Anti-cosmopolitanism and 'ethnic cleansing' at Cronulla

Anti-cosmopolitanism was at the centre of Sydney's Cronulla beach riots in December 2005, and in this chapter we argue that a logic of 'ethnic cleansing' is at work in these processes. Contemporary cosmopolitanism involves a sense of commonality with other peoples, despite their diversity" a sense heightened by globalising processes that make more immediate, extensive and inevitable the contact with strangers, and also create more shared and more universal human problems. Cosmopolitanism also involves an ethics of hospitality, or at least of accepting the stranger without hostility. We may define anti-cosmopolitanism as a reaction to these principles and practices. Anti-cosmopolitanism seeks to close off the openness to the other and to difference; it emphasises incompatibility, rejects a moral community with the other, and adopts hostility towards the other.