Defining cosmopolitan sociability in a transnational age. An introduction

Abstract This special issue features ethnographiesthat examine the trajectories of mobile people within particular places, moments and networks of connection. Critiquing the ready equation of cosmopolitanismwith experiences of mobility, we examine the encounters of pilgrims, migrants, missionaries or members of a diaspora. Defining cosmopolitanismas a simultaneous rootedness and openness to shared human emotions, experiences and aspirations rather than to a tolerance for cultural difference or a universalist morality, the authors explore the degree to which mobility produces cosmopolitansociability.