Defining cosmopolitan sociability in a transnational age. An introduction (original) (raw)
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Cosmopolitan Sociability Locating Transnational Religious and Diasporic Networks
This book approaches the concept of cosmopolitan sociability as a cultural or territorial rootedness that facilitates a simultaneous openness to shared human emotions, experiences, and aspirations. Cosmopolitan Sociability critiques definitions of cosmopolitanism as a tolerance for cultural difference or a universalist morality that arise from contemporary experiences of mobility and globalization. Challenging these assumptions, the book explores the degree to which a 'cosmopolitan dimension' can be practised within particular religious communities, diasporic ties, or gendered migrant identities in different parts of the world. A wide variety of expert contributors offer rich ethnographic insights into the interplay of social interactions and cosmopolitan sociability. In this way the book contributes significantly to ethnic and migration studies, global anthropology, social theory, and religious and cultural studies. Cosmopolitan Sociability was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Keywords of Mobility :: Cosmopolitanism
Acharya, Malasree N. (2018, 2016), "Cosmopolitanism" in Keywords of Mobility: Critical Engagements, Salazar, Noel B. and Kiran Jayaram (eds.), New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 33-54., 2018
Book Chapter in Edited Volume, Keywords of Mobility: Critical Engagements, Noel B. Salazar and Kiran Jayaram (eds.). 196 pages, bibliog., index ISBN 978-1-78533-146-6 110.00/£78.00HbPublished(June2016)ISBN978−1−78533−815−1110.00/£78.00 Hb Published (June 2016) ISBN 978-1-78533-815-1 110.00/£78.00HbPublished(June2016)ISBN978−1−78533−815−127.95/£19.00 Pb Published (March 2018) eISBN 978-1-78533-147-3 eBook Purchase Book Here: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/SalazarKeywords
Transfers, 2011
This paper urges readers to rethink the notions "mobility" and "travel" with an eye to how they may help us craft a more supple discourse of cosmopolitanism. The majority of cosmopolitanism discourses privilege mobility and travel experiences of subjects in the metropolis and sideline and downplay those of the postcolonial (and especially rural) subjects. The paper attempts to broaden the discourses of cosmopolitanism by a critical interrogation of Kant's cosmopolitan ideal and its implications for postcolonial societies. It identifies a "postcolonial moment" of cosmopolitanism that is largely ignored in mainstream analyses. This moment can be glimpsed by exploring two narratives of rural villagers who break free from their epistemic enclosures. This moment can only be fully appreciated by deploying broader conceptions of "mobility" and "travel" which capture not only these concepts' corporeal connotations, but their imaginative and virtual connotations as well.
Diasporic Cosmopolitanism: Migrants, Sociabilities, and City-Making
The phrase 'diasporic cosmopolitanism' juxtaposes the seemingly opposite sensibilities of communalism and openness. This specific modification of the term cosmopolitanism reflects a broader propensity among scholars of every day migrant life to link the term cosmopolitanism with a modifier that implies its opposite---vernacular, rooted, ghetto and diasporic . These seemingly contradictory terms query hegemonic assumptions about how cosmopolitanism is lived, whose cosmopolitanism is being noted and who is in fact open to the world (Werbner 2008; Glick Schiller et al 2011). By selecting the term diasporic cosmopolitanism from the various apparently contradictory modifiers on offer, this paper challenges the dominant notions of the cosmopolitan found in discussions of cosmopolitan urbanism, as well as the ready equation of cosmopolitanism with mobility and rootlessness in the new mobilities literature. Scholars contributing to both these approaches to cosmopolitanism tend to define the term as the capacity to appreciate or be open to difference.
Transnational Citizens, Cosmopolitan Outlooks? Migration as a Route to Cosmopolitanism
Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 2021
In this article, we argue that transnational citizens-those international migrants who maintain connections to their country of origin and its diaspora-can be moderate cosmopolitans. We hold the primarily normative idea of cosmopolitanism up against the empirical literature on transnationalism, and show how cosmopolitanism can develop from the migration process itself and the subsequent connection to a diversity of places. We claim that studying migrants who lead transnational lives can increase our knowledge about the compatibility of attachments to particular places or people on the one hand, and cosmopolitan outlooks on the other. It can also correct the narrow focus in European politics as well as in migration studies on ethnic or national values and identities, encouraging a more intersectional approach. We thus aim to contribute to a re-conceptualisation of the relationships between polity, territory, and civic responsibility in culturally and religiously diverse societies in Europe today.
Cosmopolitanism and the Society of Strangers
Current Sociology, 2007
In this article the implications of cosmopolitan thought for the cohesion of groups are explored. The central argument is that cosmopolitanism signals a shift from sociality to humanity, which eyes an all-inclusive society of strangers as its end result. Cosmopolitanism is discussed as a manifestation of the mentality of the global elite, as world citizenship, as a politics of human rights, as a religion of humanity and as global mores. In these distinct dimensions, cosmopolitanism appears to pave the way for the society of strangers.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2013.799476
"The literature on cosmopolitanism has mushroomed in the past decade or more as attempts are made to theorise new patterns of mobility, interactions between previously distant social groups and the emergence of institutions to manage these processes. In this paper, I build on the arguments of those who have emphasised the strategic aspects and temporal dimensions of cosmopolitan expressions and practices, (Skrbis & Woodward, 2007, Kothari, 2008, Muller, 2011), by focusing on the resources and constraints that different actors operate with, or under, and, as a result, the varying commitments they have to different ‘others’. Using this type of grounded approach, a number of Illustrative examples from a study of social identities in England are then analysed and used to theorise cosmopolitanism, as a perspective that is periodically articulated, in relation to specific needs, contexts or prompts, rather than being an inherent property of particular individuals, groups or situations. "