Page - 54 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:1

54 | www.limina-graz.eu view of the cosmopolitan was largely the privileged position of a global elite, who could be at home anywhere. There was also another kind of cos- mopolitanism which Paul Gilroy called a “vernacular cosmopolitanism,” which was the lot of the poor migrants who found themselves having to negotiate a precarious existence in new circumstances (2006). Particularly those people who felt unrecognized and left behind in wealthy countries rejected such a cosmopolitan view as articulated by the elites, and claimed their right to their own autonomy. This is one of the explanations given regarding the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom in 2016. Those voting for withdrawing from the European Union saw themselves as foregrounding the local and the concrete over the distant and abstract European Union. A British writer at the time spoke of them as the people of “somewhere” revolting against the elite people of “nowhere” (Goodhart 2017). One thing about the anthropology of globalization that has been noted almost from the very beginning is that it is beholden to neoliberal capi- talism. The human is seen principally as a consumer and producer. Those who cannot participate in consumption and production in an ever increas- ing capacity are viewed as less than human. Moreover, there is no teleol- ogy of the human or of globalization itself. The sole goal is self-replication and ever greater consumption and production (Robertson 1992; Schreiter 1997). Thus, the inequality and exclusion experienced by so many people is well in line with the logic of globalization itself. Seen from this perspective, it is no wonder that negative forms of nationalism and populism are such a likely or inevitable result. Fragmentation or Resistance? Relations between the Global and the Local The plurality of identities that transpire from the processes of hyperdif- ferentiation, which are driven by globalization, are often experienced as a simple fragmentation or breakdown of the universal. This is certainly the perspective from a universalist point of view. But as some scholars of con- temporary cosmopolitanism have pointed out, a vigorous embrace of the immediate, the concrete, the near-at-hand is an essential part of a healthy robert J. schreiter | Globalization and Plural theologies Inequality and exclusion experienced by so many people is well in line with the logic of globalization itself.