Table Of ContentAdam Webb brilliantly explores an alternative path to globalization with dashing
originality and stunning erudition. Webb defends a cosmopolitanism that is at
once rooted and diverse, culturally rich and historically sensitive. His vision of a
‘deep cosmopolis’ draws at once on the virtues of ‘local knowledge’ and the uni-
versalist impulse that is embedded within all human cultures, yet resists the
homogenized and flattened form of globalization encouraged by an elite class
dismissive of local diversity and impatient with the rich complexity of
civilizations.
Patrick Deneen, University of Notre Dame, USA
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Deep Cosmopolis
Too often, observers of globalisation take for granted that the common ground
across cultures is a thin layer of consumerism and perhaps human rights. If so,
then anything deeper and more traditional would be placebound and probably
destined for the dustbin of history. But must this be so? Must we assume—as
both liberals and traditionalists now tend to do—that one cannot be a cosmopoli-
tan and take traditions seriously at the same time? This book offers a radically
different argument about how traditions and global citizenship can meet, and
suggests some important lessons for the contours of globalisation in our own
time.
Adam K. Webb argues that if we look back before modernity, we find a very
different line of thinking about what it means to take the whole world as one’s
horizon. Digging into some fascinating currents of thought and practice in the
ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period, across all major
civilisations, Webb is able to reveal patterns of ‘deep cosmopolitanism’, with its
logic quite unlike that of liberal globalisation today. In their more cosmopolitan
moments, everyone from clerics to pilgrims to empire-b uilders was inclined to
look for deep ethical parallels—points of contact—among civilisations and tra-
ditions. Once modernity swept aside the old civilisations, however, that promise
was largely forgotten. We now have an impoverished view of what it means to
embrace a tradition and even what kinds of conversations across traditions are
possible. Webb draws out the lessons of deep cosmopolitanism for our own time.
If revived, it has something to say about phenomena from the rise of new non-
Western powers such as China and India and what they offer the world, to reli-
gious tolerance, to global civil society, to cross-b order migration.
Deep Cosmopolis traces an alternative strand of cosmopolitan thinking that
cuts across centuries and civilisations. It advances a new perspective on world
history, and a distinctive vision of globalisation for this century which has the
real potential to resonate with us all.
Adam K. Webb is Resident Professor of Political Science at the Hopkins-Nanjing
Centre, which is one of the two overseas branches of the Johns Hopkins University
School of Advanced International Studies.
Routledge Innovations in Political Theory
1 A Radical Green Political Theory 10 Ethics and Politics in
Alan Carter Contemporary Theory
Between critical theory and
2 Rational Woman post- Marxism
A feminist critique of dualism Mark Devenney
Raia Prokhovnik
11 Citizenship and Identity
3 Rethinking State Theory
Towards a new republic
Mark J. Smith
John Schwarzmantel
4 Gramsci and Contemporary
12 Multiculturalism, Identity and
Politics
Rights
Beyond pessimism of the intellect
Edited by Bruce Haddock and
Anne Showstack Sassoon
Peter Sutch
5 Post- Ecologist Politics
Social theory and the abdication of 13 Political Theory of Global
the ecologist paradigm Justice
Ingolfur Blühdorn A cosmopolitan case for the
world state
6 Ecological Relations Luis Cabrera
Susan Board
14 Democracy, Nationalism and
7 The Political Theory of Global
Multiculturalism
Citizenship
Edited by Ramón Maiz and
April Carter
Ferrán Requejo
8 Democracy and National
15 Political Reconciliation
Pluralism
Andrew Schaap
Edited by Ferran Requejo
9 Civil Society and Democratic 16 National Cultural Autonomy
Theory and its Contemporary
Alternative voices Critics
Gideon Baker Edited by Ephraim Nimni
17 Power and Politics in 26 Logics of Critical Explanation in
Poststructuralist Thought Social and Political Theory
New theories of the political Jason Glynos and David Howarth
Saul Newman
27 Political Constructivism
18 Capabilities Equality Peri Roberts
Basic issues and problems
Edited by Alexander Kaufman 28 The New Politics of Masculinity
Men, power and resistance
Fidelma Ashe
19 Morality and Nationalism
Catherine Frost
29 Citizens and the State
Attitudes in Western Europe and
20 Principles and Political Order East and Southeast Asia
The challenge of diversity Takashi Inoguchi and
Edited by Bruce Haddock, Jean Blondel
Peri Roberts and Peter Sutch
30 Political Language and
21 European Integration and the Metaphor
Nationalities Question Interpreting and changing the world
Edited by John McGarry and Edited by Terrell Carver and
Michael Keating Jernej Pikalo
22 Deliberation, Social Choice and 31 Political Pluralism and the State
Absolutist Democracy Beyond sovereignty
David van Mill Marcel Wissenburg
32 Political Evil in a Global Age
23 Sexual Justice/Cultural Justice
Hannah Arendt and international
Critical perspectives in political
theory
theory and practice
Patrick Hayden
Edited by Barbara Arneil,
Monique Deveaux, Rita Dhamoon
33 Gramsci and Global Politics
and Avigail Eisenberg
Hegemony and resistance
Mark McNally and
24 The International Political John Schwarzmantel
Thought of Carl Schmitt
Terror, liberal war and the crisis 34 Democracy and Pluralism
of global order The political thought of
Edited by Louiza Odysseos and William E. Connolly
Fabio Petito Edited by Alan Finlayson
25 In Defense of Human Rights 35 Multiculturalism and Moral
A non- religious grounding in a Conflict
pluralistic world Edited by Maria Dimova- Cookson
Ari Kohen and Peter Stirk
36 John Stuart Mill – Thought and 45 Tensions of Modernity
Influence Las Casas and his legacy in the
The saint of rationalism French Enlightenment
Edited by Georgios Varouxakis Daniel R. Brunstetter
and Paul Kelly
46 Honor
37 Rethinking Gramsci A phenomenology
Edited by Marcus E. Green Robert L. Oprisko
47 Critical Theory and Democracy
38 Autonomy and Identity
Essays in honour of Andrew Arato
The politics of who we are
Edited by Enrique Peruzzotti and
Ros Hague
Martín Plot
39 Dialectics and Contemporary 48 Sophocles and the Politics of
Politics Tragedy
Critique and transformation from Cities and transcendence
Hegel through post- Marxism Jonathan N. Badger
John Grant
49 Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of
40 Liberal Democracy as the End Freedom
of History ‘Two concepts of liberty’ 50 years
Fukuyama and postmodern later
challenges Edited by Bruce Baum and
Chris Hughes Robert Nichols
41 Deleuze and World Politics 50 Popular Sovereignty in the West
Alter- globalizations and nomad Polities, contention, and ideas
science Geneviève Nootens
Peter Lenco
51 Pliny’s Defense of Empire
Thomas R. Laehn
42 Utopian Politics
Citizenship and practice
52 Class, States and International
Rhiannon Firth
Relations
A critical appraisal of Robert Cox
43 Kant and International
and neo- Gramscian theory
Relations Theory
Adrian Budd
Cosmopolitan community
building 53 Civil Disobedience and
Dora Ion Deliberative Democracy
William Smith
44 Ethnic Diversity and the Nation
State 54 Untangling Heroism
National cultural autonomy Classical philosophy and the
revisited concept of the hero
David J. Smith and John Hiden Ari Kohen
55 Rethinking the Politics of 59 Time, Memory, and the Politics
Absurdity of Contingency
Albert Camus, postmodernity, and Smita A. Rahman
the survival of innocence
Matthew H. Bowker 60 Michael A. Weinstein
Action, contemplation, vitalism
56 Kantian Theory and Human Edited by Robert L. Oprisko and
Rights Diane Rubenstein
Edited by Reidar Maliks and
Andreas Follesdal 61 Deep Cosmopolis
Rethinking World Politics and
57 The Political Philosophy of Globalisation
Judith Butler Adam K. Webb
Birgit Schippers
58 Hegel and the Metaphysical
Frontiers of Political Theory
Eric Lee Goodfield
Missionary encounters in late Ming China. Matteo Ricci and Paul Xu Guangqi. From La
Chine d’Athanase Kirchère de la Compagnie de Jesus, illustrée de plusieurs monuments
tant sacrés que profanes (Amsterdam, 1670).
Deep Cosmopolis
Rethinking World Politics and Globalisation
Adam K. Webb
