Cultural Citizenship and Cosmopolitan Practice: Global Youth Communicate Online

Calls now abound in a range of literatures “philosophy, education, sociology, anthropology, media studies;” to reimagine citizenship and identity in ways befitting a global age. A concept predominant in many such calls is the ancient idea of cosmopolitanism. Refashioned now to serve as a compass in a world that is at once radically interconnected and increasingly divided, a cosmopolitan point of view remains resiliently hopeful, asserting that people can both uphold local commitments and take into consideration larger arenas of concern. This article animates theorizing about cultural citizenship, identity formation, and communication with an examination of what might be considered sites for cosmopolitan practice’ an online international social network and offline local programs designed to engage youth in representing themselves and interacting with the representations of others. Specifically, we report our initial research with a group of teenage girls in India, tracing their participation online and offline and their cosmopolitan imaginings of self and other. We hope that this work with young people worlds away geographically, culturally, and ideologically will speak to English educators in the United States who feel likewise compelled to support their students in developing twenty-first-century literacies’ both the technological competencies and the values, knowledge, and dispositions’needed to participate confidently and critically as citizens of local and global worlds.