Geography and citizenship: insight into French geography

Geography and citizenship. Insights from French geographic history Citizenship is inducing a permanent interrogation among geographers, due to their implication in country planning. This appears in the analysis of the historic evolution of the concept in geographic studies over the past century. The traditional view, connected to nationalism in the early twentieth century, has been followed by a mistrust about an eventual loss of “scientific distance” in the interwar period. After the Second World War, episodes of involvement in the state apparatus and of critical thinking have alternated. At the end of the twentieth century a post national system of citizenship has led to an implication in the various aspects of globalization. The disillusions allowed a deeper withdrawal into micro society and the “small worlds” of social grouping. This has shown the development of a participatory democracy separated from the official public sphere, which represents a challenge for geography.