The Political Philosophy of the European City


Book Description

The Political Philosophy of the European City is a courageous and wide-ranging panorama of the political life and thought of the European city. Its novel hypothesis is that modern Western political thought, since the time of Hobbes and Locke, underestimated the political significance and value of the community of urban citizens, called ‘civitas’, united by local customs, or even a formal or informal urban constitution at a certain location, which had a recognizable countenance, with natural and man-made, architectural marks, called ‘urbs’. Recalling the golden age of the European city in ancient Greece and Rome, and offering a detailed description of its turbulent life in the Renaissance Italian city-states, it makes a case for the city not only as a hotbed of modern democracy, but also as a remedy for some of the distortions of political life in the alienated contemporary, centralized, Weberian bureaucratic state. Overcoming the north-south divide, or the core and periphery partition, the book’s material is particularly rich in Central European case studies. All in all, it is an enjoyable read which offers sound arguments to revisit the offer of the small and middle-sized European town, in search of a more sustainable future for Europe.




Polis and City-state


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Polis


Book Description

An accessible introduction to the polis (plural: poleis), or ancient Greek city-state. Mogens Herman Hansen addresses such topics as the emergence of the polis, its size and population, and its political culture, ranging from famous poleis such as Athens and Sparta through more than 1,000 known examples.




Introduction to an Inventory of 'Poleis'


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Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity


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A bold and original examination of the relationships between ethnicity and political power in the ancient world.




The Ancient City


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This book provides a survey of modern debates on Greek and Roman cities, and a sketch of the cities' chief characteristics.







Yet More Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis


Book Description

A fourth collection of Papers from the Copenhagen Polis Centre, a collective whose "ulimate aim is to present a new analysis of the Archaic and Classical Greek polis," through various wide-ranging and thematically specific investigations. This volume and the others in the series are released in advance of the publication of a general synthesis of findings, hence the thematic incoherence of the titles contained herein: Polis as the Generic Term for State, Hekataios' Use of the Word Polis in His Periegesis, and A Typology of Dependent Poleis (Mogens Herman Hansen); A Survey of the Major Urban Settlements in the Kimmerian Bosphoros (With a Discussion of Their Status as Poleis ) (Gocha R. Tsetskhladze); Emporion . A Study of the Use and Meaning of the Term in the Archaic and Classical Periods (Mogens Herman Hansen); Colonies and Ports-of-Tradee on the Northern Shores of the Black Sea: Borysthenes, Kremnoi and the "Other Pontic Emporia in Herodotos (John Hind); Some Problems in Polis Identification in the Chalkidic Peninsula (Pernille Flensted-Jensen); Triphylia . An Experiment in Ethnic Construction adn Political Organisation (Thomas Heine Nielsen); The Polis of Asea. A Case-Study of How Archaeology Can expand Our Knowlege of the History of a Polis (Jeanette Forsen and Bjorn Forsen) .




Early Greek States Beyond the Polis


Book Description

Clear and direct in style, and with more than eighty photographs, maps and plans, Early Greek States Beyond the Polis is a widely relevant study of Greek history, archaeology and society. Catherine Morgan addresses the different forms of association experienced by early Iron-Age and Archaic Greeks by exploring the archaeological, literary and epigraphical records of central Greece and the northern Peloponnese. Giving an unprecedented understanding of the connections between polis identity and other forms and tiers of association, and refuting the traditional view of early Greek 'ethnic' groups (ethne) as simple systems based on primitive tribal ties, students will find this an essential text in the study of Greek history.