United in Discontent: Local Responses to Cosmopolitanism and Globalization

Cosmopolitanism is often discussed in a critical and disapproving manner: as a concept complicit with the interests of the powerful, or as a notion related to Western political supremacy, the ills of globalization, inequality, and capitalist economic penetration. Seen as the moral justification for embracing or tolerating cultural difference, ethnically and socially diverse communities unenthusiastic with change, develop an acknowledgement of their common position vis-à-vis a western, “universal” political point of view. By means of exploring the idiosyncratic form of political intimacy generated by anti-cosmopolitanism, and assuming an analytical and critical stance towards the concepts of parochialism and localism, this volume examines the political consciousness of such negatively predisposed actors, and it attempts to explain their reservation towards the sincerity of international politics, their reliance on conspiracy theories or nationalist narratives, their introversion.

Dimitrios Theodossopoulos is a Reader at the University of Kent. His earlier work examined people-wildlife conflicts and indigenous perceptions of the environment. He is currently concerned with nationalism, ethnic stereotypes, and the politics of culture commodification in Central America and Southeast Europe. He is author of Troubles with Turtles: Cultural Understandings of the Environment on a Greek Island (Berghahn, 2003), and When Greeks Think about Turks: The View from Anthropology (Routledge, 2006).

Elisabeth Kirtsoglou is Lecturer in anthropology at the University of Durham and author of For the love of women: gender, identity, and same-sex relationships in a Greek provincial town (Routledge, 2004). She has published on identity, gender, and politics.