ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of how to conceptualise cosmopolitanism for empirical research. Exploring this question whilst drawing upon the notion of openness as a principal discourse of contemporary cosmopolitanism studies, the chapter explores the application of performative and qualitative approaches to researching cosmopolitanism as a form of openness to cultural difference. Attempts to specify cosmopolitanism through traditional social scientific models deploying a variable-centred model of inquiry are valuable, but in this chapter we argue for the additional relevance of a performative theory. It proposes that forms of cosmopolitan openness can be effectively studied through the application of qualitative, performative models of social research, and that these can usefully complement quantitative research inquiries. Because they highlight the processual and contingent nature of cosmopolitan sentiments and the way such attitudes are afforded and constructed within particular spatio-temporal contexts, it is argued that a performative approach is well suited to exploring cosmopolitanism as an emergent, relational dimension of social life rather than a stable feature of identities or social types.
