Mobility and cosmopolitanism: complicating the interaction between aspiration and practice

Abstract

Within the interdisciplinary literature on cosmopolitanism, one particularly important distinction stands out as a recurring motif. Specifically, scholars have been concerned to distinguish between cosmopolitanism as a set of mundane practices and/or competences on the one hand and cosmopolitanism as a cultivated form of consciousness or moral aspiration on the other. For anthropologists, this distinction between aspiration and practice is often rendered ambiguous across the diverse expressions of cosmopolitanism that they encounter ‘on the ground’. This special issue therefore brings together five contributions from anthropologists who are reporting on encounters and aspirations that reveal different forms of spatial mobility, scales of commitment or risk, and are often transient, ambivalent and precarious. These are circumstances in which cosmopolitanism emerges as uneven and partial rather than as a comprehensive or unequivocal transformation of practice and outlook.

Keywords:

• cosmopolitanism
• practice
• aspiration
• commitment
• mobility
• fragility

Acknowledgements

This special journal issue arises out of two conference panels convened by Vered Amit and Pauline Gardiner Barber, respectively, at the 2010 Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) meetings and the 2011 American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings. We would like to thank all of the panelists in these sessions for their contributions and the discussants, Sharon Roseman, Christine Jourdan and Ulf Hannerz, for their thoughtful comments and helpful suggestions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vered Amit

VERED AMIT is Professor of Anthropology at Concordia University.

Pauline Gardiner Barber

PAULINE GARDINER BARBER is Professor of Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University.