Cosmopolitanism and the Legacies of Dissent (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)

The core idea shared by all cosmopolitan views is that all human beings belong to a single community and the ultimate units of moral concern are individual human beings, not states or particular forms of human associations. Nevertheless, the attempts to ground a political theory on overarching universal principles is in contradiction with the plurality of social, cultural, political, religious interpretative standpoints in the contemporary world. Is dissent cosmopolitan? Is there a legacy of dissent for a theory of cosmopolitanism?

This book is a comparative, historical analysis of dissident thought and practice for contemporary debates on cosmopolitanism. Divided into two parts, the editors and contributors explore the contribution of ‘paradigmatic’ dissidents like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Havel, Sakharov, Mandela, Liu Xiaobo, Aung San Suu Kyi towards a post-universalist cosmopolitan theory. Part Two examines the inherent cosmopolitanism of the seemingly ‘peripheral’ dissent of contemporary forms of protests, resistance, direct action like NO TAV movement and Occupy Wall Street.

A timely book which allows for a much needed new engagement in contemporary debates of cosmopolitanism, we learn how practical resistance to totalizing/hegemonic claims is generated, and how dissident thinking might contribute to new, enriched ways of conceiving the non-totalizing foundations of cosmopolitanism. An innovative look at what lessons can scholars of cosmopolitanism learn from dissent/dissident movements, and what the role of dissent in cosmopolitan democracy could be.

Tamara Caraus is a researcher, at the New Europe College in Bucharest, Romania. Her current area of research is in cosmopolitanism, radical political theory, agonistic democracy, dissidence/civil disobedience, global resistance. Tamara Caraus has undertaken several research projects in political philosophy at Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, Austria; University of Uppsala, Sweden; University of Groningen, The Netherland; Oxford University, UK; University College London, UK; Palacky University of Olomouc, Czech Republic and others.

Camil Alexandru Parvu is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the "Fundamenta Politica" Research Centre at the University of Bucharest. His current research focuses on two directions: the critical foundations of cosmopolitanism and the contemporary articulations of radical democracy and populism. His current publications monitor the renewal of democratic thought and questions about the nature of populism and political movements such as Occupy Wall Street.