Political Sociologies of the Cultural Encounter

This book offers transdisciplinary scholarship which challenges the agendas of and markers around traditional social scientific fields. It builds on the belief that the study of major issues in the global cultural and political economies benefit from a perspective that rejects the limitations imposed by established boundaries, whether disciplinary, conceptual, symbolic or material. Established and early career academics explore and embrace contemporary political sociology following the 'global' and 'cultural' turns of recent decades. Categories such as state, civil society, family, migration, citizenship and identity are interrogated and sometimes found to be ill-suited to the task of analyzing global complexities. The limits of global theory, the challenges of global citizenship, and the relationship between globalisation and situated and mobile subjects and objects are all referenced in this book. The book will be of interest to scholars of International Relations, Political Science, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, Geography, Area studies and European studies.

Barrie Axford is Professor Emeritus in Politics at Oxford Brookes University, UK, where he is also a member of the Centre for Global Politics Economy and Society (GPES). Alistair Brisbourne is a Research Manager at accountancy and business advisory firm BDO LLP, UK. Claudia Lueders is a Teaching Fellow in Politics at Oxford Brookes University, UK. Sandra Halperin is a Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.

Introduction: The Importance of the 'Cultural Encounter' Part I: Encounters Beyond Borders 1. What is a Border Comrade? 2. Seeing from the Border with Chris Rumford: Towards Cosmopolitan Borders and a Multiperspectival Border Studies 3. Politics of Space, Strangeness and Culture in the Global Age Part II: Everyday Encounters and Strangeness 4. The Complex Trajectories of the Commoner: Cosmopolitanism, Localisation and Nationalism 5. Artistic Encounters with Difference, Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism and the Political Imagination 6. The Story of the Ship-in-a-bottle: Encountering Strangeness and Familiarity through a Globalised Object 7. Don't Look Back in Anger: A reflection on strangeness and borders in academia Part III: Global Studies and Interdisciplinarity 8. Europe in Crises: Europe's Others and Other Europes from a Global Perspective 9. Globalization: Interactive and Integral 10. Cosmopolitan Borders, Strangeness, and Inter-Cultural Encounters 11. Religion and Globalising Processes: An Investigation into the Relationship between Religious Practices and Institutions and the Complex Historical Forms of Global Social Change 12. Challenges of Globalization and the Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Implications of the Anthropocene