The cosmopolitan perspective: sociology of the second age of modernity*

ABSTRACT ‘Second age of modernity’ is a magical password that is meant to open the doors to new conceptual landscapes. The whole world of nation sovereignty is fading away – including the ‘container theory of society’ on which most of the sociology of the first age of modernity is based upon. In this article I propose a distinction between ‘simple globalization’ and ‘reflexive cosmopolitization’. In the paradigm of the first age of modernity, simple globalization is interpreted within the territorial compass of state and politics, society and culture. This involves an additive, not substitutive, conception of globalization as indicated for example by ‘interconnectedness’. In the paradigm of the second age of modernity globalization changes not only the relations between and beyond national states and societies, but also the inner quality of the social and political itself which is indicated by more or less reflexive cosmopolitization as an institutionalized learning process – and its enemies.