ABSTRACT
Cosmopolitanism, derived from the Greek conjunction of ‘world’ (cosmos) and ‘city’ (polis), describes a ‘citizen of the world’, member in a ‘universal circle of belonging that involves the transcendence of the particular and blindly given ties of kinship and country’ (Cheah 2006: 487). Against ‘globalisation’, a term implying the free movement of capital and the global (mainly Western) spread of ideas and practices, cosmopolitanism is a word used by the ‘new’ cosmopolitans to emphasise empathy, toleration, obligation and respect for other cultures and values. Thus, at its most basic, cosmopolitanism is about reaching out across cultural differences through dialogue, aesthetic enjoyment, and respect; of living together with difference. It is also about the cosmopolitan right to abode and hospitality in strange lands and, alongside that, the urgent need to devise ways of living together in peace in the international community. Against the slur that cosmopolitans are rootless, with no commitments to place or nation, the new post-1990s cosmopolitanism attempts to theorise the complex ways in which cosmopolitans juggle particular and transcendent loyalties – morally, and inevitably also, politically.
