1 / 9

Cultural Ecologies

Cultural Ecologies. Material culture, text and identity in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean. Defining our central concepts. Ecologies Hellenistic and Roman world Material culture and text Identity Culture(s) Cultural boundaries Ethnicity Culture contacts and acculturation.

alving
Download Presentation

Cultural Ecologies

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Cultural Ecologies Material culture, text and identity in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean

  2. Defining our central concepts • Ecologies • Hellenistic and Roman world • Material culture and text • Identity • Culture(s) • Cultural boundaries • Ethnicity • Culture contacts and acculturation

  3. Ecologies “striving for an equilibrium” as a basic tendency in culture contacts Hellenistic and Roman worlds Period(s?) of intensified culture contact – but nothing uncommon: any other period would do to study culture contacts Identity Plural identities, personal and public. The identity at issue in this seminar is cultural identity: the sense of being in whatever way affilliated to a particular culture (cf below)

  4. Culture:approach by way of: • 1 Structure, pattern; such as: whole way of life, cognitive structure, pattern of behaviour, structures of signification, social organization • 2 Functions; such as: adaptation to the world, identity, belonging, difference, stereotyping, means of control • 3 Processes; such as: differentiating, making sense, relating, dominating, transmitting a way of life • 4 Products • 5 Group membership • 6 Power / ideology

  5. Culture: continued definitions: E.B. Tylor in 1871 (Primitive culture): culture is “the complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. Minimalist definition: culture is what people think (shared beliefs, values, rituals, language etc) and what people do (economy, polity, ritual, social structure etc), and all products resulting thereof. These add up to distinct complexes: cultures. Cultural boundaries are not barriers between the one culture and the other: they are permeable and the locus of contact. Cultures are distinct but are not discrete.

  6. Culture contacts and acculturation: • “Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups” < Robert Redfield, Ralph Linton & Melville J. Herskovits, A memorandum for the study of acculturation, Man 35 (1935) 145-148.

  7. Acculturation, continued: Always take into account: • 1 Types of contact: intensity; duration; entire groups or subgroups; between groups of equal or unequal size; friendly or hostile; groups marked by (un)equal degrees of complexity in material or non-material aspects of culture, or both; does one group move into the habitat of another, do they meet in a new region etc. • 2 Situation: volutarily or forced upon; social and political (in)equality, in different constellations. • 3 Process: acceptance (partial, complete etc cf type of contact and situation); resistance; to what purpose (donor group, receiving group): economic profit, political dominance, desire for conformity, ethical or religious considerations; social advantage (prestige); congruity of existing patterns; necessity (because of adoption of functionally related traits). Integration: factor time; element of conflict (also psychic conflict); adjust-ment: modification, reinterpretation (of new or pre-existing traits/ patterns), displacement (plus issue of survivals); differential selection/ acceptance of traits in accordance with gender, social strata, belief types, occupation.

  8. Acculturation, continued: Possible results: • 1 Assimilation: a culture is absorbed by the other and is essentially lost (also called: absorption; its everyday use is much more ambiguous) • 2 Integration: the two cultures accommodate, and individuals can be, or have to be, competent in two cultures (also described as alternation: bicultural competence; or as accommodation – which probably also includes all other results except absorption/assimilation; or as stabilized pluralism: also including separation?). • 3 Fusion: the two cultures merge, and a single new successor culture is formed (integration and fusion are also dealt with under the heading of adaptation = combination into cultural whole that is a historic mosaic; either a harmonious whole, or a series of more or less conflicting elements “which are reconciled in everyday life as specific occasions arise”).

  9. Acculturation, continued: • 4 Separation: the two cultures live side by side, with a minimum of interaction, individuals have a single cultural identity (multiculturalism: no bicultural competence, but separate domains – but the everyday usage of multicultural is rather more ambiguous) • 5 Marginalization: a group can miss out on the process, so to speak, and end up participating in no mainstream culture at all: to all purposes they have no identity, except that of being marginal. • 6 Reaction: contra-acculturative movement, to compensate for imposed or assumed inferiority, or through the prestige which a return to pre-acculturative conditions brings

More Related