'Cosmic patriotism’: Jane Addams and the Chicago immigrants’ cosmopolitan experience and ethic

• Jane Addams (1860-1935) was a prominent intellectual of the early twentieth century: a sharp social analyst, applying philosophical pragmatism and certain brand of egalitarian ideas of social reform, as well as the international leader of the women’s anti-war movement (Nobel Prize winner in 1931). Her agenda for solving the “social question” was intimately related to her struggle for world peace. In this sense her attitudes were representative for the attitudes epitomized by the social settlement movement – of which she was the unrivalled leader in the USA. More unique was her way to use her experience of living among the immigrants of Chicago – the symbol of the ultra-modern, industrialized and multi-ethnic giant city – as a cue to a modern, non-sentimental, forceful, and practical struggle for peace on the basis of “righteousness”. Addams’s first book on international relations (1907) was mainly a slightly extended version of her treatment of social problems, basically on the local level; in this case focusing the lack of opportunity for self-government and active citizenship on the part of immigrants – and women. In the everyday solidarity among underprivileged in the modern slum she saw the seed of a modern cosmopolitanism, characterized by mutual respect for differences in terms of experience and culture – viewing diversity as a resource – and a distinctly modern experience of universal humanity, of all that unites people without regard to gender, class, “race”, ethnicity or nationality. With an ironic twist, relating to the immigrants’ delicate position between the national identities of their homelands and the belligerent American patriotism of the day, Addams toyed with naming this new ethos “cosmic patriotism”.

Nyckelord

Jane Addams

peace

cosmopolitanism

nationalism

social work

cultural diversity

feminism

philosophical pragmatism

Chicago

immigration

social settlement movement

Hull House

John Dewey

George Herbert Mead

W.E.B. Du Bois

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