University of Leeds
Cosmopolitanism - Appiah and Calhoun
Introduction
Cosmopolitanism has been in the heart of the research agenda of the social sciences
to study the social beyond the national. It has also been used for marketing and branding
strategy in cities nowadays. For example, the Action Plan of Manchester’s Cultural Strategy
mentions that one of the expected outcomes of the city plan of cultural strategy is to
strengthen its position to be known as a cosmopolitan city. This ideology of citizen of the
world – all human belong to a single community based on shared morality – is often used to
refer to some kind of identity which distinguishes ‘cosmopolitans’ from ‘nationals’ and
‘locals’. On the other hand, cosmopolitanism believes in global society which consists of
different groups of people in the form of local societies and communities as well as national
states.
Kwame Anthony Appiah and Craig Calhoun explore Cosmopolitanism in two different
ways. In his book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in A World of Strangers, Appiah (2006) gives an
understanding of Cosmopolitanism from moral and cultural strands. Meanwhile Calhoun
(2007), in his latest book Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream,
explains the importance of nationalism in pursuing cosmopolitan dream. This essay is to
review both books individually, to compare them together, and to reflect it to the study case
of Manchester.
Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers
The book seems to be the further level of his previous writings The Ethics of Identity
(2005) and Cosmopolitan Patriots (1998). It is often found in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a
World of Strangers some ideas which are based on the deeper thinking evident in these two
writings. In this book, Appiah’s main points are that in cosmopolitanism everybody matters
and cosmopolitanism starts with what is human in humanity. He introduces two ideas that
intertwine in the notion of cosmopolitanism....