After The Cosmopolitan

In this book, Michael Keith argues that both racial divisions and intercultural dialogue can only be understood in the context of the urban cities that gave them birth, and considers how race is played out in the worlds most eminent cities.

In this book, Michael Keith argues that both racial divisions and intercultural dialogue can only be understood in the context of the urban cities that gave them birth, and considers how race is played out in the worlds most eminent cities.

Examining the way people imagine and interact in their cities, this book explores the post-cosmopolitan city. The contributors consider the effects of migration, national, and religious revivals (with their new aesthetic sensibilities), the dispositions of marginalized economic actors, and globalized tourism on urban sociality. The case studies here share the situation of having been incorporated in previous political regimes (imperial, colonial, socialist) that one way or another created their own kind of cosmopolitanism, and now these cities are experiencing the aftermath of these regimes while being exposed to new national politics and migratory flows of people. Caroline Humphrey is a Research Director in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She has worked in the USSR/Russia, Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Nepal, and India. Her research interests include socialist and post-socialist society, religion, ritual, economy, history, and the contemporary transformations of cities. Vera Skvirskaja is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Anthropology at Copenhagen University. She has worked in arctic Siberia, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Her recent research interests include urban cosmopolitanism, educational migration in Europe and coexistence in the post-Soviet city.

Natan Sznaider offers a highly original account of Jewish memory and politics before and after the Holocaust. It seeks to recover an aspect of Jewish identity that has been almost completely lost today - namely, that throughout much of their history Jews were both a nation and cosmopolitan, they lived in a constant tension between particularism and universalism. And it is precisely this tension, which Sznaider seeks to capture in his innovative conception of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism', that is increasingly the destiny of all peoples today. The book pays special attention to Jewish intellectuals who played an important role in advancing universal ideas out of their particular identities. The central figure in this respect is Hannah Arendt and her concern to build a better world out of the ashes of the Jewish catastrophe. The book demonstrates how particular Jewish affairs are connected to current concerns about cosmopolitan politics like human rights, genocide, international law and politics. Jewish identity and universalist human rights were born together, developed together and are still fundamentally connected. This book will appeal both to readers interested in Jewish history and memory and to anyone concerned with current debates about citizenship and cosmopolitanism in the modern world.

A Yale sociology professor discusses how everyday people meet the demands of urban living through islands of civility he calls "cosmopolitan canopies" and describes how activities carried out under this canopy can ease racial tensions and promote harmony.

The cosmopolitan political tradition defines people not according to nationality, family, or class but as equally worthy citizens of the world. Martha Nussbaum pursues this “noble but flawed” vision, confronting its inherent tensions over material distribution, differential abilities, and the ideological conflicts inherent to pluralistic societies.

Examining the way people imagine and interact in their cities, this book explores the post-cosmopolitan city. The contributors consider the effects of migration, national, and religious revivals (with their new aesthetic sensibilities), the dispositions of marginalized economic actors, and globalized tourism on urban sociality. The case studies here share the situation of having been incorporated in previous political regimes (imperial, colonial, socialist) that one way or another created their own kind of cosmopolitanism, and now these cities are experiencing the aftermath of these regimes while being exposed to new national politics and migratory flows of people.