111th American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting
November 14-18, 2012
San Francisco, CA
Borders and Crossings

Cosmopolitan Crossings: Class Identities, Global Aspirations, and Moral Sensibilities in China and India

A dozen years into the new millennium, what does it mean to be a cosmopolitan? As noted by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, the term can be traced to the Cynics in fourth century BC who coined the term to simply mean "a citizen of the cosmos." In the eighteenth century, Western Enlightenment thinkers reimagined the ideal cosmopolitan to be a citizen-subject of the world with a shared moral responsibility to a greater humanity. In its latest economic iteration, a cosmopolitan suggests a savvy citizen-consumer with the social capital to traverse through different cultural terrains. And in the work of James Ferguson, cosmopolitanism is a "style" of cultural practices that distances the practitioner from the "local" and the attending claims and expectations in an attempt to seek "worldliness at home." Moreover, it is a "style" performed with intention and significantly shaped by the shifting context of micropolitical economic forces. In this panel, we are focusing on how cosmopolitanism as a "cultural style" becomes a touchstone for emerging class and cultural identities, as well as a register of social fragmentation in China and India. As capitalism in its heterogeneous forms enfolds more societies into worlds of consumption and market rationality, China and India are not only the most prominent sources of labor for the global economy; their emergent middle classes are viewed as the largest and most promising consumer markets in the new millennium. The affinities and divergences in the development trajectories of China and India offer a critical comparative opportunity for the study of urban-rural divisions, class formation, citizenship rights, and cultural production. We seek papers that examine the grounded, translocal practices of Chinese and Indians espousing cosmopolitan values, sensibilities, motives, and aspirations as acts of self-fashioning or collective identification, and belonging or refusal of belonging. Our inquiry approaches cosmopolitans and cosmopolitanisms not as fully determined identities or distinctive sets of practices traceable to a specific point of origin, but as open-ended identifications and a range of social action continually in flux in a complex social field of signification.

Papers can address but need not be limited to the following topics:

* Class relations, social responsibility, and philanthropy
* Urban and rural spaces, politics of access or exclusion, revitalization campaigns
* Labor practices, professionalization, "multicultural" work environments
* "Global" education, cultivation of innovation and talent, and creative industries
* Migration, leisure, and tourism
* Consumerism, status goods, fashion and ornamentation
* Everyday translocal practices

Paper abstracts of 250 words should be submitted by April 6th (extended deadline from April 1st), 2012, to panel co-organizers:

Trang Ta and
Naheed Aaftaab .

Thank you for your interest in the panel.