ABSTRACT
In this chapter my aim is to investigate the arguments for a cosmopolitan turn in the social sciences when researching and writing on race and racialised peoples. When researching the UK’s South Asian diaspora, the embracing of a definition of ‘cosmopolitan’ for this community is critical in challenging categorisations of race and definitions of ‘native’ and ‘non-native’. All of these categorisations rely heavily on cultural definitions within the social and natural sciences that define taxonomies in both the realms of human and non-human species. The philosopher Lorraine Code (2006) has argued for ‘ecological thinking’ in respect of our ethical and social approaches to research with the ‘other’. In particular it is important to acknowledge the historical and ethnocentric nature of the epistemologies we use in social sciences research and research dissemination. Code demonstrates the need for responsible taxonomies. In this chapter I investigate the possibilities for responsible taxonomies within the discourses of ‘native and non-native’ species as well as developing those which are truly against ‘race’ (Gilroy 2004). I examine these possibilities by engaging with Ulrich Beck and Natan Sznaider’s call for a ‘cosmopolitan turn’ (2006) in the social sciences and considering this notion in two pieces of research; one situated in the arboretum landscape in Burnley and the other in a South Asian home. Through these sites I will argue that ‘cosmopolitanism’ as a discourse and definition is an appropriate term for defining the political positioning of diasporic populations living in the UK. This chapter is an investigation into challenging the usual categories within which racialised populations in Britain are framed and thus metaphorically locked into limited possibilities spatially, socially, culturally and academically.
