ABSTRACT
The cosmopolitan turn in the social sciences over the past twenty years has been an exciting and welcome move. Exciting, because it was able within a reasonably short period of time to bring together a variety of scholarly traditions and focus them on the conceptual and normative challenges of our current global modernity. Welcome, because some despite excesses and shortcomings, it has decidedly contributed to the critique of different essentialist, chauvinist and indeed nationalistic ways of thinking that have been present throughout the history of the social sciences (Chernilo 2007; Delanty 2009; Fine 2007; Turner 2006). Cosmopolitanism is now a common term within a number of different scholarly communities and intellectual traditions – look no further than this very compendium that now celebrates the publication of a second edition. One note of caution is needed, however. Recent sociopolitical events – Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the so-called ‘alt-right’, etc. – offer a clear warning that this is no time for complacency. The last thing we want is a repetition of ‘the rise and fall’ of globalisation theories of the turn of the century; that the excitement and critical spirit of cosmopolitanism fades well before it was able to ascertain more fully its intellectual agenda.
