Urban versus National Citizenship?
A Sawyer Seminar funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
University of Aberdeen, 15 - 16 April 2005
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About the Conference
We are pleased to announce this forthcoming Colloquium dedicated to investigating the relationship between urban and national citizenship, from the early modern to the contemporary periods.
The conference is part of the prestigious Sawyer Seminar series held at the University of Aberdeen over a two-year period, addressing contemporary political issues from an early modern perspective. This fifth event in the series will explore a theme that was introduced in previous colloquia. It was observed in the first colloquium that “citizens” in early modern Europe were individuals who held certain freedoms by virtue of being property-holding residents of towns and cities. There has been some discussion since then of the relation between this urban citizenship and other political identities, including that of being a subject of the Crown. There has been less discussion, however, of the fate of this urban civic tradition. It has been assumed, perhaps, that this older tradition was simply superseded by the modern tradition of national citizenship.
We are bringing together a truly inter-disciplinary group of scholars drawn from social, intellectual and legal history, anthropology, political science and urban sociology to discuss the fate of this urban tradition. In particular, we are concerned to investigate the possibility that urban-oriented citizenship is still extant alongside nation-oriented citizenship. We are also interested in identifying possible tensions between urban-oriented and nation-oriented citizenship since the early modern period.
Conference speakers
The conference will be opened on the Friday evening by Professor Engin Isin (York U, Canada), author of several books on urban citizenship, who will discuss the relation of urban citizenship to national citizenship in Western social and political thought. He will then discuss how that has led him to study the 16th-18th-century Ottoman urban waqf as a form of urban citizenship.
The first session on the Saturday will pair two celebrated historians of the early modern period, Professor David Harris Sacks (History, Reed College), author of The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic World, and Professor Tamar Herzog (History, Chicago), author of Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America. Each of these speakers will discuss the relationship between urban citizenship and other political identities during the early modern period. In particular, they will consider the possibility that an emergent tradition of national citizenship derived, at least in some respects, from the older tradition of urban citizenship. In doing so, each will bring to bear the particular insights afforded by considering a colonial dimension to the question; Sacks via a consideration of the transatlantic activities of English expansionism, and Herzog through an investigation of Spanish American activity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Professor Claudio Lomnitz (Anthropology and History, New School) has agreed to discuss these papers from the perspective of his wide-ranging research on citizenship in contemporary Mexico.
The second session will consider the fate of citizenship in the modern world. The first presenter will be Professor Rui Ramos (History of Political Culture, U Lisbon), who will discuss his work on the absence of corporate traditions such as urban citizenship in the development of Portuguese national citizenship in the 19th and 20th centuries. He will also introduce his recent research into the 1808 Portuguese uprising again the French army of occupation, asking whether this was a re-assertion of an older urban tradition or the development of a new nationalist consciousness. The second presenter will be Professor Guido Martinotti (Urban Sociology, Milan), who has written extensively on the city with a focus on non-resident populations. In doing so, he has explored the profound transformation of the city and provided a valuable critique of scholars who invoke the “piazza” and other popular images of “cities d’antico regime” as a model for urban citizenship. We have asked him, however, whether he finds any continuity since the early modern period or whether he thinks urban citizenship was entirely subsumed by national citizenship, becoming in effect, merely a form of “local” citizenship. Professor Robert von Friedeburg (History, Erasmus) will discuss the papers from the perspective of his work on the changing legal relationship between urban citizenship and other political identities in the early modern period.
The Colloquium will culminate in a final session featuring the Conference Respondent, the political scientist Professor Richard Dagger (Arizona), author of Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship and Republican Liberalism, in which he proposes the city, particularly the small city, as a possible locus of citizenship. Professor Dagger will use his perspective from political theory to draw out some of the implications and potential applications arising from the event.
Conference Schedule
FRIDAY 15 APRIL
- 6 pm Introduction and welcome
- 6.30 pm
Engin Isin (York)
’City.State: Critical reflections on scalar thinking’
Reception and buffet to follow
SATURDAY 16 APRIL
- 9.30 – 10.30 am Coffee and Registration
Venue: James McKay Hall - 10.30 – 12.30 pm Session 1: Urban Citizenship and Nation-Oriented
Identities in the Early Modern World
Venue: Old Senate Room
David Harris Sacks (Reed College)
‘Freedom to, Freedom from, Freedom of: Political Rights and Political Participation in Early Modern England’ Tamar Herzog (Chicago)
‘Communities Becoming a Nation: Spain and Spanish America in the wake of modernity’Discussant: Claudio Lomnitz (New School)
- 12 .30- 1-30 pm Lunch
Venue: James McKay Hall - 1.30 – 3.30 pm Session 2: Urban and National Citizenship
in the Modern World
Venue: Old Senate Room
Rui Ramos (Lisbon)
‘A Tale of One City?: Cities in the Portugese Republican Tradition of Citizenship (18th - 19th Century)’ Guido Martinotti (Milan)
‘Gone with the wind: Public spaces in a society of flows’Discussant: Robert von Friedeburg (Erasmus)
- 3.30 - 4 pm Tea
Venue: James McKay Hall - 4 - 5.30 pm Session 3: Response
Venue: Old Senate Room
Richard Dagger (Arizona)
- 5.30 - 7 pm Drinks reception in James McKay Hall
Professor Lomnitz will also be giving a talk entitled "Corruption, Scopic Regimes and the New Republicanism in Contemporary Latin America” at 4 pm on Monday 18 April in room F87 of the Edward Wright Building and conference delegates are welcome to attend.
Accommodation and other Enquiries
There is NO conference fee, but it is important that you contact us to reserve a place.
Accommodation is available at a reasonable rate at the university’s visitor suite, King’s Hall (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/confevents/kingshall.html). There are also several Bed and Breakfasts within a few minutes walk.
For further information or to reserve a place, please contact the conference organisers:
Drs. Andrew Gordon & Trevor Stack
School of Language and Literature
University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen. AB24 3UB.
Email: a.gordon@abdn.ac.uk or t.stack@abdn.ac.uk
Hosted by the Centre for Early Modern Studies, University of Aberdeen.