From Document to Monument

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Cooley
Keyword(s):  
Asia Minor ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Public Display ◽  
Local Initiative ◽  
Local Agency ◽  
Central Direction ◽  
Universal Application

The transformation of written imperial documents into monumental inscriptions in the Greek-speaking provinces owed more to local agency than central direction. Local interests ensured public display of an emperor's instruction curbing abuses by imperial officials, and ancient treaties were kept on public view centuries after they were enacted. Only in a few cases were there explicit instructions requiring public and prominent display. Dissemination of even major historical documents appears to have depended on local initiative. Copies of the Deeds (Res Gestae) of Augustus (d. ad 14) are known from only three cities in Asia Minor, and Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices (ad 301), despite its universal application, is known from only two provinces of Asia Minor and the province of Achaea.

Local Spaces for Peace in Cambodia?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eng Netra ◽  
Caroline Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Local Agency ◽  
Village Level ◽  
Central Direction ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Basic Infrastructure

This chapter focuses on the case of Cambodia. Local agency is evident in efforts by Cambodian people to cope with the immensity of the events overwhelming them. For example, much initial restoration of basic infrastructure and rudimentary services, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, was the result of local agency as much as central direction. Nevertheless, throughout postcolonial Cambodian history, Cambodian governance has been characterised by high levels of surveillance and repression. This has been accompanied by an explicit concern by elites to manipulate ideas of the Cambodian tradition into a politics of populist authenticity that significantly affects possibilities for emancipatory forms of peace formation. The chapter then examines two areas: the reform of village-level political structures and the restoration of Buddhist rituals.

Diogenes of Oenoanda

2020 ◽  
pp. 530-548
Author(s):  
Pamela Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Public Display ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The otherwise unknown Diogenes of Oenoanda authored a monumental Greek inscription that offered Epicurean salvation (σωτηρία) to his compatriots and to foreign visitors to his small but thriving town in Lycia (now in Turkey). Parts of the dismantled circa second-century ce inscription were first discovered in 1884, and fragments continue to emerge. The contents include several letters, original epitomes on Physics and Ethics, a discourse on Old Age, a collection of the Epicurean Key Doctrines, a set of original Maxims, and a lengthy but now fragmentary explanation of Diogenes’s philanthropic purpose. Scholars estimate that Diogenes’s text—the largest known inscription from the ancient world—originally consisted of over 25,000 words spread across 260 square meters. Located evidently in a prominent urban setting, the inscription had the properties of a billboard, an archive, a philosophical handbook, an imposing commemorative monument, and something akin to a shrine. While the epigraphical content is unique and even subversive, the inscription reflects trends in imperial Asia Minor: extravagant urban benefactions, the enthusiasm for epigraphy, and the public display of Greek culture. Diogenes’s inscription is significant to the history of Epicureanism, as it provides glimpses of a lost Epicurean community, sheds light on the formation of Epicurean texts, and attests to the diversity of the social and cultural contexts of Epicureanism. Among its most unexpected aspects are an emphasis on altruism and a description of an imagined Epicurean future when there would be no slaves, fortifications, or laws, and the world would be “full of justice and mutual love.”

scholarly journals Sennacherib and the Ionians

1910 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. W. King
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Maritime Provinces ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Political Success

We possess few contemporary records of the Ionian expansion, even in its later stages, and the gradual hellenization of the coast-lands of southern Asia Minor is a process that, in the absence of historical documents, has largely to be inferred from later developments and by archaeological research. At least as early as the eighth century the sea-faring Greeks were known to the Assyrians, under the generic name of Ionians, as pirates and freebooters who troubled the coasts of their maritime provinces. That they should occasionally come into armed conflict with the Assyrian power was to be expected, but it has not hitherto been realized that at the beginning of the seventh century they were sufficiently numerous and powerful within the area of Assyrian control to join other adventurous and discontented elements in conducting a land campaign of some magnitude, and in defying, for a time successfully, the Assyrian forces. That they were capable of doing so may be taken as evidence of a considerable Ionian expansion eastwards at the close of the eighth and the beginning of the seventh centuries, and, though the Assyrians had little difficulty in checking the movement, it is probable that fresh conflicts of a like nature would have been recorded in the later Assyrian annals, were it not that a few years afterwards the centre of Ionian power in Western Asia Minor began to be held in check by Lydia, and later, in company with Lydia, was shaken to its foundation by the Cimmerian invaders. In fact those Ionians, whom Sennacherib met and defeated, achieved little political success, and that of a temporary character. It is possible that the effects of their cultural relations with their conquerors were more lasting.

Conclusion: Revolutions, Settlements and Scotland’s Political Development

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Raffe
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Central Direction ◽  
Established Church ◽  
Power And Authority ◽  
The Revolution

THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT OF 1689–90 repudiated many of the principles and policies of royal government in the Restoration period. But while their responses were different, James VII and the makers of the settlement sought solutions to the same fundamental problems. By studying the upheavals of the 1685–90 period, we have focused on two sets of challenges confronting the rulers of seventeenth-century Scotland. The first concerned the character of the established Church. How was it to be constituted and what was the appropriate role for the monarch in its government? How should the civil magistrate deal with religious dissent? A second cluster of problems involved the crown’s power and authority. Was the king ‘absolute’ and what did this mean in practice? To what extent was local government in Scotland autonomous, and how far was it amenable to central direction?...

Having Their Say, Leaving Their Mark

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Adolphus G. Belk ◽  
Robert C. Smith ◽  
Sherri L. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Adverse Conditions ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Independent Organization

In general, the founders of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists were “movement people.” Powerful agents of socialization such as the uprisings of the 1960s molded them into scholars with tremendous resolve to tackle systemic inequalities in the political science discipline. In forming NCOBPS as an independent organization, many sought to develop a Black perspective in political science to push the boundaries of knowledge and to use that scholarship to ameliorate the adverse conditions confronting Black people in the United States and around the globe. This paper utilizes historical documents, speeches, interviews, and other scholarly works to detail the lasting contributions of the founders and Black political scientists to the discipline, paying particular attention to their scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and civic engagement. It finds that while political science is much improved as a result of their efforts, there is still work to do if their goals are to be achieved.

Through the Lens of Gurdjieff

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-52
Author(s):  
Michael Pittman
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Spiritual Transformation ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Eastern Asia ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Spiritual Conversation

G. I. Gurdjieff (c.1866–1949) was born in Gyumri, Armenia and raised in the Caucasus and eastern Asia Minor. He also traveled extensively throughout Turkey to places of pilgrimage and in search of Sufi teachers. Through the lens of Gurdjieff’s notion of legominism, or the means by which spiritual teachings are transmitted from successive generations, this article explores the continuing significance of spiritual practice and tradition and the ways that these forms remain relevant in shaping contemporary trends in spirituality. Beginning with Gurdjieff’s use of legominism, the article provides reflection on some early findings done in field research in Turkey— through site visits, interviews and participant-observation—conducted in the summers of 2014 and 2015. The aim of the project is both to meet individuals and groups, particularly connected to Sufism, that may have some contact with the influences that Gurdjieff would have been familiar with, and to visit some of the sites that were part of Gurdjieff’s early background and which served to inform his work. Considerations of contemporary practices include the view of spiritual transmission, and practices of pilgrimage, prayer and sohbet, or spiritual conversation, in an ongoing discourse about spiritual transformation.

Postscript

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-132
Author(s):  
Stephen Hugh-Jones
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Recurrent Events ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
York Academy ◽  
American Museum ◽  
International Conference ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
American Tropics ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The previous paper was first published in 1982, when ethnoastronomy was still in its infancy. It appeared in Ethnoastronomy and Archaeoastronomy in the American Tropics, Tony Aveni and Gary Urton’s edited proceedings of an international conference held at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium in New York under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences. Aveni and Urton were true pioneers who opened up a new interdisciplinary field of research that brought together astronomers, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and others, all interested in astronomical knowledge amongst contemporary indigenous societies, in how buildings, settlements and archaeological monuments were aligned with recurrent events in the sky, and in how such alignments matched up with astronomical information contained in ancient codices and other historical documents and in contemporary ethnographic accounts.

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