ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept of rooted cosmopolitanism and the political operations of the adjective “rooted” on the noun “cosmopolitanism”. After (a) some general remarks on these operations and a brief comment on (b) Judith Shklar’s critique of “one’s requiring roots”, I set out from the “why” of having roots to investigate how the adjective “rooted” operates in cosmopolitan theory. “Rooted” qualifies cosmopolitanism and protects it from charges of toxic, imperial hidden agendas as well as toxic, culturally parasitic abstraction. While acknowledging the importance of seeing cosmopolitanism as “rooted”, (c) I critique exaggerated valorisations of it as cultural. These downplay how dependent the normativity of cultural cosmopolitanism is on other aspects (e.g., moral, legal and political) of cosmopolitanism. An anthropological and an archaeological example helps me explain why the synergy and tensions of these many aspects of cosmopolitanism are important. Being only one aspect of cosmopolitanism, cultural “rooted” cosmopolitanism lacks the normative weight that theories of cultural diversity and heritage often attach to it. Its interconnectivity with other aspects of cosmopolitanism becomes more visible when we supplement the cultural perspectival view with what I shall explain as a stereoscopic vision of cosmopolitanism.
