Risk and Cosmopolitanism
Writing about the Mediterranean as a human unit in the age of Phillip II, Braudel defined this sea as ‘the sum of its routes, land routes and sea routes, routes along the rivers and routes along the coasts. An immense network of regular and causal connections, the life giving blood stream of the Mediterranean region’. A sea with ‘no unity than that created by the movement of men, the relationship they imply and the routes they follow’, ‘a very ancient crossroads on which, for thousands of years, everything has converged -men, beasts of burden, vehicles, merchandise, ships, ideas, religions and the arts of living’.
In an age of globalisation the Mediterranean is being criss-crossed by cables, pipelines, ships, planes and satellites. A new logic of flows underlies the faster pace at which cultural, social, political, and environmental boundaries are being erased, redrawn, fortified and multiplied. The difference with pre-modern times is also a matter of intensity. In these structural interdependencies there is now the potential for a politically effective Mediterranean identity. Yet, if this identity ever takes shape, it will probably do so not so much or not exclusively on the basis of a shared ancient history, as European intellectuals have dreamed about in the past, but of an endangered future.
The challenges facing the region in the 21st century are overwhelming. In geopolitical terms the Mediterranean is regarded as a hotspot for international conflicts. It is the most militarised sea in the world and current processes such as the increasing inequalities between and within both shores, the demographic dynamics in Europe, the Maghrib and sub-Saharan Africa, or the tensions around the control of energy sources and distribution routes, are set to heighten social, political and economic instabilities in the area.
Deeply enmeshed in these instabilities is an impending environmental crisis which will aggravate the situation. Water scarcity, desertification and coastal erosion are already causes of concern and will be amplified by climate change. Meanwhile the concentration of the population along the increasingly urbanised coastline is already stressing civil infrastructure and coastal and marine ecosystems and leading to the emergence of ‘geographies of disaster’.
Signs that at an international institutional level these risks and uncertainties are creating a heightened consciousness of interdependency are, for example, the UNEP Blue Plan for the sustainable development of the Mediterranean and, more recently, the Barcelona Process (Barcelona+10) aiming at the creation of a Euro-Mediterranean region.
Whether a shared horizon of expectation among the lay publics emerges as a result of these challenges remains just a possibility. Meanwhile life experiences are increasingly suffused and transformed by what until recently seemed far away realities. And this involves not only the media bringing home crisis and risks radiating from any corner of the Mediterranean or the world but also bodily engagements with the complex realities of ‘others’, human or non-human, Senegalese music in public squares or toxic tropical algae brought along to beaches by merchant vessels. If a new, more sustainable Mare Nostrum is to emerge in the course of the 21st century, it will partly depend on the recognition of the increasing transnationalization of forms of life and its translation into progressive cosmopolitan dispositions.
| Home | Mission
Statement | About Us | Networks
| Seminar Series | Events
|
| News |
Critical Mobilities | Contacts |
