ABSTRACT
The theory of reflexive modernization, including its cosmopolitan turn, offers valuable suggestions for a spatial re-figuration theory of the social, which will be explored. The paper elaborates the spatial theoretical implications of the theory of reflexive modernization and further proposes the concept of a symbolically and spatially mediated cosmopolitics of the social. This concept implies an understanding of spatial structures and spatial cultures based on the inclusion of the hitherto excluded and the suspension and reconfiguration of established distinctions relevant to spatial knowledge. First, social and cultural science research on globalization as well as the relationship between globality and locality will be discussed. Subsequently, selected argumentations of the theory of reflexive modernization are examined. The perspective of a cosmopolitan location of the subject in the context of multiple socialization, multiple world relations and multiple horizons of relevance, condensed in the concept of the cosmopolitics of the social, is finally developed as a possible bridge between reflexive modernization and re-figuration and illustrated by the example of the relation between gender and space.
