Full Description
The significance that people grant to their affiliations as members of nations, religions, classes, races, ethnicities and genders is evidence of the vital need for a cosmopolitan project that originates in the figure of Anyone - the universal and yet individual human being. Cosmopolitanism offers an alternative to multiculturalism, a different vision of identity, belonging, solidarity and justice, that avoids the seemingly intractable character of identity politics: it identifies samenesses of the human condition that underlie the surface differences of history, culture and society, nation, ethnicity, religion, class, race and gender. This book argues for the importance of cosmopolitanism as a theory of human being, as a methodology for social science and as a moral and political program.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION: INTENT AND STRUCTURE
A cosmopolitan project
'Everyman' and 'Anyone'
Singular values
Cosmopolitanism and liberalis
Category-thinking and politeness
Dead dogma?
Envoi
PART 1. COSMOPOLITANISM AND COSMOPOLIS: DEFINITIONS AND ISSUES
1.1 A History and Overview
Founding moments
Contemporary Voices and Issues
Cosmopolitanism is a specific kind of morality
Cosmopolitanism is a specific kind of normative programme
Cosmopolitanism is a specific kind of social condition
Cosmopolitanism is a specific kind of attitude or orientation
The cosmopolitan is a specific kind of actor
Anthropological Critiques
Epistemological critique of cosmopolitanism
Real-political critique of cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanisms
1.2 A Cosmopolitan Project for Anthropology
What cosmopolitanism is and what it is not
Multiculturalism, Utilitarianism, Globalization, Pluralism
Human universalism and cultural diversity
Voluntarism and community belonging
The fluidity of experience
Cosmopolitan hope
Human Rights, World Cities, Worldwide Issues
Global governance
Cosmopolitan politesse
PART II: 'MY NAME IS RICKEY HIRSCH': A LIFE IN SIX ACTS, WITH MARGINALIA AND A CODA
Act I
Notes in the Margin I
Act II
Notes in the Margin II
Act III
Notes in the Margin III
Act IV
Notes in the Margin IV
Act V
Act VI
Coda
PART III: ANYONE IN SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: EVIDENCING AND ENGAGING
3.1 Personal Truth, Subjectivity as Truth
Introduction
A Kierkegaardian excursus
Personal truth as political and physiological
Personal truth as physical environment
Nietzsche's 'night-time' (Umnachtung)
Conclusion: The pragmatism of personal truth
3.2 Generality, Distortion and Gratuitousness
Introduction
Simmel's distortions
Beyond Simmel
Generality and the route to human science
Modelling the one and the whole
Bodily characteristics as individual and general
Generality and the route to liberal society
Conclusion: Distortion revisited
3.3 Public and Private: Civility as Politesse
Introduction: 'Politesse'
Politesse as naturally occurring
Anthropology and interactional routine
Anthropology and communication
Politesse as political policy
Anthropology and global society
Politesse as ethos of global becoming
Politesse as lived practice
Case-studies of complex society
Invitation to politesse
Conclusion: Good manners
AFTERWORD: JEWISH COSMOPOLITANISM
Jew, Israeli, Cosmopolitan
Bibliography
Index
