Bride exchange in the Western Mediterranean, 400-600 C.E.

西地中海的新娘交换，公元 400-600 年

• 批准号: AH/D501458/1
• 负责人: Kate Cooper
• 金额: $ 3.23万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FD501458%2F1
• 关键词: Bride; exchange; Western; Mediterranean; 400

This project compares different strategies used by elites to co-opt each other into predictable behaviour at a time when the Roman empire in the West was subjected first to repeated invasion and then to collapse.Two main strategies are central here: diplomatic marriage on the one hand, and the exchange of religious gifts, especially relics, on the other. The former area has remained under-explored despite increasing interest in the history of marriage and the household in recent decades. The latter has received comparatively greater attention, building on important work by Brown and Geary in the 1980s. A recent article by Florin Curta (in Speculum of 2006) offers a summary of this work's use of theories of the gift from Mauss to Bourdieu.We suggest, however, that after Bourdieu anthropologists working on exchange and value have in fact developed a more valuable critical framework for assessing how donors and recipients assigned value and meaning to acts of exchange, a framework neglected by historians 'borrowing' from the earlier anthropological literature. Crucial to this approach is the fact that recognition of an act or a relationship can be asymmetrical: the two parties to an exchange can disagree over the act's importance, or about the follow-on effect that it should have.It is important to notice also that by comparison to raw metal or minted coin, objects of gift exchange have an enhanced capacity to 'carry' narrative. This holds true whether the objects are animate (like the brides involved in kinship diplomacy), inanimate (prestige objects such as jewellery), or ambiguous (saints' relics, which partake of the characteristics of each category). Negotiation of this narrative element is central to the social choreography of exchange.I have placed particular importance on the volatile dynamics of this negotiation of meaning. The first is what I call the 'calculated vulnerability' of the donor in the act of exchange. Because of the volatility of meaning in the exchange act, the donor has to propose a meaning which may or may not be confirmed by the recipient. This in itself is a gesture of vulnerability, even though it has been interpreted by previous writers as a gesture of power (similar to Veblen's 'conspicuous consumption'). The donor is open to material damage, especially in the case of kinship diplomacy, where the bride's role is that of a hostage in the household of a rival lineage. (The early medieval sources are rich with cases of maiming and/or execution of brides whose fathers have fallen out of favour.) But even where the object of exchange is safe from damage, the gift can be refused, or treated in a way that humiliates the donor, after accepting a gift the recipient can refuse a claim of loyalty that was clearly implicit in the exchange.These dynamics of relationship negotiation were volatile in the context of the upheavals of the last century of empire in the West. More was up for grabs in a situation of chaos. But there is also a surprise: developments of the comparatively solid empire of the late third and fourth centuries also played an important role: in particular, the administrative reforms of Diocletian, which had undermined the social fabric of regional elites, and the coinage reforms of Constantine, which made it possible to side-step techniques of social solidarity necessary in the absence of monetary liquidity, and the rise of Christianity.These developments made it easier to withhold symmetrical recognition of social acts. In the context of exchange, this made the vulnerability of the donor more difficult to calculate. The rise of relics as an exchange medium can be understood, by comparison to the older strategy of bride exchange, as an attempt to limit the donor's vulnerability, at the same time enhancing the donor's control over the narrative capacity of the exchange object (through the texts that often accompanied religious gifts).

这个项目比较了在西方罗马帝国首先遭受多次入侵然后崩溃的时候，精英们使用的不同策略来拉拢彼此成为可预测的行为。两种主要策略在这里是核心的：一方面是外交婚姻，另一方面是宗教礼物的交换，特别是文物。尽管近几十年来人们对婚姻和家庭历史的兴趣与日俱增，但前一个领域仍未得到充分开发。后者得到了相对较大的关注，建立在布朗和盖里在20世纪80年代的重要工作基础上。弗洛林·柯塔最近的一篇文章(发表在2006年的《镜报》上)总结了这项工作对毛斯给布尔迪厄的礼物理论的使用。然而，我们认为，在布尔迪厄之后，致力于交换和价值的人类学家实际上已经开发出一个更有价值的批评框架，用于评估捐赠者和接受者如何将价值和意义赋予交换行为，这一框架被历史学家从早期的人类学文献中忽略了。这种方法的关键是，对一项行为或一种关系的承认可能是不对称的：交换的双方可能会在该行为的重要性或其应该产生的后续影响方面存在分歧。同样重要的是，需要注意的是，与生金属或铸币相比，礼物交换对象具有增强的“携带”叙事的能力。无论这些物品是有生命的(如参与亲属关系外交的新娘)、无生命的(珠宝等有声望的物品)还是模棱两可的(圣人的遗物，具有每一类的特征)，这一点都是成立的。对这一叙事元素的谈判是交换的社会编排的核心。我特别重视这种意义谈判的变化无常的动态。第一个是我所说的捐赠者在交换行为中的“计算脆弱性”。由于交换法案中含义的变化无常，捐赠人必须提出一个可能得到接受者确认也可能不被确认的含义。这本身就是一种脆弱的姿态，尽管它曾被之前的作家解读为一种权力的姿态(类似于Veblen的“炫耀性消费”)。捐赠者容易受到物质损害，特别是在亲属关系外交的情况下，新娘的角色是敌对血统家庭中的人质。(中世纪早期的资料中有大量残害和/或处决父亲失宠的新娘的案例。)但是，即使在交换对象不受损害的情况下，礼物也可以被拒绝，或者以羞辱捐赠者的方式对待，在接受礼物后，接受者可以拒绝明确包含在交换中的忠诚声明。在上个世纪西方帝国动荡的背景下，这种关系谈判的动力是不稳定的。在混乱的情况下，还有更多可供争夺的东西。但也有一个惊喜：相对稳固的帝国在第三和第四世纪末的发展也发挥了重要作用：特别是戴克里先的行政改革破坏了地区精英的社会结构，君士坦丁的铸币改革使人们有可能在缺乏货币流动性的情况下回避必要的社会团结技术，以及基督教的崛起。这些发展使人们更容易保持对社会行为的对称承认。在交换方面，这使捐助者的脆弱性更难计算。与旧的新娘交换战略相比，遗物作为交换媒介的兴起可以理解为试图限制捐赠者的脆弱性，同时加强捐赠者对交换对象的叙述能力的控制(通过通常伴随宗教礼物的文本)。