scholarly journals Cosmopolitanism and the Roman Empire.

Author(s):  
Christoph Pieper

My article explores the tension between idealized cosmopolitan ideas, of a single citizenry for all people in the world, and imperial Roman nationalism between the late Roman Republic and the Italian Renaissance. In the form of three case studies (and without any claim that those are representative for the development) it focusses on three important thinkers whose work shows affinity with cosmopolitan discourse, but who at the same time also explicitly reflected on the political realities they were living in: Cicero, Augustine, and Lorenzo Valla. All three favour cosmopolitan ideals over political egoism, and all three reflect on whether and how the historical reign under which they are living can live up to the philosophical or theological ideals they advocate. Finally, all three authors do not only share similar discursive patterns, but also react to each other intertextually (links will be mentioned especially between Cicero and Augustine and between Augustine and Valla). Thus, while all three are distinct in their argument and use cosmopolitan concepts for hugely different aims, the comparison can share light both on the boundaries and the discursive power of the concept in Latin literature.    

Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter

In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were six permanent international courts. Today there are more than two dozen that have collectively issued over thirty-seven thousand binding legal rulings. This book charts the developments and trends in the creation and role of international courts, and explains how the delegation of authority to international judicial institutions influences global and domestic politics. The book presents an in-depth look at the scope and powers of international courts operating around the world. Focusing on dispute resolution, enforcement, administrative review, and constitutional review, the book argues that international courts alter politics by providing legal, symbolic, and leverage resources that shift the political balance in favor of domestic and international actors who prefer policies more consistent with international law objectives. International courts name violations of the law and perhaps specify remedies. The book explains how this limited power—the power to speak the law—translates into political influence, and it considers eighteen case studies, showing how international courts change state behavior. The case studies, spanning issue areas and regions of the world, collectively elucidate the political factors that often intervene to limit whether or not international courts are invoked and whether international judges dare to demand significant changes in state practices.


2020 ◽  
pp. 377-395
Author(s):  
Nora Moroney ◽  
Stephen O’Neill

This chapter examines the political and textual transformations of the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish News, and the Belfast News Letter in the twentieth century. It discusses the creation and expression of separate forms of national and editorial identities in regard to the northern Unionist-leaning Telegraph and News Letter, and the nationalist Irish News. All three would eventually be transformed by their reportage of the World War, and the later Troubles. Describing the enduring popularity of all three papers as platforms for political expressions across the spectrum of twentieth century Irish history and politics, it argues that their longevity speaks to the success of their readjustments during these tumultuous years. Drawing on archives in the National Library of Ireland and the Belfast Central Library, the chapter includes case studies focusing on how each paper reported the failure of the Boundary Commission in 1925, the Belfast Blitz in 1941, and the IRA Ceasefire in 1994.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Paul R. DeHart ◽  

In Pagans & Christians in the City, Steven D. Smith argues that in contrast to ancient Rome, ancient Christianity, following Judaism, located the sacred outside the world, desacralizing the cosmos and everything in it—including the political order. It thereby introduced a political dualism and potentially contending allegiances. Although Smith’s argument is right so far as it goes, it underplays the role of Christianity’s immanent dimension in subverting the Roman empire and the sacral pattern of antiquity. This division of authority not only undermined the Roman empire and antique sacral political order more generally—it also subverts the modern state, which, in the work of Hobbes and Rousseau, sought to remarry what Western Christianity divorced.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Campbell Orchard

<p>Revitalised by Mussolini in the early twentieth century as a symbol of the ‘New Roman Empire’, Roma has endured a long history of national representation. Traditionally the figure of Roma is on the one side associated by historians with the Roman imperial cult and Augustus, and on the other by Numismatists as the helmeted female figure on the coinage of the Roman Republic. However, these figures are not presently considered one and the same. When describing this figure, Roma is considered a Greek innovation travelling west, which naturally discounts well over two centuries of Roman issued coinage. Roma inaugurated by Hadrian and previously manipulated by Augustus was not simply a Greek import, but a complex Roman idea, which, true to Roman form, incorporated native and foreign elements in shaping an outward looking signifier of Roman identity.</p>


The Merovingian era is one of the best studied yet least known periods of European history. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the inhabitants of Gaul (what now comprises France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Rhineland Germany and part of modern Switzerland), a mix of Gallo-Romans and Germanic arrivals under the political control of the Merovingian dynasty, sought to preserve, use, and reimagine the political, cultural, and religious power of ancient Rome while simultaneously forging the beginnings of what would become medieval European culture and identity. As a result, the Merovingian era is at the heart of historical debates about what happened to western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Yet in these centuries, the inhabitants of the Merovingian kingdoms created a culture that was the product of these traditions and achieved a balance between the world they inherited and the imaginative solutions that they bequeathed to Europe. Situated at the crossroads of Europe, connecting northern Europe with the Mediterranean and the British Isles with the Byzantine empire, Merovingian Gaul also benefitted from the global reach of the late Roman Empire. In this collection of 46 essays by scholars of Merovingian history, archaeology, and art history, we encounter the new perspectives and scientific approaches that shape our changing view of this extraordinary era.


Author(s):  
James Harvey

In Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Art Cinema, James Harvey contends that Rancière’s writing allows us to broach art and politics on the very same terms: each involves the visible and the invisible, the heard and unheard, and the distribution of bodies in a perceivable social order. Between making, performing, viewing and sharing films, a space is constructed for tracing and realigning the margins of society, allowing us to consider the potential of cinema to create new political subjects. Drawing on case studies of films including Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates and John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses, this books asks to what extent is politics shaping art cinema? And, in turn, could art cinema possibly affect the political structure of the world as we know it?


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Sosteric

Archetypes inform our self-image, influence how we see the world, and direct many of the actions we take as we navigate and create our realities. According to psychologist Carl G. Jung, archetypes are powerful determines of human experience and human psychological and political realities. As such, they hold significant spiritual, psychological, and sociological interest. There has been sustained interest from those interested in the psychology and spirituality of archetypes; however to date sociologists have remained largely aloof. Hoping to overcome this lacuna, this paper explores the sociology of archetypes by examining the emotional and psychological power of archetypes and by demonstrating how powerful archetypes become situated in elite “spiritual” discourses designed not in the service of human health and development, but in the service of the political and economic agenda of societal and world elites.


Author(s):  
Stephen Alomes ◽  
Bruno Mascitelli

Throughout the world, celebrity and populism have become formidable combinations in supporting political leadership. The rise of these phenomena has provoked much debate and has led to the examination of the features, causes and consequences of this kind of politics. Celebrity politics is a reflection of both the influence of celebrities and the power of celebrity images in the media which see politicians becoming celebrities, deliberately or accidentally. The political rise and fall of Nicholas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi and their roles in the performances associated with political leadership furnish two case studies of celebrity and populism in France and Italy respectively. This paper examines these two “presidential-style” leaders in Europe who at first seemedadept in practising aspects of both celebrity and populist politics.


Author(s):  
Nathanael Andrade

Hailing from the Syrian city of Palmyra, a woman named Zenobia (and Bathzabbai) governed territory in the eastern Roman Empire from 268 to 272. She thus became the most famous Palmyrene who ever lived. But sources for her life and career are scarce. This book situates Zenobia in the social, economic, cultural, and material context of ancient Palmyra. By doing so, it aims to shed greater light on the experiences of Zenobia and Palmyrene women like her at various stages of their lives. Not limiting itself to the political aspects of her governance, it contemplates what inscriptions and material culture enable us to know about women and the practice of gender in Palmyra, and thus the world that Zenobia navigated. It also ponders Zenobia’s legacy in light of the contemporary human tragedy in Syria.


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