Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World

The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100

Clemens Gantner, Walter Pohl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317001355
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

This volume looks at 'visions of community' in a comparative perspective, from Late Antiquity to the dawning of the age of crusades. It addresses the question of why and how distinctive new political cultures developed after the disintegration of the Roman World, and to what degree their differences had already emerged in the first post-Roman centuries. The Latin West, Orthodox Byzantium and its Slavic periphery, and the Islamic world each retained different parts of the Graeco-Roman heritage, while introducing new elements. For instance, ethnicity became a legitimizing element of rulership in the West, remained a structural element of the imperial periphery in Byzantium, and contributed to the inner dynamic of Islamic states without becoming a resource of political integration. Similarly, the political role of religion also differed between the emerging post-Roman worlds. It is surprising that little systematic research has been done in these fields so far. The 32 contributions to the volume explore this new line of research and look at different aspects of the process, with leading western Medievalists, Byzantinists and Islamicists covering a wide range of pertinent topics. At a closer look, some of the apparent differences between the West and the Islamic world seem less distinctive, and the inner variety of all post-Roman societies becomes more marked. At the same time, new variations in the discourse of community and the practice of power emerge. Anybody interested in the development of the post-Roman Mediterranean, but also in the relationship between the Islamic World and the West, will gain new insights from these studies on the political role of ethnicity and religion in the post-Roman Mediterranean.

Part I
What Difference Does Ethnicity Make?Tribe and State:
Social Anthropological Approaches

Chapter 1
Envisioning Medieval Communities in Asia: Remarks on Ethnicity, Tribalism and Faith

Andre Gingrich

This chapter is written from the perspective of historical anthropology, and as a conceptual contribution to the debates that feature in this volume and at the symposium that preceded it. In particular, it follows the work of my colleagues Johann Heiss and Guntram Hazod (see Chapter 2 in this volume), with whom I have had the opportunity to share many years of collaborative research. The following remarks on ethnicity, tribalism and faith draw upon the medieval contexts of southwestern Arabia and of Tibetan-speaking Central Asia. My primary concern here is to outline and to elaborate some of the conceptual tools that historical anthropology has to offer for historical analyses of such contexts. Before that, some methodological considerations are offered to outline the background and orientations.

INTRODUCTORY METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The desire to conceptually and methodologically bridge the gaps between medieval history and historical anthropology follows a pragmatic as well as a theoretical rationale. The pragmatic dimension is informed by joint efforts invested by Walter Pohl, Guntram Hazod, Johann Heiss, myself and several other researchers to set up a large research network in both local Viennese and international academic contexts, and to elaborate and submit a corresponding grant proposal to that purpose to the Austrian Science Fund. The grant proposal and research network in fact resulted from this volume and the preceding conference, and consequently bore the same title, ‘Visions of Community’. In these pragmatic contexts, historians of Asian and European medieval periods cooperate with historical anthropologists with some expertise in the relevant periods in southwestern Arabia and Tibet. It is this particular pragmatic setting of trans- and interdisciplinary research within a specified set of contextualized research problems that defined the need to also review and elaborate those conceptual tools that historical anthropology has to offer for this type of academic work.

On a theoretical level, this task can be accomplished neither as swiftly nor as straightforwardly as one might expect. Initially, anthropology’s own record of historical theorizing and conceptualizing requires cautious, retrospective consideration.¹ That requirement is primarily due to two structural reasons that are rooted in historical anthropology’s own development. The first of these is linked to what I call an uneven distribution of workloads within anthropology. The shifting trends of socio-cultural anthropology constitute the second structural reason, which directly intersects with the first and may be referred to as the changing fashions of ‘hot topics’ inside socio-cultural anthropology.

The uneven distribution of workloads inside socio-cultural anthropology has resulted from the necessities of regional specialization. Those anthropologists who specialize in areas with deep and fairly continuous historical records obviously have to engage with those records as soon as their own interests shift to historical topics. By contrast, anthropologists who specialize in areas where such fairly continuous historical records are not available are unable to do so, for better or for worse. One consequence of this uneven distribution of challenges within anthropology was often a more pronounced regional engagement by anthropologists who had to face the challenge of densely available historical sources. As a result, regionally engaged anthropologists were reluctant to move beyond the specificities and peculiarities of regional expertise on occasion to engage in comparative and broader conceptual reasoning as well. By and large, broader comparative and theoretical input into socio-cultural anthropology has steadily emerged from the works of scholars less preoccupied with the burden of local and regional historical records.

The changing fashions of socio-cultural anthropology to an extent are related to that uneven distribution of workloads. Today, historically well-informed anthropologists often tend to interact with their partners in regional expertise from other disciplines, such as archaeologists, linguists, physical anthropologists or, indeed, historians. They have often managed to overcome their previous marginalization as representatives of auxiliary disciplines, for which many had to live through challenges similar to those experienced by professional women in business careers: in order to be recognized as an equal partner, you have to be better than the others – or, rephrased for the present academic context: in order not to be marginalized into an auxiliary position, you have to be a good anthropologist and a respected expert in historical matters as well. On the one hand, regionally focused research agendas leave less time and energy for wider conceptual and theoretical elaborations outside one’s own field of historical and regional expertise. This has contributed to the narrowing of audiences and interests among other anthropological sub-communities working in other fields: if by a certain necessity and logic, the results of regionally and historically highly specialized anthropological analyses are less and less often communicated in comprehensible terms to the anthropological communities at large, then the latter will tend less often to take notice of those results.

On the other hand, this is just one among two main reasons why during the quarter of a century between, say, the mid-1980s and 2010, the changing fashions of ‘hot topics’ inside socio-cultural anthropology included less often than before the insights of historical anthropology. The second factor resulting in the same effect has to do with socio-cultural anthropology’s larger development throughout the twentieth century. Ever since the 1980s, this field has gone though a whole series of critical self-examinations. Some of them cumulatively built upon each other while others did not, and all of them today seem to be feeding into the beginnings of a transnational and global era in anthropology.² From the perspective of today’s anthropology, coping with globalization and its challenges and dangers certainly is the central task of the years to come. Out of that perspective, it is evident and self-understood that historical anthropology per se seems to be a research realm of merely secondary significance – and moreover, the existing legacies of historical anthropology convey a reputation of being hopelessly old-fashioned and out of touch. Historical anthropologists today are thus struggling more often than not with skeptical attitudes toward their research agenda.

Such skeptical reactions are indeed justified to the degree that historical anthropology’s record does in fact include a plethora of formerly hegemonic, outdated paradigms and models. Still, these outdated and formerly hegemonic models continue to define what commonly is understood as historical anthropology inside socio-cultural anthropology at large, and beyond it. Evolutionism, diffusionism, ethnohistory and certain elements in structuralism, functionalism and Marxism have all contributed to the promotion of definitions not only of historical anthropology, but also of anthropology at large. To a great extent, socio-cultural anthropology until the 1970s or so shared such outdated paradigms with historical anthropology.³ By contrast, socio-cultural anthropology since the 1970s has generally ignored historical anthropology.

So, what comes next? Historical anthropology’s relative insignificance within its own discipline during the last quarter of a century has had both negative and positive consequences. The negative side is that this subfield has diminished not merely in significance, but also in size and human resources. On the positive side, it has entered into its own phases of reorientation. On a theoretical level, to a remarkable extent it has absorbed the results of the critical self-examination that has characterized the field at large. Simultaneously, it has moved ahead on an empirical level in fast and pioneering ways: For some areas, such as southern Arabia or Tibet, the subjects of the present chapter, the histories of whole periods in the medieval and modern eras have in fact been written neither by philologists nor by historians but by socio-cultural anthropologists, among them Paul Dresch,⁴ Johann Heiss⁵ and Guntram Hazod (with Sorensen).⁶

As a result, historical anthropology today is a small subfield in anthropology which nevertheless has fully established its expertise and reputation in its respective regional specializations. In turn, this lean and active presence provides a solid basis for an academic future in which transnational and global issues will continue to occupy a central position inside and outside anthropology, while the continuing relevance of postcolonial studies is preparing the way for a renewal of historical interest inside socio-cultural anthropology.

Historical anthropology thus is entering new grounds while such comparative and wider conceptual tools are re-assessed and tried out across regional, ‘national’ and disciplinary boundaries, as in the present volume. If this is done with a focus on established anthropological concepts such as ethnicity, tribalism and faith, then this meets precisely the challenges historical anthropology has to face now.

ETHNICITY THEN AND NOW

Not unlike older debates on tribes and tribalism, some anthropologists working with a short historical perspective continue to argue that ethnicity was basically a product of colonialism. Within certain limits, this may in fact depend on the choice of definition. If primary emphasis is placed upon administrative classifications from above, then colonialism certainly aggravated...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Ethnicity, Religion and Empire
• Part I What Difference Does Ethnicity Make?
• Part II Political Identities and the Integration of Communities
• Part III Visions of Community, Perceptions of Difference
• Conclusions
• Index