The Dictionary of Human Geography

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illustrate the whole of universal knowledge.

The dazzling ‘marvels’ of the worlds newly

encountered by Renaissance Europeans meant

that cosmography often failed to distinguish

reality from fable, and the cosmographic pro-

ject’s grand synthetic goals became increas-

ingly unwieldy (Grafton, 1992; Lestringant,

1994). Cosmography’s assumption of a closed

universe meant that acceptance of

Copernicus’ world system, especially after

Galileo and Newton, led to its decline as an

active field of knowledge, being replaced by

astronomy and geography as distinct enquiries

(see alsogeography, history of), although

mathematical cosmography remained a crit-

ical science during the eighteenth-century

establishment of accurate meridians on an

oblate globe and the development of geodetic

survey (Edney, 1993). Non-Western and pre-

modern cosmologies find graphic expression

in diverse cosmographic maps and diagrams

(seecartography, history of). dco

Suggested reading

Besse (2003); Cosgrove (2006a).

cosmopolitanism Across the centuries, pol-

itical philosophers and social commentators

have argued over the desirability and possibil-

ity of social organization and affiliation on a

cosmopolitan scale. Cosmopolitans, blaming

nationalismfor many of the ills of the world,

have argued that universal attachments and

rights offered at transnational scale are

desirable for human progress and emancipa-

tion. For example, the ancient Greeks empha-

sized the global responsibility of the citizen,

while during much of modernity the cosmo-

politan ideal has been driven by Kant’s desire

for governments to have obligations beyond

their ownterritories(Delanty, 2005b). In

contrast, Adam Smith stressed the role of sym-

pathy as a bridge between individuals and

among nations in a world differentiated by

market laws, and the French revolution

sought to extend the principles of liberty,

equality and fraternity as universal values,

while Marx insisted on the necessity of a

socialist commons under the guidance of the

international workers’ movement.

In recent years, the cosmopolitan ideal has

evolved in new directions, to include proposals

such as global government, binding inter-

national charters, corporate social responsi-

bility, enhanced human rights, global

environmental stewardship and various inter-

national commitments to poor countries, as a

response to growing international inequality

and planetary damage (Held and Koenig-

Archibugi, 2003). Global citizenship and

political action in general has come to be

placed at the heart of the cosmopolitan ideal

as a necessary adjunct to the process ofglob-

alization in economic, social, institutional

and cultural life, involving the rise of planetary

organization, transnational flows and cross-

national interdependencies. Global citizenship

and global government are seen to be required

by the rise of global society.

The critics of cosmopolitanism have long

argued, however, that collectiveaffect and

affiliation have always depended on strong ter-

ritorial loyalty and identification, as have the

processes and institutions of political expression

and action, most commonly around ethno-

national communities. Thus, cosmopolitan

ideals have been judged to be elitist, as reflec-

tions of only the values and cultural practices of

intellectuals, the itinerant upper echelons and

territorially disaffected minorities, with mass or

majority affiliation held to be gathered around

enduring national and local communities. The

critics – past and present – have also dismissed

the cosmopolitan ideal as utopian, naı ̈ve or

unworkable, on the grounds that it is a fictive

aspiration that fails to excite affect and loyalty

on the ground, that in a world ordered around

local, national and regionalsovereigntyits

institutional proposals have little chance of

uptake and survival, and that as a symbol of

progress it is undermined by a human condition

that is increasingly wary of universalistic or

teleological aspirations (Bauman, 2003).

Undercutting these normative disputes, lies

the claim that contemporary social reality is

becoming thoroughly cosmopolitan, regard-

less of questions of consciousness. Ulrich

Beck (2004), for example, stresses the need

to distinguish cosmopolitanism as a credo

fromcosmopolitanizationas a multidimensional

process of trans-territorial transformation that

demands more than national orstate-centred

response. Beck provides four examples. The

first is ‘risk cosmopolitanism’, a fear shared by

all around the world of heightenedrisk– mili-

tary, climatic, epidemiological, environmental,

sociobiological – viewed as a global threat that

requires new commonalities and intercon-

nected action. Consequently, the second is a

‘postnational politics’ driven by a global sense

of unlimited threats and uncertainties that are

much harder to identify and calculate on the

basis of traditional state measures, forcing new

approaches to inter-state regulation and the

rise of many non-state policy networks.

The third example he gives is the globalization

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COSMOPOLITANISM