Medieval modernity: On citizenship and urbanism in a global era

This paper examines forms of citizenship associated with contemporary urbanism. Focusing on three paradigmatic spaces: the gated enclave, the regulated squatter settlement and the camp, the authors argue that the landscape of urban citizenship is increasingly fragmented and divided. These geographies are constituted through multiple and competing sovereignties which, when territorially exercised, produce fiefdoms of regulation or zones of ‘no-law’. In order to understand these practices, the authors employ the conceptual framework of the ‘medieval city’. This use of history as theory sheds light on particular types of urban citizenship, such as the ‘free town’ or the ‘ethnic quarter’, that were present at different moments of medievalism and that are congruent with current processes. The ‘medieval’ is invoked not as an historical period, but rather as a transhistorical analytical category that interrogates the modern at this moment of liberal empire.