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This chapter engages cosmopolitan and feminist paradigms of knowledge production through their shared ethics of social justice, equality, and diversity, promoting integration into an emerging postdisciplinary focus on embodied cosmopolitanism(s) as a promising way forward in tourism studies. Cosmopolitan paradigms theorize the dialectics of cultural diversity and universal rights, while feminist cosmopolitanism focuses on gender and sexuality equality and difference within this intersection. An embodied approach combines work on “the body” and “situated embodiment” with the cosmopolitan to embrace all human differences and acknowledge that the researchers’ own embodied cosmopolitanism affects research questions, ethics, and praxis toward transformation in research communities and the academy.

Cosmopolitanism represents a complex, multilevel, multilayer phenomenon manifested in a variety of social spheres, including moral, political, social, and cultural. Yet, despite its prominence in other disciplines, cosmopolitanism has received relatively scant attention in international management research. Furthermore, the understanding of cosmopolitanism as an ever-present social condition in which individuals are embedded lags significantly behind.

In this chapter, we develop a conceptual framework for cosmopolitanism as an individual-level phenomenon situated at the intersection of the moral, political, and sociocultural perspectives. The framework explicates the interrelations between macrolevel dynamics and individual experiences in a globalized world. We conceptualize cosmopolitanism as an individual disposition manifested and enacted through identities, attitudes, and practices. We also highlight the diversity of individuals who can be considered cosmopolitans, including those who may not possess the classic cosmopolitan CV. Finally, the chapter explores the implications of cosmopolitanism for global organizations and global leadership.

As an interruption to existing nationalistic and neoliberal frames, teachers are beginning to embrace cosmopolitanism to ground literacy instruction. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the possibilities and tensions of using a cosmopolitan approach to literacy instruction. This chapter presents a qualitative study of interviews with 24 educators from the United States, Belize, and China to examine curricular and instructional choices educators report using to promote students' global meaning-making and cosmopolitan worldviews. Findings include three themes: situated relevance, glocal connections, and intercultural collaboration. Participants reported that creating a welcoming environment and promoting equality in the local classroom is foundational to teaching students at the local or global level. Teaching global literacies included teaching about similarities and differences locally and internationally and making local–global connections on issues of importance to the students. Also, participants reported that for students to engage in global meaning-making, they needed to dialogue and collaborate with people from different countries. While the findings present possibilities, the discussion approaches the data through the lens of potential challenges. Some participants reported first helping students move beyond ethnocentric thinking and stereotypes through reflexive exercises so that students could constructively interact with peers cross-culturally. However, not all participants taught reflexivity or with a critical lens. This study may bring awareness to educators as to curricular choices and instructional processes that hold promise for promoting students' global meaning-making.

Our point of departure is a reservation concerning the validity of cosmopolitan ideas in response to 9/11. Cosmopolitanism in the social and political sciences plays an important role in the reconstruction of conceptual tools, the diagnosis of the current epoch and the creation of new normative standards. Its key motif, however, that of epochal change from a nationally-based to a cosmopolitan world order, is prematurely dismissive of traditional categories and assimilative of a normative vision. The separation of the present from the past is as overstated as is its conflation with the future.

Drawing on sociological role theory, this chapter introduces and explains the distinction between cosmopolitan and local role orientations as status categories in international teams. Qualitative data from a multimethod field study conducted at a leading international development agency illustrates that the high status of cosmopolitans and locals in this setting was based on expectations that these team members would enable their teams to more effectively interpret knowledge obtained from outside sources. The possible dynamics of status rivalry and deference in teams with cosmopolitan and local membership are explored, and their implications for team performance are addressed. Thus, status in groups is viewed as both contested and contingent on the situation.

This chapter proposes selected cultural values and worldviews of cosmopolitan individual cultural identity as an ideal and model for international and transnational higher education, in teaching and learning, benefitting individuals and institutions. As a “metacultural position” and interactive engagement with the “Other,” cosmopolitan teaching and learning could impact national and global higher education. Such reflection of timeless educational values and ideals could benefit the development higher education systems in our ever more globalizing world.

Conceptually, cosmopolitan identity is defined via a complex literature matrix of key issues and concerns of world citizenship, substantiated and enriched by considerable critical thinking. Empirically, an investigation of highly multilingual students for revelations of their global identity strengthens and furthers this framework. Overall, interdisciplinary insights from literary, social, media and gender studies complement contributions to higher education's universality and values, so as to suit individual, institutional, and international needs.

Cosmopolitan features and values could harmonize global knowledge systems yet without cultural hegemonies, by building cross-cultural standards via best identity notions and practices. Recognizing equally valuable cultural contributions would also improve institutions' diversity, equity, and inclusion, raising educational quality, motivations, and expectations. Cosmopolitan identity could thus educationally enrich and institutionally empower for global complexity and uncertainty.

Educational stakeholders could shape institutions for cosmopolitan cultural values and increased diversity, with transnational norms and practices grounded in local realities, such as improved linguistic competences, or increased cultural understanding and engagement. Individual internationalization could therefore develop parallel to cultural and educational worldviews, expandable and improvable on an open-ended scale.

Problematic attributes of providing development aid in International Service-Learning (ISL) placements exist with its paternalistic implications. Broadening the discussion of ISL by shifting the focus toward prioritizing the incorporation of goals of cross-cultural learning and fostering cultural humility addresses these problematic attributes. Approaching ISL placements with a learning mindset inverts the service-learning model by emphasizing learning over helping. Additionally, cultivating a deeper self-awareness and learning from the host communities prior to offering service encourages cultural humility, enhances the ability to remain open to different perspectives, and sustains engagement as a lifelong learner. A framework for developing international education experiences with a systems-oriented approach is proposed: one that acknowledges the interdependent relationships with others in global social and economic structures. The proposed framework applies Milton Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity and Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti’s HEADS UP educational tool for critical engagement in global social justice issues. Transformative learning theory guides the process of perspective transformation and invites students to critically reflect on their own values, assumptions, and cultural beliefs. The intent is to establish a model for ISL placements which invites respectful collaboration across cultural differences and imbalances in power relations.