Appiah and Cosmopolitan “Contamination”

Abstract

The writing of Kwame Anthony Appiah on cosmopolitanism helps me to re-frame the idea of being at home in a global sense. Appiah’s unique emphasis on conversation and contamination sheds light on the possibilities of considering home on a global scale in a practical sense that includes but is not limited to people who own or rent multiple global residences or those who reject these economic roots in order to conceive of themselves as “rootless” and only ever temporarily “at home.” In fact, both groups and others benefit from an exchange of objects, practices, and ideas. I further examine a multi-rooted, ethical, and glocal cosmopolitanism marked by connections, allegiances, and diverse forms of engagement with places rather than a sense of cosmopolitanism as a freedom from connections or allegiances.