This book approaches the concept of cosmopolitan sociability as a cultural or territorial rootedness that facilitates a simultaneous openness to shared human emotions, experiences, and aspirations.

Cosmopolitan Sociability critiques definitions of cosmopolitanism as a tolerance for cultural difference or a universalist morality that arise from contemporary experiences of mobility and globalization. Challenging these assumptions, the book explores the degree to which a 'cosmopolitan dimension' can be practised within particular religious communities, diasporic ties, or gendered migrant identities in different parts of the world. A wide variety of expert contributors offer rich ethnographic insights into the interplay of social interactions and cosmopolitan sociability. In this way the book contributes significantly to ethnic and migration studies, global anthropology, social theory, and religious and cultural studies.

Cosmopolitan Sociability was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Though long-associated with violence, the Caucasus is a region rich with religious conviviality. Based on fresh ethnographies in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Russian Federation, Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces discusses vanishing and emerging sacred places in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious post-Soviet Caucasus. In exploring the effects of de-secularization, growing institutional control over hybrid sacred sites, and attempts to review social boundaries between the religious and the secular, these essays give way to an emergent Caucasus viewed from the ground up: dynamic, continually remaking itself, within shifting and indefinite frontiers.

This book approaches the concept of cosmopolitan sociability as a cultural or territorial rootedness that facilitates a simultaneous openness to shared human emotions, experiences, and aspirations. Cosmopolitan Sociability critiques definitions of cosmopolitanism as a tolerance for cultural difference or a universalist morality that arise from contemporary experiences of mobility and globalization. Challenging these assumptions, the book explores the degree to which a 'cosmopolitan dimension' can be practised within particular religious communities, diasporic ties, or gendered migrant identities in different parts of the world. A wide variety of expert contributors offer rich ethnographic insights into the interplay of social interactions and cosmopolitan sociability. In this way the book contributes significantly to ethnic and migration studies, global anthropology, social theory, and religious and cultural studies. Cosmopolitan Sociability was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Transnational flows of people, money and ideas are part and parcel of globalization processes. Ties to the homeland have always been a central focus of migration studies. How and why do the descendants of migrants maintain their attachment to the ancestral homeland? Tsypylma Darieva examines the changing nature of transnational migratory flows and a new generation of diasporic youth among global Armenians. Drawing on long-term observation and ethnographic and interview data, she shows the social and political significance that homeland pilgrimage and roots mobility acquire when the mythical "homeland" becomes a real (local) place. How do these flows shape transnational post-migrant life projects and visions of the future between West and East?

With the rise of grassroots initiatives in urban spaces across Eastern Europe and Eurasia in recent decades, Urban Activism in Eurasia addresses three central questions: What are distinctive features and the dynamic of urban activism in contemporary post-Soviet cities? How urban civic engagement does evolve on a micro level and in larger-scale processes? How a variety of group and individuals who claim to the city space and its development find their own ways to initiate local urban change. The volume challenges the prevailing simplistic view of weak, passive and scared citizens in Eastern European and Eurasian cities, which are often seen to be predominantly shaped by neo-liberal and authoritarian structures. Instead, we argue for the vibrant diversity and dynamism in the contemporary urban civic activism in Eurasia. Employing diverse sources such as intriguing photographs, interviews with local activists and scholarly reports from the field of anthropology, urban planning, architecture, political sciences and sociology, the edited volume explores the creativity and novelty of Eurasian urban grass roots activism. Drawing on these multi-disciplinary perspectives, the volume hopes to overcome distances and trigger dialogues in several respects and realms: among the interested public, activists, 'urban decision makers' and scholars in East and West, North and South alike. With contributions by Andrei Semenov, Levon Abrahamian, Gayane Shagoyan, Nadia Douglas, Oleg Pachenkov, Lila Voronkova, Christian Frohlich, Lela Rekviashvili, Esma Berikishvili, David Sichinava, Alexander Formosov, Nazaket Azimli, Otto Habeck, Jonas Buchel, Carola S. Neugebauer, Olena Denysenko and Tsypylma Darieva.