Cosmopolitanism

Definition

Cosmopolitanism, in the wiki's interior-design form, is Kwame Anthony Appiah's ethics of the "citizen of the world": "Appiah's cosmopolitanism brings forward two specific characteristics that are crucial in the formation of a 'citizen of the world' and for anyone studying the soul: first, feeling an obligation to others, and second, taking interest in the lives of others and what gives those lives significance" (Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, 2006). Hadjiyanni deploys the concept to define what "must be intentionally fostered for the creation of global interiors" — the designer's formation — and extends it into a research programme: "who is the 'other'? What kind of skills and educational preparation would designers need to embark on this journey of understanding the 'other'? How does one demonstrate 'interest' and what are the ways by which this demonstrated interest can be supported and sustained?"

The wiki holds the term in two registers. In the Cosmopolitanism vs. Cosmopolitics debate, "cosmopolitanism" names Kant's globe of rational moral agents (Position A). Appiah — carried into the debate by Hadjiyanni's chapter — is that position's contemporary descendant, but with an empirical turn: not universal reason alone but the fostered dispositions (obligation, interest) that make a world citizen. Against Latour's cosmopolitics (composition of a common world with nonhumans), Appiah's cosmopolitanism remains anthropocentric — its "others" are strangers, persons — which is precisely why it serves a design discipline whose users are people.

Key Thinkers

• Kwame Anthony Appiah — the concept's contemporary theorist: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Norton, 2006); the two characteristics (obligation; interest); not yet paged (see log).
• Tasoulla Hadjiyanni — the concept's design transfer: the characteristics as intentionally fostered designer qualities; "globalism implies responsibility for all – including those once invisible."
• Immanuel Kant — the debate position's founder: cosmopolitan politics from the global perspective, Earth as sphere of limited resources, mutually dependent moral agents (via Morgan's Kant for Architects).

Related Concepts

• Cosmopolitics — the rival global: Latour's diplomatic composition of a common world among heterogeneous (human and nonhuman) actors against Appiah's ethics among strangers.
• Global Soul — the concept's user-side complement: the falling-between subject whose lives the cosmopolitan must take "interest" in.
• Capabilities Approach — the sibling social-justice frame: each person as an end; obligation translated into opportunity-distribution.
• Interiors as Global Constructs — the concept's spatial site: global interiors as where obligation and interest are designed for.
• Ethics — the concept's disciplinary family.
• Space of Flows — the mobility condition the cosmopolitan must navigate: interconnected, independent spaces.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Interiors as global constructs (Hadjiyanni 2018) — the founding source: Appiah's two characteristics; the "intentionally fostered" designer-formation programme; the "who is the 'other'?" question-set; "globalism implies responsibility for all – including those once invisible."
• Kant for Architects (Morgan 2018) — the debate's founding Kantian form: universal reason and moral agency as the ground of architecture addressing shared human needs.

Open Questions

• Appiah's "interest in the lives of others and what gives those lives significance" — is this a learnable designer competency ("what kind of skills and educational preparation would designers need"), or an ethical disposition that design education can only, at best, not obstruct?
• Does obligation scale? Appiah's stranger-ethics addresses individuals; Hadjiyanni's trafficking and displacement cases involve systems (a "global industry of monumental proportions") — can a cosmopolitan disposition design against an industry?
• How does Appiah's cosmopolitanism relate to the cosmopolitics critique — is the "composition of a common world" demand a supplement to obligation-and-interest or its replacement for a discipline that now designs for nonhumans too (nonhumans)?
• "How does one demonstrate 'interest' and what are the ways by which this demonstrated interest can be supported and sustained?" — the chapter's own open question, and the unsolved problem of community-engaged design pedagogy.