Global, Transnational and Cosmopolitan Sociology

This work analyzes some social changes derivatives on globalization process, their interdependence and global consequences. More in details, the focus of this paper is the concept of citizenship and its evolution. The processes of definition of citizens are always more dependent from models, relationships and situations that occur in distant places with respect to the physical space within which their biography is materially lived. The privileged audience of our citizenship narratives is not necessarily placed in the contexts of our material life and it nor constitute part of networks of our direct relations. Instead, it can be reached in mediated ways and can be part of a virtual or a spatially imaginative context of reference. The growing interdependence and the contemporary erosion and multiplication of boundaries make it possible to think of oneself as freed from local ties, in constant motion, immersed in global flows that enable remote relationships, the rapid transition from one context to another and the ability to overcome and establish distinctions. They allow individuals to recognize themselves within a cosmopolitan outlook, which could mean: “Global sense, a sense of boundarylessness. An everyday, historically alert, reflexive awareness of ambivalence in a milieu of blurring differentiations and cultural contradictions. It reveals not just the ‘anguish’ but also the possibility of shaping one’s life and social relations under conditions of cultural mixture. It is simultaneously a skeptical, disillusioned, self-critical outlook” (Beck U., 2000)