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period involves the meaning and practices of
contemporary citizenship.
With the ever-increasing volume and speed
of the flows characteristic of globalization,
including those of trade, finance, commod-
ities, information, ideas, culture and human
beings, the ability of state actors to control
and regulate border-crossings and their
increasingly mobile populations has greatly
diminished. At the same time, most states
have maintained various kinds of power
through new types of geopolitical alliances,
new forms of disciplining and regulation of
people across borders, and the development
of new transnational or supranational institu-
tions and practices of rule. In all of these
assemblagesof power, the meaning, status
and practice of citizenship has remained a cru-
cial and much sought-after prize, and it has
been at the centre of multiple hegemonic
struggles worldwide over the past two decades.
The scholarship on citizenship has bur-
geoned over the same time period, with hun-
dreds of titles on different forms of citizenship,
such as post-national, transnational, dual and
multicultural. Those with an empirical bent
have tracked the transformations in citizenship
lawin different national sites over this period
and/or the numbers of immigrants or denizens
who have become citizens, or whose status or
benefits or rights have changed. Those leaning
towards post-structuralism have written
about the cultural qualities of contemporary
citizenship, emphasizing in particular its
multi-layered nature and/or the ways in which
belonging andidentityare morphing into
something quite different from earlier nation-
based understandings and assumptions. Many
have also remarked on the different scales of
citizenship, from supra-national (e.g. the EU)
to sub-national (e.g. Basque) citizenship pos-
sibilities. Soysal (1994) argues that the devel-
opment of both of these forms manifests the
declining importance of national citizenship
and the rise of new forms of post-national
membership ineurope.
Almost all current scholarship engages with
citizenship as a constantly evolving, non-linear
formation that is tied to the development of
modern nation-states as well as to the evolu-
tion of contemporary economic systems.
In thewest, it is inevitably interrelated with
the form and logic of capitalist development.
This said, it should be noted that the ways in
which citizenship takes shape at different his-
torical periods and in different places always
reflect the actions of those to whom its
transformation matters. State and economicrestructuring responding to civic or popular
action – whether it is of resistance or accom-
modation – shifts the terrain of rights, respon-
sibilities and belonging on which citizenship
is based, leading inexorably to new formations
through time. kmSuggested reading
Castles and Davidson (2000); Hall and Held
(1989); Turner (1986).city The etymological roots of the term lie
in the Latincivitas; it is related to the Greek
polis, the Latinurbs, the Frenchla cite,la ville,
the Italianla citta`and the Germandie Stadt.
Today, a more generic usage of the term refers
to an urban demographic, economic and
above all political and jurisdictional unit,
usually bigger than a town. In the USA, cities
are considered to have self-government gran-
ted by the states. In Canada, where municipal
autonomy is more restricted, cities are under
the constitutional jurisdiction of provinces. In
the UK, reference is to a large town that has
received title from the Crown.
Cities are usually trading centres and mar-
ketplaces. Their emergence is linked to the
historical separation of non-agricultural work
from the land (seeurban origins). Ancient
cities in the Indus valley, in Mesopotamia,
Egypt and China were based on a hydrological
agricultural economy, and were the seats of
religious and militarypower, and thestate.
The built environment developed around a
temple or ziggurat, and was walled for defence
and internal control of the population. In
ancient Greece and Rome, city-states
(Athens, Rome) were cores of larger empires
(Mumford, 1961; Benevolo, 1980). Medieval
cities in Europe are often seen as the Western
archetype of urban socio-spatial organization
and the core of an urban-based network of
trade systems (e.g. the German Hansa).
During that period, cities were municipal cor-
porations of free citizens embedded in – usu-
ally feudal – larger territorial units. Cities were
seats of church power and of the emerging
bourgeoisie, as well as the tightly organized
artisan trades. Many cities became the loca-
tion of the first universities.
Today’s most common image of cities
is influenced by the industrial age. The
industrial revolutionled to the large-scale
demographic concentration of working-class
populations around manufacturing plants
or industrial complexes, and housed in the
typical tenement and rowhouse settlements
of the nineteenth-century city. Industrial coreGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 85 31.3.2009 9:45pmCITY