Arthur Jensen – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

A Call to Cosmopolitan Communication

Jensen, A. (2020). A call to cosmopolitanism: A narrative of richness and mystery. Oracle, AZ: CMM Institute Press.

We are witnessing the emergence of a new form of communication.

Call to Cosmopolitanism cover

One with the potential to overcome the political polarization dominating our social landscape in recent decades. Cosmopolitan communication is one way of naming this emerging form and the promise it holds. In A Call to Cosmopolitan Communication, Arthur Jensen explores the dimensions, skillsets, and transforming potential of this new form, contrasting it with the all-too-familiar patterns of communication we experience as ethnocentric and modernistic tendencies.

Drawing on Pearce and Cronen’s enduring practical theory, the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM), Jensen focuses on the concept of mystery and our ability to co-produce narratives of richness that embrace our differences instead of simply assimilating, tolerating, or dismissing them.

A Call to Cosmopolitan Communication is not a call to arms but a call to human thriving. The call to human thriving is answered when we recognize that our lives are shaped in social interaction with others and that the quality of our communication with each other matters enormously. This book, along with Penman and Jensen’s previous work in Making Better Social Worlds, supports Cosmopolis2045.com, a companion project depicting one vision of a better social world that can emerge from a cosmopolitan mindset.

Penman & Jensen: Making Better Social Worlds

Penman, R., & Jensen, A. (2019). Making Better Social Worlds: Inspirations from the Theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning. Oracle, AZ: CMM Institute Press.

Barnett Pearce invited us all to make better social worlds. Penman and Jensen show us how to begin—how to cross the wide gap between wanting to make a better social world and actually beginning to do so. – Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz

Making Better Social Worlds: Inspirations from the Theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning is a companion volume to the Cosmopolis2045 website. It serves as a fitting first book from the new CMMi Press. The book offers a clear and comprehensive account of how the theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) can be used to help us rise to the challenges of 21st century life with its political turmoil, social divisiveness and increasing moral bankruptcy. Making Better Social Worlds describes how we create our social worlds in communication, that our relationships with people matter deeply to the quality of our lives and that living with difference enriches us. Readers are offered a new mindset that is relationship-orientated, self-reflexive and morally attuned, along with what it means to engage in joint action, dialogue and cosmopolitan communication, to show how changing our communication practices can bring about social and cultural change.