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The Cosmopolitan Standard of Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Elite Belonging Inside the Indian Foreign Service
This article asks what it takes to belong among the “cosmopolitan elite” in international society.
With a reflexive sociological sensibility, it examines the ways in which diplomats of the Indian
Foreign Service have sought to secure recognition and equal standing in international society by
inhabiting a cosmopolitan habitus. Instead of analysing cosmopolitanism in the conventional
register of political theory as an egalitarian international ethic, the article considers “actually
existing cosmopolitanism” as a transnational elite aesthetic. It suggests that the demands of a
cosmopolitan habitus themselves constitute a new standard of civilization, imposed on Indian
diplomats not by Western fiat but through a process of cultural self-policing. In this process,
dominant upper-class and upper-caste members of the Foreign Service impose this standard
against internal Others, including those of lower class and caste status. The performance of the
cosmopolitan habitus serves a social function in international society – it is a social strategy by
which Indian diplomats seek to find parity inside the global diplomatic club. As such, the
performance lays bare the unequal rules of elite belonging in a supposedly pluralistic but
ultimately deeply socially stratified international society. Ultimately, the exclusionary social logics
of “actually existing cosmopolitanism” also signify the political failure of a postcolonial project of
solidarity, democratization, and diversity
Date:
27 May 2021, 15:00
Venue:
https://teams.microsoft.com/dl/launcher/launcher.html?url=%2F_%23%2Fl%2Fmeetup-join%2F19%3Ameeting_YzNjNmNhZDMtNmUxNi00ZjZmLTlkZGQtZmY4ZjM3OGIzNmQw%40thread.v2%2F0%3Fcontext%3D%257b%2522Tid%2522%253a%2522cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%2522%252c%2522Oid%2522%253a%25229dacfb99-ec01-41bb-82ed-785d5b32e2d7%2522%257d%26anon%3Dtrue&type=meetup-join&deeplinkId=9e0ad5fa-d8a3-4769-b616-56ad3770d32a&directDl=true&msLaunch=true&enableMobilePage=true
Speaker:
Dr Kira Huju (University of Oxford)
Organisers:
Pratim Ghosal (University of Oxford),
Benjamin Graham (University of Oxford),
Pratinav (Anil)
Part of:
South Asian Political Thought Seminar
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Benjamin Graham
