Towards a Cosmopolitan Anthropology of Anyone: A Response to Brigitte Lewis

Abstract

In response to a critique of ‘cosmopolitanism’ and what it might offer ‘anthropology’, this article sets out to formulate a relation between the two that encompasses an ambitious programme of both knowledge and justice. A cosmopolitan anthropology would look beyond cultural difference to common civilisation, beyond local traditions to truth, and beyond conventions of personhood to a universal individuality. To know the human, to find ways justly to represent the human and to secure the human in moral social arrangements, is necessarily to come to terms with the individuality of life and identity.