Cosmopolitics and The Commons | Education Ouverte et Libre - Open Education

Who is open education for, and where might it ultimately lead us? This paper examines social and political dimensions of open education with a focus on the concept of cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitics.  After providing an outline of open education, I proceed by critically examining the commonly held policy position that ‘publicly funded should mean openly licenced’, arguing that it implies a form of ‘weak’ moral cosmopolitanism. I describe ‘global citizenship’ and show its relevance to coordination in the efforts of open education through a commons supported by open licences.  Tensions are surfaced between the universalist perspectives of cosmopolitanism and the recent emphasis on political issues such as social justice, decolonization, equity, diversity and inclusion in open education research. To address these, I explore a concept of openness as ‘counter-enclosure’ and argue for the relevance of a cosmopolitical perspective on open education.  I draw on Leonelli’s (2023) distinction between openness as sharing and openness as judicious connection in the context of open science.  I use this as the basis of a framework which describes a cosmopolitical perspective on open education. The discussion considers this framework in relation to recent developments in the commons: notably generative artificial intelligence which challenges long established notions of copyright and commoning. I suggest that positioning openness as an active practice of resisting privatisation - rather than merely a commitment to transparency or accessibility - open education functions as a site of political contestation rather than passive inclusion in neoliberal economies of knowledge.