Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular Perspectives

Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism inaugurates a new, situated, cosmopolitan anthropology. Its ethnographic and theoretical subject is the rise of postcolonial movements responsive to global rights movements, which espouse a politics of dignity, cultural difference, democracy, dissent and tolerance. The book starts from the premise that cosmopolitan is not, and never has been, a " western," elitist ideal exclusively. The book's major innovation is to show the way cosmopolitans beyond the North--in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Malaysia, India, Africa, the Middle East and Mexico--juggle universalist commitments with roots in local cultural milieus and particular communities. Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism breaks new ground in theorizing the role of social anthropology as a discipline that engages with the moral, economic, legal and political transformations and dislocations of a globalizing world. It introduces the reader to key debates surrounding cosmopolitanism in the social sciences, and is written clearly and accessibly for undergraduates in anthropology and related subjects.

Pnina Werbner is a professor of Social Anthropology at Keele University.

Chapter 1. Introduction: Towards a New Cosmopolitan Anthropology, Pnina WerbnerSection 1: Anthropology as a Cosmopolitan DisciplineChapter 2. The Founding Moment: Sixty Years Ago, Elizabeth ColsonChapter 3. The Cosmopolitan Encounter: Social Anthropology and the Kindness of Strangers, Pnina WerbnerChapter 4. Central European Cocktails: Malinowski and Gellner vis-á-vis Herderian Cosmopolitanism, Chris HannSection 2: Feminist and Non-Violent Cosmopolitan MovementsChapter 5. Gender, Rights and Cosmopolitanisms, Maila StivensChapter 6. Islamic Cosmopolitics, human rights and anti-violence strategies Indonesia, Kathryn RobinsonChapter 7. 'A New Consciousness Must Come': Affectivity and Movement in Tamil Dalit Women's Activist Engagement with Cosmopolitan Modernity, Kalpana RamSection 3: Rooted Cosmopolitan, Public CosmopolitansChapter 8. A Native Anthropologist in Palestinian Israeli Cosmopolitanism, Aref Abu RabiaChapter 9. Reaching the Cosmopolitan Subject: Patriotism, Ethnicity and the Public Good in Botswana, Richard WerbnerChapter 10. Paradoxes of the Cosmopolitan in Melanesia, Eric HirschChapter 11. Cosmopolitics, Neoliberalism, and the State: The Indigenous Rights Movement in Africa, Dorothy HodgsonSection 4: Vernacular Cosmopolitans, Cosmopolitan NationsChapter 12. Cosmopolitan Nations, National Cosmopolitans, Richard FardonChapter 13. Other Cosmopolitans in the Making of the Modern Malay World, Joel S. KahnChapter 14. On Cosmopolitan and (Vernacular) Democratic Creativity, or: There Never Was a West, David GraeberSection 5: Demotic and Working Class CosmopolitanismsChapter 15. Xenophobia and Xenophilia in South Africa, Owen SichoneChapter 16. Cosmopolitan Values in a Central Indian Steel Town, Jonathan ParryChapter 17. Cosmopolitanism, Globalisation and Diaspora, Stuart Hall in Conversation with Pnina Werbner