ABSTRACT
The exponential growth in the number of humanitarian international non-governmental organizations is 'often celebrated as an indication of growing cosmopolitanism and conscience'. This chapter outlines some of the controversies that beset the attempt to set modern humanitarianism with adequate frames of sociological and historical understanding. It reviews how these relate to contemporary debates over the values associated with 'cosmopolitanism', and how in turn, these might inform further projects of theoretical thinking and empirical research. The chapter discusses that the controversies stoked by critical assessments of the moral state and political condition of humanitarianism fuel ongoing debates over how cosmopolitanism should be culturally represented and evaluated. It argues that the moral and political controversies raised in response to humanitarian thought and practice hold the potential to operate as a spur to a critical cosmopolitanism that seeks to be reflexively alert to its social and historical contingencies.
