Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism is an intriguing book whose drive is to invite readers to take a step back from “the noise” of the world and view it in a light that encompasses the similarities and differences of the people that live in it. Through this view, we come to understand that with the bit of help from the globalization phenomenon, the world is made up of communities within communities, within communities, within a community. Appiah states that, cosmopolitanism “begins with the simple idea that in the human community, as in national communities, we need to develop habits of coexistence: conversation in its older meaning, of living together, association” (Appiah 2006, xix). In the introduction he cites the history of cosmopolitanism,
He gives examples of professional relativism where ethnographers and anthropologists who travel to foreign places to immerse themselves into a new culture and once doing so, return with an appreciation of the similarities and differences his/her culture shares with the people of which they have traveled to. In his examples, he does a good job of pointing out the issue of relativism where it concerns cultural differences. Female circumcision or female genital cutting is one issue different societies have different opinions on. Appiah points out that from the perspective of one society, female circumcision is seen as harmful to girls and women and also an abuse of their bodily rights, “a disgusting mutilation that deprives women of the full pleasures of sexual experience” (Appiah 2006, 15). On the other hand, women in another society will view the act as a means to expressing themselves, enhancing pleasure, and a rite of passage. Why shouldn’t it be this way if Western society readily accepts the act of tattooing, piercings, and other body changes, says Appiah? This brings about his question of which form if any of relativism is right; And he makes a great point that it isn’t about right or wrong, that some cultural aspects cannot be defined as such, but that cosmopolitans accept, as should the rest of the world, the value of our
He provides some background on his argument by referring to the history of legal and illegal transportation of cultural artifacts from countries like Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. These artifacts, one way or another, end up in Western museums in Italy, London, and New York without considering the implication or impact of how the removal of these objects affects the people of those cultures. Do these museums rightfully own the objects or do they belong to the originating nations? One would assume the right answer is that it belongs to the country of which the artifact was taken from but Appiah will disagree. Instead, utilizing his cosmopolitan view, he argues that these cultural artifacts belong to all human beings and that since the world has become more open, the issue of ownership should no longer be restricted to just the country of