How Appiah and Anderson Relate

First off, I would like to thank Mehjigsaw and all of you who have commented on my posts for all of your wonderful commenting!! I feel like my last post was a lot of...let's say...information taken from the reading and maybe not enough opinion on the reading on my part. What do you guys think?

On another note, here is my interpretation of how Appiah and Anderson studies relate:

"Essentially, cosmopolitan canopies allow people of different backgrounds the chance to slow down and indulge themselves, observing, pondering, and in effect, doing their own folk ethnography, testing or substantiating stereotypes and prejudices or, rarely, acknowledging something fundamentally new about the other"(Anderson, 25)

This "testing or substantiating stereotypes and prejudices" occurs when meeting people whom Appiah would refer to as "Imaginary strangers." We understand the concept of the imaginary stranger introduced in chapter 6 of "Cosmopolitanism" (someone whom we have prejudices or stereotypes for), and we also know that it can be someone whom we know or do not know, someone in the same country, or another one far off. Because of this, and Anderson's notation of this type of behavior in the Terminal, we are able to place terms on the behaviors he has noticed and truly deem the place as cosmopolitan. Our understanding of Cosmopolitanism came from Appiah, and now our knowledge of its appearance in everyday life is given to us by Anderson.

Appiah's Cosmopolitanism and Elijah Anderson's "The Cosmopolitan Canopy" are also similar in that they both describe the concept of active human understanding known as "Cosmopolitanism" in which people observe and respect others' beliefs and formulate or modify their own based on what they have found during their interactions. I found several similar trains of thought within the two writings that can help readers to gain a better understanding of both. For instance, one such concept occurs in "The Cosmopolitan Canopy" on page twenty-one: "In these circumstances, people carry on their business but also engage in folk ethnography and formulate or find evidence for their folk theories about others with whom they share the public space." This fits in with Appiah's description of how Cosmopolitanism involves listening to others about their views and not neccesarily agreeing with them, but simply considering different ways of thought. If we have read Appiah's Cosmopolitanism, we can infer that folk ethnography and folk theories involve our initial suspicions about people and patterns of thought.

I think, that by having read "Cosmopolitanism," we understand the mechanics of how a Cosmopolitanist operates. We realize that by listening and considering, Cosmopolitans have a respect for other people's differences. In "The Cosmopolitan Canopy," this respect for diversity is mentioned (See page 28, the second paragraph under Conclusion), but the methods we use for obtaining this respect is not fully explained. Anderson's work focuses more on the effects of the place rather than the abilities of the Cosmopolitan, therefore, having read Cosmopolitanism, we understand as readers of "The Cosmopolitan Canopy" how he attributes this importance to the Terminal and how to formulate our opinions about the importance of place in the Cosmopolitanist effort.



"Such places are important settings for diverse strangers to "learn" how to get along with one another, albeit at times superficially."

-"The Cosmopolitan Canopy"