Simon Price

Bio: Simon Price is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Roman Empire & Josephus. The author has an hindex of 16, co-authored 21 publications receiving 1877 citations.

Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor

Abstract: List of maps List of text figures List of plates Preface Abbreviations maps 1. Introduction Part I. Contexts: 2. Hellenistic cities and their rulers 3. Greeks and Rome 4. Distribution and culture 5. Festivals and cities Part II. The Evocations of Imperial Rituals: 6. Architecture 7. Images 8. Sacrifices 9. Rituals, politics and power A catalogue of imperial temples and shrines in Asia Minor Bibliography Indexes.

Religions of Rome

Abstract: 1. Earliest Rome 2. The deities of Rome 3. The calendar 4. Religious places 5. Festivals and ceremonies 6. Sacrifices 7. Divination and diviners 8. Priests and priestesses 9. Individuals and gods: life and death 10. Rome outside Rome 11. Threats to the Roman order 12. Religious groups 13. Perspectives Glossary Deities and their epithets Bibliography Indexes.

The Greek city : from Homer to Alexander

Abstract: The Greek city-state or polis is the earliest advanced form of social organization in the western world; it was the dominant political structure in the Mediterranean area from the eighth until the late fourth century BC, when it was transformed into a basis for world civilization by the conquests of Alexander the Great. The experience of the polis is the starting-point for western political thought. Fourteen new essays by leading scholars from Britain, Denmark, France, Italy, and North America present leading aspects of this phenomenon. The Greek city is placed in the general context of Mediterranean history and its impact on the urbanization of Italy is assessed. Other chapters consider the geography of the polis and the relationship between city and countryside, its political and religious institutions, and the distinction between public and private spheres. The first essay seeks to define then uniqueness of the phenomenon of the polis, and the last assesses the reasons for its decline. The book is written for the general reader and the student of social sciences as much as for professional historians of the ancient world. It presents a variety of contemporary approaches to the phenomenon of the polis.

Rituals of royalty : power and ceremonial in traditional societies

Abstract: List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: divine rites of kings David Cannadine 1. Usurpation, conquest and ceremonial: from Babylon to Persia Amelie Kuhrt 2. From noble funerals to divine cult: the consecration of Roman emperors Simon Price 3. The construction of court ritual: the Byzantine Book of Ceremonies Averil Cameron 4. The Lord's anointed and the people's choice: Carolingian royal ritual Janet L. Nelson 5. Bureaucrats and cosmology: the ritual code of T'ang China David McMullen 6. Gifts to the gods: power, property and ceremonial in Nepal Richard Burghart 7. The ritual of the royal bath in Madagascar: the dissolution of death, birth and fertility into authority Maurice Bloch 8. The person of the king: ritual and power in a Ghanaian state Michelle Gilbert Index.

Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion

Abstract: Religion is not an evolutionary adaptation per se, but a recurring cultural by-product of the complex evolutionary landscape that sets cognitive, emotional, and material conditions for ordinary human interactions. Religion exploits only ordinary cognitive processes to passionately display costly devotion to counterintuitive worlds governed by supernatural agents. The conceptual founda- tions of religion are intuitively given by task-specific panhuman cognitive domains, including folkmechanics, folkbiology, and folkpsy- chology. Core religious beliefs minimally violate ordinary notions about how the world is, with all of its inescapable problems, thus en- abling people to imagine minimally impossible supernatural worlds that solve existential problems, including death and deception. Here the focus is on folkpsychology and agency. A key feature of the supernatural agent concepts common to all religions is the triggering of an "Innate Releasing Mechanism," or "agency detector," whose proper (naturally selected) domain encompasses animate objects rele- vant to hominid survival - such as predators, protectors, and prey - but which actually extends to moving dots on computer screens, voices in wind, and faces on clouds. Folkpsychology also crucially involves metarepresentation, which makes deception possible and threatens any social order. However, these same metacognitive capacities provide the hope and promise of open-ended solutions through representations of counterfactual supernatural worlds that cannot be logically or empirically verified or falsified. Because religious be- liefs cannot be deductively or inductively validated, validation occurs only by ritually addressing the very emotions motivating religion. Cross-cultural experimental evidence encourages these claims.

Understanding early civilizations : a comparative study

Abstract: This book offers the first detailed comparative study of the seven best-documented early civilizations: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Shang China, the Aztecs and adjacent peoples in the Valley of Mexico, the Classic Maya, the Inka, and the Yoruba. Unlike previous studies, equal attention is paid to similarities and differences in their sociopolitical organization, economic systems, religion, and culture. Many of this study's findings are surprising and provocative. Agricultural systems, technologies, and economic behaviour turn out to have been far more diverse than was expected. These findings and many others challenge not only current understandings of early civilizations but also the theoretical foundations of modern archaeology and anthropology. The key to understanding early civilizations lies not in their historical connections but in what they can tell us about similarities and differences in human behaviour.

Physiology and Faith: Addressing the “Universal” Gender Difference in Religious Commitment

Abstract: That men are less religious than women is a generalization that holds around the world and across the centuries. However, there has been virtually no study of this phenomenon because it has seemed so obvious that it is the result of differential sex role socialization. Unfortunately, actual attempts to isolate socialization effects on gender differences in religiousness have failed, as have far more frequent and careful efforts to explain gender differences in crime. There is a growing body of plausible evidence in support of physiological bases for gender differences in crime. Making the assumption that, like crime, irreligiousness is an aspect of a general syndrome of short–sighted, risky behaviors leads to the conclusion that male irreligiousness may also have a physiological basis. If nothing else, this article may prompt creative efforts to salvage the socialization explanation.

Why are the Design and Development of Public Spaces Significant for Cities

Abstract: Much of the recent interest in urban design has focused on the creation and management of public spaces of cities. My aim in this paper is to explore the nature and role of public space and its sig...

Policing and the social: Questions of symbolic power

Abstract: Taking as its point of departure the tension that currently exists in Britain between official crime control discourse and popular sentiment towards policing, this paper has two aims. Drawing upon P. Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power the author argues, first, that sociological enquiry needs to devote more attention to understanding the social meanings of policing, and outline a framework within which the role and significance of policing as a cultural category might be investigated. He then illustrates the symbolic power of the police by means of a discussion of the contemporary cultural salience of policing in the 1950s. His argument is that the continuing mobilization and appeal of policing in this period says much about the relationship between the police and dominant forms of English national identity