Abstract:

Reflective modernization, second modernity, cosmopolitanization and world-risk society theories, and sociologist Ulrich Beck, known for his work on the risk society in the field of international relations, argues that the writing of international relations is historically built on the national status drawing, that methodological nationalism is a practical practice in the field and that a cosmopolitan methodology must be followed to go beyond. From here on, this study creates a question on the drunk position of methodological nationalism in the field of international relations, discusses the tools and possibilities that Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology and methodological cosmopolitanism offers to go beyond the corresponding error, and discusses the changes and transformations that Beckchi cosmopolitanism predicts for the existing analysis units and categories in the field. The study claims that the meaning of the proposed cosmopolitan transformation is generally questioned separately for the fields of International Relations, in particular Inter-National Relations and Foreign Policy Studies, while the cosmopolitan approach, overcoming the methodological nationality and the reducing problems it brings, offers the possibility to re-definitise and explore the relevant fields, the main research categories, the national, the international, and the global inter-national structures and relations.

Abstract:

The sociologist Ulrich Beck – a pioneering figure in reflexive modernism, second modernity, cosmopolitanization and world risk society, and the scholar known within the International Relations (IR) by his works on risk society – argued that IR has retrospectively been built on the premises of the national condition, thus methodological nationalism is an intrinsic practice within the field, and to go beyond it a cosmopolitan methodology shall be embraced. Based on this, this paper explores the intrinsic position of methodological nationalism within IR, discusses about the means and opportunities Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology and methodology present in going beyond such misconduct and in this manner reflects on the changes and transformations the Beckian cosmopolitanism prescribes for the units and categories of analysis within the field. This paper, while examining the meaning of such transformation for IR in general and for transnational relations and foreign policy studies in specific, argues that the cosmopolitan approach, through going beyond methodological nationalism and beyond the problems of reductionism accompanying it, offers opportunities for the relevant fields of redefining the national, international, transnational and global as transnational structures and relations and of accordingly analysing them.

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