From the Individual to the Political: The Development of Cosmopolitanism among College Students in China

• In Event: 505 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Globalization and Individual Attitudes

Abstract

Recent scholarship on cosmopolitanism has shifted from a focus on theory to the empirical analysis of the causes of cosmopolitan perspectives. However, these latter studies suffer somewhat from their cross-national comparative approach. Because they rely on questions in pre-existing surveys, they do not capture the impact of individual exposure to foreign individuals, media, and products—for which data is unavailable—on dependent variables measuring cosmopolitan attitudes and how unobserved national particularities might affect the statistical relationships between individual-level data and the dependent variables. Using data from a survey given to first-year college students at a top-tier university in China, I posit a hierarchy of cosmopolitanisms ranging from cultural exposure to political attitudes. The corresponding mixed empirical results both affirm and complicate the findings of other scholars that suggest national-level variables strongly determine the development of cosmopolitanism. The lack of statistical significance in the regressions of predictors against the variables indicating support for supranational organizations, in particular, show that such support may be especially susceptible to national-level influences.

Author

• Rene Nahele Patnode, University of California-San Diego