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    19.00 - 20.15
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Wednesday 4 April 2018 14.00 - 16.00
D-3 ANT01 Citizenship and the Diversity of Identities in the Ancient World
MAP/OG/005 Maths and Physics
Network: Antiquity Chair: Edward Harris
Organizer: Jakub Filonik Discussant: Edward Harris
Roger Brock : Civic Subdivisions and Citizen Identity in Ancient Greece
The citizen community of the ancient Greek polis was typically divided into smaller units, notably by tribe, location, fictive kinship, military contingent or simple numerically-based grouping. Citizens (politai) thus had besides their membership in the community of the polis a range of other nested or overlapping identities as members ... (Show more)
The citizen community of the ancient Greek polis was typically divided into smaller units, notably by tribe, location, fictive kinship, military contingent or simple numerically-based grouping. Citizens (politai) thus had besides their membership in the community of the polis a range of other nested or overlapping identities as members of other bodies. The evidence collected by Jones in Public organization in ancient Greece (1987), supplemented more recently by the Inventory of archaic and classical Greek poleis compiled by the Copenhagen Polis Centre (2004), suggests that the smallest subdivisions typically had an average membership in the high tens or low hundreds. Not only will this have facilitated the regulation of citizen membership and behaviour through local knowledge, as we know was done by the demes at Athens (ps.-Aristotle Athenian constitution 42), so that even there acceptance in the local community was crucial to maintaining citizen status (Demosthenes 57 Against Euboulides; Isaios 12 For Euphiletus, both relating to a global review of citizens): noting the broad correspondence between the size of these units and ‘Dunbar’s number’, I shall argue that these subdivisions by their small size were able to provide an environment, even in very large poleis such as Athens, in which individuals could interact in a stable and effective way on a day to day basis and, furthermore, that since such bodies frequently had a spatial locus, resources and formal functions, particularly in religion and cult, they may well have offered meaningful quotidian civic activity and identity, above all in those many poleis in which only a minority of citizens were politically active; thus they potentially supply the basis of a model of civic identity and community which illuminates the average polis as well as the anomaly of Athens. (Show less)

Mirko Canevaro : Greek Citizenship: a Renewed Institutional Approach
Greek historians have been challenging in recent years the ‘institutional’ understanding of status groups in the Greek poleis, and therefore the Aristotelian take on citizenship as formal legal access to political and judicial functions. On the one hand, some scholars have highlighted the permeability of the citizen group (e.g. Vlassopoulos) ... (Show more)
Greek historians have been challenging in recent years the ‘institutional’ understanding of status groups in the Greek poleis, and therefore the Aristotelian take on citizenship as formal legal access to political and judicial functions. On the one hand, some scholars have highlighted the permeability of the citizen group (e.g. Vlassopoulos) and the centrality of associations below and beyond the polis for political life (e.g. Vlassopoulos, Ismard, Gabrielsen); on the other, scholars have highlighted the performative dimension of citizenship (e.g. Duplouy) and the centrality of religious belonging and access (Blok).

These development, in different ways, have side-lined legal and political analysis, and exposed its deficiencies for understanding Greek citizenship. This paper takes stock of these developments, and explores the potential of a renewed ‘institutional’ approach which, in line with the many New Institutionalisms in political science, expands our approach to institutions to include not only formal rules, but informal practices and narratives, and the analysis of individuals’ behaviour within the institutional structures of citizenship as a negotiation between these different levels of the relevant normative order.

I argue that the more recent different approaches can be integrated with previous ones into a unitary understanding of citizenship as an evolving normative order founded on narratives (stories founding the identity of the citizen group), practices (informal duties and performance) and rules as the manifestation of progressive formalisation (and institutionalisation) within the city-states. In doing this, the paper provides a theoretical introduction to the panel, and sets the contributions of the following paper into the wider context both of the discipline of ancient history, and of relevant approaches in political science. (Show less)

Jakub Filonik : Public-private Blends for Rhetorical Ends: Addressing Athenian Citizens’ Identities in Public Speeches
Citizens of democratic Athens described their city-state as a political community ‘based on speeches’, where orators made repetitive appeals to their audiences’ shared identities in the political institutions of the city. In these speeches, citizenship is referred to not only as a legal status, but also a set of normative ... (Show more)
Citizens of democratic Athens described their city-state as a political community ‘based on speeches’, where orators made repetitive appeals to their audiences’ shared identities in the political institutions of the city. In these speeches, citizenship is referred to not only as a legal status, but also a set of normative rules of conduct presented before civic audiences through elaborate rhetorical measures. This paper will draw on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the theories of Conceptual Blending to explore more oblique ways in which the category of citizenship was constructed, reframed, and exploited in the political discourse of Athenian democracy.

As argued in recent decades by linguists such as G. Lakoff, Z. Kövecses, A. Musolff or R.W. Gibbs, conceptual metaphor is a reflection of patterns around which human thought and action are organized, and can be expressed in a number of indirect ways in everyday language. Since it refers to a deep level of the cognitive image of the world and echoes ‘frames’ that constitute the person’s basic sense of identity, it can be exploited through concealed references to the latter. This paper argues that in Athenian political culture, metaphorical appeals to shared identities could prove to be a rhetorical skeleton key, employed whenever speakers were striving for favourable reactions from their audiences. It thus attempts to identify some prevalent modes of the application of such metaphors in Athenian courtrooms and in the Assembly, along with the implications the former brought to Athenians’ own thinking about their civic status, duties, and identity. It will particularly look at the way Athenians constructed their categories of ‘public’ and ‘private’. In oratory, various citizens’ roles, relationships, and obligations are represented as private, household-related ties and activities, while private actions of individuals are said to be a reflection of their political stance, in order to fit the speaker’s rhetorical ends.

This paper will make use of the theories discussed in the recent decades in cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis to explore such representations and their rhetorical use in the political discourse of classical Athens, in attempt to gain new insights into the political culture and citizens’ identities of that period. (Show less)

David Lewis : Prototypical and Institutional Approaches to Slave and Citizen Status in Classical Athens
Recent studies of category formation in cognitive psychology, building on the work of Ludwig Wittgestein and Eleanor Rosch, have stressed the importance of prototypes to the organisation of categories in the human mind (e.g. Lakoff; Aitschison). On this view, most categories are organised by family resemblance around a prototypical example ... (Show more)
Recent studies of category formation in cognitive psychology, building on the work of Ludwig Wittgestein and Eleanor Rosch, have stressed the importance of prototypes to the organisation of categories in the human mind (e.g. Lakoff; Aitschison). On this view, most categories are organised by family resemblance around a prototypical example of a given phenomenon; membership of a category depends on the degree of resemblance to the prototype. Such categories are not bounded by hard, formal criteria, but have fuzzy edges. Some recent work in slavery studies (Patterson; Hunt) has suggested that we ought to jettison an institutional (viz. legal) distinction between slaves and free persons, and operate using a prototypical approach instead. However, these scholars have overlooked the fact that Lakoff and Aitchison admit that some categories (e.g. whether or not one is a US Senator) are determined by formal criteria. It is not the case, then, that cognitive psychologists have rejected formal categories tout court. In this paper I will show that the classical Athenians had both a legal, institutional understanding of the distinction between slaves and free persons (based on the criterion of legal ownership), and a prototypical conception of slaves, free persons, and citizens, as well, viz. social stereotypes. Drawing on the work of the Oxford Group for the Study of Social Mobility, I will show how examples of misalignment between formal status and extra-legal attributes of social stereotypes (viz. wealth, modes of dress, etc.) drew ire from Athenian writers; and how some Athenian laws were designed to ringfence certain kinds of behaviour (e.g. attending the gymnasium, pederastic relationships with free boys) as illegal for slaves to engage in, and suitable for citizens and other free persons only (Show less)



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