scholarly journals Scaling the State: Egypt in the Third Millennium BC

Author(s):  
Richard Bussmann

Discussions of the early Egyptian state suffer from a weak consideration of scale. Egyptian archaeologists derive their arguments primarily from evidence of court cemeteries, elite tombs, and monuments of royal display. The material informs the analysis of kingship, early writing, and administration but it remains obscure how the core of the early Pharaonic state was embedded in the territory it claimed to administer. This paper suggests that the relationship between centre and hinterland is key for scaling the Egyptian state of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2,700-2,200 BC). Initially, central administration imagines Egypt using models at variance with provincial practice. The end of the Old Kingdom demarcates not the collapse, but the beginning of a large-scale state characterized by the coalescence of central and local models.

2019 ◽  
pp. 246-256
Author(s):  
A. K. Zholkovsky

In his article, A. Zholkovsky discusses the contemporary detective mini-series Otlichnitsa [A Straight-A Student], which mentions O. Mandelstam’s poem for children A Galosh [Kalosha]: more than a fleeting mention, this poem prompts the characters and viewers alike to solve the mystery of its authorship. According to the show’s plot, the fact that Mandelstam penned the poem surfaces when one of the female characters confesses her involvement in his arrest. Examining this episode, Zholkovsky seeks structural parallels with the show in V. Aksyonov’s Overstocked Packaging Barrels [Zatovarennaya bochkotara] and even in B. Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago [Doktor Zhivago]: in each of those, a member of the Soviet intelligentsia who has developed a real fascination with some unique but unattainable object is shocked to realize that the establishment have long enjoyed this exotic object without restrictions. We observe, therefore, a typical solution to the core problem of the Soviet, and more broadly, Russian cultural-political situation: the relationship between the intelligentsia and the state, and the resolution is not a confrontation, but reconciliation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 317-335
Author(s):  
Ngar-sze Lau

Abstract This practice report describes how Chinese meditators understand the “four foundations of mindfulness” (satipaṭṭhāna, sinianzhu 四念住) as a remedy for both mental and physical suffering. In the tradition of Theravāda Buddhism, satipaṭṭhāna is particularly recognized as the core knowledge for understanding the relationship between mind and body, and the core practice leading to liberation from suffering. Based on interviews with Chinese meditation practitioners, this study develops three main themes concerning how they have alleviated afflictions through the practice of satipaṭṭhāna. The first theme highlights how practitioners learn to overcome meditation difficulties with “right attitude.” The second theme is about practicing awareness with “six sense doors” open in order to facilitate the balance of the “five faculties.” The third theme explores how practitioners cultivate daily life practice through an understanding of the nature of mind and body as impermanent and as not-self. This paper details how these themes and embodied practices of satipaṭṭhāna constitute ways of self-healing for urban educated Buddhists in the contemporary Chinese context.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Matthews ◽  
Shoaib Sufi ◽  
Damian Flannery ◽  
Laurent Lerusse ◽  
Tom Griffin ◽  
...  

In this paper, we present the Core Scientific Metadata Model (CSMD), a model for the representation of scientific study metadata developed within the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to represent the data generated from scientific facilities. The model has been developed to allow management of and access to the data resources of the facilities in a uniform way, although we believe that the model has wider application, especially in areas of “structural science” such as chemistry, materials science and earth sciences. We give some motivations behind the development of the model, and an overview of its major structural elements, centred on the notion of a scientific study formed by a collection of specific investigations. We give some details of the model, with the description of each investigation associated with a particular experiment on a sample generating data, and the associated data holdings are then mapped to the investigation with the appropriate parameters. We then go on to discuss the instantiation of the metadata model within a production quality data management infrastructure, the Information CATalogue (ICAT), which has been developed within STFC for use in large-scale photon and neutron sources. Finally, we give an overview of the relationship between CSMD, and other initiatives, and give some directions for future developments.    


2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Marie Baylouny

In the decade and a half since economic liberalization began in Jordan, a little noticed but large-scale organizing trend has taken over the formal provision of social welfare, redefining the institutional conception of familial identity in the process. For over one third of the population, kin solidarities have been reorganized, formalized, and registered as nongovernmental organizations in an attempt to cope with the removal of basic social provisioning by the state. Although kinship clearly has been a major element in Jordan's history, the present phenomena alter traditional familial institutions, change kin lineages, and institutionalize the economic salience of family relations. In turn, the relationship of the populace to the state has changed, marginalizing previously regime-supporting groups and facilitating the implementation of economic neoliberalism without significant protest. Repackaged as charitable elements of civil society, these family associations are sanctioned and encouraged by the state and international community. Although they are not regime creations, family associations reinforce the Jordanian regime's efforts at political deliberalization. The new elites who head the organizations have been placated through indirect incorporation into the regime; they now wield significant economic power over fellow kin and have enhanced social status backed by the new group. Furthermore, the trend mainly consists of families without immediate ambitions of entering national politics. These are not the traditional elite families.


Author(s):  
Michael A. Gomez

This prologue provides an overview of the history of early and medieval West Africa. During this period, the rise of Islam, the relationship of women to political power, the growth and influence of the domestically enslaved, and the invention and evolution of empire were all unfolding. In contrast to notions of an early Africa timeless and unchanging in its social and cultural categories and conventions, here was a western Savannah and Sahel that from the third/ninth through the tenth/sixteenth centuries witnessed political innovation as well as the evolution of such mutually constitutive categories as race, slavery, ethnicity, caste, and gendered notions of power. By the period's end, these categories assume significations not unlike their more contemporary connotations. All of these transformations were engaged with the apparatus of the state and its progression from the city-state to the empire. The transition consistently featured minimalist notions of governance replicated by successive dynasties, providing a continuity of structure as a mechanism of legitimization. Replication had its limits, however, and would ultimately prove inadequate in addressing unforeseen challenges.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Preminger

Chapter 15 summarizes the chapters which addressed the third sphere, the relationship of labor to the political community. It reiterates that since Israel was established, the labor market’s borders have become ever more porous, while the borders of the national (Jewish) political community have remained firm: the Jewish nationalism which guides government policy is as strong as ever. NGOs, drawing on a discourse of human rights, are able to assist some non-citizens but this discourse also resonates with the idea of individual responsibility: the State is no longer willing to support “non-productive” populations, who are now being shoehorned into a labor market which offers few opportunities for meaningful employment, and is saturated by cheaper labor intentionally imported by the State in response to powerful employer lobbies. These trends suggest a partial reorientation of organized labor’s “battlefront”, from a face-off with capital to an appeal to the public and state.


The main aim of the paper is the comparison of two archaeological sites, (1) the Eufaula site of McIntosh County, and (2) the Spiro site of Leflore County, Okla. Purpose of the comparison is to indicate the relationship between the 2 sites, thereby establishing a Spiro Focus, the ramifications and general affiliations of which will be suggested. The thesis is based on original research coming out of my experience as Project Superintendent of various units of the Oklahoma WP A Project. The Project, sponsored by the university of Oklahoma and directed by Dr. F.E. Clements, has carried on large scale excavations in Oklahoma since 1936. At that time the Spiro l\found group, in the east central part of the state, was opened up. In the two years from 1936 to 1938 a crew of 70 WP A laborers, under the direction of trained archaeologists, unearthed quantities of archeological material. The main bulk of material from the "Great Temple" Mound was excavated under the direction of Mr. Joe Finkelstein. 1 It was my privilege to analyze the material excavated by him. I also excavated the Spiro Village and a series of villages in the vicinity of the Mound group. 2 Both groups of data will be utilized.


Iraq ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Davide Nadali ◽  
Lorenzo Verderame

The ancient city of Nigin in the State of Lagash is largely attested in the epigraphic sources of the rulers of the First Dynasty of Lagash. Conversely, the archaeological evidence of the Early Dynastic Period is so far very scanty and limited. This paper presents a small group of documents to be dated to the Early Dynastic Period IIIb that were found out of context, but that nevertheless point to a phase of occupation of Nigin in the third millennium BC and are coherent with the information we already know about history of the city and the State of Lagash.


Author(s):  
Mariana Mazzucato

Building on the core ideas in the author’s book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking private vs. public sector myths, the chapter looks at the narrow way in which public policy is viewed in economics and the implications of this for our understanding of wealth creation. Focusing on the relationship between the State and innovation-led growth, it looks at the key role that public policies have had in taking on extreme risk and uncertainty in the innovation process. This has entailed the State acting not just as lender of last resort, but as investor of first resort. In this context, economic policy is more about market making and shaping, rather than just a market fixing. The chapter then focuses on the implications of this different understanding of public policy, for a more ‘collective’ understanding of wealth creation, and ways to ensure that not only risks but also rewards are socialized.


2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (280) ◽  
pp. 443-463
Author(s):  
Daniele Bruno

Abstract This paper discusses the prospects of a comprehensive philosophical account of promising that relies centrally on the notion of trust. I lay out the core idea behind the Trust View, showing how it convincingly explains the normative contours and the unique value of our promissory practice. I then sketch three distinct options of how the Trust View can explain the normativity of promises. First, an effect based-view, second, a view drawing on a wider norm demanding respect to those whom one has invited to something, and finally, as a new suggestion, a Normative Interest View. This view holds that promising is a normative power that serves our interest in facilitating or enabling the relationship of trust between promisor and promisee. I argue that only those embracing the third view can fully account for the distinctive obligation that results from the giving of a valid promise in all cases.


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