfaces: consumption, identity, community and action. Each interface is analysed through a set of juxtapositions to reveal the global city as a site of antagonisms, empathies and co-existing particularities. Timely, interdisciplinary and multi-perspectival, Media and the City will be essential reading for students and scholars in media and communications, cultural studies and sociology, and of interest to those concerned with the growing role of the media in changing urban societies.

This book draws on the concrete knowledge and practice experience of leading mediators, working in a variety of fields, to inform contemporary debates and challenges. These practitioners reflect on the excitement, complexity and satisfaction of their work as well as on the differences and commonalities across diverse fields of mediation practice.