Ethnic Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean
Social Life Under Empire
Format:Paperback
Publisher:The University of Chicago Press
Publishing:12th Jun '26
£32.00
This title is due to be published on 12th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A fresh perspective revealing how ethnographic thinking shaped the sociocultural landscape of the ancient Mediterranean.
With this book, Philip A. Harland presents a large-scale rereading of social and cultural life in the eastern part of the ancient Mediterranean in particular, examining social interactions among peoples, from culturally dominant groups to minority populations. Harland assesses literary and archaeological evidence to yield fresh insights into the dynamics of ethnic relations in the region and to explore how the population navigated questions of identification, differentiation, categorization, stratification, criminalization, and population production.
Harland considers encounters between peoples as well as their representations of one another, reframing the social landscape of the ancient world by focusing on the influence and ubiquity of the ethnographic imagination between the fifth century BCE and the third century CE. Drawing insights from anthropology, sociology, and postcolonial studies, Harland offers close readings of papyri, inscriptions, monuments, sculptures, and other materials that reflect interactions between different populations at all levels of society. He gives careful attention to the perspectives of enslaved, immigrant, and subject peoples, including Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians, and Judeans under Persian, Hellenistic, or Roman rule.
Offering an innovative reading of social and cultural life from the ground up, this book reveals the extent to which ethnographic thinking structured the sociocultural landscape of the ancient world.
Exceptionally detailed in its analysis, Ethnic Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean is an exciting, comprehensive, and well-researched book that will make a significant impact on the study of ethnicity in Mediterranean antiquity. This work is unique in its chronological and geographical sweep, considering dynamics of identity discourse from Herodotos to the early imperial period, which allows us to see ancient ethnic discourses from a variety of different perspectives and angles. Harland also pays careful attention to the imperial, colonial, and geopolitical contexts that shaped discourses of ethnicity, looking at subject peoples within colonial contexts or dotting the margins of imperial control.”
-- Cavan Concannon, University of Southern California“Harland has written a remarkable book about ethnic interactions and ethnographic perceptions in the ancient Mediterranean. While decentering the gazes of Greek and Roman elite authors and the colonial traditions that prioritize them, it embeds the production of ethnic categories in the social encounters of people of differing statuses that have long evaded our attention. By complicating the simple dichotomies on which so much classical scholarship is based, it also enables us to envision the cognitive hierarchies in which ancient peoples situated themselves and others. Above all, it places many different peoples, including Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Lycians, Thracians, Judeans/Jews, and Christians, in conversations with one another at the local level. The result is an essential work that uniquely captures how they fostered friendly and unfriendly rivalries, crafted cultural exchanges, and emulated one another in ways that move beyond blanket narratives of nationalism, domination, or resistance.”
-- Nathanael Andrade, Binghamton University (SISBN: 9780226848617
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
368 pages