Project Details
Projekt
FOR 2615: Rethinking Oriental Despotism - Strategies of Governance and Modes of Participation in the Ancient Near East
Subject Area
Humanities
Term
since 2017
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 323052459
Research on the genesis, types, and functions of political orders has traditionally treated political formations in the Ancient Near East as examples of early forms of autocracy. Particularly outside the field of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, established categorizations and narratives serve to conceal the complexity of the available evidence, its comparative promise, and the innovative potential of a longterm perspective on Ancient Near Eastern events. The research group will refocus attention on political orders in the societies of the Ancient Near East: In contrast to partially inadequate, static concepts such as despotism, theocracy, and bureaucracy, the focus will be placed on dynamic-processual forms of governance based on the interplay of contingency and formalization, of participation and procedure.We thus suggest a tripartite approach: (1) the focus on a concrete historical setting; (2) a methodologically critical reflection on the descriptive and classificatory terminology used, including reflections on the history of the field; and (3) the trial application of a theoretical toolset which systematically derives its impulses from other fields, including research on governance.Initially, the primary focus will be on the 2nd millennium BC, since the associated states and their diverse, coexisting social formations during this period provide an ideal trial-ground for political structures. The time is characterized by a heterogeneity of social structures, dynamic configurations of political space, and new dimensions of political interaction and reflection. The formation of specific regulative regimes, the tension between the formalization of administration (for example, as prerequisite for the organization of large states) and the organizational potential of informal rules of behavior and small-scale organization (including custom, usage, convention, trust, ethical principles) will be discussed in an interdisciplinary and comparative context.The research group associates this approach with three goals: (1) to stimulate new perspectives on the interdependence of political and social forms of organization in the Ancient Near East; (2) to establish the 2nd millenium less as a hybrid phase of transition than as a reflection and response to the diversity and innovative potential of Ancient Near Eastern societies; and (3) making the distinctive types of evidence found in Near Eastern societies for questions of governance and political structure both more accessible and more contextually nuanced in on-going discussions of these questions beyond the confines of individual, areally-defined disciplines.
DFG Programme
Advanced Studies Centres in SSH
Projects
Spokesperson
Professor Dr. Jörg W. Klinger
Project Head
Professorin Dr. Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum
