Introduction

Over the past two decades there has been very wide interest in cosmopolitanism across the human and social sciences. Where earlier it had been largely a term associated with moral and political philosophy, cosmopolitanism has now become a widely used term in the social sciences and possibly rivals globalization and transnationalism as a focus for research. In many ways cosmopolitanism constitutes an interdisciplinary area for the human and social sciences. As invoked in this volume, the idea of cosmopolitanism studies – or cosmopolitan studies – does not proclaim anything more than the recognition of interdisciplinarity arising from common research questions and theoretical lineages. Cosmopolitanism has been taken up by most disciplinary traditions, though its usage various often quite considerably. Cosmopolitanism in anthropology, for instance, is quite different from cosmopolitanism in sociology and in political philosophy. While the diverse literature often appeals to some classic texts, there is nonetheless considerable variety of interpretations and applications. In general, these vary from highly normative approaches as in political philosophy to more empirical applications in sociology and anthropology. There is much to be gained by greater dialogue between the various disciplines that have taken up the idea of cosmopolitanism. It is in this somewhat limited sense of interdisciplinarity that the notion of cosmopolitanism studies can be uncontroversially used. This volume is a contribution to interdisciplinary cosmopolitanism. As several chapters demonstrate, philosophical debate about the normative characteristics of cosmopolitanism needs to engage with the anthropological and sociological literature on actual cosmopolitanism. However, disciplinarity presupposes disciplinarity.