American Ethnologist • Volume 30 Number 3 August 2003 If the artist's cosmopolitan negotia- tions are sullied in Beijing, the Hong Kong and Shanghai described by Ack- bar Abbas take them to an extreme. Despite their elusive contrasts, Hong Kong and Shanghai both represent "the city as remake" (p. 220) and, as such, highlight the urgency of seeking a redefinition of cosmopolitanism that would make possible "strategies for negotiating the disequilibria and dislo- cations that globalism has created" (p. 227). Thus, in Walter Mignolo's view, cosmopolitanism has always been "at- tentive to the dangers of global de- signs" (p. 159) consolidated in the West, inclusion and conviviality having long been its hallmarks. But whether it can be an "abstract universal" (p. 180) em- bracing epistemic diversity or, as Mignolo suggests, a conversation rather than a blueprint remains to be seen. Cosmopolitanism has previously had eloquent advocates and commen- tators. However right-minded, their agenda, particularly against globaliza- tion as the latest phase of labor exploi- tation, have bogged down in slogans and rhetoric more often than they have composed a coherent political pro- gram or ethical practice. The writers in the collection under review do best at avoiding this pitfaJl when examining particular cases. In their descriptions there is a tension between an implicit, Utopian idealization of cosmopolitan- ism and its actualization. That hiatus is indicative of cosmopolitanism's politi- cal enmeshment as well as its enmesh- ment in desire. These writers propose a "zero-degree" cosmopolitanism in which diverse modalities of being can be theorized and enacted. But their pro- tean, let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom ap- proach also shows cosmopolitanism representing—or masking—cultural im- perialism, a mere transcending of lo- calism, and even analysts' desire to be connoisseurs of difference and compe- tent in dealing with it. In the face of the nationalist-based "horrendous conflicts in recent his- tory" (p. 3), the specter of terrorism, and the "grotesque caricature of ... Western modernity" (p. 3) that has be- come more exaggerated in non- Western contexts, cosmopolitanism also poses an ethical challenge. The authors give us only an inkling of what principles should inform a cosmopoli- tan ethics. Beyond euphemism and rhetoric, Zhang Dali's story of cosmo- politan negotiation is particularly in- structive. Here, negotiation is a con- joint, dialogic activity that does not so much aim at normalizing difference in reference to values, even the valoriza- tion of diversity, but that is enabled in reference to metavalues, not the least among them agreeing to disagree about how to navigate the encounter. Whatever its interiority to Western ideologies and its collusion with elit- ism or coloniality, cosmopolitanism is extrainstitutional as much as it is trans- national and transcultural. It is an op- positional, necessarily minority posi- tion, an incitement to think differently about difference. As a rhetorical trope of considerable power, it easily be- comes a substitution for self-portrai- ture, a displacement of the critic's so- cial self-description or the oblique maneuvering of those refusing to be entirely described. One wonders if a cosmopolitan practice or a cosmopoli- tan ethics is possible. Perhaps the de- sire for cosmopolitanism, in its spiral- ing sublimations, is haunted by a loss of faith in, yet a desire for, culture as a master trope or organizing metaphor. As these writers demonstrate, cos- mopolitanism has achieved a currency that challenges cultural critics, social theorists, and ethnographers to appro- priate it as a master trope along with— or instead of—globalization, multicul- turalism, and even culture itself. Per- haps cosmopolitanism owes some of its currency to the growing problemat- ics of these other terms. Its candidacy as an organizing metaphor may also derive from its pointedly extracultural or metacultural resonances. As the lapidary discourses of these essayists imply, cosmopolitanism may derive not only from a desire to ground "mu- tuality in conditions of mutability" (p. 4) but also from a desire for a theory and practice of cosmopolitanism yet to be achieved. Unconventional Sisterhood: Feminist Catholic Nuns in the Philippines. Heather L. Claussen. Ann Arbor: Uni- versity of Michigan Press, 2001. ix + 235 pp., notes, references, index. KATHARINE L. WIEGELE Northern Illinois University Unconventional Sisterhood is a rich ethnographic description and analysis of the Missionary Benedictine Nuns in the Philippines and their lives as femi- nists, activists, educators, and spiritu- ally committed sisters. Claussen's field- work was conducted almost exclusively at the Missionary Benedictine priory in Manila, within the campus of St. Scho- lastica's College, which is run by the nuns. Through her observations of daily life within the priory and the col- lege (and on a few excursions with the sisters) and through the narratives of her informants, Claussen gives the reader a vivid sense of both the profun- dity of the Missionary Benedictine life- style in the Filipino context and how these nuns are attempting to reshape Filipino culture and norms. The Missionary Benedictines break as many stereotypes about nuns as they do Filipino gender norms. Simply becoming Missionary Benedictine is a political act. As the reader becomes ac- quainted with the sisters, with the nu- anced processes of deciding to join the Missionary Benedictines, and with the cultural contexts from which these women emerge, it is easy to see why the convent, at least in the Missionary Benedictine order, is "an ideal choice for Filipinas raised on dreams of ad- venture rather than of marriage and maternity" (p. 59). One of the main strengths of Claussen's book is her intimate and detailed de- scriptions of aspects of the sisters' lives, for example, prayer, a "philo- sophically and psychologically compli- cated process" (pp. 131-132). She also explores the nuns' struggles with their vows of obedience, their abilities to fi- nesse their own wills within these vows, and the complex ways nuns who are relatively secure and well-provided for by local standards understand the vow of monastic poverty. Claussen's closeness to the sisters also allows her to show us the ways in which the sisters 458