Cosmopolitan Asia Littoral Epistemologies of the Global South

One key concept in the large body of scholarship concerned with theorizing social relations is the idea of 'cosmopolitanism'. This book unpacks the idea of cosmopolitanism through the linked knowledges of the Global South. It brings into dialogue an inter-disciplinary team of local and transnational scholars who examine various temporal, cultural, spatial and political contexts in countries as different, yet connected, as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. The book also considers a wide range of subjects – present and historical, real, as represented in literature and in theatre, and as theorized in philosophy – across these diverse contexts, but always focusing on regions and places where inter-Asian intermingling has taken place. The conclusions arrived at are varied and considerably enrich social theorizing. The book reveals a cosmopolitanism that is much more specifically Asian than the cosmopolitanism usually associated with the West, demonstrates how concepts of 'nation', 'local' and 'globalization' play out in practice in Asian settings, and re-examines concepts such as migration, diaspora, and the construction of identities. The book has much to offer scholars engaged in history, literary studies, anthropology and cultural studies.

Introduction Sharmani Patricia Gabriel and Fernando Rosa 1. Migration, transnationalism, and modernity: Thinking of Kerala’s many Cosmopolitanisms J. Devika 2. ‘Beyond the limits of nation and geography’: Rabindranath Tagore and the cosmopolitan moment, 1916–1920 Mark R. Frost 3. Tamils and Greater India: Some issues of connected histories Lakshmi Subramanian 4. Creole Hadramis in the Malay world in the 1800s: Fragments of biographies and connected historiesSumit K. Mandal 5. Malang cosmopolitanisms of the 1960sMelani Budianta 6. Crossing the Indian Ocean and wading through the littoral: Cosmopolitan visions in Amitav Ghosh’s ‘antique land’ and ‘tide country’ Meg Samuelson 7. Contesting imagined communities: Politics of script and Tai cosmopolitanism in upland VietnamYukti Mukdawijitra 8. Bayam, the cosmopolitan: Postcolonial ecologies of the amaranth Christopher Lloyd De Shield 9. Cultural Cosmopolitanisms in the Malaysian TheatreSusan Philip 10. Cosmopolitanism without empire? Tense and tender ties in Don Lee’s Country of OriginChih-ming Wang Conclusion

Sharmani Patricia Gabriel is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Malaya, Malaysia. Fernando Rosais a researcher in the Department of English at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.