ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as an introduction to the volume as a whole and discusses the main theoretical concepts at stake. At present, the notion of cosmopolitanism is most often used as an ideological argument and understood as something that is estranged from (or even opposed to) the local. We argue, however, that cosmopolitanism is, in fact, about the entanglement of the local with the global. The addition of the notion of ‘rootedness’ serves as a useful reminder of this double stemma. The concept might therefore be eminently suited to play a role in current debates on heritage and questions of belonging, characterised as these often still are by the either/or logic of identity politics and culturalist approaches. To illustrate that point, we first discuss rooted cosmopolitanism as a bottom-up methodology for participatory archaeology and indigenous heritage studies. Second, we draw attention to its potential to help us conceptualise Heritage as emergent and constantly ‘in the making.’
