RUPC #9: Is there anything left after global spectacles and local events?

Craig Calhoun in conversation with Peter Beilharz & Nikos Papastergiadis

This text is based upon a conversation that took place on 15 May 2017 at The Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture, hosted by the Research Unit in Public Cultures in collaboration with Thesis Eleven.

it could also be argued that, as a policy framework that aimed to support emergent cultural practices, multiculturalism is one of Australia’s greatest contributions to world culture. The city has changed in demographics, not least because f the pressures of gentrification, and so the Greek community, cognizant that the horizontal precinct is fading away, became proactive and built this new building to serve as a vertical precinct. The Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture looks forward to a new cultural agenda. The aim is not confined to protecting our specific linguistic and cultural heritage, but has opened up to embrace a cosmopolitan vision. Such a wide scope for thinking about culture is now a necessity given the new hybrid cultural forms that arise from mixed marriages, and the complex range of local and global cultural influences. Craig Calhoun and Peter Beilharz, world-renowned scholars on nationalism, modernity and cosmopolitanism, reflect on the conditions for public culture in the current context, and even to consider the question: have we ever been cosmopolitan?

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Is there anything left after global spectacles and local events?