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Groups under roofs: A network model of Europe and Western Christianity, their history, problems, and prospects
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Abstract
What is, or maybe was, Europe? And might there be a nexus between the fact that specific Western institutions diffused over the globe, and global problems? The paper describes how western Christianity emerged shaping itself in a specific 'groups under roofs' structure of social relations that is described by the partition of society into groups which can easily be represented in overarching institutions. The model allows to explain the medieval European ascent, its specific development of self-governance and industrial society institutions, and the specific two-stage nature of European institutional modernization with a current second (albeit so far much less severe) modernization crisis. In a world that has become more connected and includes societies without 'groups under roofs' cultural traditions, partitioning institutions have to be reconsidered and adequately adapted.
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Proponents of the Axial Age contend that parallel cultural developments between 800 and 200 BCE in what is today China, Greece, India, Iran, and Israel-Palestine constitute the global historical turning point toward modernity. The Axial Age concept is well-known and influential, but deficiencies in the historical evidence and sociological analysis available have thwarted efforts to evaluate the concept’s major global contentions. As a result, the Axial Age concept remains controversial. Seshat: Global History Databank provides new tools for examining this topic in social formations across Afro-Eurasia during the first two millennia BCE and first millennium CE, allowing scholars to empirically evaluate the varied and contrasting claims researchers have put forward. Results undercut the notion of a specific “age” of axiality limited to a specific geo-temporal localization. Critical traits offered as evidence of an axial transformation by proponents of the Axial Age concept appeared across Afro-Eurasia hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years prior to the proposed Axial Age. Our analysis raises important questions for future evaluations of this period and points the way toward empirically-led, historical-sociological investigations of the ideological and institutional foundations of complex societies.
We propose a new framework to unify three conceptions of institutions that play a prominent role in the philosophical and scientific literature: the equilibria account, the regulative rules account, and the constitutive rules account. We argue that equilibrium-based and rule-based accounts are individually inadequate, but that jointly they provide a satisfactory conception of institutions as rules-in-equilibrium. In the second part of the paper we show that constitutive rules can be derived from regulative rules via the introduction of theoretical terms. We argue that the constitutive rules theory is reducible to the rules-in equilibrium theory, and that it accounts for the way in which we assign names to social institutions.
To assist colleagues from other disciplines who teach Augustine’s texts in their core courses, this contribution to the Lilly Colloquium discusses Augustine’s assessments of Emperors Constantine and Theodosius. His presentations of their tenure in office and their virtues suggest that his position on political leadership corresponds with his general skepticism about political platforms and platitudes. Yet careful reading of his revision of Ambrose’s account of Emperor Theodosius’s public penance and reconsideration of the last five sections of his fifth book City of God—as well as a reappraisal of several of his sermons on the Psalms—suggest that he proposes a radical alternative to political conformity relevant to undergraduates’ conventional expectations of society’s progress and their parts in it.
'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.
This four-part work describes and analyses democracy and despotism in tribes, city-states, and nation states. The theoretical framework used in this work combines Weberian, Aristotelian, evolutionary anthropological, and feminist theories in a comparative-historical context. The dual nature of humans, as both an animal and a consciously aware being, underpins the analysis presented.
Part One covers tribes. It uses anthropological literature to describe the “campfire democracy” of the African Bushmen, the Pygmies, and other band societies. Its main focus is on the tribal democracy of the Cheyenne, Iroquois, Huron, and other tribes, and it pays special attention to the role of women in tribal democracies. Part Two describes the city-states of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Canaan-Phoenicia, and includes a section on the theocracy of the Jews. This part focuses on the transition from tribal democracy to city-state democracy in the ancient Middle East – from the Sumerian city-states to the Phoenician. Part Three focuses on the origins of democracy and covers Greece—Mycenaean, Dorian, and the Golden Age. It presents a detailed description of the tribal democracy of Archaic Greece – emphasizing the causal effect of the hoplite-phalanx military formation in egalitarianizing Greek tribal society. Next, it analyses the transition from tribal to city-state democracy—with the new commercial classes engendering the oligarchic and democratic conflicts described by Plato and Aristotle. Part Four describes the Norse tribes as they contacted Rome, the rise of kingships, the renaissance of the city-states, and the parliamentary monarchies of the emerging nation-states. It provides details of the rise of commercial city states in Renaissance Italy, Hanseatic Germany and the Netherlands.
This paper empirically investigates why, between 800 and 1800, the urban center of gravity moved from the Islamic world to Europe. Using a large new city-specific data set covering Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, we unravel the role of geography and institutions in determining long-run city development in the two regions. We find that the main reasons for the Islamic world's stagnation and Europe's longterm success are specific to each region: any significant positive interaction between cities in the two regions hampered by their different main religious orientation. Together, the long-term consequences of a different choice of main transport mode (camel versus ship) and the development of forms of local participative government in Europe that made cities less dependent on the state explain why Europe's urban development eventually outpaced that in the Islamic world.
This book reveals the Hebrew Bible to be a sophisticated work of political philosophy, and the birthplace of egalitarian thought. Focusing on the Pentateuch, this book lays bare the manner in which the Bible appropriated and reconstituted ancient norms and institutions to create a new blueprint for society. Theology, politics, and economics were marshaled anew to weaken traditional seats of power, and to create a homogeneous class of empowered common citizens. Much of this anticipates developments in the history of political thought that would recur only during the Enlightenment and in the thought of the American Founding Fathers. Ancient religion granted sacral legitimation to the ruling classes and saw the masses as mere servants. The Pentateuch, by contrast, elevates the common citizenry in the eyes of God by invoking the political institution of the vassal treaty, and casting Israel as a subordinate king to the Almighty through the theology of covenant. Through the prism of the political philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Montesquieu, the book demonstrates the Pentateuch to be history's first proposal for the distribution of political power. Utilizing the anthropology of pre-modern economies, ancient norms are explored concerning land tenure, taxation, and loans are reworked so that the common citizenry remains economically secure. Invoking the transformational role of the printing press in the spread of the Reformation and the birth of the Enlightenment, the book identifies far-reaching consequences in the Bible's approach to what was then the new technology of communication: the alphabetic text.
This article constructs a positive theological case for liberal multiculturalism through a close interrogation of the exegetical methods of Augustine of Hippo (354–430). Drawing out the political implications of the charitable hermeneutics of De doctrina christiana, I suggest that Augustine authorizes political theology to respond generously to multicultural practices of social co-existence and notions of “deep diversity.” In this guise, the Augustinian method of Scriptural reading provides a means of cherishing diverse cultural forms. Yet, alongside these inclusive affirmations, Augustine’s Scriptural politics suggests that liberal multiculturalism should not be an uncontested project for the Church. In place of a politics of separatist autonomy or passive tolerance, Augustine points us towards a radical politics of difference rooted in a fusion of truthfulness and love