Circumscribed cosmopolitanism: travel aspirations and experiences

Abstract

Recent scholarly conceptualisations of cosmopolitanism have often distinguished between mundane practices on the one hand and a conscious assertion of an ethical project on the other hand. But this kind of distinction may be less a matter of the simple presence or absence of a particular kind of consciousness than of the degree of self-awareness as well as of the consonance or disjuncture between this consciousness and what can actually be realised in practice. In this article I take up some of these questions of degree and disjuncture to reflect on the interaction between aspirations and circumscribed experiences occurring among two sets of Canadian travellers: (i) consultants whose specialisation in international projects involves frequent stays abroad, and (ii) young adults who have taken up opportunities for an extended stay abroad afforded by university exchanges or working holidaymakers programs.

Keywords:

• cosmopolitanism
• travel
• aspiration
• practice

Notes

1. This project was entitled: ‘Itinerant Consultancy: An anthropological study of transnational travel, work and social location among mobile professionals’ and it was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

2. This project was entitled: ‘Coming of Age in an Era of Globalization: Achieving Cultural Distinction through Student Travel Abroad’ and it was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The project involved collaboration between Vered Amit and Noel Dyck with the assistance of several graduate students including most especially Heather Barnick, Kathleen Rice and Meghan Gilgunn.

3. In the interests of confidentiality, I will only be using pseudonyms in place of the actual names of people who participated in the projects being discussed in this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vered Amit

VERED AMIT is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Concordia University.