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The chapter offers a critical reading of currently hegemonic practices and understandings of liberal cosmopolitanism. It argues that the praxis of liberal cosmopolitanism assists in the consolidation of Western hegemony by furnishing a moral vocabulary for the justification of coercive disciplinary practices such as humanitarian intervention and economic conditionality, which are intended to enforce conformity with liberal political and economic values in the Third World. Such justifications tend to mask a set of power relations that have endured since colonial times. Contemporary resistance to the praxis of liberal cosmopolitanism is informed and sharpened by the historical memory of empire and imperialism. The second part of the chapter explores the politics of cosmopolitanism within the Western academy, identifying a dual tendency inherent within cosmopolitan thought towards the justification of imperial governance on the one hand (apology) and an ineffectual critique of empire on the other (utopia).

This chapter examines the ways in which the protracted Sahrawi refugee context has been represented by its political body, the Polisario Front, to its non-Sahrawi ‘audience’ in such a way as to assure continued political and humanitarian support. This chapter builds upon the recognition that the delivery of development aid is generally dependent on the capacity of the recipients to fulfil a set of non-economic conditionalities such as the creation of democratic political structures, the protection of human rights, and the promotion of gender equality. Refugees are expected to conform to the values of their sponsors. Conformity to these imposed values assuages them continued arrival of humanitarian supplies. However, such conditionalities do not necessarily lead to the modification of recipients’ socio-political structures as sponsors may expect. Rather, multiple forms of dependence on external aid and the broader political context have directly impacted the manners with which the recipients market themselves to their sponsors. In this chapter, the efforts of the Polisario Front in developing a particular representation of the Sahrawi ‘Self’ based upon the observations of its own observers form the focus of this chapter. It examines the strategies employed by the Front such as placing the Sahrawi refugee woman and solidarity movements as forefront representations of the refugee camps in order to secure external aid.