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Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity
01 Jan 1997-
TL;DR: The nature and expression of ethnicity: an anthropological view 3. The discursive dimension of ethnic identity 4. Ethnicity and genealogy: an Argolic case-study as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: 1. Phrasing the problem 2. The nature and expression of ethnicity: an anthropological view 3. The discursive dimension of ethnic identity 4. Ethnography and genealogy: an Argolic case-study 5. Ethnicity and archaeology 6. Ethnicity and linguistics 7. Conclusion.
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01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: This article surveys the available evidence for cultural transformation and merger of identities between the two principal peoples of Vandal Africa, the Vandals and the Romano-Africans, to determine the origins of those changes in identity, and how the people of Africa came to be different enough from Romans for ancient writers to pass such comment.
Abstract: In 534, after the conquest of the Vandal kingdom, Procopius tells us that the emperor Justinian deported all remaining Vandals to serve on the Persian frontier. But a hundred years of Vandal rule bred cultural ambiguities in Africa, and the changes in identity that occurred during the Vandal century persisted long after the Vandals had been shipped off to the East: Byzantine and Arabic writers alike shared the conviction that the Africans had, by the sixth and seventh centuries, become something other than Roman. This thesis surveys the available evidence for cultural transformation and merger of identities between the two principal peoples of Vandal Africa, the Vandals and the Romano-Africans, to determine the origins of those changes in identity, and how the people of Africa came to be different enough from Romans for ancient writers to pass such comment. It examines the visible conversation around ethnicity in late-antique Africa to determine what the defining social signifiers of Vandal and Romano-African identity were during the Vandal century, and how they changed over time. Likewise, it explores the evidence for deliberate attempts by the Vandal state to foster national unity and identity among their subjects, and in particular the role that religion and the African Arian Church played in furthering these strategies for national unity. Finally, it traces into the Byzantine period the after-effects of changes that occurred in Africa during the Vandal period, discussing how shifts in what it meant to be Roman or Vandal in Africa under Vandal rule shaped the province's history and character after its incorporation into the Eastern Empire.
10 citations
01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider four different members of the Melampodid and Iamid clans in order to elucidate Greek cultural fantasies about seers and seercraft and explore why the seer is cast as a navigator, a military commander, an oikist (founder of a city), and a figure of charismatic authority.
Abstract: This dissertation considers four different members of the Melampodid and Iamid clans in order to elucidate Greek cultural fantasies about seers and seercraft. I explore why the seer is cast as a navigator, a military commander, an oikist (founder of a city), and a figure of charismatic authority. Moving beyond viewing seers merely as specialists in divination, I consider the other qualities Greeks attributed to seers and the range of ventures in which Greeks envisioned their seers participating. Each chapter concentrates on a particular seer in order to investigate a discrete facet of the Greek cultural imaginary of manteia (prophetic power).Chapter 1 examines the relationship between Odysseus and the Melampodid seer Theoklymenos. The seer and the hero operate as a coherent pair within the framework of colonization. The Odyssey casts Odysseus' return home as a re-colonization of Ithaka and Odysseus himself as the oikist of this colony. Theoklymenos emerges not only as a seer but also as a skillful navigator for the oikist. He thus exemplifies the homology that the ethnographer Mary Helms observes in pre-industrial societies between figures skilled at negotiating the horizontal axis of long-distance travel (e.g., navigators and traders) and those who mediate the vertical axis of communication with the supernatural (e.g., prophets). Adept at traversing both axes, Theoklymenos aids Odysseus in effecting the metaphorical re-foundation of Ithaka. In Chapter 2, I turn to Herodotus' characterization of the Iamid Teisamenos as a leader of wars (9.33) and seek to uncover a cultural tendency to regard certain military seers as conduits of talismanic power (kudos). Talismanic potency accounts for the several references to seers commanding armies and winning battles. Beyond their technical ability to interpret divinatory sacrifices, seers could be a crucial presence on campaign because their kudos was perceived to guarantee victory for the army that enlisted them. Once we recognize that seers could be viewed as bearers of kudos, we can examine how they converge and intersect with other talismanic figures similarly characterized in the context of warfare. For instance, the three versions of the conflict between Kroton and Sybaris reported in different sources diverge only in crediting an athlete, an oikist, and a seer as the cause of victory (Diod. Sic. 12.9 and Hdt. 5.44-45). These three competing tales reveal a shared template: a talismanic figure brings victory to Kroton. I begin Chapter 3 by observing that scholars often emphasize the parallels between military campaigns and colonial expeditions of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. Yet whereas seers regularly feature in accounts of archaic and classical Greek warfare, they rarely appear in colonial narratives of the same period. Furthermore, I discern that although the seer himself goes missing from most foundation tales, the functions the seer typically performs do not. I argue that the characterization of the oikist in colonial narrative as a figure who is singled out by and acts on behalf of Apollo, the god of divination, usurps the religious authority enjoyed elsewhere by the seer. In the second half of the chapter, I explore the idea of the seer's elision from colonial narrative by reading Bacchylides' Ode 11 as a specific example of this phenomenon. I demonstrate that in his rendition of the myth of the Proitids Bacchylides intentionally omits the seer Melampous and at the same time casts Proitos' arrival in Tiryns as a foundation and Proitos himself as its oikist. Chapter 4 takes up a noteworthy exception to the seer's erasure from colonial discourse. In Olympian 6, Pindar praises the laudandus Hagesias as an Iamid seer, an athletic victor, and a co-oikist of Syracuse. The poet thereby joins together three kudos-bearing categories to fashion an individual of tremendous talismanic authority. Further, by identifying Hagesias as a co-oikist, Pindar uncovers what is typically occluded in foundation tales, namely the seer's participation in colonization. This final chapter accounts for the dual and often paradoxical nature of Hagesias by placing it in its cultural context. Hagesias is a talismanic figure subordinated to Hieron, a seer who is also a co-oikist, and an athletic victor linked to both the Peloponnese and Sicily who leads a victory revel from home to home (O. 6.99). I argue that these qualities make Hagesias a useful participant in Hieron's colonial program: his hybridity embodies Hieron's specific colonial fantasies for the recently founded Aitna while his two homes make him a less threatening figure for Syracuse, since he never fully belongs in any one location. In this way, Pindar distinguishes Hagesias from other seers, such as Teisamenos or the mythical Melampous, who are perceived as dangerous for the city and its political leaders, and he offers an alternative vision of a seer who is welcomed by Syracuse and credited with its foundation.
10 citations
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: Burrus et al. as discussed by the authors described a sarcophagus sculpture and Jewish patrons in the Roman world as a part of their "Remembering the righteous: Sarcophage Sculpture and Jewish Patrons in theRoman World" project.
Abstract: Remembering the Righteous: Sarcophagus Sculpture and Jewish Patrons in the Roman World by Sean P. Burrus Graduate Program in Religion Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Eric M. Meyers, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Mary T. Boatwright, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Laura S. Lieber ___________________________ Kalman Bland ___________________________ Steven Fine An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 Copyright by Sean P. Burrus 2017
10 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that return migration is an essential component of global socio-cultural processes and a significant phase of the migration phenomenon that no longer can be underestimated by the social sciences and that the empirical study of such phenomena will contribute to an understanding of new ways in which nationalisms are interrelated to identifications, and how they are produced reproduced, reinforced and challenged.
Abstract: This article theorizes and problematizes the concepts of self and nation as exemplified in stories of return migration to subjects' ancestral homeland (Greece). The personal project of return migration to parents' homeland is densely interconnected with processes of identification perceived by the returnees themselves as the dynamic context wherein the cultural self intersects with the ethnic self in both private and public national constructions. Such interactive processes direct the returnees towards a re-evaluation of notions of home and belonging and allow for the redefinition of otherwise static notions of being and becoming. These processes are central in the returnees' narratives and clearly reflect: (1) the continuous interplay between the returnee as active agent and the national construction of homeland as structure, (2) that incomplete, disjointed and ambivalent identities are realized through the process of return, which challenges previous images and imaginings of the homeland and what home means, and (3) the diasporic journey of return becomes the spatial context of appraisal of nation as a means to realize the self as contextualized through emotional and rational processes of incorporation. The article suggests that return migration is an essential component of global socio-cultural processes and a significant phase of the migration phenomenon that no longer can be underestimated by the social sciences. Furthermore, it argues that the empirical study of such phenomena will contribute to an understanding of new ways in which nationalisms are interrelated to identifications, and how they are produced reproduced, reinforced and challenged. Narratives of return and belonging were gathered through in-depth interviewing with second-generation Greek-American return migrants who made a conscious decision to relocate from their country of birth and origin (USA) to their country of parental extraction, heritage and descent (Greece) throughout the last decade.
10 citations
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: Fisher et al. as discussed by the authors argue that a central project of Thucydides' work was to reexamine and radically reinterpret the essential features of Athenian democracy, its relationship to other regime types, and the conditions for its success by considering it as a type of collective hero.
Abstract: Author(s): Fisher, Mark Douglas | Advisor(s): Hoekstra, Kinch | Abstract: Employing the tools of both textual and contextual analysis, this dissertation demonstrates that a central project of Thucydides’ work was to reexamine and radically reinterpret the essential features of Athenian democracy, its relationship to other regime types, and the conditions for its success by considering it as a type of collective hero. It argues that, against the grain of fifth-century democratic ideology, Thucydides developed an account of the imperial democracy that placed it within the tradition of Greek heroism and autocracy, thereby contesting the belief that democracy should be characterized primarily as a form of egalitarian rule antithetically related to kingship and tyranny. In undertaking this project, however, this dissertation shows that Thucydides was less a critic of Athenian democracy than of Athenian democratic ideology. He conceived of his city as a collective autocrat not in an effort to denigrate it, but to better understand the apex that it achieved. This dissertation further demonstrates that, in redescribing Athenian democracy as a heroic autocrat, Thucydides also set out to reinvent the Greek tradition of heroic autocracy. His commitment to a rationalistic and naturalistic mode of inquiry practiced by fellow fifth-century thinkers such as the Hippocratic medical writers appears to have provided some of the impetus for this ambition. However, this dissertation shows that it also stems from Thucydides’ deep and careful contemplation of the Athenian experience of the war itself. Recognizing that many of the central fixtures of the heroic worldview offered a helpful frame for thinking about the causes and pitfalls of democratic greatness, Thucydides nevertheless perceived that these could get him only so far. This dissertation tracks the crucial differences between a collective, democratic autocrat and an individual hero that had to be accounted for if the rise and fall of Athens was to be made fully intelligible. Many of these flowed from the democratic hero’s ability to selectively incorporate egalitarian practices into its domestic organization. At the most basic level, some degree of equality allowed for greater inclusivity, cooperation, and collective action in the heroic project, which translated directly into greater power. This was an unambiguous good, but the same cannot be said of all manifestations of equality within the democracy. In the deliberative sphere, the possession of an equal vote by all citizens created a variable dynamic between people and leaders, resulting in either excellent or catastrophic policy depending on the relative merit of those who vied for popular leadership. For Thucydides, this dissertation shows, the success of the democratic hero depended on the maintenance of a delicate balance between egalitarian and autocratic relationships among citizens, and the eventual tragic fall of the democratic hero could be traced to the overextension of equality in the deliberative sphere, which led to untrammeled autocratic ambitions abroad and ruinous civil war at home.
10 citations
References
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01 Jan 1980
TL;DR: Bourdieu as mentioned in this paper develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood.
Abstract: Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.
21,227 citations
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01 Jan 1973
TL;DR: The INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES CLIFFORD GEERTZ Books files are available at the online library of the University of Southern California as mentioned in this paper, where they can be used to find any kind of Books for reading.
Abstract: THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES CLIFFORD GEERTZ PDF Are you searching for THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES CLIFFORD GEERTZ Books files? Now, you will be happy that at this time THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES CLIFFORD GEERTZ PDF is available at our online library. With our complete resources, you could find THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES CLIFFORD GEERTZ PDF or just found any kind of Books for your readings everyday.
20,105 citations
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01 Jun 1940
1,049 citations
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01 Jan 1997
TL;DR: Sian Jones as mentioned in this paper argues for a fundamentally different view of ethnicity, as a complex dynamic form of identification, requiring radical changes in archaeological analysis and interpretation, and presents a comprehensive and critical synthesis of recent theories of ethnicity in the human sciences.
Abstract: The question of ethnicity is highly controversial in contemporary archaeology. Indigenous and nationalist claims to territory, often rely on reconstructions of the past based on the traditional identification of 'cultures' from archaeological remains. Sian Jones responds to the need for a reassessment of the ways in which social groups are identified in the archaeological record, with a comprehensive and critical synthesis of recent theories of ethnicity in the human sciences. In doing so, she argues for a fundamentally different view of ethnicity, as a complex dynamic form of identification, requiring radical changes in archaeological analysis and interpretation.
816 citations