The idea that political community implies a special connection to a particular territory supplies a key dimension of traditional conceptions of citizenship, and was consolidated under the modern state system. In a longer perspective, however, the development in modernity of a more abstract model of sovereign rule, together with the emergence of transnational political entities such as the European Union, has diluted the territorial relation. Yet post-territorial citizenship remains a matter of degree. It is not, nevertheless, a moot question, but one constantly tested in today’s more globalised political environment. Within this environment, a graduated language of commitment, perhaps one no longer even comfortable with the traditionally dichotomizing language of citizenship, may become better able to depict the nuances of our increasingly non-exclusive and fluctuating relationship to collective belonging and practice , and to the conceptions of place that have for so long stood behind collective belonging and practice.