We Do Not Live in an Age of Cosmopolitanism but in an Age of Cosmopolitization: The ‘ Global Other’ is in Our Midst

Abstract

The collapse of a world order is often a moment for reflection on the dominant social theory and research of the time, but surprisingly this is not the case today. Mainstream social theory still floats loftily above the lowlands of epochal transformations (climate change, financial crisis, nation-states) in a condition of universalistic superiority and instinctive certainty. This universalistic social theory, whether structuralist, interactionist, Marxist, critical or systems-theory, is now both out of date and provincial.