A COSMOPOLITAN ANTHROPOLOGY?

A CONFERENCE

The purpose of this conference is to assess the place of cosmopolitanism within

anthropology, both as an analytical concept and as a political and moral programme.
Cosmopolitanism has long been a part of philosophical and political debate, but in recent
years recognition of its possible applicability has spread: cosmopolitanism has entered
debates on globalisation, transnationalism, diaspora and multiculturalism. Anthropology’s
specialism as a study of social relations in global perspective, a study of the relationship
between individual, cultural tradition, social structure and natural environment, makes it an
appropriate venue for an examination of notions of the ‘cosmopolitan’ and their relevance.
Indeed, insofar as cosmopolitanism (‘cosmos’ vis-à-vis ‘polis’) draws attention to the
inexorable linkage of the local and the global, small-scale and large-scale processes, the
individual life as microcosm of universal human life, and intends a holistic knowledge, it can
be argued that cosmopolitanism and anthropology have a natural affinity. Both are modern
derivatives of Enlightenment thought --both, indeed, were named by Immanuel Kant-- and
both have had universalist pretensions. The conference invites delegates to consider the
extent to which the above affinities should be formally recognised. Should anthropology
admit to a cosmopolitan constitution, or should its loyalty to localised identities in local
environments --social, cultural and natural alike-- lead it to beware new universalist
projects?
***
‘Cosmopolitanism’ has a certain momentum at present, in politics and academia equally.
Anthropology of late has witnessed a flurry of researches, writing and conferring. We have
met depictions of ‘cosmopolitans as against locals’ (Hannerz 1990), ‘pre-modern and
modern cosmopolitans’ (Stade 2006), ‘working-class cosmopolitans’ (Werbner 1999),
Caribbean cosmopolitans (Wardle 2000), Chinese cosmopolitans (Ong 1998), ‘cosmopolitan
patriots’ (Appiah 1998), plural discrepant cosmopolitanisms (Clifford 1998), and
cosmopolitan cityscapes (Rapport 2006). The 2006 ASA conference (Association of Social
Anthropologists of the Commonwealth) took cosmopolitanism as its central theme, as did
the 2007 CASCA conference (Canadian Anthropology Society). A number of edited volumes
have recently been published (Vertovec and Cohen 2000, Robinson 2007, Werbner 2008),
and new research centres opened. Are these significant developments? Does
‘cosmopolitanism’ offer something original, distinct from conceptualisations of
‘multiculturalism’, ‘globalism’, ‘diaspora’, ‘transnationalism’, ‘hybridity’, ‘pluralism’,
‘ecumenism’ or ‘civil society’? ‘Cosmopolitanism’ provides an umbrella for an array of
conceptual, methodological and empirical insights which do not necessarily sit comfortably
together: can these distinct perspectives be explored in dialogue without the creation of
entrenched intellectual camps? The conference to be held in St. Andrews in September
2009 will take stock and deliver a verdict in the form of a collected volume of papers.
The intuition of the conference organizers is that cosmopolitanism does indeed
usefully identify a new anthropological agenda. One does not intend a master-trope or
panacea, but the concept is workable for claiming a particular history of inscribing the
human, and a future project (Hannerz 2006; Rapport 2007a, 2007b). More than this,
cosmopolitanism offers a significant perspective on matters of social policy: on integration
in modern society, on the bearers of human rights, on the balance between community
memberships and tradition on the one hand and the capability of individuals to be singular
authors of their own ongoing identities.
***
The discipline of anthropology, according to historian George Stocking (1992), has been
dialectically torn between the universalism of “anthropos” and the diversitarianism of
“ethnos” throughout its modern history. Do we become human only within culture or does
our humanity (consciousness, creativity, individuality, dignity) transcend cultural
particularities? Are human beings to be regarded as the same only insofar as all inhabit
different cultural worlds, or in spite of their inhabiting such worlds? Cosmopolitanism
encourages an anthropology which Kant might have recognised: which considers ‘the
human’ to be a phenomenon over and above proximal categorizations and identifications
such as nation, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and locale.
A cosmopolitan anthropology might be conceived of as a return to Enlightenment
origins. When Kant first formulated ‘anthropology’ as a modern project --a science of
humankind-- he had in mind the ‘cosmopolitan’ enterprise of linking up of human being in
its everyday diversity (polis) and its global historical commonality (cosmos). Humankind
comprised a complexly emergent singularity which might be better known, whose lot might
be improved, and whose existence was the guarantor of cultural-imaginative diversity.
Ethically, ‘humankind’ embodied an opposition to the ideology of an ancien regime which
insisted on essential differences of nature and of worth between patrician and plebeian,
man and woman, French and German, Christian and Jew: the liberal vision was of an
emerging recognition of the moral and intellectual equivalency of human beings as
individuals. Scientifically, ‘humankind’ embodied a premise and a promise that a knowledge
which transcended the despotism of the merely communitarian, customary,
commonsensical and revelatory was an appropriate goal.
Critics of Kant have pointed to the narrowness of his category of the human, to its
racialised and gendered character. Nevertheless, a Kantian anthropology suggests the
ontological and pragmatic project of defining the human, its capacities and liabilities. Also
the methodological project of finding ways to approach the human in its material
irreducibility: to apprehend individuality and the objectivity of the subjective point of view.
And again, the moral-cum-political project of aiming to secure just global social institutions
that nurture the opportunities for human-individual expression and community-making.
The conference ‘A Cosmopolitan Anthropology?’, to be held at St. Andrews in
September 2009, will be a timely appraisal of currents in academia and politics alike.
Invited speakers will join with members of the St. Andrews Department of Social
Anthropology to examine the viability of ‘cosmopolitan’ notions. ‘Cosmopolitanism is about
reaching out across cultural differences through dialogue, aesthetic enjoyment, and respect;
of living together with difference’ (Werbner 2008:2). But how might that difference be
framed in terms of universal human wholeness that are not decried as ‘European’, ‘liberal’
and ‘elitist’?

References
Appiah, K. A. 1998. ‘Cosmopolitan patriots’, in P. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds), Cosmopolitics,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Clifford, J. 1998. ‘Mixed feelings’, in P. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds), Cosmopolitics,
Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Hannerz, U. 1990. ‘Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture’. Theory, Culture and Society
7(2-3): 237-
51.
---- 2006. Two faces of cosmopolitanism: Culture and Politics, Documentos CIDOB, Serie
‘Dinámicas
interculturales’ Número 7, Barcelona: CIDOB.
Ong, A. 1998. ‘Flexible citizenship among Chinese cosmopolitans’, in P. Cheah and B. Robbins
(eds),
 Cosmopolitics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rapport, N. 2006. ‘Diaspora, cosmopolis, global refuge: Three voices of the supranational
city’, in S.
Coleman and P. Collins (eds), Locating the Field. Oxford: Berghahn.
---- 2007a. ‘An outline for cosmopolitan study, for reclaiming the human through
introspection’. Current
Anthropology 48: 257-83.
---- 2007b. ‘A Cosmopolitan Turn --or Return?” [with R. Stade], Social Anthropology 15(2):
223-35.
Robinson, K. (ed.) 2007 Asian and Pacific Cosmopolitans: Self and Subject in Motion,
Palgrave:
Basingstoke.
Stade, R. 2006. ‘Cosmos and polis: Past and present’, in J. A. Scholte and R. Robertson
(eds.),
Encyclopedia of globalization. London: Routledge.
Stocking, G. 1992. The ethnographer’s magic and other essays in the history of
anthropology. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press.
Vertovec, S. and Cohen, R. (eds) 2000 Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, New York: Oxford
University Press.
Wardle, H. 2000. An ethnography of cosmopolitanism in Kingston, Jamaica. Lampeter:
Mellen.
Werbner, P. 1999. ‘Global Pathways: Working-Class Cosmopolitans and the Creation of
Transnational
Ethnic Worlds’. Social Anthropology 7(1): 17-35.
---- (ed.) 2008 Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism, Oxford: Berg.