Cosmopolitan Networks – Networking Cosmopolitans: Between Anyone, the Other and the Making of Sociality

Abstract

ABSTRACT In an increasingly polarised world, crisp labelling, dichotomisation, and the flourishing of nation- and ethnic-based prejudice hinders the finding and construction of spaces for transcending boundaries. By combining cosmopolitanism as forms of relating with networks as a social and cultural practice characteristic of our time, this special issue aims at discerning forms and situations which defy prior categorisation or bridge social boundaries. It brings together eight case studies that provide ethnographically grounded explorations of the articulation of cosmopolitan perspectives with networking practices. The articles cover a variety of ethnographic settings, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Bringing ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘network’ together points to issues that are foundational to the discipline: from the definition of the ‘Other’ and the definition of the anthropological object of analysis, to the definition of the social in different social formations and actions.