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Wed 30 March
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    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 31 March
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Fri 1 April
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    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
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Sat 2 April
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    14.00 - 16.00
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Wednesday 30 March 2016 11.00 - 13.00
O-2 ANT01 Community and Conflict: Models and Categories to its Historical Studies
Aula 12, Nivel 1
Network: Antiquity Chair: Carlos Machado
Organizer: José Knust Discussant: Neville Morley
Paulo Henrique de Carvalho Pachá : Saints, Lords and Peasants: Gift-exchange, Patronage and Conflict in the Iberian Late Antiquity
This paper will address the conceptual distinction between gift-exchange and patronage in the specific context of the Iberian late antiquity. Gift-exchange is an anthropological concept most developed by Marcel Mauss and, today, highly popular in the medieval studies. Patronage is a sociological concept with an important tradition in the historiography ... (Show more)
This paper will address the conceptual distinction between gift-exchange and patronage in the specific context of the Iberian late antiquity. Gift-exchange is an anthropological concept most developed by Marcel Mauss and, today, highly popular in the medieval studies. Patronage is a sociological concept with an important tradition in the historiography of classical antiquity. There are several studies about gift-exchange in the classical antiquity and patronage in the middle ages, but those still are the exceptions. In between those periods – the late antiquity –, it is not possible to distinguish the affirmation of clear conceptual choice. Historians researching the late antiquity have not developed or adopted a specific framework, sometimes using patronage and other times gift-exchange as its conceptual tool of choice.
In the first part of our paper, we will argue that historians investigating the late antiquity have a tendency to treat both concepts as almost the same thing: they highlight its intra-aristocratic scope and the reciprocity as its basic characteristic. In this way, the historiography striped gift-exchange from its specific conceptual character and transformed it from an analytical tool to only a hyper-theorized version of patronage.
We can see the main differences between patronage and gift-exchange in the relative positions of the inferior party in each relationship. Both patronage and gift-exchange are highly hierarchical. But, as we will argue, patronage is mostly beneficial for both parties while gift-exchange has in its core conflicting positions. The inferior actor in a (series of) gift-exchange(s) may receive several benefits, but with each benefit the inequality between the inferior and the superior actors grows. The result of this process is not only inequality and hierarchization, but personal domination.
In the second part of our paper we will analyze the visigothic context (VI and VII centuries) as a case study to develop the concept of gift-exchange and uncover its analytical possibilities. In this context, gift-exchange will be our main concept to frame the creation and reproduction of hierarchical and conflictive relations. To stress the distinction between gift-exchange and patronage, we will analyze the relations between local aristocrats, saints (mostly bishops) and peasants as represented in the Iberian hagiographies produced in the seventh century.
The conclusion of our paper will show that gift-exchange can (and should) be profoundly distinguished from patronage – even if both can describe overlapping phenomena during the Late Antiquity. In this way, gift-exchange should be seen as a social relation that also functions as a means to create, reproduce and reinforce personal domination – one that is a fundamental mechanism of class hegemony. (Show less)

Uiran Gebara da Silva : Social Conflict in Late Antiquity: Concepts and Models for Late Roman Rural Rebellions
The aim of this paper is to address the concepts and models of rural rebellions developed by the social sciences in the twentieth and twentieth first centuries, and to examine whether some of them are helpful or not in the understanding of late roman rural rebellions. To achieve such goal ... (Show more)
The aim of this paper is to address the concepts and models of rural rebellions developed by the social sciences in the twentieth and twentieth first centuries, and to examine whether some of them are helpful or not in the understanding of late roman rural rebellions. To achieve such goal I first describe and present some of the key concepts and models for the understanding of rebellions or rural rebellions and their original historical or anthropological contexts of research. I intend to deal with models such as the peasant rebellions and/or the idea of peasant revolutions in twentieth century, or the transformation of the concept of moral economy and, then, to consider the pitfalls or benefits of the application of those models to the late roman documental context. In that regard, I propose that some of the models discussed indeed contribute to the investigation of the ancient accounts about the actions of the bagaudae in the late Roman Gaul and the circumcellions in late Roman North Africa. The main consequences of that is that the reconstruction of activities of both the bagaudae and the circumcellions should reincorporate the perspective of social conflict and the rural and labor conditions of the communities from which the above mentioned rebellions have sprung, going beyond the models proposed in the late twentieth century, which overly-emphasized religious, political or ethnic reasons for the revolts. (Show less)

José Knust : From young Marx to Early Rome: State and Community in Early-republican Central Italy
Early Rome, as every state formation before the eighteenth century, was not a modern Nation-State. It is a truism, but the Roman state (during its whole history) has often been grasped as if it had the same configuration of the modern western states (monopoly of violence, territorial sovereignty, internal judicial ... (Show more)
Early Rome, as every state formation before the eighteenth century, was not a modern Nation-State. It is a truism, but the Roman state (during its whole history) has often been grasped as if it had the same configuration of the modern western states (monopoly of violence, territorial sovereignty, internal judicial monism, etc.). However, Early-republican Rome is a very opportune case study to defy this view: Rome had a complex relationship with her neighbours in this period, progressively incorporating them into her hegemonic system but without annexing them to its absolute sovereignty. In this paper, I will propose a model to think Early-republican polities in Roman central Italy as historically specific forms of state. To this end, I will use some concepts and categories of social sciences.
The young Karl Marx realized, through the critique of Hegel’s philosophy, the importance of the analysis of civil society beyond the State per se. It was a crucial development in Marx’s thought, shifting his focus from German political philosophy to English political economy. This movement allowed him to achieve the theoretical formulations that made him so important to the social sciences. However, Marx never explored again the theme of State in his maturity as deeply as he did in his youth, in works like Critique of Hegel’s philosophy of Right and On the Jewish question.
Marx’s core thoughts on these texts were about the separation between the “political constitution” (i.e., the form of the state) and the “material reality” (i.e., the civil society) in modern capitalist societies. This separation would lead to political alienation. Comparing this reality to other historical periods, as Medieval Europe, Ancient Greece and the Ancient Near East, Marx advanced some categories to explain different relationships between state and society. Marx’s definition of Medieval Europe as ‘the democracy of unfreedom’ as well his theoretical distinction between the natures of Monarchy and Democracy sovereignties are especially fertile to think about a State Theory for societies without an ‘Abstract State’, in which the relationship between ‘Political State’ and ‘Material State’ (Marx’s terminology) contrasts with the one that prevail the modern Nation-State.
Early Roman Central Italy was composed by several polities, which were composed mostly by peasants’ communities. Thus, we can improve this young Marx’s dense theoretical framework using some concepts of sociology of community (from Ferdinand Tönnies to Norbert Elias and beyond). Using this conceptual structure, I intend to model the state system developed in these region in two different moments of its history: after the Foedus Cassianum (493 BCE) and after the end of the Second Latin War (338 BCE). (Show less)



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