ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents six broad themes in light of both gender and urbanization: economy, circulations and exchanges; space, place and environment; civic identity and political culture; objects, artefacts and material culture; intimacy and emotion; and the colonial town. It examines the ways spaces were defined, and redefined, noting the complexities and shifting character of urban worlds. The book focuses on the fourteenth through twentieth centuries, a period in which corporate and individual identities were shifting, in which nation building and the process of urbanisation surged forward and in which cultural processes reworked notions of gender. It concerns the metropole, and especially the European nations, it reaches out to European urban colonial worlds to contribute to understanding the themes of other sections, such as the gendered nature of the economy, the organization of urban space and the role of the town in forging local identities.
