This book examines recent debates on the political dynamics of cosmopolitanism, particularly in its connection with European civil society and the public sphere. The aim of the volume is to trace to what extent cosmopolitanism corresponds to «second modernity», with the latter concept referring to the potential for consensus, the creation of multiple political alternatives and the recognition of otherness. The book accordingly explores questions about democratic legitimacy and the formation of social and political institutions and presents empirical research on phenomena such as global violence.
The volume is intended to constitute a cosmopolitan project in itself, comprising contributions from scholars with very diverse approaches. Together, these contributions provide a stimulating analysis of what cosmopolitanism can offer to socially and politically diverse twenty-first-century societies.

Anastasia Marinopoulou is Associate Lecturer at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has taught at Munich University (Geschwister-Scholl Institute for Political Science), the University of Peloponnese and the Open University in Greece. Her research interests focus on epistemology, political theory and philosophy of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is the author of The Concept of the Political in Max Horkheimer and Jürgen Habermas (2008).

Contents: Anastasia Marinopoulou: The Origins of the Second Modernity - Any Political Prospects? ¿ Hauke Brunkhorst: Some Conceptual and Structural Problems of Global Cosmopolitanism ¿ Piet Strydom: Cosmopolitization and the Prospects of a Cosmopolitan Modernity ¿ Max Preglau: Cosmopolitanism and its Enemies: The Return of Nationalism - The Case of Austria ¿ Manos Spyridakis: Cosmopolitan Possibilities and Ethnographic Realities in the Workplace: The Case of Struggling Employees in the Mass Media Sector ¿ Robert Fine: Cosmopolitanism and Antisemitism: Two Faces of Universality ¿ Tracey Skillington: Violence, Memory, Time: Towards a Cosmopolitan Model of Learning from Atrocity ¿ Kevin McSorley: Cosmopolitanism and the Body ¿ Anastasia Marinopoulou: Defining Cosmopolitanism: European Politics of the Twenty-First Century ¿ Jens Greve: Differentiation, Class Formation and Elite-Network Structures in World Society.