Back to Basics: Cosmopolitanism?

Abstract

In this chapter we outline the basic assumptions and concepts structuring the book, clarifying that cosmopolitanism for us is necessarily a local construct, making sense of circulating narratives at other scales, linking with larger networks, and reinterpreting self, past, present and future in a manner that allows for a persuasive narrative of pre-figuration or eminent representation of what will be eminent globally. We emphasize that our theory has to address narratives and networks in multi-level governance, that it has to understand that only what can be interpreted, coordinated, acted upon locally can materialize, and that the theory has to discern the various functions of cosmopolitan narratives in a community.