ABSTRACT
Most discussions of cosmopolitanism take as their starting point a manifested attitude in people’s moral orientations and one that is not constrained only by local contexts (Roudometof 2005). It is therefore worth starting this chapter by noting that while classical approaches strongly emphasized the moral dimensions of cosmopolitanism structured around abstract universal ideas, more recently the emphasis is moving to the understanding of how cosmopolitics emerges from the diversity of historical contexts (Appiah 2005; Mendieta 2012). As many contributions to this volume show, cosmopolitan practices, projects, and imaginaries can be found in many situations and places. However, as will be argued in this chapter, world orientations seeking ways of non-exclusive conviviality is not something that should be seem as a ‘natural’ (Taylor 1989) or an ahistorical human ability. Cosmopolitism emerges because of the transformation of internal and external societal borders creating new interpretations of what communality means in the context of diversity. That is why cosmopolitics should rather be seen as a universal orientation created through the many encounters between humans and non-humans which puts the idea of respect (but also disrespect) within and between peoples and species at the center of dispute. Before moving forward, the reader should be aware of the fact that in this chapter, cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitics are used deliberately without distinguishing the terms from each other. As Mignolo and Stråth (both in this volume) put it, cosmopolitanism is always a ‘disputed political project’ that should not be seem as field of studies apart from social and political struggles. One should be always suspicious of any attempt to put apart cosmopolitanism as a field of study and as a political practice.
