Search



  • Subscribe to our newsletter

    Email address


  • Archives

  • Tags

    Argentina arts Australia Canada conferences culture DFA diaspora diaspora strategy economy education elderly emigrants emigrant voting emigration EU events Farmleigh film GAA Global Irish Economic Forum heritage history ILIR immigration reform individuals Irish-America irish studies medium wave New York new zealand North oral history predictions publications radio research RTE statistics UK unemployment US Visas voting rights youth

  • Newswatch Categories

    • « | Main | »

    Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism: Wisconsin, June 2008.

    By Noreen Bowden | June 1, 2008

    UW-Madison Postcolonial, Migration and Transnational Studies

    (Part of Worldwide Universities Network (WUN)
    International Network in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies)

    International Conference on Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism

    June 20-21, 2008

    Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism

    An International conference to be held June 20-21, 2008 at the University of
    Wisconsin, Madison

    http://africa.wisc.edu/postcolonial/

    Conference Description

    The term “diaspora” designates the scattering of a given population like
    seeds (spore) on the wind through migration-conventionally often in the form
    of forced migration rather than its opposite. The term “cosmopolitanism”
    refers to the politics and philosophy of inhabiting a polis or political
    community on the scale of the cosmos rather than the metropolis. Both
    paradigms thus constitute alternatives to models of community in which a
    society is organized around a single geographic space, with the metropole at
    its center. While diaspora studies are generally associated with the
    identities and claims of marginalized populations, cosmopolitanism has, in
    the words of Amanda Anderson, “close ties with universalism.”
    Cosmopolitanism, Anderson notes, “endorses reflective distance from one´s
    own cultural affiliations, a broad understanding of other cultures and
    customs, and a belief in universal humanity.” Recently, Anthony Appiah has
    suggested that cosmopolitanism in the wake of globalization is virtually
    inevitable through not only the cultivated praxis of reflective distance as
    a means of accommodating a world of difference, but also the quotidian
    praxis of mimetic acquisition of diverse cultural tastes, behaviors, and
    relationships in globalized societies. Yet histories of the non-integration
    of migrants, of the hostile co-existence of “hosts” and “guests” in the
    state framework, or of the explosion of national populations into new
    traumatic diaspora through economic, military, ecological, and cultural
    upheavals, provide challenges to political and philosophical models of
    cosmopolitanism.

    Full Text at
    http://www.africa.wisc.edu/postcolonial/postcolonialdescription.htm

    Speakers
    http://www.africa.wisc.edu/postcolonial/Speakers.html

    Forwarded on behalf of Tejumola Olaniyan tolaniyan@wisc.edu

    Topics: events | Comments Off on Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism: Wisconsin, June 2008.

    Comments are closed.