The Poverty of Civism

This chapter shows how medieval civism, or civicness, revolved around poverty. In an excursus on Georg Simmel’s reflection on modern civic life and the work of the Chicago School, it then demonstrates how influential the enmeshing of civicness and poverty has been in modern urban sociology. Returning to the Middle Ages, it elaborates on the consequences of the intricacies between civicness and poverty for the development of the idea of the rights of the poor in Jean Gerson’s work. In a final move back to our time, it outlines the development of the rights of the poor in early modern and modern thinking and demonstrates that some of the characteristic aporiae of the contemporary notion of rights of the poor can best be explained by their origin in medieval civism. The chapter thus provides original insights into the importance of the forgotten in history as it explores the forgotten origins of civicness and, through its modern reflections within urban sociology, on the one hand, and in the notion of the rights of the poor, on the other, the political relevance of the forgotten in the history of civism, and beyond.