Cosmopolitanism: The Mediterranean Archives

Abstract

There can be no doubt that cosmopolitanism is now a key concept, not only traveling across the disciplinary boundaries of the social sciences but also those between academic knowledge and popular imagination. As Calhoun claims, "[c]osmopolitanism is in fashion. The trend started in the 1990s, after the end of the cold war and amid intensifying globalization. Cosmopolitan is now a compliment for the suave in a way it hadn't been since the 1920s or at least the 1960s, when in cold war spirit spies epitomized the cosmopolitan" (2008,106). Cosmopolitanism today sits firmly in the agenda of the social sciences (Beck 2006), emancipatory politics (Pieterse, 2006), the United Nations (Taylor 1999), and the European Union (Rumford 2007). Despite being fiercely contested (Beck 2002), a "cosmopolitanism turn" (Delanty 2009, 3) is central to many of the key issues and debates concerning contemporary modernity (Toulmin 1992). Present-day cosmopolitanism is particularly associated with globalization (