Conclusion Post-script on Sex, Race and Culture

Just prior to the start of our research programme on ‘The Culturalization of Citizenship’, one of us published a book on issues of autochthony, citizenship and exclusion in Africa and Europe which touched on many of the themes addressed in this volume (Geschiere 2009). The title of that book, Perils of Belonging, expressed considerable distrust towards what the author called ‘a global conjuncture of belonging’—the convergence, roughly since the end of the Cold War, of various global trends combining to fuel a preoccupation with local belonging, and this in a world that was supposedly ‘globalizing’. Looking back at the findings of our programme, some of which are presented in this volume, an obvious question is what has changed in the meantime. To what extent is it still possible to speak of a ‘global conjuncture of belonging’? Have we witnessed the emergence of new issues and preoccupations?