Gender and the City before Modernity

Gender and the City before Modernity presents a series of multi-disciplinary readings that explore issues related to the role of gender and gendered behaviours in cities before the onset of modernity - that is, in societies unaffected or only lightly touched by the processes of large-scale industrialization, capitalism, large-scale globalization and world-wide networks.

Cities in the ancient, medieval and early modern worlds exhibited qualitatively different kinds of spatial, political, social, religious and economic configurations from their more recent counterparts, often emerging for very different reasons, and operating in different political and territorial contexts. Yet, gender played a crucial role in shaping the lives of the inhabitants of all pre-modern urban communities, both physically and conceptually, as a fundamental element of human identities, social relationships and the larger political, economic and cultural networks in which they were embedded.

The wide range of case studies in this book spans various facets of gender during the ancient, medieval and early modern periods in Mexico, China, Britain, Italy, Carthage, Greece, Asia Minor and Persia. Gender and the City before Modernity offers insights into the similarities, differences and convergences of gender as practiced in cities around the world.