ABSTRACT
The intellectual field of cosmopolitanism has developed tremendously over the last fifteen years. There has appeared a plethora of writings on cosmopolitan thought and practice (e.g. Lu 2000; Mignolo 2000; Harvey 2009). These range from formal political and legal theories (Eckersley 2007), to empirically-informed accounts of multiplicitous forms of ‘lived cosmopolitanism’ (Pollock 2002; Nowicka and Rovisco 2009). Although it is a term that was originally strongly associated with European antiquity, cosmopolitanism is now one of the central topics for research, debate and controversy across the social sciences. Having begun as a sense of non-national affiliation – declaring oneself to be a ‘citizen of the world’ rather than of any particular polity – it now encompasses a much wider range of issues, such as the nature of ethics, justice, social responsibility and cultural affiliations, all having to be considered within social conditions of complex globality.
