Cosmos And Hearth: A Cosmopolite’s Viewpoint

by Yi-Fu Tuan

In a volume that represents the culmination of his life's work in considering the relationship between culture and landscape, Tuan argues that "cosmos" and "hearth" are two scales that anchor what it means to be fully and happily human. Hearth is our house and neighborhood, family and kinfolk, habit and custom. Cosmos, by contrast, is the larger reality - world, civilization, and humankind. Tuan addresses the extraordinary revival of interest in the hearth in recent decades, examining both the positive and negative effects of this renewed concern. Among the beneficent outcomes has been a revival of ethnic culture and sense of place. Negative repercussions abound, however, manifested as an upsurge in superstition, excessive pride in ancestry and custom, and a constricted worldview that when taken together can inflame local passions, leading at times to violent conflict - from riots in U.S. cities to wars in the Balkans. In Cosmos and Hearth, Tuan takes the position that we need to embrace both the sublime and the humble, drawing what is valuable from each.
Illustrating the importance of both cosmos and hearth with examples from his country of birth, China, and from his home of the past forty years, the United States, Tuan proposes a revised conception of culture, the "cosmopolitan hearth," that has the coziness but not the narrowness and bigotry of the traditional hearth. Tuan encourages not only being thoroughly grounded in one's own culture but also the embracing of curiosity about the world. Optimistic and deeply human, Cosmos and Hearth lays out a path to being "at home in the cosmos."

Genres: Philosophy

216 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1996

About the author

Fu Tuan (Traditional Chinese: 段義孚, born 5 December 1930) is a Chinese-U.S. geographer.
Tuan was born in 1930 in Tientsin, China. He was the son of a rich oligarch and was part of the top class in the Republic of China. Tuan attended University College, London, but graduated from the University of Oxford with a B.A. and M.A. in 1951 and 1955 respectively. From there he went to California to continue his geographic education. He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

[Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently re-read this and after 10 years my opinion has shifted a bit. The main thing I feel like I came away with this time was a sense that I still don't really get the point or points that are being made here. There's lots of interesting framing of various cultural and historical bits to fit into these ideas of "cosmos" and "hearth" and "high modernism" but it didn't really feel like it came together in to a nice coherent whole.

I still feel like this might be an interesting book for discussing, if only because it seems like it would invite lots of conversation, and I use that in the sense that Tuan did:

Conversation occurs when a serious attempt is made to explore "self" and "world" with another. It presupposes an awareness of self in all its elusive complexity and depth, which in turn implies the existence of private space (one's own room, one's own collection of books) to which one can withdraw to think and meditate. It presupposes, further, a degree of sociopsychological independence from the group and its pressures, and a willingness to listen to another even though he may not come cloaked in formal authority. Conversation, as distinct from talk and admonition, rarely takes place within the family -- certainly not in a tradition-bound family. It is typically something that happens between strangers who, as a result of such interaction, become friends.

Previous review from June 29, 2008, follows:
It's an interesting read and I think gives what to me seemed like well reasoned insight into some of the cultural aspects of the US and China that were previously kind of opaque to me.

I feel like I will need to re-read this again, probably with a dictionary closer at hand and in doing so I'll get more out of it, as the first pass left me feeling like I was reading the work of somebody much much smarter than me and I was missing a lot of what was being said.

The final chapter, A Cosmopolite's Viewpoint, was a pretty compelling case for cosmopolitanism though not completely unhinged from notions of hearth, not that this could be achieved anyway.

[Robyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tuan makes a lot of generalizations, for example about China and the U.S. that worry me. I feel like more of his assertions about different cultures should be cited. Some are supported well with examples; others are not.

He also says some things that concern me, like about "radical" postmodernists. I have a hard time understanding when he is critiquing various perspectives or theories and when he is simply describing them. Sometimes it seems he's this crotchety old guy who's like "newfangled immigrants complain too much," but then he'll say the opposite so maybe I'm just misunderstanding him.

I also sort of feel that he goes all over the place, like I'll be like, Why are we talking about technology now? But to be fair, I often get lost when I'm reading things so perhaps it will all make sense to others.

Despite all this though, I feel there are certain things that might be useful. If I can figure out the connections he's drawing between technology, cosmos, and hearth, that could be very useful for me. I also think it could be useful to think about the way Chinese Americans are influence by the Chinese and American ways he describes, but I feel like this would be a real stretch. I don't know... I guess the basic sense that we desire both cosmos and hearth is handy.

Oh, I also am not comfortable with his privileging of the cosmopolitan...