Militant Cosmopolitics

Maps the radical cosmopolitan dimension of global protests and social movements from the last decades This book explores cosmopolitanism's radical dynamic as expressed in the struggles from below, all over the world, against exclusion and domination, pointing to the horizon of another world that appears possible. It shows that cosmopolitanism emerges negatively through disaffiliation from the given forms of belonging and by questioning the existing meanings and unjust practices. Through a radical critique, cosmopolitanism goes to the roots of the existing world order based on the nation-state, exposes its exclusionary structure, and brings instead the idea of a World Republic where No One Is Illegal and where all are equal citizens of the world. Caraus captures this radical dynamic in a cluster of novel concepts, such as 'cosmopolitanism of dissent', 'post-foundational cosmopolitanism', 'cosmopolitan ontology', 'institution of critique', 'radical cosmopolitical love', all integrated into an approach of a militant and radical cosmopolitics that reclaims the legacy of the first cosmopolitan stance of the Ancient Cynics. Tamara Caraus is Researcher at the Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon

Cosmopolitics, the concept of a world politics based on shared democratic values, is in an increasingly fragile state. While Western democracies insist ever more vehemently upon a maintenance of their privileges-freedom of speech, security, wealth-an increasing number of the world's inhabitants are under threat of poverty, famine and war. What is needed, the writers suggest, is a deliberate decision to extend the principles and values of democracy to the sphere of international relations. Recent experience does not bode well, but their arguments, which range from reform of the United Nations, reduction of military weapons, additional power for international judiciary institutions and an increase in aid to developing countries, urge new and inspired action.

While supporting the cosmopolitan pursuit of a world that respects all rights and interests, James D. Ingram believes political theorists have, in their approach to this project, compromised its egalitarian and emancipatory principles. Focusing on recent debates without losing sight of cosmopolitanism's ancient and Enlightenment roots, Ingram confronts the philosophical difficulties of defending universal ideals and the implications for ethics and political theory. In morality as in politics, theorists have generally focused first on discovering universal values and second on their implementation. Ingram argues that only by prioritizing the development and articulation of universal values through political action in the fight for freedom and equality can theorists do justice to these efforts and cosmopolitanism's universal vocation. Only by proceeding from the local to the global, from the bottom up rather than from the top down, on the basis of political practice rather than moral ideals, can we salvage moral and political universalism. In this book, Ingram provides the clearest, most systematic account yet of this schematic reversal and its radical possibilities.

For two decades Bruce Robbins has been a theorist of and participant in the movement for a "new cosmopolitanism," an appreciation of the varieties of multiple belonging that emerge as peoples and cultures interact. In Perpetual War he takes stock of this movement, rethinking his own commitment and reflecting on the responsibilities of American intellectuals today. In this era of seemingly endless U.S. warfare, Robbins contends that the declining economic and political hegemony of the United States will tempt it into blaming other nations for its problems and lashing out against them. Under these conditions, cosmopolitanism in the traditional sense—primary loyalty to the good of humanity as a whole, even if it conflicts with loyalty to the interests of one's own nation—becomes a necessary resource in the struggle against military aggression. To what extent does the "new" cosmopolitanism also include or support this "old" cosmopolitanism? In an attempt to answer this question, Robbins engages with such thinkers as Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Anthony Appiah, Immanuel Wallerstein, Louis Menand, W. G. Sebald, and Slavoj Zizek. The paradoxes of detachment and belonging they embody, he argues, can help define the tasks of American intellectuals in an era when the first duty of the cosmopolitan is to resist the military aggression perpetrated by his or her own country.

Cosmopolitanism and Place considers the way contemporary Anglophone fiction connects global identities with the experience in local places. Looking at fiction set in metropolises, regional cities, and rural communities, this book argues that the everyday experience of these places produces forms of wide connections that emphasize social justice.

Information Cosmopolitics explores interaction between nationalist and information sharing practices in academic communities with a view to understanding the potential impacts of these interactions. This book is also a resounding critique of existing theories and methods as well as the launching point for the proposition of an alternate approach. Dominant approaches in the Information Behaviour (IB) field are investigated, as well as questions existing theoretical approaches to nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The concept of information cosmopolitics is introduced as an approach for tracing information practices and enabling research participants to perform their own narratives and positionings, and that the focus of information studies should be on tracing the continuous circulation of processes of individualisation and collectivization. Provide an alternative to the dominant approaches in the field of Information Behaviour Offers a novel theoretical model to trace information practices Questions existing approaches to nationalism and cosmopolitanism

In 1795 Immanuel Kant proclaimed that humans had entered into a 'universal community'. Since then, connections have grown ever more pronounced, with the notion of 'cosmopolitics' defining the modern age. This interdisciplinary volume makes a timely contribution to debates on international law, global ecology and economy and transnational synergies.

This book is a collection of contributions by leading scholars on theoretical and contemporary problems of militant democracy. The term 'militant democracy' was first coined in 1937. In a militant democracy preventive measures are aimed, at least in practice, at restricting people who would openly contest and challenge democratic institutions and fundamental preconditions of democracy like secularism - even though such persons act within the existing limits of, and rely on the rights offered by, democracy. In the shadow of the current wars on terrorism, which can also involve rights restrictions, the overlapping though distinct problem of militant democracy seems to be lost, notwithstanding its importance for emerging and established democracies. This volume will be of particular significance outside the German-speaking world, since the bulk of the relevant literature on militant democracy is in the German language. The book is of interest to academics in the field of law, political studies and constitutionalism.

This volume discusses how commonality and difference are negotiated across heterogeneous social movements in Latin America, especially Peru. It applies cosmopolitics as an analytical lens to understand the intricacies of social movement encounters across difference, without imposing colonial hierarchies or categorizations. The author blends multiple theoretical approaches—such as social movement research, postcolonial feminism, and post-foundational discourse theory—with ethnographic insights to develop a theory of cosmopolitical solidarity. Providing a transnational and intersectional perspective on the politics of social justice in a postcolonial context, this book will appeal to students of social movements, gender studies, racism, Latin American studies, and international relations, as well as practitioners involved in activism, social work, or international cooperation.

Invoking the notion of ‘cosmopolitics’ from Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers, this volume shows how and why cities constitute privileged sites for studying the search for and composition of common worlds of cohabitation. A cosmopolitical approach to the city focuses on the multiple assemblages of human and nonhuman actors that constitute urban common worlds, and on the conflicts and compromises that arise among different ways of assembling the city. It brings into view how urban worlds are always in the process of being subtly transformed, destabilized, decentred, questioned, criticized, or even destroyed. As such, it opens up novel questions as to the gradual and contested composition of urban life, thereby forcing us to pay more explicit attention to the politics of urban assemblages. Focusing on changing sanitation infrastructures and practices, emerging forms of urban activism, processes of economic restructuring, transformations of the built environment, changing politics of expert-based urban planning, as well as novel practices for navigating the urban everyday, the contributions gathered in this volume explore different conceptual and empirical configurations of urban cosmopolitics: agencements, assemblies, atmospheres. Taken together, the volume thus aims at introducing and specifying a novel research program for rethinking urban studies and politics, in ways that remain sensitive to the multiple agencies, materialities, concerns and publics that constitute any urban situation.