ancient cities

exceptionality of the space in relation to the state
and the law. Representations of the camp in its ideal
form as an exceptional and depoliticized space have
been criticized, however, for ignoring the specificity
and historical material reality that such camps take
and the various social, political, geographic, and
economic relations that constitute them.
A second strand of theorizing, more predominant
in sociology and urban geography and anthropology,
involves researching other global cities of
the South and the precarious urban spaces within
these cities, such as the slum or shantytown. Here
research often centers on providing alternative
theorizing to questions of globalization and global
cities and notions of modernity and urban development.
Additionally, this strand highlights the
socio-cultural-political, and not just economic,
dynamics of these city-spaces, investigating them
as particular lived political, social, cultural, and
economic places. Taking as its starting point the
perspective of those marginalized within these
spaces, this strand of theorizing investigates these
other urban forms as important objects of analysis
in their own right but also, in doing so, casts critical
analysis back onto the more traditional notion
of the global city from the perspective of those
excluded from, and yet also central to, its functioning
and the concentration of wealth and power
that accumulate. Finally, both strands of theorizing
have generated interest into questions of how
those resigned to reside in these other urban spaces
actually live by accepting, negotiating, and often
resisting the conditions of these spaces, not as passive
victims, but as political agents of change. This
is the focus of a third strand of research that centers
on other global city spaces as sites of resistance
and cosmopolitanism.
The Global City as Site of
Resistance and Cosmopolitanism
As noted earlier, Saskia Sassen understood global
cities to be, not just sites of wealth and power
accumulation, but also places where new forms of
transnational politics emerge. In the 1960s Henri
Lefebvre argued that “the right to the city” (having
presence and participating in the city, in part, by
appropriating and using its space) was a first right
prior to being able to claim other rights. Echoing
Lefebvre, Sassen argued that it was through global
Other Global Cities
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cities that marginalized peoples, nevertheless, acquired
“presence” in the city and could thereby engage as
political actors and make claims to rights to the city.
By contrast, “other global cities” are spaces of
exclusion that rely on exactly the opposite spatial
logic described by Lefebvre and, later, Sassen.
These other spaces deny presence to people by
hindering the visibility, association, recognition,
status, and rights that come with being of the city.
However, as Engin Isin’s work on citizenship and
the city has demonstrated, “being political” may
owe less to the citizens of the city than to those
excluded from it and the multiple ways they find
to engage and claim belonging and rights to
the city.
Such ideas have generated interest in researching
other urban forms as social and political spaces
and the politics of citizenship emerging from them.
Within more activist theorizing, this interest has
inspired the creation of new cartographies from
the perspective of noncitizen migrant and refugee
rights groups (such as Migreurope’s map of Europe,
with foreigners’ camps replacing cities as the focal
points, or Humane Borders’ map of the U.S.–
Mexico border drawn around points of known
water stations and deaths). In this activist theorizing,
spaces of exclusion are understood not simply
as containers of space but as processes. As with
traditional global city literature, spaces of exclusion
(such as detention centers and camps) are
connected as part of a global network of spaces
but one based on processes of exclusion, expulsion,
and containment (e.g., through processes of
incarceration, deportation, border policing, and
the extraterritorialization [or externalization] of
asylum and visa processing).
Alongside this, a different trajectory has focused
on theorizing spaces of exception informed by a
logic of hospitality and reception rather than
exclusion. Here, Jacques Derrida’s concept of a
“city of refuge” as an autonomous city, independent
from other cities and part of a network of
allied cities that share a commitment to exercising
an ethic of hospitality to the Other, has been influential.
Research in this vein investigates such alternative
spaces of hospitality as sanctuaries, sanctuary
cities, refugee welcome zones and towns, and hatefree
zones. It has also invigorated theorizing
about alternative forms of urban politics particularly
in relation to displaced peoples, migrants,