Media Cosmopolitanism

Reading Michael Bull's Sound Moves: iPod Culture and the Urban Experience (Routledge, 2007).

He defines cosmopolitanism following Roger Silverstone: "In the ideal world such a figure is mobile, flexible, open to difference and differences. And such a figure is no longer seen as marginal but rather as central to the civic project" (Bull, p. 37). However, the iPod and mobile phone join the automobile as a means of retreating from the city and from others. With an iPod in your ears, you can ignore not just your surroundings (the buildings and noises) but also all the other people. Rather than making one open to difference, a cosmopolitan value, it attempts to ignore or eliminate difference.

Paradoxically, there is a cosmopolitanism in the iPod, in our eclectic sound mixes (easily including global artists and musics from around the world).

Bull writes:

"Cosmopolitanism appears to reside in the contents of the iPod itself, in the culturally varied playlists of users or in downloaded news programmes, informing users of what is occurring in the world beyond. This rich, interiorised cosmopolitanism stands in stark contrast to the strategies that iPod users employ to navigate urban space." (37)

I must admit that this contrast (potential, at least) between mediated cosmopolitanism and interpersonal cosmopolitanism (actually treating others well) wasn't one that occurred to me in Cultural Globalization. But it's worthy of some consideration. But a danger of any cosmopolitanism is when it disembeds itself too much from the local, when only the global matters. That is not a cosmopolitanism I hold with (and that is a point I make in the conclusion).