Dnia 5 maja 2015 r. o godz. 18.30 w Warszawie w ramach spotkań studencko-doktorancko-pracowniczych Zakładu Historii Starożytnej oraz studenckiego Koła Starożytniczego UW odbędzie się wykład prof. Johna K. Daviesa (Uniwersytet w Liverpoolu) pt. State formation in Early Iron Age Greece: the operative forces. Wykład będzie miał miejsce w Instytucie Filologii Klasycznej UW, Krakowskie Przedmieście 1, sala 103.
Streszczenie wykładu:
After a Preamble which explains how and why this paper is heterodox, Part I: Towards a generative model summarises two papers on state formation by the sociologist W.G. Runciman, reviews newer historical work, and insists that the task is about tracing the emergence not only of the polis but also of a wider spectrum of Greek statehood. The portrayals of Skherie in the Odyssey and of Hesiod’s village are suggested as representing Level 1 of a hierarchy of settlement. Part II: The operative forces identifies six operative forces as combining in varied ways to yield the various components of that spectrum. They are (i): the exceptional individual, along with the expedients which communities had to adopt in order to control such persons; (ii) population, three aspects of which (numbers, role, and cohesion) each have effects, not least that of generating second-level entities of a hierarchy; (iii) the environment, with its restrictive effects generated by terrain, by the rhythms of human life-cycle, and by the efforts required to make a living; (iv) the supernatural, including the effects of polytheism, of the location of cult-spots via the convention that gods had certain preferred locations for access, and of sanctuary predominating over community; (v) convertible resources, with the productive processes and acquisition procedures that they generate; and finally (vi) memory, imagination, and a sense of identity, all of which are mental concepts which shape both time and space. An Envoi, Towards the emergence and consolidation of the polis-state, explains why the tone of this paper has been pre-civic, avoiding the terms ‘citizenship’ and emphasising that the emergence of the phenomenon was neither inevitable, nor linear, nor uniform, and was due in great part to the absence of ‘top-down’ power and of invasion.