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Mana : a history of a western category /
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In Mana: A History of a Western Category Nicolas Meylan proposes a critical account of Western imaginations of mana, a word belonging originally to Oceanic languages but borrowed by European languages in which it acquired the meaning 'supernatural power.' While mana is best known for its tenure in the disciplines studying religion, Nicolas Meylan situates such academic uses in a wider context, analyzing the ways Westerners conceptualized mana in the earlier colonial context as well as its mobilizations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries by (video)game designers and Neo-Pagan witches. This focus on various Western uses of mana allows for the critical investigation of the ways power has been mystified in conjunction with religion.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004349247 :
2214-3270 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
After orientalism : critical perspectives on western agency and eastern re-appropriations /
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The debate on Orientalism began some fifty years ago in the wake of decolonization. While initially considered a turning point, Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) was in fact part of a larger academic endeavor - the political critique of "colonial science" - that had already significantly impacted the humanities and social sciences. In a recent attempt to broaden the debate, the papers collected in this volume, offered at various seminars and an international symposium held in Paris in 2010-2011, critically examine whether Orientalism, as knowledge and as creative expression, was in fact fundamentally subservient to Western domination. By raising new issues, the papers shift the focus from the center to the peripheries, thus analyzing the impact on local societies of a major intellectual and institutional movement that necessarily changed not only their world, but the ways in which they represented their world. World history, which assumes a plurality of perspectives, leads us to observe that the Saidian critique applies to powers other than Western European ones - three case studies are considered here: the Ottoman, Russian (and Soviet), and Chinese empires. Other essays in this volume proceed to analyze how post-independence states have made use of the tremendous accumulation of knowledge and representations inherited from previous colonial regimes for the sake of national identity, as well as how scholars change and adapt what was once a hegemonic discourse for their own purposes. What emerges is a new landscape in which to situate research on non-Western cultures and societies, and a road-map leading readers beyond the restrictive dichotomy of a confrontation between West and East. With contributions by: Elisabeth Allès; Léon Buskens; Stéphane A. Dudoignon; Baudouin Dupret; Edhem Eldem; Olivier Herrenschmidt; Nicholas S. Hopkins; Robert Irwin; Mouldi Lahmar; Sylvette Larzul; Jean-Gabriel Leturcq; Jessica Marglin; Claire Nicholas; Emmanuelle Perrin; Alain de Pommereau; François Pouillon; Zakaria Rhani; Emmanuel Szurek; Jean-Claude Vatin; Mercedes Volait
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Original French title: Après l'orientalisme : l'Orient créé par l'Orient.
Includes index. :
1 online resource (xiii, 289 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004282537 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The 'Abbasid and Carolingian Empires : comparative studies in civilizational formation /
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Circa AD 750, both the Islamic world and western Europe underwent political revolutions; these raised to power, respectively, the ʿAbbasid and Carolingian dynasties. The eras thus inaugurated were similar not only in their chronology, but also in the foundational role each played in its respective civilization, forming and shaping enduring religious, cultural, and societal institutions. The ʿAbbāsid and Carolingian Empires: Studies in Civilizational Formation , is the first collected volume ever dedicated specifically to comparative Carolingian-ʿAbbasid history. In it, editor D.G. Tor brings together essays from some of the leading historians in order to elucidate some of the parallel developments in each of these civilizations, many of which persisted not only throughout the Middle Ages, but to the present day. Contributors are: Michael Cook, Jennifer R. Davis, Robert Gleave, Eric J. Goldberg, Minoru Inaba, Jürgen Paul, Walter Pohl, D.G. Tor and Ian Wood.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004353046 :
1929-2403 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Histories of the Middle East studies in Middle Eastern society, economy and law in honor of A.L. Udovitch /
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For four decades Abraham L. Udovitch has been a leading scholar of the medieval Islamic world, its economic institutions, social structures, and legal theory and practice. In pursuing his quest to understand and explain the complex phenomena that these broad rubrics entail, he has published widely, collaborated internationally with other leading scholars of the Middle East and medieval history, and most saliently for the purposes of this volume, taught several cohorts of students at Princeton University. This volume is therefore dedicated to his intellectual legacy from a uniquely revealing angle: the current work of his former students. The papers in this volume range chronologically from the period preceding the rise of Islam in Arabia to the Mamluk era, geographically from the Western Mediterranean to the Western Indian Ocean and thematically from the political negotiations of Christian and Islamic Mediterranean sovereigns to the historiography of Western Indian Ocean port cities.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004214736 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
After the past : essays in ancient history in honour of H.W. Pleket /
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What was funny about ancient jokes, and why? Why did the Roman state legislate to curb the behaviour of its obscenely rich and powerful elite, if it never really expected such laws to be obeyed? Why did it oppress the poor, and lavish public child support on them? These are important questions, but ancient Greeks and Romans could never have thought of them. They never questioned the right of the rich to be rich. They could not improve their understanding of Homeric gift-giving with the experience of ritualized friendship among the Trobriand islanders. Such questions and such answers can only come from those who live after the ancient past. This volume honours the well-known Dutch epigraphist and ancient historian H.W. Pleket. Ten substantial essays reflect his wide range, from early Greece to the Roman Empire, and his taste for comparative economic and social history.
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1 online resource (xxiv, 378 pages) : maps. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004350915 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Yet another Europe after 1984 : rethinking Milan Kundera and the idea of Central Europe /
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Much of the debates in this book revolves around Milan Kundera and his 1984 essay "The Tragedy of Central Europe." Kundera wrote his polemical text when the world was pregnant with imminent social and political change, yet that world was still far from realizing that we would enter the last decade of the twentieth century with the Soviet empire and its network of satellite states missing from the political mappages Kundera was challenged by Joseph Brodsky and György Konrád for allegedly excluding Russia from the symbolic space of Europe, something the great author deeply believes he never did. To what extent was Kundera right in assuming that, if to exist means to be present in the eyes of those we love, then Central Europe does not exist anymore, just as Western Europe as we knew it has stopped existing? What were the mental, cultural, and intellectual realities that lay beneath or behind his beautiful and graceful metaphors? Are we justified in rehabilitating political optimism at the beginning of the twenty-first century? Are we able to reconcile the divided memories of Eastern or Central Europe and Western Europe regarding what happened to the world in 1968? And where is Central Europe now?
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International conference proceedings. :
1 online resource (x, 223 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401208178 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Why did ancient states collapse? : the dysfunctional state
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Ancient states were rooted in agriculture, sedentism and population growth. They were fragile and prone to collapse, but there is no consensus on the causes or meaning of collapse, and there is an ongoing debate about the importance, nature and even existence of state-wide collapse
Explanations of collapse in terms of competing mono-causal factors are found inferior to those incorporating dynamic, interactive systems. It is proposed that collapse should be explained as failure to fulfil the ancient state’s core functions: assurance of food supplies, defence against external attack, maintenance of internal peace, imposition of its will throughout its territory, enforcement of state-wide laws, and promotion of an ideology to legitimise the political and social status quo.
To fulfil these functions certain necessary conditions must be met. The legitimacy of the political and social status quo, including the distribution of political power and wealth, needs to be accepted; the state should be able to extract sufficient resources to fulfil its functions such as defence; it must be able to enforce its decisions; the ruling elite should share a common purpose and actions; the society needs to reflect a shared spirit (asibaya) and purpose across elites and commoners who believe it is worthy of defence.
Weaknesses and failure to meet any condition can interact to exacerbate the situation: maladministration, corruption and elite preoccupation with self aggrandisement can induce fiscal weakness, reduced military budgets and further invasion; it can induce neglect of key infrastructures (especially water management). Inequality, a commonly neglected factor despite ancient texts, can erode asibaya and legitimacy and alienate commoners from defence of the state.
These themes are explored in relation to the Egyptian Old Kingdom, Mycenae, the Western Roman Empire (WRE), and the Maya. They all exhibit, to varying degrees, weaknesses in meeting the above conditions necessary for stability. (Some of the explanatory political and social factors involved have modern analogies but that issue is not examined).
The Aghlabids and their neighbours : art and material culture in 9th-century North Africa /
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The first dynasty to mint gold dinars outside of the Abbasid heartlands, the Aghlabid (r. 800-909) reign in North Africa has largely been neglected in the scholarship of recent decades, despite the canonical status of its monuments and artworks in early Islamic art history. The Aghlabids and their Neighbors focuses new attention on this key dynasty. The essays in this volume, produced by an international group of specialists in history, art and architectural history, archaeology, and numismatics, illuminate the Aghlabid dynasty's interactions with neighbors in the western Mediterranean and its rivals and allies elsewhere, providing a state of the question on early medieval North Africa and revealing the centrality of the dynasty and the region to global economic and political networks.
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1 online resource (xxxviii, 688 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004356047 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The poetics of grammar and the metaphysics of sound and sign /
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This book examines the seemingly universal notion of a grammatical cosmos. Individual essays discuss how many of the great civilizations provide cognitive maps that emerge from a metaphysical linguistics in which sounds, syllables and other signs form the constructive elements of reality. The essays address cross-cultural issues such as: Why does grammar serve as a template in these cultures? How are such templates culturally contoured? To what end are they applied - id est, what can one do with grammar - , and how does it work upon the world? The book is divided into three sections that deal with the metaphysics of linguistic creation; practices of encoding and decoding as a means of deciphering reality; and language in the widest sense as a medium for self- and cultural transformation. Contributors include: Jan Assman, Sara Sviri, Michael Stone, M. Finkelberg, Yigal Bronner, Martin Kern, Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Dan Martin, Jonathan Garb, Tom Hunter, David Shulman, and Sergio La Porta.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047421658 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Conquête ottomane de l'Égypte (1517) : arrière-plan, impact, échos /
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Conquête ottomane de l'Égypte (1517) est le premier ouvrage collectif consacré à la victoire de Selīm Ier sur les Mamelouks, qui a fait du sultanat ottoman l'unique puissance musulmane en Méditerranée orientale, et ravalé l'Égypte au rang de province. Il en renouvelle l'approche en faisant appel à des sources ottomanes, arabes et occidentales très variées. Les contributions réunies par Benjamin Lellouch et Nicolas Michel s'attachent à mesurer les transformations structurelles qu'a induites l'événement dans la société, les pouvoirs, la culture littéraire, artistique et matérielle en Égypte. Elles explorent ses antécédents et son impact géopolitique, et restituent les échos, bruyants puis assourdis, qu'il a suscités, au Proche-Orient, en Italie, et plus généralement en Méditerranée. Conquête ottomane de l'Égypte (1517) is the first collective work that deals with Selīm Ist's crushing victory over the Mamluks, which made the Ottoman sultanate into the sole remaining Muslim power in the eastern Mediterranean, and reduced Egypt to the rank of a province. The book offers new insights into this major event by using a wide range of Ottoman and Arabic as well as Western sources. These essays in French and English collected by Benjamin Lellouch and Nicolas Michel examine to what extent the Ottoman conquest altered the structures of Egyptian society, power relations, literature, arts and material culture. They explore both its backgrounds and geopolitical aftermath, and reconstruct its echoes - loud at first, then gradually fading out - in the Middle East, Italy, and the Mediterranean.
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1 online resource (xxi, 434 pages) : illustrations (some color) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004232082 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religious and sexual nationalisms in Central and Eastern Europe : gods, gays, and governments /
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Religious and Sexual Nationalisms in Central and Eastern Europe: Gods, Gays, and Governments. presents case studies from some ten countries that serve to explore the ways in which religion, nationalism, and (homo)sexuality intersect in public discourse. It shows how religious leaders, political and social movements, LGBT-organizations, governments, and media negotiate the powers of religion and state in taking position regarding sexual diversity. These negotiations are as much about sexual morality as they are about national identity, anti-EU sentiments, and the efforts of religious institutions to regain power in post-communist societies.
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1 online resource (viii, 186 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004297791 :
1061-5210 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Between Worlds : Forging an African Mission Church in Southern Africa /
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Between Worlds expands beyond the focus of the previous volume-the British colony of Natal-to the more challenging framework of the American Zulu Mission and its Congregational churches in southeastern Africa between the 1880s and 1920s. This study rejects arguments by many critical scholars, who see Western missionaries at best as adjuncts of the colonial project, imposing an understanding of Western Christianity that inevitably clashes with alien and resistant African cultures. The mission-church relationship in this era also changes dramatically especially in urban environments. The church in South Africa becomes the dominant partner from the 1880s and by 1900 the mission has become an adjunct of the church-an understanding with far-reaching consequences elsewhere in the subcontinent.
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1 online resource (292 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004733701
Mamluk Cairo, a crossroads for embassies : studies on diplomacy and diplomatics /
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Mamluk Cairo, a Crossroads for Embassies offers an up-to-date insight into the diplomacy and diplomatics of the Mamluk sultanate with Muslim and non-Muslim powers. This rich volume covers the whole chronological span of the sultanate as well as the various areas of the diplomatic relations established by (or with) the Mamluk sultanate. Twenty-six essays are divided in geographical sections that broadly respect the political division of the world as the Mamluk chancery perceived it. In addition, two introductory essays provide the present stage of research in the fields of, respectively, diplomatics and diplomacy. With contributions by Frédéric Bauden, Lotfi Ben Miled, Michele Bernardini, Bárbara Boloix Gallardo, Anne F. Broadbridge, Mounira Chapoutot-Remadi, Stephan Conermann, Nicholas Coureas, Malika Dekkiche, Rémi Dewière, Kristof D'hulster, Marie Favereau, Gladys Frantz-Murphy, Yehoshua Frenkel, Hend Gilli-Elewy, Ludvik Kalus, Anna Kollatz, Julien Loiseau, Maria Filomena Lopes de Barros, John L. Meloy, Pierre Moukarzel, Lucian Reinfandt, Alessandro Rizzo, Éric Vallet, Valentina Vezzoli and Patrick Wing.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004384637 :
0929-2403 ;
A Hundred Years of Han (vol.1) : Being the Chronicle of the Later Han Dynasty for the Years 57 to 156 AD as Recorded in Chapters 44 to 53 of the Zizhi tongjian of Sima Guang /
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This is Volume 1 of a 2-volume set: Compiled by the scholar statesman Sima Guang of the Song dynasty, Zizhi tongjian is well recognised as one of the major histories of China. In length and extent, Later or Eastern Han was one of the great empires of east Asia, and its eventual failure led to the heroic age of the Three Kingdoms and centuries of division between north and south. Sima Guang's account of the dynasty's successes and failures provides detailed and informed information on the nature and governance of the Chinese imperial state. This translation offers a Western reader access to and an understanding of that world.
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1 online resource (500 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004725355
The Civilian Legacy of the Roman Army /
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The Roman army represented an important social and organizational reference model for the Romano-Barbarian societies, which progressively replaced the Western Empire in the transition from Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages. The great flexibility of the decision-making and organizational solutions used by the Roman army allowed the 'new lords' to readapt them and thus maintain power in early medieval Europe for a long time. From a perspective ranging from political, social and economic history to law, anthropology, and linguistic, this book demonstrates how interesting and fruitful the investigation of this specific cultural imprint can be in order to gain a better understanding of the origins of the civilization that arouse after the fall of the Roman world. Contributors are Francesco Borri, Fabio Botta, Francesco Castagnino, Stefan Esders, Carla Falluomin, Stefano Gasparri, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Soazick Kerneis, Luca Loschiavo, Valerio Marotta, Esperanza Osaba, Walter Pohl, Jean-Pierre Poly, Pierfrancesco Porena, Iolanda Ruggiero, Andrea Trisciuoglio, Andrea A. Verardi, and Ian Wood.
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1 online resource (576 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004698017
Licit magic : the life and letters of al-Ṣaḥib born ʻAbbad (d. 385/995) /
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In Licit Magic: The Life and Letters of al-Ṣāḥib born ʿAbbād (d. 385/995) Maurice A. Pomerantz explores the biography and literary output of a major tenth-century Muslim statesman, literary patron, and intellectual. His nearly two-decade reign as vizier on behalf of two Buyid amirs was an important period for the flowering of Arabic letters, Muʿtazilī theology and Shīʿism in Western Iran. Making use of Ibn ʿAbbād's large corpus of letters ( rasāʾil ), Pomerantz explores the role that eloquence played in the conduct of administration, the maintenance of social networks of elites, and persuasion. Licit Magic argues that the eloquent expression that Ibn ʿAbbād displayed in his letters was central to his exercise of power.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004348042 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.