Cosmopolitan Borders

Cosmopolitan Borders makes the case for processes of bordering being better understood through the lens of cosmopolitanism. Rather than 'world citizenship' an alternative understanding of cosmopolitanism is offered, emerging from a critique of the idea of 'openness', and founded on a different understanding of the relationship between globalization and cosmopolitanism. The core argument is that borders are 'cosmopolitan workshops' where 'cultural encounters of a cosmopolitan kind' take place and where entrepreneurial cosmopolitans advance new forms of sociality in the face of 'global closure'. The book outlines four cosmopolitan dimensions of borders: vernacularization, multiperspectivalism, fixity/unfixity, and connectivity.

Chris Rumford is Professor of Political Sociology and Global Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is the author of The Globalization of Strangeness, Cricket and Globalization (co-edited with Steve Wagg), Cosmopolitan Spaces and Rethinking Europe (with Gerard Delanty).