Volume 1, 2009
Sungtae Lee
Pages 113-127
In Search of Cosmopolitan Space
A Case for Human Plurality
At present, there is a widely shared doubt about theoretical or practical validity of “nation state” as a framework to grasp the reality of the social. This doubt legitimately boils down to a more fundamental question, within or without the realm of social science, that is, whether or not the current conceptualization of the social is caught in a sort of anachronism that blocks thinking and acting in terms of transforming reality. In this paper, I would like to delineate the situation not merely as a theoretical shortcoming of cotemporary social science but as a challenge: a call for reactivated social sensitivity. In an effort to meet this challenge, the socio-political significance of dialogue and human plurality as its critical element will be elaborated in search of cosmopolitan opening to the ways to think and act for the social in the making.