Modern social research, as we know it now, emerged as a part of rise of modern social sciences in the context of transition to modernity. As an enterprise of modernity social research reflected some of the foundational assumptions of modernity. For example, the project of sociology was closely tied to the project of nation-state, embodying in its epistemology methodological nationalism. Social research also proceeded within the bounded logic of disciplines. But all these assumptions of modernity as well as their social manifestations have been subjected to fundamental criticisms and interrogations in the last decades. Both anti-systematic socio-cultural movements and critical discursive movements and new movements of ideas have challenged the modernist paradigms of pathology and normality as well as distinction between ontology and epistemology. In the background of critiques of modernity, social movements and processes of transformations the present essay submits some proposals for a creative and critical social research. It explores ways of moving beyond mere denunciations and critiques and embodying transformational theories and methods which would facilitate creative and critical research. The essay also calls for a new vocation of social research by pleading for a simultaneous engagement in activism and creative understanding, fieldwork and philosophical reflections, ontological self-cultivation and epistemic labour of learning.

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A revival of cosmopolitanism seems to be underway in both discourse and practice. However, much of this revival draws from only one trajectory of cosmopolitanism, and fails to build upon different traditions of cosmopolitan thinking and experimentation. Cosmopolitanization is an ongoing process of critique, creativity and border‐crossing which involves transformations in self, culture, society, economy and polity. It requires multi‐dimensional processes of self‐development, inclusion of the other, and planetary realizations. Against this background, this contribution explores the multiverse of transformations that confront contemporary discourses of cosmopolitanism. It also discusses the issue of cosmopolitan responsibility, noting three major challenges: global justice; cross‐species dignity; and dialogue among civilizations, cultures, religions and traditions.

The discourse and practice of human development has been subjected to fundamental restructuring and criticism in recent years. While restructuring has involved a continuing shift from state to market as the main actor of development, deconstruction of it has led to a critique of development as hegemony and domination. Jn this context the paper submits that neither a one-sided valorization of development in terms of being a slave to the market nor an essentialist abandonment of development as domination is helpful at the contemporary juncture. The urgent task now is to come to terms with the calling of responsibility which calls for a multi-dimensional approach understanding the simultaneous significance of self, social movements, state and market. Responsibility involves both capacity to look up to the face of the other and self-cultivation-both ethics and aesthetics. Jn this way the paper presents the outline of a moral critique of development.

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