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.