[Published in Fardon, R. (ed.) 2012, The Sage Handbook of Social Anthropology, London: Sage, pp. 523-37] THE COSMOPOLITAN WORLD Nigel Rapport Introduction Cosmopolitanism is a very old concept. It has, however, again found favour, in recent decades, as a means to describe and to analyse aspects of the human condition, especially as these pertain to relations between societies and their constituent units, and relations between levels or ranges of human society, from local to global. Cosmopolitanism compasses, too, a normative vision of society: it is a political and moral programme, offering an alternative to multiculturalism, for instance, in a conceptualisation of identity, social integration, rights and justice focussed upon the individual citizen. As Richard Werbner (2008:194) phrases it, cosmopolitanism encourages a ‘thinking of the unthinkable’, a global humanity without frontiers. This chapter provides an introduction to the ways in which cosmopolitanism makes anthropological sense of the human condition, in particular entering into debates on globalisation, diaspora, transnationalism, transculturation, hybridity and ecumenism. First, however, it is important to acquire an overview of the concept’s history. 1