ABSTRACT
Social science needs to abandon the analytical prison of ‘methodological nationalism’ and turn to ‘methodological cosmopolitanism.’ Only then can global risk dynamics, transnational relations, new inequalities, and the globalized images and symbols influencing everyday culture be brought into analytical focus. Two essential issues move to the fore: on the one hand the process of Europeanization; on the other the cosmopolitanization of cites and spaces. In both cases national patterns of explanation and legitimization fail. The question elicited is: What is new about mobility viewed from the cosmopolitan perspective? How does the cosmopolitan gaze, or more precisely ‘methodological cosmopolitanism,’ change the conceptual framework, the realities, and relevance of mobility? Networks, scapes, and flows contain and generate powers that transform the mobile risk society into a constellation of cosmopolitanized societies.
