ABSTRACT
We began this study by asking some basic questions about the theory and practice of cosmopolitanism as commonly understood today. Cosmopolitanism, like globalization, comes in many voices; it is enormously complex, problematic and multidimensional in character. The dominant cosmopolitan process, currently underway, is hegemonic and homogenous in character. In our social living, and in our attitude to the past, we repeat ritualistically about the need to preserve diversity, as we often do with regard to the rapidly vanishing plant and animal kingdom. The reason for this is the ways we see ourselves succumbing to the powerful economic and political forces that seem to crush the local, and the smaller units out of existence everywhere. In the modern world, as we saw in the Preface and Introduction of this book, such changes come under the name of the global modern. For tracing the roots of a cosmopolitanism that is truly empowering we might return to an earlier era.
