Introduction. “We Are the Weavers, We Are the Web”: Cosmopolitan Entanglements in Modern Paganism

Abstract

The development of modern Paganisms has not taken place in a social or political vacuum, and their global proliferation has proceeded alongside such processes as globalization, a postcolonial revaluing of indigenous religions, ubiquitous Internet use, the ever-mounting environmental crisis, increased human mobility, new political configurations and new nationalisms. Increasingly, even individuals and groups that do not embrace a cosmopolitan identity, and that reject cosmopolitanism as a moral ideal, experience a growing sense of living in “one world” and become, to an extent, unwitting—even if unwilling—cosmopolitans. Rountree argues that this is true for modern Pagans, for whom cosmopolitanism and nationalism, the local and global, are inevitably entangled. The chapter introduces the volume’s themes and the contribution each chapter makes.