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Urbanism

Is City-State a Useful Term?

Throughout this course we have encountered a lot of terminology, for some of which the usefulness has come in to question repeatedly. Words like state, chiefdom, culture, elite, and complex society can be problematic due to the history of their use. The term city-state is also one of these. Originally a translation of the Greek word polis, city-state was probably just a descriptive term, like most of the terms listed above. Unfortunately all of these terms that seem perfectly reasonable in a descriptive sense have been warped in scholarship over the years. Some argue that their meanings have become so loaded that they have ceased to inform and contribute to scholarly conversation, but rather detract from it and create confusion. I have argued before in these response papers for a need for simplicity in the basic understanding of these terms on the part of the reader, and specification and elaboration on the part of the author. This can eliminate the confusion these terms generate and save us from having to create entirely new sets of terminology that will likely just undergo the same type of warping in the long run. As long as people are aware of the baggage that goes along with the terminology they are using, and are explicit in their use of it, I would argue that these terms can still be very useful and, indeed, are the right terms to use. This is especially true of “city-state.”

Much of the criticism that has fallen upon the term city-state comes from its Greek root, polis. This immediately associates the term with the Greek city-states of the Classical period and colors people’s interpretation of a text based on that etymology. When “city-state” is used to talk about the cities and states of the Near East, then, or Indus Valley, or the New World, as it often is, people are forming their thoughts of these cities based on the Greek example from which the term originates. This, of course, is a problem. However, if scholars make this problem known in their work and make distinctions such as “Near Eastern city-state” and “Greek city-state,” that already presents them as different things not to be thought of in the same way. If the author does something as simple as briefly describing the similarities and differences between these types of city-states, it’s even better. Again, it is important to have simple definitions for broadly used terms, but to define them specifically when used in a specific way. This call for precision does not seem like it should be that difficult to answer, and, from what we have read this semester, it seems like most scholars either ignore the problem and go on using the terminology, or problematize it so much they reject it all together. There does not need to be such a radical split and I don’t think that there is any reason a middle ground as simple as the one above cannot be reached.