Dialogic Cosmopolitanism and the New Wave of Movements: From Local Rupture to Global Openness

Abstract

The emergence of a new cycle of protests in 2011 raises questions about the connection between social movements and about the possible existence of a cosmopolitan vision to combine the local and the global dimensions of the protests. This article presents a conceptualization of dialogic cosmopolitanism to account for the kind of cosmopolitanism which characterizes this new cycle. Being dialogic entails connectivity between previous and forthcoming struggles in a process combining determination and anticipation with the constant (re)definition of the movement. This process is considered to be the combination of social local ruptures with global openness. Dialogic cosmopolitanism consists of 3 main features: the conflictual dimension, whereby the dominant consensus is questioned and spaces of conflict and dissent are generated; the shaping of translocal solidarities that are able to connect local and transnational dynamics in spaces of convergence; and translatability, since the common ground (the unity) is translated into a multiplicity of practices.

Keywords:

• cosmopolitanism
• dialogic
• conflict
• translocal
• solidarity
• translatability

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Óscar García Agustín

Óscar García Agustín is Associate Professor at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark. His main research areas include discourse theory, critical studies, and social movements. With Christian Ydesen, he has coedited the book Post-crisis perspectives: The common and its powers (Peter Lang, 2013) and with Martin Bak Jørgensen, he has coedited the special issue Civil society and immigration: New ways of democratic transformation (Migration Letters, 2013) and the books Politics of dissent (Peter Lang, 2015) and Solidarity without borders. Gramscian perspectives on migration and civil society (Pluto Press, 2016). He is author of Discurso y autonomía zapatista (Peter Lang, 2013) and Sociology of discourse: From institutions to social change (John Benjamins, 2015).