Community, Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Human Commonality

In this follow up to their widely read earlier volume, The Trouble with Community, Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport ask: 'Do notions of community remain central to our sense of who we are, in the dislocating context of globalization, or can we see beyond community closures to a human whole?'

This volume explores the variable nature of contemporary sociality. It focuses on the ethical, organizational and emotional claims and opportunities sought or fashioned for mobilizing and evading social collectivities in a world of mobile subjects. Here is an examination of the tensions and interactions between everyday forms of fluid fellowship, culturally normative claims to identity, and opportunities for realizing a universal humanity.

The book offers a new perspective on human commonality through a dialogue between two eminent anthropologists who come from distinct, but complementary positions.

Vered Amit is Professor of Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. Together with Nigel Rapport, she is the author of The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity (Pluto, 2002) and editor of Claiming Individuality (2006). Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St Andrews. He is author of a number of books including Transcendent Individual (Routledge, 1997).