Towards a cosmopolitan social theory: An epistemological inquiry

Abstract

The increasing significance of transnational and global phenomena determines the need in a new social theory that, while considering the particularity and unique characteristics of social phenomena, makes them scientifically meaningful on a transnational and global scale and in relation to each other. The fluid, indeterminate and multi-dimensional nature of global phenomena, which has become the basis for deep uncertainty and insecurity throughout the world, has increased the need to understand transnational and global phenomena. This made social and global studies revisit and reformulate social theory in relation to globalization and ever-increasing global interconnectedness [1; 33]. In general, there are two approaches: the revisionist approach seeks to reformulate and modify social sciences based on the new ontology of the contemporary world and referring to the roots and foundations of social sciences, especially sociology, to be reconstructed and restored [2; 17; 30; 34]; radical approaches argue that, given the historical-social background of social sciences and their epistemological-theoretical characteristics, it is impossible to modify and adapt them to the contemporary world; thereby, they strive to substitute these sciences [1; 4; 18; 23; 35-37]. The paper presents an attempt to find a balance between these two extremes, criticizing the epistemological foundations of social sciences and retrieving them from post-foundationalist philosophy, in order to develop a cosmopolitan social theory. Global cosmopolitanization and the increasing role of indeterminacy, mutual communication and interdependence of social phenomena, determine the need in a social theory that takes into account singularity and conceptualizes it in relation to transnational and global trends through concepts of fluidity and indeterminacy. The author argues that social sciences and theories are based on three epistemes - modern, national, and imperial - as the epistemological-historical foundations. Any cosmopolitan social theory needs primarily to criticize and go beyond these epistemes, which the author shows by interrogating two epistemological antinomies - universalism/singularism and essentialism/relativism. Postfoundationalism and the idea of social configurations are presented as the cores of cosmopolitan social theory, which can overcome the predicaments imposed by three epistemes and provide a solution for the above-mentioned antinomies. .