Community, cosmopolitanism and the problem of human commonality / Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

PART I: Community and disjunction: the creativity and uncertainty of everyday engagement. Community as 'Good to Think With': The Productiveness of Strategic Ambiguities -- Consociation and Communitas: The Ambiguous Charms of the Quotidian -- Disjuncture as 'Good to Think With' -- Mobility and Cosmopolitanism: Frustrated Aspirations towards disjuncture. PART II: Cosmopolitanism: actors, relations and institutions beyond the communitarian. The Space of Cosmopolitanism, and the Cosmopolitan Subject -- Cosmopolitan Living: People of the Air and Global Guests -- Cosmopolitan Learning: Diffusion, Openness and Irony -- Cosmopolitan Planning: Anyone, Society and Community -- Epilogue: Cosmopolitanism and Culture. PART III: Dialogue. Amit Responds to Rapport: When cosmopolitan rights are not enough -- Rapport Responds to Amit: On the analytical need to deconstruct "community."

"Globalisation has dislocated community relations, and yet notions of community remain central to our sense of who we are. This book examines the changing nature of community through an exploration of mobile subjects, such as migrants and business travellers, and the tension between culturally specific notions of identity and a universal sense of humanity. The authors develop a 'cosmopolitan anthropology' which engages with both the specific and the universal. This book offers a new perspective on community through a dialogue between two eminent anthropologists, who come from distinct, but complementary, positions."--Publisher's website.