From climate change, debt, and refugee crises to energy security, environmental disasters, and terrorism, the events that lead nightly newscasts and drive public policy demand a global perspective. In the twentieth century the world sought solutions through formal institutions of international governance such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the World Bank, but present-day responses to global realities are often more provisional, improvisational, and contingent. Tracing this uneven history in order to identify principal actors, contesting ideologies, and competing rhetoric, Negative Cosmopolitanism challenges the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism as the precondition for a perpetual global peace. Uniting literary scholars with researchers working on contemporary problems and those studying related issues of the past – including slavery, industrial capitalism, and corporate imperialism – essays in this volume scrutinize the entanglement of cosmopolitanism within expanding networks of trade and global capital from the eighteenth century to the present. By doing so, the contributors pinpoint the ways in which whole populations have been unwillingly caught up in a capitalist reality that has little in common with the earlier ideals of cosmopolitanism. A model for provoking new and necessary questions about neoliberalism, biopolitics, colonialism, citizenship, and xenophobia, Negative Cosmopolitanism establishes a fresh take on the representation of globalization and modern life in history and literature. Contributors Include Timothy Brennan (University of Minnesota), Juliane Collard (University of British Columbia), Mike Dillon (California State University, Fullerton), Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia), Dina Gusejnova (University of Sheffield), Heather Latimer (University of British Columbia), Pamela McCallum (University of Calgary), Geordie Miller (Dalhousie University), Dennis Mischke (Universität Stuttgart), Peter Nyers (McMaster University), Liam O’Loughlin (Pacific Lutheran University), Crystal Parikh (New York University), Mark Simpson (University of Alberta), Melissa Stephens (Vancouver Island University), and Paul Ugor (Illinois State University).

From climate change, debt, and refugee crises to energy security, environmental disasters, and terrorism, the events that lead nightly newscasts and drive public policy demand a global perspective. In the twentieth century the world sought solutions through formal institutions of international governance such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the World Bank, but present-day responses to global realities are often more provisional, improvisational, and contingent. Tracing this uneven history in order to identify principal actors, contesting ideologies, and competing rhetoric, Negative Cosmopolitanism challenges the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism as the precondition for a perpetual global peace. Uniting literary scholars with researchers working on contemporary problems and those studying related issues of the past – including slavery, industrial capitalism, and corporate imperialism – essays in this volume scrutinize the entanglement of cosmopolitanism within expanding networks of trade and global capital from the eighteenth century to the present. By doing so, the contributors pinpoint the ways in which whole populations have been unwillingly caught up in a capitalist reality that has little in common with the earlier ideals of cosmopolitanism. A model for provoking new and necessary questions about neoliberalism, biopolitics, colonialism, citizenship, and xenophobia, Negative Cosmopolitanism establishes a fresh take on the representation of globalization and modern life in history and literature. Contributors Include Timothy Brennan (University of Minnesota), Juliane Collard (University of British Columbia), Mike Dillon (California State University, Fullerton), Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia), Dina Gusejnova (University of Sheffield), Heather Latimer (University of British Columbia), Pamela McCallum (University of Calgary), Geordie Miller (Dalhousie University), Dennis Mischke (Universität Stuttgart), Peter Nyers (McMaster University), Liam O’Loughlin (Pacific Lutheran University), Crystal Parikh (New York University), Mark Simpson (University of Alberta), Melissa Stephens (Vancouver Island University), and Paul Ugor (Illinois State University).

In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological analysis of the cosmopolitan implications of globalization. Beck draws extensively on empirical and theoretical analyses of such phenomena as migration, war and terror, as well as a range of literary and historical works, to weave a rich discursive web in which analytical, critical and methodological themes intertwine effortlessly. Contrasting a ‘cosmopolitan vision’ or ‘outlook’ sharpened by awareness of the transformative and transgressive impacts of globalization with the ‘national outlook’ neurotically fixated on the familiar reference points of a world of nations-states-borders, sovereignty, exclusive identities-Beck shows how even opponents of globalization and cosmopolitanism are trapped by the logic of reflexive modernization into promoting the very processes they are opposing. A persistent theme running through the book is the attempt to recover an authentically European tradition of cosmopolitan openness to otherness and tolerance of difference. What Europe needs, Beck argues, is the courage to unite forms of life which have grown out of language, skin colour, nationality or religion with awareness that, in a radically insecure world, all are equal and everyone is different.

This work, in assessing cosmopolitanism as a cause, argues that justifications and critiques of the cosmopolitan are shaped as much by political and cultural forces as by the distinctive philosophical tradition in which it is situated.

It historicizes the contemporary discussion of urbanism, highlighting the local and global breadth of the city landscape. This interdisciplinary collection examines how the city develops in the interactions of space and imagination. The essays focus on issues such as street design in Vienna, the motion picture industry in Los Angeles, architecture in Marseilles and Algiers, and the kaleidoscopic paradox of post-apartheid Johannesburg. They explore the nature of spatial politics, examining the disparate worlds of eighteenth-century Baghdad, nineteenth-century Morelia. They also show the meaning of everyday spaces to urban life, illuminating issues such as crime in metropolitan London, youth culture in Dakar, "memory projects" in Tokyo, and Bombay cinema.

Since cosmopolitanism has often been conceived as a tenet of 'Western civilization' that emanates from its Enlightenment-based origins in a humanist age of modernity, Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism: Spheres of Belonging advances a highly innovative gesture by contemplating the implications and relevance of the idea in a so-called non-Western cultural territory. The particularities of the Iranian and Islamic context shed new light on advancements and obstacles to cosmopolitan praxis. The volume provides four principle disciplinary assessments of cosmopolitanism: philosophy, political science, sociology, and cultural studies,including literary criticism. The authors in this collection critically examine topics including the historical encounter between Iranian and Western thinkers and its impact on Iranian political ideals; the tension between maintaining apolitical-theology rooted in metaphysical assumptions and the prerequisite of secularism in cosmopolitan and democratic philosophies. This highly innovative volume will be of interest to scholars and students of Middle Eastern and Iranian Studies, Islamic Studies, Globalization, Political Science and Philosophy.

Main description: Over the past years global justice has established itself as one of the new and most promising frontiers of political theory. Sovereign Justice collects valuable contributions from scholars of both continental and analytic tradition, and aims to investigate into the relationship between global justice and the nation state. It deals with the moral relevance of national boundaries and cosmopolitanism, and takes into account the most influential traditions that shape current approaches to the subject, especially those descending from Rawls and Kant.