This book showcases the wide variety of commercial cosmopolitan practices that arose from the global economic entanglements of the early modern period. Cosmopolitanism is not only a philosophical ideal: for many centuries it has also been an everyday practice across the globe. The early modern era saw hitherto unprecedented levels of economic interconnectedness. States, societies, and individuals reacted with a mixture of commercial idealism and commercial anxiety, seeking at once to exploit new opportunities for growth whilst limiting its disruptive effects. In highlighting the range of commercial cosmopolitan practices that grew out of early modern globalisation, the book demonstrates that it provided robust alternatives to the universalising western imperial model of the later period. Deploying a number of interdisciplinary methodologies, the kind of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ that Ulrich Beck has called for, chapters provide agency-centred evaluations of the risks and opportunities inherent in the ambiguous role of the cosmopolitan, who, often playing on and mobilising a number of identities, operated in between and outside of different established legal, social, and cultural systems. The book will be important reading for students and scholars working at the intersection of economic, global, and cultural history.

Henry James and the Media Arts of Modernity: Commercial Cosmopolitanism turns to the author’s late fiction, letters, and essays to investigate his contribution to the development of an American cosmopolitan culture, both in popular and high art. The book contextualizes James’s writing within a broader cultural and social history to uncover relationships among increasingly sensory-focused media technologies, mass-consumer practices, and developments in literary style when they spread to Europe at the inception of the era of big business. Combining cultural studies with neoclassical Marxism and postcolonial theory, the study addresses a gap in scholarship concerning the rise of literary modernism as a cosmopolitan phenomenon. Although scholars have traditionally acknowledged the international character of artists’ participation in this movement, when analyzing the contributions of American expatriate writers in Europe, they generally assume an unequal degree of reciprocity in transatlantic cultural exchange with European artists being more influential than American ones. This book argues that James identifies a cultural form of American imperialism that emerged out of a commercialized version of cosmopolitanism. Yet the author appropriates the arts of modernity when he realizes that art generated with the mechanized principles of mass-production spurred a diverse range of aesthetic responses to other early-twentieth century technological and organizational innovations.

Kant’s omnipresence in contemporary cosmopolitan discourses contrasts with the fact that little is known about the historical origins and the systematic status of his cosmopolitan theory. This study argues that Kant’s cosmopolitanism should be understood as embedded and dynamic. Inspired by Rousseau, Kant developed a form of cosmopolitanism rooted in a modified form of republican patriotism. In contrast to static forms of cosmopolitanism, Kant conceived the tensions between embedded, local attachments and cosmopolitan obligations in dynamic terms. He posited duties to develop a cosmopolitan disposition (Gesinnung), to establish common laws or cosmopolitan institutions, and to found and promote legal, moral, and religious communities which reform themselves in a way that they can pass the test of cosmopolitan universality. This is the cornerstone of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, and the key concept is the vocation (Bestimmung) of the individual as well as of the human species. Since realizing or at least approaching this vocation is a long-term, arduous, and slow process, Kant turns to the pedagogical implications of this cosmopolitan project and spells them out in his later writings. This book uncovers Kant’s hidden theory of cosmopolitan education within the framework of his overall practical philosophy.

Cultural theorist Mica Nava makes an original and significant contribution to the study of cosmopolitanism by exploring everyday English urban cosmopolitanism and foregrounding the gendered, imaginative and empathetic aspects of positive engagement with cultural and racial difference. By looking at a wide range of texts, events and biographical narratives, she traces cosmopolitanism from its marginal status at the beginning of the 20th century to its relative normalisation today. Case studies include the promotion of cosmopolitanism by Selfridges before the first world war; relationships between white English women and 'other' men – Jews and black GIs – during the 1930s and 1940s; literary, cinematic and social science representations of migrants in postcolonial Britain; and Diana and Dodi's interracial romance in the 1990s. In the final chapter, the author draws on her own complex family history to illustrate the contemporary cosmopolitan London experience. Scholars have tended to ignore the oppositional cultures of antiracism and social inclusivity. This ground-breaking study redresses this imbalance and offers a sophisticated account of the uneven history of vernacular cosmopolitanism.

Cosmopolitanism is the idea of humanity as a single community or polis. Beyond particularities, all human beings (and in some versions of cosmopolitanism certain non-humans) are part of a community, and have responsibilities, rights and the power to decide on a common future. Ideas of cosmopolitan vary from the purely moral to cultural, social, legal, institutional, political, educational and economic cosmopolitanism, or combine some or all of these facets. All of these different perspectives try to establish the basis necessary to create a true cosmopolitanism. This book provides an introduction to the ideality and reality of cosmopolitanism, presenting it “in genesis” and giving a point of departure to students and readers of cosmopolitanism from which to analyse its various contemporary versions and proposals, providing an additional tool for their thinking and judgments in the face of a huge amount of literature today. It also offers a sense of emergency to those matters, requiring a prompt legal, political and economic response, for the continuing existence of the planet and for cosmopolitanism to continue as a viable proposal for humanity. As such, this volume will, ultimately, provoke the reader into a new spirit and action, that of cosmopolitanism.

Gender and Cosmopolitanism in Europe combines a feminist critique of contemporary and prominent approaches to cosmopolitanism with an in-depth analysis of historical cosmopolitanism and the manner in which gendered symbolic boundaries of national political communities in two European countries are drawn. Exploring the work of prominent scholars of new cosmopolitanism in Britain and Germany, including Held, Habermas, Beck and Bhabha, it delivers a timely intervention into current debates on globalisation, Europeanisation and social processes of transformation in and beyond specific national societies. A rigorous examination of the emancipatory potential of current debates surrounding cosmopolitanism in Europe, this book will be of interest to sociologist and political scientists working on questions of identity, inclusion, citizenship, globalisation, cosmopolitanism and gender.

Cosmopolitan Justice and its Discontents pursues a reflection upon the institutional orders designed to ensure respect for the rule of law, human rights, and social justice. The majority of literature on cosmopolitanism tends to be oriented in sociology, political science or philosophy, and is largely positive. This book aims to fill the lacuna with respect to critical and legal perspectives in this field. In particular, it highlights the importance of international economic law and its institutions when evaluating the evolution of cosmopolitan norms. In addition, it provides critical and multidisciplinary perspectives on Cosmopolitan Justice and Sovereignty; Institutions, Civil Society and Accountability; and Social Exclusion, Migration, and Global Markets. This book will be of considerable interest to academics and students concerned with international public and private law, international criminal law, international economic law, human rights, migration, criminology, political science, and philosophy.