ABSTRACT
Theorizations of global change are certainly not in short supply. Indeed, to glance over the different approaches to globalization is to witness an array of vastly different diagnoses of its nature and scale (O’Byrne and Hensby, 2011). Within this debate, those who speak of global civil society or cosmopolitanism tend to be put on the same side: both perspectives seeing globalization – that is, the process of global interconnectedness and compression in which the world increasingly is understood as a single space – as an ever-unfurling reality that is both totalizing in reach and broadly irreversible in its effects. With this process established as a given, its advocates fervently argue that in political thought one cannot retreat to a purely statist model: we can only go forwards. Nor must the juggernaut of globalization be dominated by the interests of the neo-liberal marketplace, as ultimately, the securing of a peaceful and prosperous global coexistence must be of profound importance. Such sentiments are an essential foundation of cosmopolitan thought, and arguably presuppose the concept of an active global civil society.
