Cultural literacy, cosmopolitanism and tourism research

•A post-disciplinary perspective that advances cultural literacy as an tool for tourism research.•Positions cultural literacy as an ontology as a fundamental principle of cosmopolitanism.•Explains cosmopolitan capital as compossibilities of cultural literacy.•Analyses the problems pertaining to measuring cosmopolitanism.•Applies cultural literacy to the intersections of tourism/worldmaking/cosmopolitanism.

Cosmopolitanism has been approached from a multitude of perspectives yet it continues to pose theoretical challenges in application. This paper assumes a post-disciplinary approach to critique these writings and analyse the intersections of tourism/cosmopolitanism/worldmaking. Through these means a philosophical platform is built that advances cultural literacy as the defining principle of cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism encompasses the both-and, and has much to do with cosmopolitics, worldview, cultural orientations and compossibilities of tourism populations. Tourism is at the coalface of inter- and intra-cultural exchange and cultural literacy provides an innovative tool to operationalize worldmaking and address the complexities of an increasingly cosmopolitanized world. These ideas constitute an ontological shift in thinking about tourism and its many contexts.