Ethnic Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean: Social Life Under Empire

Description: A fresh perspective revealing how ethnographic thinking shaped the sociocultural landscape of the ancient Mediterranean.

With this book, Philip A. Harland presents a large-scale rereading of social and cultural life in the eastern part of the ancient Mediterranean in particular, examining social interactions among peoples, from culturally dominant groups to minority populations. Harland assesses literary and archaeological evidence to yield fresh insights into the dynamics of ethnic relations in the region and to explore how the population navigated questions of identification, differentiation, categorization, stratification, criminalization, and population production.

Harland considers encounters between peoples as well as their representations of one another, reframing the social landscape of the ancient world by focusing on the influence and ubiquity of the ethnographic imagination between the fifth century BCE and the third century CE. Drawing insights from anthropology, sociology, and postcolonial studies, Harland offers close readings of papyri, inscriptions, monuments, sculptures, and other materials that reflect interactions between different populations at all levels of society. He gives careful attention to the perspectives of enslaved, immigrant, and subject peoples, including Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians, and Judeans under Persian, Hellenistic, or Roman rule.

Offering an innovative reading of social and cultural life from the ground up, this book reveals the extent to which ethnographic thinking structured the sociocultural landscape of the ancient world.

Brief description: Philip A. Harland is professor in the Departments of Humanities and History at York University in Toronto. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations; Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians; and Group Survival in the Ancient Mediterranean.

Review Quotes:

Exceptionally detailed in its analysis, Ethnic Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean is an exciting, comprehensive, and well-researched book that will make a significant impact on the study of ethnicity in Mediterranean antiquity. This work is unique in its chronological and geographical sweep, considering dynamics of identity discourse from Herodotos to the early imperial period, which allows us to see ancient ethnic discourses from a variety of different perspectives and angles. Harland also pays careful attention to the imperial, colonial, and geopolitical contexts that shaped discourses of ethnicity, looking at subject peoples within colonial contexts or dotting the margins of imperial control."