Letter to Engin

My discussion of Engin Isin's monumental tome Being Political takes the form of a public letter to him. Rather than reviewing the book, I draw on my background and concerns as an urban political geographer to ask him three questions. The first asks him to focus and explicate his idea of “politics” and “the political”. The second asks him to consider the possibility for being political in rural places. The third asks him to expound on the chronological organization of the book, which seems ironically to reduce geography to 'the map of history'. My aim with this colloquy is to frame a productive, public conversation amongst political geographers and citizenship scholars.