ABSTRACT
Cosmopolitanism has received renewed attention in the social sciences in recent years as an important component of the heightening of global consciousness, which Roland Robertson emphasised as the significant subjective dimension of globalisation (Robertson 1992). The term is used not only to describe an empirical reality but also to question established disciplinary trends and to point to new methodological orientations. Thus, it denotes both an objectively existing social reality and a methodological approach to describing this reality. Cosmopolitanism is also viewed in its critical potential as embodying a transformative vision of an alternative society. This introductory chapter reflects on some theoretical insights of what has been called the new cosmopolitanism and elaborates on the importance of translation for any consideration of a cosmopolitan social reality or for methodological cosmopolitanism. The first section sketches out the main insights on cosmopolitanism today. The second and third sections elaborate further on the relevance of translation for a productive understanding of cosmopolitanism, exploring translation as the experience of the foreign and relating such an understanding to the notion of cosmopolitanism as openness to others. The final section introduces the question of the stranger as a key aspect to consider in any approach to the cosmopolitan condition of living in translation.
