The Cosmopolitan Standard of Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Elite Belonging Inside the Indian Foreign Service
This article asks what it takes to belong among the “cosmopolitan elite” in international society.
With a reflexive sociological sensibility, it examines the ways in which diplomats of the Indian
Foreign Service have sought to secure recognition and equal standing in international society by
inhabiting a cosmopolitan habitus. Instead of analysing cosmopolitanism in the conventional
register of political theory as an egalitarian international ethic, the article considers “actually
With a reflexive sociological sensibility, it examines the ways in which diplomats of the Indian
Foreign Service have sought to secure recognition and equal standing in international society by
inhabiting a cosmopolitan habitus. Instead of analysing cosmopolitanism in the conventional
register of political theory as an egalitarian international ethic, the article considers “actually