Cultural Cosmopolitanism as Habits in Everyday Life

Abstract

Current cultural cosmopolitanism is portrayed in this paper as residing in the bodies of individuals around the world in the form of nondeclarative personal culture, stored as types of internalized embodied knowledge acquired through engagements with globally circulating products, artefacts, devices and gadgets. These types of knowledge exist as mental schemata, motor skills, sensory knowledge and informative data, and are habitually and routinely enacted in everyday life practices. The first two sections of the paper outline a perspective on cultural cosmopolitanism and the notion of nondeclarative personal culture. The second part of the paper looks at cosmopolitan habits, focusing on three essential everyday life practices – musicking, eating, getting dressed – and discussing them as cases exemplifying current cultural cosmopolitanism.

Keywords

cultural cosmopolitanism eating embodied knowledge everyday life practices getting dressed musicking

Introduction

This written lecture makes a case for the assertion that, as of approximately the mid-20th century, humanity has been living in a state, or condition, of cultural cosmopolitanism, manifested in everyday life practices. The term ‘cosmopolitanism’ is used here not in any idealistic, prescriptive or aspirational meaning, as is often the case in political and moral philosophy (Appiah, 1997; Nussbaum, 1994; Scheffler, 1999). Rather, from a sociological perspective (Inglis, 2014), cosmopolitanism is used as a descriptive term, being the most adequate for depicting the ‘actually existing’ (Robbins, 1998) reality of global culture as it consolidated towards the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century. A cultural reality that emerged and came into being following at least two centuries of gradual cultural globalization, and several decades of intensive cultural globalization since the mid-20th century.

To be more precise, the emphasis here is on cultural cosmopolitanism. That is, I do not discuss cosmopolitanism in its political meaning as global citizenship. It should be noted in this regard that the surge of research and theory in the sociology of political cosmopolitanism (and its affiliated methodological stance of cosmopolitan sociology), primarily in the wake of Ulrich Beck’s body of work (Beck, 2006; Beck and Sznaider, 2006), has met some critique, mostly, but not exclusively, from the perspective of postcolonial studies (Bhambra, 2016). Political cosmopolitanism faces challenges also in light of geopolitical realities of the 21st century. Research on cultural cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, seems to be thriving (Cicchelli et al., 2019), especially amid the rise of digital culture and streaming platforms for music and television (see, for example, Martin et al., 2020; Straubhaar et al., 2022).

Indeed, a sociological perspective implies a focus on the empirical dimension of current cultural cosmopolitanism, namely what are its components, where do they reside and how are they manifested. In this paper, I propose that current cultural cosmopolitanism resides in the bodies of individuals around the world as nondeclarative personal culture (Lizardo, 2017), stored as forms of internalized embodied knowledge acquired through engagements with globally circulating products, artefacts, devices and gadgets. These are types of knowledge that exist as mental schemata, motor skills, sensory knowledge and informative data, and are habitually and routinely enacted in everyday life practices.

The first two sections of the paper outline my perspective on cultural cosmopolitanism and the notion of nondeclarative personal culture. The second part of the paper looks at cosmopolitan habits, focusing on three essential everyday life practices – musicking, eating, getting dressed – and discussing them as cases exemplifying current cultural cosmopolitanism.

Current Cultural Cosmopolitanism

Sociological and anthropological discourse produced a string of approaches, terms and concepts aiming to capture, describe and analyze cultural globalization in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Concepts such as cultural imperialism, Americanization, Westernization, cultural hybridity, creolization, multi-directional flow or glocalization attempted to underpin, each in its own way, a certain cultural and social logic that drives cultural globalization (see Crane, 2008 for a comparison of some of these terms). While not countering these perspectives, and in fact continuing in their vein, this paper focuses on their outcome. That is, on the state of global culture that emerged in their wake.

I pick here the term cosmopolitanism to depict the current condition of global culture because it encapsulates the idea of global culture as oneness, yet retains the notion of cultural diversity. The notion of cultural cosmopolitanism broadens the term aesthetic cosmopolitanism that relates to practices and artefacts involving creative labor in their production, and value judgment of taste in their consumption. That is, it relates primarily to cosmopolitanism manifested in the arts and popular culture (see Cicchelli et al., 2019; Kendall et al., 2009; Regev, 2007; Szerszynski and Urry, 2002). With a look at additional cultural realms of everyday life, the term cultural cosmopolitanism seems more appropriate. The two terms, however, largely intersect in multiple ways.

I understand current cultural cosmopolitanism to be a transfiguration or permutation of global cultural diversity, leading to increased cultural overlap, or to a significant surge in the proportions of common cultural ground shared by nations, ethnic groups or any other forms of collective identity – and by their individual members. This reconfigured diversity stems from orientations and mechanisms of openness to foreign others and cultures, a premise that most sociological approaches to cosmopolitanism converge on (Saito, 2011).

Orientations of openness, it should be stressed, are not a matter of individual inclination, but rather a structural facet of national and ethnic cultures in general or, at the very least, of major sectors within them. It is not a whim of individual curiosity, but a collective mechanism (Skrbiš and Woodward, 2011). In the terminology of new institutionalism, it can be viewed as the outcome of normative, imitative or coercive isomorphic processes that propel adaptations of globally circulating models to local contexts (Alasuutari, 2015; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Meyer et al., 1997; see also Regev, 2011).

Another way to sociologically understand the socio-cultural mechanism that boosts cultural cosmopolitanism is to portray it – following Bourdieu’s notions of distinction, fields, and the homology between them (Bourdieu, 1984, 1993) – as emanating from the dynamics of a global socio-cultural market of lifestyle identities. On the demand side of this market, variables like demography, class inequality, diversification of education and professions, identity politics and additional social variables join to structurally and recurrently push the emergence of multiple intra-national and cross-national sectors, factions and groupings. All these groups seek to express and practice their contemporary socio-cultural sense of local or translocal singularity and distinction, most often by combining global modern cultural trends with local indigenous culture. On the supply side of this market stand the products of global fields of cultural production, all organized around impulses for constant aesthetic and stylistic innovation. Driven either by variants of the ideology of ‘pure creativity’ or by ‘commercial’ interests (or any combination of both), global fields of cultural production constantly produce fashions, aesthetic styles, trends and fads of lifestyle and consumption practices, presented as improvements and updates of modern life (see, for example, Kuipers, 2012, on television series; Velthuis and Curioni, 2015, on contemporary art; Garavaglia and Swinnen, 2018, on craft beer). The demand and the supply aspects of the market reinforce and feed on each other to create, in accelerated speed, recurrent lifestyle groupings and multiple lifestyle factions within and across national settings, differentiated from each other by actual and symbolic boundaries (an emblematic case being electronic dance music communities; see McLeod, 2001). These boundaries materialize through taste preferences and cultural practices, and range from clearly demarcated ones to nuanced differences. The global socio-cultural market of lifestyle identities is characterized, in other words, by a permanent quest for new cultural forms and contents that can serve distinction and boundary making interests of new or repetitively refreshed lifestyle groups around the world, in particular middle- and upper-middle class factions (Heiman et al., 2012; Koo, 2016; Spronk, 2014). The quest is shared by consumers as well as by cultural producers who need to satiate their impulse for aesthetic innovation (best exemplified by the modern cultural cycles of fashion; see Kawamura, 2018). The quest is threaded by adoption, adaptation, localization, indigenization and vernacularization of cultural elements that originate in cultures other than a group’s own.

Another aspect of the market of lifestyle identities consists of an expanding spiral process through which cultural cosmopolitanism becomes ever more taken for granted, obvious and an undisputed cultural reality. While nonlocal cultural materials are embraced and localized initially by certain factions who are keen on adapting fashionable and recent global cultural trends (Srinivas, 2007), later on such materials diffuse and infiltrate to additional sectors in national societies, becoming part of routine everyday life and public culture. As they become legitimized and integral to broader sectors, the once ‘alien’ meaning of such materials is eroded and erased, eventually becoming totally transparent. Consecutive cycles of adaptation and indigenization leave behind them a trail that is best described as an expanding spiral of cultural cosmopolitanism, materialized over a spectrum ranging from its most active and advertent agents to the most passive and inadvertent.

Cultural openness, in other words, is not just a matter of acquaintance with, awareness to or consumption of cultural otherness, but rather an institutionalized collective mechanism that constantly works to transform everyday life practices by adapting and implementing cultural elements alien to native cultures and traditions. It all means that in the condition of current cultural cosmopolitanism, cultural phenomena at the national and local level are most often variants of globally circulating models, albeit in indigenized versions.

There are, however, two basic perspectives on the meaning of openness concerning cultural cosmopolitanism, depending on the location of observers. In Western countries, talk about cosmopolitanism connects primarily to the presence of non-Western cultural materials. It puts much emphasis on willingness to absorb cultural forms and contents from non-Western countries, often bearing a mark of being exotic. In East and West Asia, in Africa and Latin America, on the other hand, cultural cosmopolitanism relates primarily to openness toward forms, contents and materials perceived as representing a global, universal modernity, often referred to simply as ‘Western’. Cultural cosmopolitanism in this case is closely linked to updating traditional and indigenous culture along the forefronts of modernity. The two notions are not necessarily opposites, and they intersect in many ways, feeding on each other. A sociology of cultural cosmopolitanism should encompass both perspectives and avoid a bias towards either. In other words, the condition of cultural cosmopolitanism consists of two intertwined channels, as it were: one is the legitimized and localized presence of ethnic, national and indigenous cultural materials in locations other than their origin, and the other is the ubiquitous presence of global modernity.

Nondeclarative Personal Culture

Sociological accounts of current cultural cosmopolitanism tend to look at two indicators for assessing it. Using an emerging vocabulary in cultural sociology, explored by Lizardo (2017), these indicators can be characterized as public culture and declarative personal culture. Public culture consists of material culture (consumer goods, gadgets, devices) and symbolic artefacts (music, movies, videos, photographs) circulating in the global cultural public sphere, meaning thereby the products of all media channels, art worlds, consumer and cultural industries. This line of research surveys the global flow of cultural goods, looking at the presence of artefacts of various kinds, and at artistic and popular culture genres in countries and cultural zones different from their origin (Appadurai, 1990; Lizardo, 2008). Declarative personal culture as an indicator of cultural cosmopolitanism is researched by looking at verbal statements made by individuals when asked or interviewed about beliefs, values and attitudes concerning otherness, as well as taste preferences for and familiarity with cultural materials from countries and ethnic groups other than one’s own (Cicchelli and Octobre, 2017; Verboord, 2017). Various studies sometimes combine the two indicators.

In this paper, I shift the focus to a third indicator of cultural cosmopolitanism, namely nondeclarative personal culture. This term refers to internalized embodied knowledge resulting from engagements with globally circulating public cultural objects, either material or symbolic, and to routine enactments of such knowledge in everyday life practices. If cosmopolitanism is associated with stances of cultural openness, I look at what emerges, worldwide, once cultural materials originating beyond one’s own native, indigenous and traditional culture have already been absorbed, naturalized and localized into everyday life, their uses and related knowledge routinized as mundane practices. A focus on nondeclarative personal culture locates cultural cosmopolitanism in the bodies of human beings all over the world, stored as multiple dimensions of embodied knowledge, and manifested in everyday life practices through routine enactments of such knowledge. These types of practices reflect more accurately the actual condition of current cultural cosmopolitanism. By now, especially when materialized through such practices, cultural cosmopolitanism is a self-evident, taken-for-granted reality in which the previously perceived dichotomy between ‘cosmopolitans’ and ‘locals’ (Hannerz, 1990) has dissolved and been replaced by a continuum stretching between advertent and inadvertent cultural cosmopolitans. It is through this focus that I understand cultural cosmopolitanism as habit, or a repertoire of habits. It is a set of habits because cultural cosmopolitanism is by now a way of being in the world, of moving and managing smoothly various aspects of one’s own life, enacting and performing forms of embodied knowledge shared by other individuals around world. Forms of embodied knowledge that, regardless of their cultural origin, exist as a matter of routine in many parts of the world, albeit as indigenized and localized variants.

Theoretically, these ideas combine the sociology of cosmopolitanism with insights from practice theory. A basic premise of practice theory is that the body is a site of cultural knowledge, and that the material body is always also a cultural body. Mauss’s (1973 [1934]) notion of ‘techniques of the body’ is the classic theoretical point of departure for this perspective. The concept of habitus, as developed by Bourdieu (1990), is obviously a key contribution to this tradition, followed by various versions of practice theory (Ortner, 1984; Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki et al., 2001; Warde, 2005). For the current purpose, I want to cite Lizardo (2009), who postulates in this regard that practices ‘are a “mixed” phenomenon, blending together the material with the ideal, the bodily with the mental, the psychological and the social. . . .[they are] inscribed in the body in the form of techniques and hexis, are a sort of “biologico-sociological” phenomenon’ (p. 713). Later on, he follows this logic when discussing the notion of habit (Lizardo, 2021), mentioning biking and driving as examples that include both ‘behavioral’ and ‘perceptual’ or ‘mental’ techniques. What he points to is that these two habits involve enactments of several dimensions of embodied knowledge – not only motor skills of coordination but also sensory memory in regard to sight, sound and balance, as well as mental schemes and informative knowledge concerning traffic rules. What Lizardo does not mention, and seems to take as self-evident, is that biking and driving are relatively new in historical terms – they are habits of modern everyday life, Western in origin but considered universal and globally diffused by now. As such, they stand as examples not just of habits in general but of particular historical and cultural types of habits – habits that manifest current cultural cosmopolitanism. Indeed, if the body is always also a cultural body, we cannot settle in describing it as such in just general terms but also, in light of Elias (2000 [1939]), in terms of the specific types, or the particular characteristics of cultural bodies in given historical eras and social formations.

With these ideas in mind, I move now to illustrate some traits of the current cosmopolitan cultural body, one characterized by routine enactments of motor skills, cognitive schemes, informative knowledge and sensory knowledge emanating from engagements with contemporary, globally circulating objects.

Cosmopolitan Habits

Cultural cosmopolitanism is then ‘not just an abstract theoretical or political project’; it also manifests itself ‘in material everyday practices and “habits of thought and feeling”’ (Germann Molz, 2011: 33; Robbins, 1998). Engagement with globally flowing cultural goods, material or symbolic, translates to mental and bodily actions of individuals that become routine and habitual, as they acquire, develop and perform knowledge and skills. Examples of these are in abundance, but here I look at three mundane practices – musicking, eating and getting dressed. For each of them I glance over globally flowing goods, compile a short list of mental and bodily skills that develop from engagement with such goods, and highlight some types of sensory knowledge.

Musicking

Musicking is a universal practice, existing in almost every type of society, in which people engage with ‘organized sound’ by way of generating it, listening, reacting to and using it in many ways, individually and collectively (Small, 1998). Rhythmic, harmonic and melodic structures of musical pieces, their sonic textures, instruments used to generate them, patterns and modes of listening, social functions of music and various other elements join to characterize differences in musical cultures and in the practice of musicking. Global multi-directional flow, especially since the mid-20th century, of musical styles and genres, of musical instruments, of music related technologies for listening, and additional elements gave rise to forms of musicking shared by musical cultures all over the world.

Musicking today, as an activity in everyday life, involves in most cases handling and operating various gadgets and devices for playing recorded music, either from music-carrying objects such as vinyl records and CDs, or from streaming services. Regardless of musical style or genre, musicking everywhere is based on enactments of motor skills and cognitive schemes required for handling such objects and devices (Nowak, 2016).

Classification into genres, styles and forms of music consists of another form of cognitive scheme, augmented by informative knowledge, that is shared by individuals in many parts of the world. Classification of musical pieces into forms such as classical (or art), popular and folk; into genres such as jazz, heavy metal, electronic, dance or pop; into national or ethnic labels such as Latin, Arab, Indian, African and more are mentally stored and enacted by listeners or music practitioners in most parts of the world. This means that the typical rhythmic patterns and sonic textures of styles and ethnic genres are stored in the auditory memory of individuals across cultures. Coupled to this is widespread acquaintance with musicians and musical works. We may talk in this regard about a sort of global musical canon, consisting of, for example, extracts from famous operas or symphonies, songs by the Beatles, a Latin American song such as ‘Besame mucho’ and, for a very young generation, K-pop hits.

But a major cultural cosmopolitan component of musicking, in my view, resides in sensory knowledge, in the expansion and transformation of musical-auditory memory, ushered in by the ubiquitous presence of music and the proliferation of new sonorities and idioms that form the building blocks of musical works (Regev, 2013). Most essentially, modern individuals almost anywhere, but especially in urban settings, find themselves immersed in musical environments (Bull, 2015). The frequency and intensity of exposure to musical sounds in everyday life today, in most parts of the world, is unprecedented. Individuals almost anywhere today store in their knowledge, as they move about in their daily lives, the expectation of being exposed to amplified musical sounds emanating from loudspeakers and various sources.

In addition, the palette of familiar, decodable musical sonorities, the repertoire of so-called musematic structures (Tagg, 2012), has immensely expanded. Musical instruments from different musical cultures in various parts of the world gained presence and became part of sonic repertoires, so that by now individuals anywhere are familiar with their typical sounds. The sounds of instruments such as the sitar, quena, oud, African drums, didgeridoo and many others, once signals of specific local and ethnic genres, are by now integrated into all types of music styles and genres, and their typical sonic texture stored in the auditory memory of listeners across cultures. More widespread, following the global ‘pop-rockization’ of popular music (Regev, 1997, 2019), is familiarity with fuzzed up, distorted electric guitars, electronic beats generated by drum machines, or the palette of electronic sounds emanating from synthesizers and sequencers. These types of sonorities are historically new, and upon their initial use were met in many musical cultures with resentment, even hostility, as ‘nonmusical’. But by now people anywhere in the world have at the very least some amount of auditory memory and musical knowledge, if not actual liking, of emotional coding that comes with these sounds, as they have become essential building blocks of most styles of pop and rock (including hybrid indigenous/national variants of pop and rock), of many contemporary ethnic styles, of music for commercials and film or television soundtracks. Coupled to this are perceptions of musical sound quality in terms of clarity, precision and richness. Musicking is by now fully conditioned to expect sounds manipulated and mediated through various technological procedures. Either for acoustic or electric instruments, or for any type of ensemble – a jazz quartet, a symphonic orchestra or a rock band – the ears of modern listeners expect to hear musical sounds produced in sophisticated studios, mixed and manipulated with recording equipment. It has become the standard for any type of music, and a measure of sonic quality.

Eating

Eating habits compose another universal practice that in many aspects was transformed into a cosmopolitan one through multiple elements of embodied knowledge. To begin with, the so-called ‘supermarket revolution’ (Humphery, 2012) that decoupled supply from local and seasonal production of food, the development of canning and freezing techniques, as well as transportation means, afforded the emergence of a ‘world cuisine’ (Goody, 1982). Such cuisine consists of, for example, tinned sardines and tuna fish, tomato paste, condensed milk, bottled beer and soft drinks, but also coconut milk/oil, dried seaweed, soy products, quinoa, passion fruit, mango, avocado, papaya. Additional items include hamburgers, French fries, sandwiches, cereal flakes, sweet packaged snacks, (grape) wines, coffee drinks and chocolate, but also sushi, ceviche, phad-thai and hummus (see, for example, Ceccarini, 2011; Farrer, 2015; Inglis and Almila, 2019).

Familiarity with these foods is entangled with cognitive schemes that classify them into a culinary hierarchy composed of categories such as fine dining, street food, fast food, and home cooking, or into ethno-national categories like Italian food, Asian food, Middle Eastern food, etc. Also notable in this regard, for street and outdoor eating, is familiarity with the typical aesthetics of cafes and fast-food restaurants belonging to chains specializing in particular dishes.

Food classification is often coupled to mental schemes concerning the standardization of meal structures and their timing during the day. These schemes allocate dishes to function as appetizer, main dish, side dish or dessert, depending on their predominant taste (Leschziner, 2006). They also classify meals into types and formats according to their components and time of day. Formats of breakfast, lunch or dinner circulate worldwide, are adapted to local culinary culture, and usher in similar modes of food consumption. Thus, for example, a cup of coffee goes well with breakfast, at the end of lunch or dinner, or as an afternoon snack, but it is broadly accepted that it would be odd to have it as an element in the midst of your main dish at dinner. Other schemes allocate prestige or lack of it to certain foods. Caviar is generally considered a high-end type of food, while French fries are usually perceived as a simple dish.

Motor skills involved in handling food are another aspect of eating practices. These have been greatly affected by the introduction of modern furniture into homes and restaurants all over the world. Traditional forms of eating, like sitting on floor cushions or low stools, or reclining over food served on short-legged tables, have been augmented, or totally replaced, by Western type tables and chairs, both in restaurants and households. Consequently, coordination of hands, arms and body movements employed for bringing food into the mouth, even modes of digesting, have been adjusted to the new type of furniture. At the same time, many Westerners have acquired in their repertoire the necessary skill for eating according to non-Western patterns, especially when visiting certain ethnic restaurants. Related to furniture are motor skills required for the use of cutlery (Sobal and Wansink, 2007). Techniques for using Western style fork and knife and East Asian chopsticks have been adopted into the repertoire of eating practices in countries where only one of these was previously used.

Also notable on a worldwide scale are corporal skills needed for handling globally widespread street foods like ice-cream cones, pizza slices, bowls of East Asian noodle soups or eggrolls, Mid-Eastern pita breads and Mexican tacos. Indeed, these dishes are just a sample of a large repertoire of foods in all levels of culinary culture – street, restaurants and household – from multiple cultural origins that are by now familiar and easily recognizable in most countries.

But as with music, sensory knowledge is probably the most penetrating form of embodied knowledge. In the case of food, this is where culture becomes, as it were, the most ‘biological’ and organic. Indeed, ‘an integrated account of eating might be expected to synthesize knowledge of the physiological, alimentary and sensory processes associated with it and demonstrate their intersection with the social and aesthetic aspects of events and dishes’ (Warde, 2015: 69–70). Getting accustomed to new foods and dishes, not to mention coming to like and enjoy them habitually, involves adjustments of taste buds’ sensitivities and the entire bio-chemical process of digestion. Familiarity with all the foods listed above means that their tastes and smells are stored in gustatory, olfactory and visual memory of individuals around the world. Indeed, with the consolidation of repertoires of gustatory and olfactory memory shared by individuals all over the world, we may talk about a cosmopolitan palate. Subdivided into ‘exotic’, ‘industrial’ and ‘gourmet’ aspects, it is not a trait of some elite minority but rather a standard and banal trait, enacted daily and routinely in eating habits in all dimensions of culinary cultures. Montanari points in this regard to the difference between analytic cuisine, one that ‘tends to differentiate tastes – sweet, salty, bitter, sour, spicy . . . reserving for each of these an autonomous space, either in a specific food or in the sequence of the meal’ (Montanari, 2006: 62), and a more synthesizing cuisine where tastes are bound together in the same dish. Whereas the first is typical of European cuisines, such as the Italian or French, the latter is typical of Mexican and Indian cuisines, for example. But I would say that, by now, knowledge of and appetite for both types of cuisine are stored in the gustatory memory of individuals across the world, ready to be enacted for grabbing street food, dining out or for home cooking.

Getting Dressed

Putting on clothes is another example of a universal practice, very different across cultures for centuries, yet increasingly cosmopolitan in recent decades. This is by far one of the cosmopolitan practices in which non-Western elements remain minimal. Indeed, individuals in most countries have adopted by now, at least in some measure, Western-style modern gear, sometimes mixing it in various ways with local-traditional garments (Maynard, 2004; Paulicelli and Clark, 2009; Richards, 2021). The following observation about Azerbaijan, for example, might stand as emblematic for the global situation:

The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed an almost total disappearance of most folk elements from the clothes styles of the rural population. Today one has to take great pains to find in some far-flung villages solitary items of traditional garments, and even these are no longer worn but are kept merely as a memory of the past. (Trofimova, 1979: 412)

Consequently, entire sets of embodied knowledge required for handling modern gear became regular for millions in the daily routine of simply putting on clothes.

One element of such knowledge consists of classification schemes of modern outfits into several key models. Most notable are the male business suits, the female outfits of blouse and skirt (or dress), and the casual look of sweatshirt or t-shirt, denim jeans and sneakers (see Schoss, 1996, for enactment of a ‘professional’ and a ‘beach boy’ appearance by workers in the Kenyan tourist industry). Additional models include those associated with youth subcultures such as hip-hop or punk. Getting dressed amounts in many, if not most, cases to adjustments into one of these models, depending on the type of social encounter a person is heading to, time of day, etc. Knowledge of these models involves also cognitive schemes concerning tidiness and order. Indeed, getting dressed is performed ideally in front of a mirror, aiming to achieve a sense of neatness, a certain symmetry and order, following conventions and norms of the models and schemes dictated by the local variant of the fashion industry. It is an aesthetically driven action as much as one leading towards comfort. In addition to sensorial comfort, this action might be targeted towards socio-cultural comfort. That is, towards a feeling of approval as the view in the mirror seems to comply with what one perceives as good appearance. Thus, buttoning up a shirt properly and symmetrically and tucking the shirt into pants are, for example, two procedures enacted with care in order to look neat and adequate, in accordance with aesthetic models inscribed in memory. Modern apparel brings with it also specific motor and body skills required for inserting body parts and fastening garments to the body. Aiming to comply with aesthetic models of proper appearance, stored as mental schemes, but also to achieve a sense of comfort, one has to stretch, pull, adjust and modify the way clothes rest on the body and relate to each other.

One also has to gain proficiency and dexterity in techniques, gymnastics and acrobatics required for adjusting certain garments. One particular example of such acquired techniques is the modern brassier. Prior to any consideration or debates about the role of this garment in modern notions of femininity, there stands the complex technique involved in putting it on (Sukumar, 2007). Another notable example consists of the gymnastics required for inserting the body into (tight) pants. Modern pants have long been adopted as world standard appearance for men, and to a large degree for women as well. Putting them on consists of a set of specific corporal maneuvers, including insertion of each leg separately, pulling the pants up to the waist, fastening and adjusting them. Tight and narrow models, as in the case of jeans or sports gear, require extra effort and training, especially for certain body measures and sizes. Finally, either for pants or other garments, a quintessential type of finger dexterity is required for handling zippers, the universally accepted fastening devise (Friedel, 1996).

As for sensory knowledge, getting dressed involves forms of tactile memory, connected to the sense of skin and general comfort upon wearing clothes (Delong et al., 2012). Cotton became during the 20th century the dominant natural fiber for the clothing industry worldwide, augmenting and in most cases replacing animal-based materials like wool or leather, and other plant-based materials like hemp. Multiple textures processed from cotton have become the basis for a taken-for-granted tactile sense of comfort worldwide. An additional leap in the consolidation of cross culturally shared tactile sensitivity in the wearing of apparel came with the development of synthetic fibers. According to some statistics, by 2010, synthetic fibers accounted for 48% of apparel fiber consumption in developed countries and for 68% of such consumption in developing countries (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO] and International Cotton Advisory Committee [ICAC], 2013). Nylon, acrylic, polyester, lycra (spandex) – in themselves, or weaved together with animal or plant-based fibers – induce typical skin sensations, shared worldwide by individuals almost anywhere. Perhaps not as ‘biological’ as food, the entire set of embodied knowledge that comes with clothing concerns not only visual self-presentation but the very sense of the body, how individuals feel their own physique every single moment. In this regard, this sense has become broadly cosmopolitan in the literal meaning of being part of one world culture (Brooks, 2015).

Additional Realms

The three realms discussed above are, of course, just examples. Many additional realms of everyday life involve practices and enactments of global forms of embodied knowledge. Think about the cognitive schemes involved in handling financial matters through bank accounts; about codes of behavior and mental schemes of navigation in modern, developed urban or built environments like shopping centers (malls), airports, hotels, or even high-rise buildings (operating a lift); think about motor skills and cognitive schemes required for operating gadgets and devices like shower faucets and toilet bowls; think about the worldwide diffusion of repertoires of olfactory memory consolidated by the cosmetics, beauty and hygiene industries with products like deodorants, toothpaste, shaving gear and more. And I haven’t said a word about skills and dexterity that accompany all types of electronic devices and gadgets like smartphones, game-consoles or laptops, where motor skills have been globally similar from the outset, or about the by now universal perception of time and space, namely the 24-hour day according to the Coordinated Universal Time system (Zerubavel, 1985).

Concluding Remarks

Reiterating some points raised at the opening of this talk, I would say that as mental schemata, motor skills, sensory memory and informative data that govern daily, mundane routines of everyday life have become similar for large sectors of humanity – this aspect of social life exemplifies more than others the actual, literal meaning of cultural cosmopolitanism. And if the material body is always also a cultural body, then we may refer in this regard to cultural bodies across the world in the early 21st century as cosmopolitan bodies: not only by being flexible, adaptable and tolerant to difference, as suggested by Germann Molz (2006), but as bodies whose very corporeality is inscribed with similar cultural dispositions and sensibilities for performing myriad habitual tasks in everyday life. If cosmopolitanism is about openness, it is at this level of habits in everyday life that the current era might be referred to as post-openness, an era when all local and indigenous cultures of the world have already absorbed and naturalized into them multiple non-indigenous elements. This means that cultural diversity has not disappeared, but rather it has been reconfigured, has undergone certain permutations, to a condition where local and indigenous cultures are always a variant of globally circulating models, not only at institutional levels but also in the small details of everyday life, with large overlaps of common ground and similarity between them.

And again, cultural cosmopolitanism does not entail any idyllic situation. In fact, one might hypostasize that expanded global common cultural ground and enhanced global similarities in routine habits of everyday life constitute a cultural basis for social tension. It might propel perceptions and emotions of relative deprivation and consequently rising expectations for equal standards of living, for qualities of everyday life known to exist and to which people feel entitled. In other words, cultural cosmopolitanism, as habits in everyday life, has the potential to be a factor in accelerating social and political conflicts.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on a lecture given at the Theory, Culture & Society Summer School, held in Klagenfurt, Austria, September 2023. Earlier versions were presented in GEMASS – Groupe d’Etude des Méthodes de l’Analyse Sociologique de la Sorbonne, Paris, April 2019, and as keynote at the online midterm conference of the ESA Research Network on Global, Transnational and Cosmopolitan Sociology, May 2021.

ORCID iD

Motti Regev

This article is part of the Theory, Culture & Society special section on ‘The Public Sphere, the Post-University and the Scholarly Apparatus’, edited by Mike Featherstone, Sunil Manghani, Tomoko Tamari and Rainer Winter.

Motti Regev is a cultural sociologist. He has worked primarily on popular music, specializing in pop-rock music and cultural globalization. In recent years his focus has expanded to a general view on cultural cosmopolitanism. His work on these subjects includes Pop-Rock Music: Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism in Late Modernity (Polity, 2013) and articles in Theory, Culture & Society, Poetics, European Journal of Social Theory and Cultural Sociology. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at The Open University of Israel.

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