scholarly journals Citizenship as Barrier and Opportunity for Ancient Greek and Modern Refugees

Humanities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Gray

Some dominant traditions in Refugee Studies have stressed the barrier which state citizenship presents to the displaced. Some have condemned citizenship altogether as a mechanism and ideology for excluding the weak (G. Agamben). Others have seen citizenship as an acute problem for displaced people in conditions, like those of the modern world, where the habitable world is comprehensively settled by states capable of defending their territory and organised in accordance with interstate norms, which leaves very limited space for the foundation of new communities with their own meaningful citizenship (H. Arendt). This paper engages with these prominent approaches, but also with more recent arguments that, when handled and adapted in the right way, the practices and ideology of citizenship also present opportunities for the displaced to form their own meaningful communities, exercise collective agency, and secure rights. It is argued that the evidence from ancient Greece shows that ancient Greek citizenship, an early forerunner of modern models of citizenship, could be imaginatively harnessed and adapted by displaced people and groups, in order to form effective and sometimes innovative political communities in exile, even after opportunities to found new city-states from scratch became quite rare (after c. 500 BC). Some relevant displaced groups experimented with more open and cosmopolitan styles of civic interaction and ideology in their improvised quasi-civic communities. The different kinds of ancient Greek informal ‘polis-in-exile’ can bring a new perspective on the wider debates and initiatives concerning refugee political agency and organisation in the ‘provocations’ in this special issue.

Author(s):  
Alain Bresson

This chapter examines the taxation system for trade and commerce in ancient Greece. It first considers how foreign trade and customs duties were supervised before discussing the system of taxation for maritime trade. Citing documents concerning tax exemptions, the chapter shows that traders were constantly seeking privileges in an effort to avoid paying taxes. Maritime shipping was the quickest and least expensive way to move goods, and ports were levied the highest amount of taxes. Cities situated on the coastline benefited from an economic rent related to their location, and they exploited their natural advantage to the maximum. A city had the right to levy transit fees on its own territory, but not if these fees were levied on a maritime channel. The chapter also emphasizes the importance of economic information in maritime commerce, especially with regard to ensuring the security of international trade.


2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 1039-1056 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN MACMILLAN

AbstractThis introductory discussion establishes the notion of intervention as a ‘social practice’ and carves out the contextual and conceptual space for the Special Issue as a whole. The first move is to recontextualise intervention in terms of ‘modernity’ as distinct from the sovereign states system. This shift enables a better appreciation of the dynamic and evolutionary context that generates variation in the practice of intervention over time and space and which is analytically sensitive to the economic and cultural (as well as Great Power) hierarchies that generate rationales for intervention. The second move is to reconceptualise intervention as a specific modality of coercion relatively well-suited to the regulation or mediation of conflict between territorially bounded political communities and transnational social forces. Third is to ‘historicise’ the practice of intervention through showing how it has changed in relation to a range of international orders that have defined the modern world and which are each characterised by a different notion of the relationship between social and territorial space. Fourth and finally is a brief consideration of the possibility of intervention's demise as a social practice.


1975 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 163-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Wagstaff

In August 1968 the Athens Centre of Ekistics (ACE) launched a large-scale study of settlements within the territories of city-states in ancient Greece. The aim of the project is ‘to come to a better understanding of the problems of human settlements by the study of their past’, their evolution through time and their relationships with total space (physical, economic, cultural), so that solutions may be offered ‘to many of the problems related to human settlements, from which humanity is at present suffering’. A method is being employed which synthesises the researches of archaeologists and historians with the work of architect-planners and topographers in an attempt to test by sample studies the validity of eight hypotheses about ancient settlements which have been advanced by C. A. Doxiadis on the basis of ‘general ekistic experience’. Doxiadis, an architect and planner of wide experience and considerable insight, has formulated the inter-disciplinary scientific study of human settlements and called it Ekistics. His hypotheses about ancient settlements are given at length in the first annual report on the Ancient Greek Settlements Project, but they may be summarised as follows.


Author(s):  
Daniil Yu. Dorofeev ◽  
Roman V. Svetlov ◽  
Mikhail I. Mikeshin ◽  
Marina A. Vasilyeva

The article is devoted to the topic of visualization, which is relevant for the modern world in general and scientific knowledge in particular, investigated through the image of Plato in Antiquity and in medieval Orthodox painting. Using the example of Plato’s iconography as a visual message, the authors want to show the great potential for the development of the visual history of philosophy, anthropology and culture in general, as well as the new visually oriented semiotics and semantics of the image. This approach reveals expressively and meaningfully its relevance for the study of Plato’s image, together with other ancient philosophers’ images, in Orthodox medieval churches in Greece, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and, of course, ancient Russia in the 15th-17th cc, allowing to see the great ancient Greek philosopher from a new perspective.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 127-133
Author(s):  
Kotenko Т.

The article deals with the historical stages of the creation, development, and formation of a human rights institute. The ideological and theoretical heritage of Ancient Greece and Rome, which is the basis for the study of ideas about justice, social equality, and human freedom, is analyzed based on the analysis of the fundamental ideas of the most famous thinkers of antiquity. It was the philosophers of antiquity who initiated the concept of "natural law", which was formed over the centuries by the desire of man to understand the world, determine his place in society and politics. From the time of antiquity, the concept of human rights gradually began to emerge; Subsequently, the concept of equality, freedom of person, person, and citizen were formed. Ancient philosophers came up with the idea of law in general and the idea of human rights under the requirements of their time and conditions of social development. Over time, the ancient perception of social equality, justice, dignity, independence, and freedom of man became the starting point and benchmark of European political culture. The early period of the development of political and legal doctrines in ancient Greece is associated with the time of the formation of ancient Greek statehood. It was at this time that an attempt was made to give rationalist ideas about ethical and legal order in human affairs and relations instead of mythological ones. It should be noted that ancient Greek views on human rights were formed in mythological ideas about the origin of policies and divine justice. That is why rights come from the divine order of justice, which became the basis for the category equality. Only what corresponded to the concept of equality (within the concept of justice) was understood as right. In ancient Greek politics, customs and mono-norms gradually transformed towards protecting the dignity of citizens. The polite democracy gave impetus to the emergence of freedom, which promoted the emergence of equal political rights among the citizens of this policy. In the Greek city-state, the law first emerged as a specific phenomenon, and the life of the policy began to be compulsory for everyone. Subsequently, the Pythagoreans (VI –V centuries BC) formulated an important role in shaping the idea of legal equality and justice, using numerical proportions, that is, the ratio of certain parameters. The provision that "fair is to pay another equal" essentially introduces the coupon principle. Subsequently, this reflected Solon (7th-6th centuries BC) in his reforms. It eliminated debt slavery and, as a result of the compromise between nobility and demos, introduced a moderate censorship democracy in Athens. All citizens of the policy should equally be protected by the law and obey its mandatory rules (1). Recognized the law as a requirement of legal equality of free citizens of the policy, slaves did not apply the legal rules. Equality was considered in two respects: equality in law and equality before the law. Developed by Roman lawyers provisions in which a person acts as a subject of law, determine the legal status of a person, establish the freedom and formal equality of people under natural law, define Roman citizenship as a special legal status of a person, the distribution of the right to private and public, etc. contributed to the awareness of legal the importance of human rights in the context of the systematic doctrine of the legal nature of the relationship between the individual and the state. Roman law, extending to a state which it regarded as the object of its study along with positive law, ensured a legal relationship between the state and the individual, which was crucial for the development of the institution of the protection of individual rights in the world at that time (14, p. 119). In relation to individuals, the state was not above the rule of law, but directly its component part, which has all the basic properties of a law. The basis of a just and legal relationship between the individual and the state recognized the law, not the state. The individual and the state must be law-abiding subjects of legal relations, that is, act according to the rules of law. Conclusion. To sum up, we can point out that the first theoretical developments and statutory provisions of the law go back to ancient times. The thinkers of Ancient Greece and Rome initiated the basic concepts of justice, equality, autonomy. It was then that ideas about political rights, lawmaking, democracy, and the personal responsibility of citizens were formed. However, freedom was not universal, it did not belong to slaves, and they were not the subjects of relations in the policy. The population of the policies was divided into different social and ethnic groups and accordingly had different legal status. Such inequality was the norm, so the priority was given to a policy or state that was enshrined in legislation. However, in Ancient Greece, there were also certain individual rights of citizens such as the right to speak; private property rights; the right to participate in government; the right to hold office; to participate in national meetings; the right to participate in the administration of justice; the right to appeal against illegal acts, etc. In Ancient Rome, this list was supplemented by the right to bargain, freedom of movement, the right of the people's tribune to veto, the ban on torture, the adversarial process of the lawsuit, etc. Keywords: Antiquity period, city-policies, human rights, legal equality, society, justice.


Author(s):  
Alain Bresson

This chapter examines the extent and the limits of the market system in ancient Greece. It begins with a historical overview of the center-periphery model that emerged during the period, predation as a defining characteristic of the ancient Greek market, and the divergence of prices from one region to another—often seen as a symptom of a lack of market integration. It then compares the overall performance of the market in the city-states with those of the cities of medieval and modern Europe before discussing the disequilibrium between supply and demand and the form of risk management adopted by individuals and by cities that made the market of ancient Greece far from being a “perfect market.” The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Nash equilibrium that characterized the market and the factors that limited the production of grain to be sold on the market.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE TRIDIMAS

AbstractAlong with introducing democracy, advancing philosophy and excelling at the arts, during the period 800–300bceancient Greece achieved substantial economic prosperity. Recent literature attributes the efflorescence to the institutions and culture of democratic city-states. However, the city-states failed to initiate sustained growth. Technological progress remained slow and the economic efflorescence ended after the prevalence of Macedon and the subsequent Roman conquest. The present study scrutinises the roles of city-state institutions and culture. It shows that ultimately ancient Greece could not sustain long-run growth because a multitude of independent small city-states prevented the exploitation of economies of scale and stoked continual wars that exhausted them financially and militarily, and because of a culture valuing landholding, self-sufficiency and collectivist attitudes.


Author(s):  
Erika Fischer-Lichte

Chapter 3 deals with ‘Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and Nietzsche’s Vision of Ancient Greek Theatre’ with regard to the emergence of a new image of ancient Greece that would rival the Winckelmannian image from that point on. Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk is described as an attempt not to return to ancient Greece but to revive ancient Greek theatre by taking into account the conditions of the modern world, as Nietzsche similarly interpreted it in his treatise The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1872). The truly revolutionary aspects of the image of Greece as developed in this treatise are examined. While Winckelmann only considered the Apollonian side of Greek culture and art, Nietzsche complemented it by focusing on its Dionysian side, thus opening up an absolutely novel approach to Greek tragedy for the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Julie Willems ◽  
Helen Farley ◽  
Chris Campbell

Digital equity is a complex and multifaceted concept. It includes not only access to hardware, software, and connectivity to the Internet but also meaningful, high-quality, and culturally relevant content in local languages, and the ability to create, share, and exchange knowledge. Participatory citizenship in the digital era involves the right to access and participate in higher education. Indeed, it is a key civil rights issue of the modern world. This editorial provides the context in which the articles in this special issue are located.


2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 91-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Kokaz

Ancient Greece is not unfamiliar to International Relations scholars. Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War has been especially influential in shaping our understanding of the ancient Greek international system, not only because it is the best historical source available, but also in light of the status it has achieved as the foremost classic of International Relations. Of particular interest to International Relations have been questions concerning the character of the system and the units within it, and how these have affected the dynamics of conflict and co-operation in the international arena. Many find the antecedents of the modern European states-system in the pattern of relations that emerged between the independent city-states of Hellas roughly between the eighth and fourth centuries BC. Like our contemporary international system, the ancient Greek international system was anarchic in the sense that it lacked an overarching common government.


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