Critical Cosmopolitanisms in a Multilingual Faith-Based Community

• In Event: Cosmopolitan Literacies: Examining the Transnational Turn in Research and Pedagogy

Abstract

Objectives: Cosmopolitanism has been discussed as a commitment to a planetary humanity over more immediate affiliations, including those of nationhood (Nussbaum, 1996, 2008). However, the local and global in cosmopolitanism is an entangled relationship and not easily bifurcated (Robbins, 2012). Rather, there are only local forms of cosmopolitanism that must be understood ideologically. This paper explores the cosmopolitan literacies of members of culturally and linguistically diverse faith-based organization and how they work together – often across cultural, linguistic, and institutional boundaries – to advocate for their children’s education and immigrant rights. In this context, we have found that community members (many of whom are undocumented) and activists invoke cosmopolitan worldviews in order to challenge nativist ideologies.

Theoretical Framework: Our theoretical framework builds off interdisciplinary research that challenges elite conceptualizations of cosmopolitanism to focus on the everyday ways in which people work together to engage in social justice struggles that may have both local and universal resonance, what has been variously termed a “cosmopolitanism from below” (Anderson, 1999), “ a globalism from below” (Appadurai, 2006), and “the transnational local” (Saldívar, 2013). We also situate our work within theories of identity that place emphasis on the epistemic priviledge (Moya, 2001) of subordinated knowledges.

Methods/Data: We report on a practitioner research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) and ethnographic (Heath & Street, 2008) study of a partnership with a faith-based community organization within a multilingual and multiethnic neighborhood. The collaboration has entailed a series of research foci developed with community members, including an intergenerational family literacy/ESOL class with Latina/o young children and families, an upper-elementary Community Researchers group, an inquiry with Indonesian refugee/immigrant families around school advocacy, an after school comics club, and a leadership inquiry group. Data sources consist of: fieldnotes of participant observation across the various dimensions of the partnership, transcripts of recorded meetings and class sessions, artifacts (e.g. planning documents, student work, written communications), and researcher reflective memos. Data was analyzed thematically (Erickson, 2004; Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

Findings: This presentation looks across the nested inquires of the partnership to explore how participants enact cosmopolitanism through their literacy practices. We focus on two representative examples: the coalitional literacies around immigrant rights, and the practices of “convivir” [living together in harmony through shared responsibility] that were shared across different ethnic and linguistic communities. Our focus on cosmopolitanism illustrates that people’s coalitional practices is not merely informed by a convergence of interests (a practical or instrumental model), but also by political and ethical visions of social justice grounded in interdependence as a culturally-situated resource.

Significance: Examining these cosmopolitan practices helps navigate between, on the one hand, an autonomous and universalizing understanding of literacy that either elides or deficitizes differences, and a relativistic profusion of literacies as bounded and isolating that can be equally as essentializing (Horner, 2013). Our research contributes to understanding the role that language and literacy play in how people work together across their insular social spaces to advocate for change in order to inform conceptual and methodological directions in the field.

Authors

• Gerald Campano, University of Pennsylvania

• Maria Paula Ghiso, Teachers College, Columbia University