Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences: a Research Agenda

The article by U.Beck and N.Sznaider, the Russian version of which we introduce to the reader, justifies the necessity of re-conceptualization of the social sciences through the cosmopolitan turn. The authors show that the methodological nationalism that equates societies with nation-state societies and views states and their governments as the primary focus of analysis deprives researchers of the opportunity to see the multidimensional process of changes that irreversibly transforms the very nature of the social world and the place of states in this world. According to their conclusion, the humanities and social sciences need to get ready for a transformation of their own positions - that is, to accept cosmopolitanism as a research agenda and raise some of the key conceptual, methodological, empirical and normative issues that cosmopolitanization of reality poses before the social sciences.