ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three questions: What is a 'cosmopolitan society'? Who are its enemies? It starts with a methodological question: What is a cosmopolitan sociology? For the social sciences, globalization raises fundamental questions of redefinition, reinvention and reorganization. Sociologists have written textbooks and conducted research on the class structure of Britain, France, and the United States, Germany. Cosmopolitanism is a broad, ancient, rich and controversial set of politicai ideas, philosophies and ideologies. As is often the case in history, cosmopolitization is being experienced and reflected upon as crisis - crisis of cosmos, crisis of polis and globalphonia. Post-modernists, system theorists and neo-liberalists disagree about almost everything. But the one point on which they converge is that they ali dismiss politics as a subject of serious inquiry. The combination of post-modern ethnic temptations and new democratic authoritarianism adds up to a severe attack on liberty.
