scholarly journals Urbanism and the division of labour in the Roman Empire

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (136) ◽  
pp. 20170367 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Hanson ◽  
S. G. Ortman ◽  
J. Lobo

One of the hallmarks of human agglomeration is an increase in the division of labour, but the exact nature of this relationship has been debated among anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and historians and archaeologists. Over the last decade, researchers investigating contemporary urban systems have suggested a novel explanation for the links between the numbers of inhabitants in settlements and many of their most important characteristics, which is grounded in a view of settlements as social networks embedded in built environments. One of the remarkable aspects of this approach is that it is not based on the specific conditions of the modern world (such as capitalism or industrialization), which raises the issue of whether the relationships observed in contemporary urban systems can also be detected in pre-modern urban or even non-urban systems. Here, we present a general model for the relationship between the population and functional diversity of settlements, where the latter is viewed as an indicator of the division of labour. We then explore the applicability of this model to pre-modern contexts, focusing on cities in the Roman Empire, using estimates of their numbers of inhabitants, numbers of documented professional associations, and numbers of recorded inscriptions to develop an index of functional diversity. Our results are consistent with theoretical expectations, adding further support to the view that urban systems in both contemporary and pre-modern contexts reflect a common set of generative processes.

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Benton ◽  
Adam Clulow

AbstractReferences to protection were ubiquitous across the early modern world, featuring in a range of transactions between polities in very different regions. And yet discourses about protection retained a quality of imprecision that makes it difficult to pin down precise legal statuses and responsibilities. It was often unclear who was protecting whom or the exact nature of the relationship. In this article, we interrogate standard distinctions about the dual character of protection that differentiate between ‘inside’ protection of subjects and ‘outside’ protection of allies and other external groups. Rather than a clear division, we find a blurring of lines, with many protection claims creatively combining ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ protection. We argue that the juxtaposition of these ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ meanings of protection underpinned the formation of irregular, interpenetrating zones of imperial suzerainty in crowded maritime arenas and conflict-ridden borderlands across the early modern world.


Author(s):  
Joseph A. Tainter ◽  
T. F. H. Allen

The evolution of complexity is one of the long-standing concerns of historical science, as well as being crucial to understanding the modern world and our future. This chapter explores the connection of complexity to energy gain, energy return on investment, and the energy–complexity spiral. The connection of energy gain to complexity is illustrated by case studies of fungus-farming ants and the Roman Empire. A comprehensive set of propositions explores the relationship of energy gain to complexity, evolution, resource use, system duration, and scarcity and abundance. These propositions can be applied to further research, and provide a framework for developing questions about cultural evolution and resource use. Finally, the relationship of energy gain to complexity is used to explore our future energy use and its relationship to land conversion, environmental damage, and return on alternative energy sources.


Author(s):  
Oleksii Chepov ◽  

The qualitative and clear definition of the legal regime of the capital of Ukraine, the hero city of Kyiv, is influenced by its legislative enshrinement, however, it should be noted that discussions are ongoing and one of the reasons for the unclear legal status of the capital is the ambiguity of current legislation in this area. Separation of the functions of the city of Kyiv, which are carried out to ensure the rights of citizens of Ukraine and the functions that guarantee the rights of the territorial community of the city of Kyiv. In the modern world, in legal doctrine and practice, the capital is understood as the capital of the country, which at the legislative level received this status and, accordingly, is the administrative and political center of the state, which houses the main state bodies and diplomatic missions of other states. It is the identification of the boundaries of the relationship between the competencies of state administrations and local self-government, in practice, often raises questions about their delimitation and ways of regulatory solution. Peculiarities of local self-government in Kyiv city districts are defined in the provisions of the Law on the Capital, which reveal the norms of the Constitution in these legal relations, according to which the issue of organizing district management in cities belongs to city councils. Likewise, it is unregulated by law to lose the particularity of the legal status of the territory of the city. It should be emphasized that the subject of administrative-legal relations is not a certain administrative-territorial entity, but the social group is designated - the territorial community of the city of Kiev, kiyani. Thus, the provisions on the city of Kyiv partially ignore the potential of the territorial community.


Author(s):  
David Willetts

Universities have a crucial role in the modern world. In England, entrance to universities is by nation-wide competition which means English universities have an exceptional influence on schools--a striking theme of the book. This important book first investigates the university as an institution and then tracks the individual on their journey to and through university. In A University Education, David Willetts presents a compelling case for the ongoing importance of the university, both as one of the great institutions of modern society and as a transformational experience for the individual. The book also makes illuminating comparisons with higher education in other countries, especially the US and Germany. Drawing on his experience as UK Minister for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014, the author offers a powerful account of the value of higher education and the case for more expansion. He covers controversial issues in which he was involved from access for disadvantaged students to the introduction of L9,000 fees. The final section addresses some of the big questions for the future, such as the the relationship between universities and business, especially in promoting innovation.. He argues that the two great contemporary trends of globalisation and technological innovation will both change the university significantly. This is an authoritative account of English universities setting them for the first time in their new legal and regulatory framework.


Author(s):  
Rainer Forst

This chapter addresses the classical question of the relationship between enlightenment and religion. In doing so, the chapter compares Jürgen Habermas's thought to that of Pierre Bayle and Immanuel Kant. For, although Habermas undoubtedly stands in a tradition founded by Bayle and Kant, he develops a number of important orientations within this tradition and has changed his position in his recent work. The chapter studies this change to understand Habermas's position better. It also draws attention to a fundamental question raised by the modern world: what common ground can human reason establish in the practical and theoretical domain between human beings who are divided by profoundly different religious (including antireligious) views?


Author(s):  
Jennifer Otto

Between the second and the sixteenth centuries CE, references to the Jewish exegete Philo of Alexandria occur exclusively in texts written by Christians. David T. Runia has described this phenomenon as the adoption of Philo by Christians as an “honorary Church Father.” Drawing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith and recent investigations of the “Parting of the Ways” of early Christianity and Judaism, this study argues that early Christian invocations of Philo reveal ongoing efforts to define the relationship between Jewishness and Christianness, their areas of overlap and points of divergence. The introduction situates invocations of Philo within the wider context of early Christian writing about Jews and Jewishness. It considers how Philo and his early Christian readers participated in the larger world of Greco-Roman philosophical schools, text production, and the ethical and intellectual formation (paideia) of elite young men in the Roman Empire.


Author(s):  
Luca Scholz

Abstract: Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire tells the history of free movement in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, one of the most fractured landscapes in human history. The boundaries that divided its hundreds of territories make the Old Reich a uniquely valuable site for studying the ordering of movement. The focus is on safe conduct, an institution that was common throughout the early modern world but became a key framework for negotiating free movement and its restriction in the Old Reich. The book shows that attempts to escort travellers, issue letters of passage, or to criminalize the use of ‘forbidden’ roads served to transform rights of passage into excludable and fiscally exploitable goods. Mobile populations—from emperors to peasants—defied attempts to govern their mobility with actions ranging from formal protest to bloodshed. Newly designed maps show that restrictions upon moving goods and people were rarely concentrated at borders before the mid-eighteenth century, but unevenly distributed along roads and rivers. In addition, the book unearths intense intellectual debates around the rulers’ right to interfere with freedom of movement. The Empire’s political order guaranteed extensive transit rights, but apologies of free movement and claims of protection could also mask aggressive attempts of territorial expansion. Drawing on sources discovered in more than twenty archives and covering the period between the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, the book offers a new perspective on the unstable relationship of political authority and human mobility in the heartlands of old-regime Europe.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (7) ◽  
pp. 1219-1236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ha Na Im ◽  
Chang Gyu Choi

This study proposes an alternative to the conventional entropy-based land use mix index, which is generally used to measure the diversity of land use. Pedestrian volume was selected as the dependent variable as it represents the vitality of districts, which many recent urban studies now consider important. The study investigates an entropy-based weighted land use mix index, which is weighted by different land use types. For the index, different areas are needed to generate a unit of pedestrian volume, whose measure is m2/person/day. The study demonstrates that this alternative is more effective than the existing conventionally used entropy-based land use mix index for explaining pedestrian volume. The research confirms that the conventionally used entropy-based land use mix index can have a positive or negative impact depending on the land use characteristics of the survey points because the conventionally used entropy-based land use mix index has a non-linear relationship with pedestrian volume. By analysing 9727 surveyed locations of pedestrian volume in Seoul, Korea, the study demonstrates that the weighted land use mix index, rather than the conventionally used entropy-based land use mix index, can improve the explanatory power of the estimation model for the relationship between pedestrian volume and built environments, showing consistent results throughout the empirical analysis. In future built-environment studies, the utility of the weighted land use mix index is expected to improve if studies include how to find the accurate weighting of the land use in estimating the pedestrian volume.


1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ned Landsman

The most persistent difficulty confronting historical interpreters of popular religion in the early modern world is that of establishing the relationship between ideas enunciated by religious leaders and those held by their hearers. The causes of that uncertainty are obvious; where historical materials for the former are plentiful, sources that address the latter are far more difficult to obtain. The great majority of evidence that we have concerning lay religiosity derives from clerical rather than lay sources, and most of it tells us more about religious behavior than belief. Even those rare accounts we have that purport to narrate the spiritual experiences of ordinary people tend to be both unrepresentative and stylized, to the point where the ultimate implications of such materials for understanding popular belief often are far from certain.Problems of documentation lead to equally significant but less often noted distortions in perspective. Where they have lacked adequate source materials for recovering the mental world of the laity, historians almost by necessity have had to approach their task as one of ascertaining the portion and proportion of the expressions of the ministry that lay men and women adopted. Thus deviations from clerical orthodoxy can only be understood as indicative either of a lack of intellectual sophistication on the part of the laity, or, at best, of a latent “folk” worldview that remains almost inaccessible to historical description. Yet there is ample documentation in the historical record that the laity possessed a rather remarkable capacity to integrate seemingly disparate beliefs and actively forge their own understandings of the delivered message and create their own religious symbols.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renita Murimi

AbstractCities are microcosms representing a diversity of human experience. The complexity of urban systems arises from this diversity, where the services that cities offer to their inhabitants have to be tailored for their unique requirements. This paper studies the complexity of urban environments in terms of the assimilation of its communities. We examine the urban assimilation complexity with respect to the foreignness between communities and formalize the level of complexity using information-theoretic measures. Our findings contribute to a sociological perspective of the relationship between urban complex systems and the diversity of communities that make up urban systems.


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