Abstract

The term cosmopolitan is increasingly used within different social, cultural and political settings, including academia, popular media and national politics. However those who invoke the cosmopolitan project rarely ask whose experience, understanding, or vision of cosmopolitanism is being described and for whose purposes? In response, this volume assembles contributors from different disciplines and theoretical backgrounds to examine cosmopolitanism’s possibilities, aspirations and applications—as well as its tensions, contradictions, and discontents—so as to offer a critical commentary on the vital but often neglected question: whose cosmopolitanism? The book investigates when, where, and how cosmopolitanism emerges as a contemporary social process, global aspiration or emancipatory political project and asks whether it can serve as a political or methodological framework for action in a world of conflict and difference.

“The strengths of this volume are numerous. It is interdisciplinary, contains ethnographic original data, and is extremely well organized despite its complexity and high number of chapters. It is also appealing to a large audience including the undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars in the disciplines of cultural studies, anthropology and sociology, migration, international development and religious studies…This collection, without hesitation, is an asset, a timely contribution to a number of fields.” · Anthropological Forum

“This book is a timely, much needed, rich and multifaceted tapestry on cosmopolitanism in today’s world… this book is more than very timely for anybody engaging research and taking a practical action to create the world a better place for those who are displaced… I imagine that this book would quickly find its way into required reading lists for the growing number of researchers questioning cosmopolitanism and postcolonialism from various disciplinary angles and migration scholars, in particular.” · Anthropological Notebooks

“…an interesting collected volume on what has become a much-discussed theme. The combination of disciplines and the critical conversation it builds up make this a worthwhile addition to the debate.” · Huon Wardle, University of St. Andrews

Andrew Irving is Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His research areas include sensory perception, time, illness, death, urban anthropology, and experimental methods. Recent publications include Beyond Text: Critical Practices and Sensory Anthropology (2014 Manchester University Press) and “The Suicidal Mind” in Mediating and Remediating Death (2014 Ashgate).

Nina Glick Schiller is Founding Director of the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Culture, Professor Emeritus of the University of Manchester and the University of New Hampshire. She serves as an Associate of the Max Planck Institutes of Social Anthropology, of Ethnic and Religious Diversity, and of COMPAS, Oxford University. Recent publications include Global Regimes of Mobilities (2012 Routledge), Beyond Methodological Nationalism (2012 Routledge), and Locating Migration (2011 Cornell).