Rethinking Oriental Despotism - Strategies of Governance and Modes of Participation in the Ancient Near East

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

In both past and present-day research on the origin, struture and effectiveness of political configurations, Near Eastern forms of rule are usually presented as the prime examples of precursors to autocratic rule. These pre-existing categories and narratives are then presupposed as an interpretive framework in the face of the overwhelming complexity of the textual and archaeological record, leaving the potential of these materials for an innovative, longue durée comparative approach unfulfilled. Research on Near Eastern societies shows, however, through its continual growth and achievements in the production of new textual and archaeological sources, a huge internal dynamism. And, consequently, this dynamism calls for a renewed effort of systematic theory-building.We see in this moment both a huge opportunity and a pressing need for a new campaign against unreflective models and theoretical cliché. The proposed Kollegforschungsgruppe aims at a new accentuation on the implementation of governance in Near Eastern social life, moving beyond hackneyed discussions of despotism, theocracy and bureaucracy toward the recognition of ‘participation’ and ‘procedure’ as well as ‘contingency’ and ‘formalization’ as the key vectors within a dynamic and process-oriented model of ‘governance’.We will pursue this new approach to Near Eastern governance in three ways: (1) a thematic focus on the heterogeneity of the second millennium BCE, (2) an aggressive methodological engagement with anachronistic conceptualizations, and (3) the implementation of a new theoretical instrumentarium rooted in comparative work on governance in a number of different times and place.Our focus on the second millennium BCE brings to the fore a time of massive competition between widely divergent types of political entities, ranging from imperial formations to quasi-independent petty states. This chronotope must be seen, at the same time, as a unique experimental field for understanding the different ways in which political structures emerge and morph into other forms through time. It was an age of massive heterogeneity in social practice, dynamic changes in political form and, not least, an unprecedented level of reflexivity in the political field. The formation and expansion of specific political regimes, the tension between the formalization of adminstrative practice (as made necessary, for example, by the growth in geographical scale of imperial states) and the power of informal practices as a means of ordering small-scale institutions (for instance, expectations, habits, conventions, and ethical principles) can only be investigated in an interdisciplinary, comparative context. This Kollegforschungsgruppe will bring such a context into being and make it into a key arena for understanding governance and political form in antiquity.Bearing these considerations in mind, the Kollegforschungsgruppe will focus on three primary goals: 1. a new perspective on the interdependence between