Civitas sine suffragio: a new (old) concept for critical geopolitics

ABSTRACT

The concept of civitas sine suffragio captures how accumulation regimes generate threshold-spaces of dispossession and inclusive exclusion through the environment-making state’s production of space. From an archaeo-genetic investigation of the frontier of the Roman imperium, the article suggests the concept as a recurrent technique of economic inclusion and political exclusion in the state’s production of space across modes of production. As part of an agenda in critical geopolitics to investigate the operations of ‘geo-power’ at sub/supra-national scales, the article goes on to question formal citizenship as a sufficient guarantor of civil rights, constitutional protections, and democratic political participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• historical materialism
• political geography
• Roman Empire

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The added benefit of such a deep archaeological dig is that it establishes a Verfremdungseffekt in the historical distancing that such an analysis entails, provoking and disturbing in a way that directly contemporary analysis might not. It is a historical style of theorizing that ‘helps us to distance ourselves from thinking in terms of contemporary paradigms, unquestioned conventions, given constellations of alternatives or implicit value judgements’ (Palonen, 2003: 102).

2 Auxilia were soldiers recruited into the armies of Rome from the non-citizen elements of the population, usually on the imperial peripheries and frontiers of the Empire.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Welsh

John Welsh is a researcher in political economy, history, and geography at the University of Helsinki. Recent journal articles can be found in Geopolitics, Anthropological Theory, Utopian Studies, Capital & Class, Social Anthropology, Contemporary Political Theory, and the International Journal of Politics, Culture & Society.