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The term subaltern is used in postcolonial theory to refer to marginalized groups and the lower classes; this sense of the word was coined by Antonio Gramsci. In current philosophical and critical usage, the term specifically describes a person rendered without agency by her or his social status, a sense that owes its influence to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's 1988 essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

In his 1996 essay "Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism" Homi Bhabha emphasizes the importance of social power relations in his working definition of 'subaltern' groups as

oppressed, minority groups whose presence was crucial to the self-definition of the majority group: subaltern social groups were also in a position to subvert the authority of those who had hegemonic power.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos uses the term 'subaltern cosmopolitanism' extensively in his 2002 book Toward a New Legal Common Sense. He refers to this in the context of counter-hegemonic practices, movements, resistances and struggles against neoliberal globalization, particularly the struggle against social exclusion. He uses the term interchangably with cosmopolitan legality as the diverse normative framework for an 'equality of differences'. Here, the term subaltern is used to denote marginalised and oppressed people(s) specifically struggling against hegemonic globalization.