The conference is organized by the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) at Södertörn University, in cooperation with the Nobel Museum.

Ideas and aims

Cosmopolitanism has been a major topic in academia since the end of the cold war. While cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism have been recognized officially, xenophobia has become more intense. Is cosmopolitanism a way out of the xenophobic state, or is the interest in cosmopolitanism in itself adding to antagonism and disrespect for human rights? The problem can be highlighted from several different aspects. However, cosmopolitanism has been extensively theorized within the social sciences, where the semantic field often tends to be separated from its historical context. In an effort to make the academic discussion more responsive to conceptual and historical perspectives, we would like to gather researchers with different backgrounds to an international conference on cosmopolitanism, with a special view to its conceptual history.

The aim of the conference is to present a new perspective on a contemporary discourse, which is often dominated by ahistorical presumptions. The conference seeks to create a meeting between the social sciences and humanities in order to examine how the history, and prehistory, of cosmopolitanism has left traces in contemporary notions and perceptions.  We are interested in how the history of the concept says something about the often contradictory meanings attributed to the term today—empirically, theoretically, and normatively. What impact did the events of 1989 have on the conceptualization of cosmopolitanism? How have the concepts of cosmopolitanism and the cosmopolitan been used in the past—and how and why are they used differently today? Can the cosmopolitan project be released from its original Enlightenment impulses of Eurocentrism and Occidentalism? How do we create or reconstruct a linguistic horizon of intelligibility that transcends rather than reproduces the dichotomizing implications of cosmopolitanism, such as between West/East (and North/South)?

Keynote speakers

Andrew Vincent, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Sheffield
Georg Cavallar, ass. Prof. of Philosophy, University of Vienna
Galin Tihanov, Prof. of Comparative Literature/Intellectual History, University of Manchester
Mica Nava, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of East London

Call for papers: Available here on the conference website.

Where: Södertörn University, Alfred Nobels allé 7, Flemingsberg/Huddinge, Sweden; The Nobel Museum, Stortorget 2, Old Town, Stockholm, Sweden.

Language: English

Anyone interested in participating in the conference with a paper must send in an abstract to cosmopolitanism@sh.se by 19th May, at the latest. The abstracts will be peer reviewed.

For registration and further information, please visit the conference web page at www.sh.se/cbees (follow the link ‘Conferences’).

Coordinator and contact: PhD Kristian Petrov, cosmopolitanism@sh.se

The conference is organized in connection with the research project ‘East of Cosmopolis.’

Website (in Swedish): www.sh.se/adress

Website (in English):  www.sh.se (In English/How to find us)

The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies is proud to announce its major international conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” (May 18-19, 2011, Jerusalem).  This conference – co-sponsored and hosted by the Center’s project partner, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute – is designed to engage global, profound, and heretofore considered intractible problems of divided societies, as well as today’s crises events of the Arab world in the greater Middle East and North Africa.  With US, European, and NATO command forces engaged in the region, The Europe Center recognizes shared concern across the transatlantic community, and brings its Stanford senior research affiliates as well as international partner scholars to illuminate the immediate as well as long-term points of contention, and prospects for meaningful peace and reconciliation.

The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” includes
sessions on the following critical subjects:

• In Search of What Democracy Is and Should Be: Contemporary Challenges to democratic ideas/formations
• Institutional Forms of Contemporary Democracies: Translating Democratic Theory into Practice
• The Challenge of Managing Diversity in Contemporary Democracies
• Civil Societies and Democratic Quality and Efficacy
• Democracy and Development
• Democratic Transitions and Recessions: The International Dimension 

The participants include leading scholars and policy analysts:

• Dan Banik, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo
• Bashir Bashir, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
• Nancy Bermeo, Nuffield College, Oxford University
• Naomi Chazan, Hebrew University, Academic College of Tel Aviv Yafo
• Amir Eshel, Stanford University, The Europe Center, FSI
• Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University FSI
• Ruth Gavison, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
• Amal Jamal, Tel Aviv University
• Michael Karayanni, The Sacher Institute, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University
• Jeffrey Kopstein, University of Toronto
• Stephen Krasner, Stanford University FSI
• Leonardo Morlino, University of Florence
• Gabriel Motzkin, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, University of Jerusalem
• Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Stanford University FSI
• Ramzi Suleiman, University of Haifa
• Laurence Whitehead, Nuffield College, Oxford University

The Europe Center’s conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” is co-developed by Michael Karayanni and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, and co-sponsored by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.  The conference is one of The Europe Center’s international partner projects run within the Center’s larger and multi-year program on “Reconciliation".

This project is conceived to address subjects of contention, and potentially reconciliation, in divided societies.  The multi-year collaborative project is designed to develop, in successive stages, a full range of programming including international workshops, publications, and scholar exchange.  Sponsored work will benefit scholarly, policy-oriented, and cultural relations.  We especially seek to support the work of colleagues from a wide range of fields including the humanities, social sciences, law, business, and education.  

Further information on The Europe Center’s multi-year program on “Reconciliation” may be found here.

On April 4, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law in collaboration with the Cloud to Street project held a digital townhall meeting connecting three Egyptian  pro-democracy activists with scholars at Stanford, Harvard, and the University of British Columbia. The web-based platform allowed virtual participants to see and hear from activists broadcast live from Tahrir Lounge in the epicenter of the January 25 movement, which shook Mubarak from three decades of rule. The Egyptian activists, Sabah Hamomou, Mona Shahien, and Adbel Rahman Faris, provided personal testimony to how political action and technology combined to produce such explosive results.

The Cloud to Street project includes CDDRL visiting scholar Ben Rowswell and a team of experienced diplomats and academics from the University of British Columbia and Harvard. The Cloud to Street team deployed to Egypt two weeks ago on a fact-finding mission to connect with activists, listen to their stories, and assess their needs as they begin to construct the foundations of a democratic state. Rowswell moderated the 90-minute virtual session that included 35 virtual participants who posed questions and provided comments through a live chat tool, sparking a conversation amongst the online community.

The session began with Rowswell asking the activists about how they became involved in the events leading up to the revolution. Shahien, a founder of the Revolutionary Youth Union and a shadow minister for the Reform and Development party, confided that she had never intended to join the movement originally but was "downloaded" as an activist after responding to an advertisement on Facebook.

Hamamou an acclaimed media journalist and blogger, joined the protests when she witnessed wave after wave of activists pass by her office. She set up a camera in Tahrir Square posting a live stream of footage on her blog, documenting the protests as they unfolded. Faris, a blogger and member of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition, used Facebook to coordinate and mobilize protests initiated by this citizen-based movement.

Hamamou responded to questions about the future of state-run media, discussing how she lobbied for the transition of al-Ahram's (Egypt's largest newspaper) overnight transition from pro-regime to pro-revolution and its attempt to make media more representative of the new Egypt. While, traditional media has played a role in the revolution, particularly when the Internet was blocked, Shahien claimed that papers have lost credibility as more people turn to online sources for accurate and uncensored reporting.

What was clear from all three leaders was the transformation of Egypt's youth from a state of political apathy to activism. "Many youth didn't want to be part of political life, it's a dirty job they don't want to be part of.  Now this is changing since January 25," said Shahien. Similarly, she added that the Revolutionary Youth Union is reaching out to women and empowering them through civic education.

The virtual chat was ablaze with questions about what is next and how academics and outsiders can be helpful (if at all) to their efforts. Faris explained, "Mubarak may have left but the regime still remains with all its corruption." He emphasized the importance of this period of transition for street-based initiatives, which should not be compromised by the rush to form political parties.

Shahien added "getting rid of Mubarak's regime will take years, we can't just exclude them, they will come back. Our role is to change the rules-journalists and political activists."

All three activists emphasized the importance of letting Egyptians shape a future democratic state for themselves, free from foreign government interference, but they welcomed exchanges with NGOs and international civil society to lend their expertise.

Hamamou described the revolution as a collective enterprise driven by secularists and Islamists alike, who worked together towards the common goal of overthrowing the regime. Looking forward, she envisioned Egypt in the same light as a "civil" (secular) country ruled by the people and separating religion from the political space. 

While, social media was successful in catalyzing this youth-led movement, it is clear that there is significant work that still needs to be done on the ground to reach the general public. In response to this challenge, Shahien launched the Tahrir Lounge project to train activists and equip them with the offline tools necessary to conduct civic education events across Egypt, particularly in rural communities. She even proposed creating a mobile application that will educate the public on their rights, civil liberties, and build awareness during the democratic transition.

Going forward, the Cloud to Street initiative and its academic partners will be working with Egyptian partners on the ground to identify ways to harness their expertise in service of Egyptian democracy activists.

For detailed information on the Cloud to Street Initiative and to read blogs, watch videos, and learn more about the activists featured in the townhall, please visit www.cloudtostreet.org or follow us on Twitter@cloudtostreet.