Sylvie Octobre

Référence électronique Vincenzo Cicchelli et Sylvie Octobre, Cosmopolitisme esthético-culturel. Publictionnaire. Dictionnaire encyclopédique et critique des publics. Mis en ligne le 24 octobre 2018. Accès : http://publictionnaire.huma-num.fr/notice/cosmopolitisme-esthetico-culturel/. Le Publictionnaire. Dictionnaire encyclopédique et critique des publics est un dictionnaire collaboratif en ligne sous la responsabilité du Centre de recherche sur les médiations (Crem, Université de Lorraine) ayant pour ambition de clarifier la terminologie et le profit heuristique des concepts relatifs à la notion de public et aux méthodes d'analyse des publics pour en proposer une cartographie critique et encyclopédique.

Nous considérons dans cet article les adolescents comme des narratologues ordinaires, c’est-à-dire à la fois comme des interprètes des narrations qui leurs sont proposées et des narrateurs eux-mêmes. Nous tentons de décrire les mécanismes de fictionnalisation par lesquels ces derniers retrouvent dans le réel et dans les médias-cultures des schèmes interprétatifs communs : la fiction est alors un étalon de mesure de la réalité. C’est sur la production de récits personnels d’attentats terroristes au moyen de ressources narratives issues de la fiction que prend appui la revendication de l’esprit critique et du doute hyperbolique chez les adolescents

Based on a French survey designed to understand how young people appropriate internationally disseminated cultural products, this article explores the social stratification of everyday aesthetico-cultural cosmopolitanism in France among them. Using two classification techniques (ascending hierarchical classification and k-means clustering) and a polytomic logistic regression, we demonstrate that this cosmopolitanism can be viewed along a continuum of configurations rather than in a number of pure types. We identify five configurations: inadvertent cosmopolitans, specific cosmopolitans, cosmopolitan fans, national fans and impossible cosmopolitans. These configurations are not uniformly distributed across society: socio-demographic factors do not have a single, unambiguous effect, but are in fact combined with individual resources (experiences, competences and aspirations).

The question addressed in this conference is both general and specific. It is general because it inevitably covers a number of commonalities that are shared by authors who are actively engaged in promoting cosmopolitanism. It is specific because we are concerned with the operationalization of the cosmopolitan perspective that has become widely popular in social sciences and has known an upsurge of interest over the last two decades. Cosmopolitanism is not only a philosophy of perpetual peace, a moral stand, a societal aspiration. Scholars agree that it may also be expressed by a diverse array of practices spread around the world. 
Drawing on both theoretical and empirical research, the aim of our meeting is to show there is some credence to the view that the cosmopolitan sociology is a heuristic way to understand how human communities, individuals, and institutions relate to globality and its outcomes. With an unprecedented rapidity, global media exposes us to an uninterrupted flow of cultural contents of diverse origins (Castells, 2001; Urry, 2006), which create and maintain what John Tomlinson (2007) calls “a condition of immediacy” at the very heart of daily life. Whilst one might argue that the human story is one of migration, the overwhelming interconnectedness of the world today has resulted in increased flows of people on a hitherto unforeseen scale (Appadurai, 1996)
As a result of these transnational processes, in their daily lives individuals frequently encounter alterity (Cicchelli, 2012). Far from being exceptional, difference is now regarded as a central feature of our increasingly diverse ‘multicultural’ and ‘plural’ societies. Thanks to the participation of leading scholars engaged in rethinking what cosmopolitanism is or should be, the purpose of this conference is to explore in a comprehensive way the usefulness of a cosmopolitan outlook. The idea is to take advantage of the global interconnectedness, and to go beyond global studies, by approaching it in a specific way. As "the ‘global other’ is in our midst” (Beck and Grande, 2010: 417), it is consequently crucial a cosmopolitan approach be based on how otherness and plurality are handled by individuals, human groups and institutions. Exploring the role played by the multifarious contacts with otherness that occur in the global society is an issue frequently ignored in empirical research on cosmopolitanism, even though it should be at its very heart.

By examining cultural consumption, tastes and imaginaries as a means of relating to the world, this book describes the effects of globalization on young people from an aesthetic and cultural perspective. It employs the concept of aesthetico-cultural cosmopolitanism to analyse the emergence of an aesthetic openness to alterity as a new generational "good taste".

Aesthetico-Cultural Cosmopolitanism and French Youth critically examines the consumption of cultural products and imaginaries that provide genuine insight into social change, particularly in regards to young people, who play the largest role in cultural circulation. This book will be of interest to students and academics across a wide range of readers, including cultural theorists, and students engaged in debates on cultural consumption, the globalization of culture and transnational aesthetic codes.

“This excellent book brings together original ideas about globalization and cosmopolitanism in a rich empirical study of the consumption practices of French youth. Because it brings together the sociology of culture with the anthropology of globalization, it will be of great interest to all those who care about the future of transnational cultural practices.” (Arjun Appadurai, New York University, USA)

“The authors offer the reader an original and innovative analysis of contemporary global cultural tastes and passions. The fivefold configuration models proposed in this book will undoubtedly become a template to which forthcoming studies will have to confront themselves.” (Stéphane Dufoix, University Paris Nanterre, France)

“Based on an innovative survey revealing young adults’ cultural preferences, this book sheds unexpected light on contemporary forms of appropriation in a world now structured by the international circulation of symbolic goods.” (Jean-Louis Fabiani, Central European University, Hungary)

Les jeunes sont les plus engagés dans la globalisation de la culture par la consommation de produits internationaux, circulant de manière accélérée sur les réseaux socio-numériques et issus d’industries de plus en plus globales. Ce ne sont pas seulement les parts de leur consommation qui l’attestent, mais, plus profondément, les structures de leurs préférences : plus de 50% des jeunes déclarent préférer les musiques étrangères, près de 60% les films étrangers et près de 70% les séries étrangères, et ce, alors que la France se caractérise par des politiques de soutien à la production et à la diffusion nationales particulièrement affirmées. Cette nouvelle orientation vers l’étranger produit une transformation des répertoires et des imaginaires culturels.