Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism As a Means of Entry for Global Imaginaries: A Research with Brazilian Young People

The increased circulation of cultural goods, to the point that they are disseminated worldwide, develops a sense that a global common knowledge exists. Still, we ask: to what extent does globalization and modernity encourage cosmopolitanism? In order to understand this issue, we discuss the meanings of cultural globalization in young people´s everyday lives, based both on its mechanical effects and on hybridization, which can build an aesthetic cosmopolitan socialization, as a means of entry for global imaginaries. Our research “Youth Cosmopolitanisms in Brazil” focuses on the cultural consumption as well as knowledge and preferences regarding global imaginaries of Brazilian young people (from 15 to 24), since this generation has lived in a context of access to global products and services, most prominently through digital media. The analysis will bring quantitative data from a survey (N=1000), as well as from two qualitative methodological tools, a card game that focuses on cultural consumption (N=410) and a cartography of global imaginaries (N=670). This data set is part of an international research project, awarded by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the GEMASS of the Université de Paris, with the support of Sesc in Brazil. The research results show us that it is not only through knowledge, but also preferences for diversity that Brazilian young people navigate in-between cultural codes. It is through the aesthetic socialization, with relevant value in their imaginaries, that they narrate the world and perceive their own local reality with its own plurality, and engage to elements of the world, building cosmopolitan dispositions.