Beyond Hybridity and Authenticity: Globalisation, Translation and the Cosmopolitan Turn in the Social Sciences


Published: May 1, 2012
Keywords:
hybridity globalisation cosmopolitanism citizenship social sciences
Esperança Bielsa
Abstract
This article focuses on current debates on the role of translation in the context of globalisation and, more specifically, on its prominence in theories of contemporary cosmopolitanism. Whereas globalisation theory was predominantly silent about the role of translation in making possible the flow of information worldwide, assuming instant communicability and transparency, translation has assumed a central importance in recent accounts of cosmopolitanism which focus on global interdependence, the negotiation of difference and the notion of multiple modernities. It is argued that such a concept of multiple modernities allows us to shift the emphasis away from notions of hybridity and authenticity and to stress the degree of interaction between different cultural traditions. A concept of translation becomes key in analysing the form in which these interactions take place and in specifying a notion of cosmopolitanism as internalisation of the other. The article finally discusses current debates on the transformation of citizenship as an instance of cosmopolitan processes of translation and internalisation of otherness.
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Author Biography
Esperança Bielsa

Esperança Bielsa is Senior Researcher at the Department of Sociology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is the author of The Latin American Urban Crónica: Between Literature and Mass Culture (Lexington Books, 2006), co-author, with Susan Bassnett, of Translation in Global News (Routledge, 2009), and co-editor of Globalization, Political Violence and Translation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

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