A Concept of Eurasia (original) (raw)
Related papers
Goody, Polanyi and Eurasia: An Unfinished Project in Comparative Historical Economic Anthropology
History and Anthropology, 2015
Goody's essay overlaps with his recent work on the "search for metals" and, more generally, with his many books expounding the commonalities of Eurasian history. His critique of Eurocentrism remains invaluable. This review article argues that his emphasis on diffusion can be usefully supplemented with a concept of civilization, to facilitate comparative structural analysis. Goody's perspective might also be enhanced by an engagement with the literature on "Axial Age" cosmologies and with substantivist economic anthropology. It is worth revisiting Karl Polanyi's efforts to grasp the position of the economy in society, in order to recover in the neoliberal present the long-run Eurasian dialectic between redistribution and market exchange.
Goody's essay overlaps with his recent work on the "search for metals" and, more generally, with his many books expounding the commonalities of Eurasian history. His critique of Eurocentrism remains invaluable. This review article argues that his emphasis on diffusion can be usefully supplemented with a concept of civilization, to facilitate comparative structural analysis. Goody's perspective might also be enhanced by an engagement with the literature on "Axial Age" cosmologies and with substantivist economic anthropology. It is worth revisiting Karl Polanyi's efforts to grasp the position of the economy in society, in order to recover in the neoliberal present the long-run Eurasian dialectic between redistribution and market exchange.
“On Eurasia and Europe”. In The Anthropology of East Europe Review, n. 33 (2), 2015, pp. 60-88 – with a reply by Chris Hann ------- This paper sets out to discuss the objects/areas/models/notions of Europe and Eurasia from the standpoint of a critical historical anthropology, in order to assess their intellectual usefulness, heuristic validity, and correspondence to actual social and historical realties. This will be done through reviewing and assessing the concept of Eurasia as it is developed in the recent works of Chris Hann. By confronting his arguments, I will articulate why the notion of Eurasia and its ontological status in this form is not entirely conceptually and historically convincing, even if it is thought-provoking (or even politically desirable). I will explain why considering Europe as a part of a macro-region – instead of as a macro-region itself – is not convincing, and thereby reaffirm the specificities which make Europe a discernible object/area/model/notion of historical-anthropological study; specificities that for the time being prove it heuristically unsuitable and unsustainable to substitute the notion of Europe with that of Eurasia (or " Western Eurasia "), as Chris Hann seems to advocate.
Towards a Maximally Inclusive Concept of Eurasia
Based on a plenary lecture given in Astana in May 2014, the paper outlines the concept of Eurasia which forms the framework for research in the Department 'Resilience and Transformation in Eurasia' at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. It probes the legacies of an interconnected Eurasia for contemporary political economy and social exclusion -both long-term with regard to the embedded economies of pre-industrial civilisations, and short-term with regard to those of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist socialism and Keynesian social democracy in the twentieth century.
Eurasian Dynamics: From Agrarian Axiality to the Connectivities of the Capitalocene
Der einleitende Beitrag umreißt einen Rahmen, der die Dynamik der eurasischen Landmasse (flexibel definiert) in den Mittelpunkt der Weltgeschichte der letzten drei Jahrtausende stellt. Konzepte von Kulturraum, Zivilisation und Weltsystem werden kritisch überprüft. Besonderes Augenmerk gilt den Theorien der Achsenzeit, die sowohl religiöse als auch säkulare Varianten der Transzendenz umfassen, sowie deren Rolle bei der Legitimation politischer Institutionen. Diese Ansätze werden durch den Rückgriff auf den anthropo-archäologischen Materialismus von Jack Goody ergänzt, der die "alternierende Führung" zwischen Ost und West betont. Der Fokus von Goody auf die wachsende städtische Differenzierung in den agrarischen Reichen der Bronzezeit kann erweitert werden, indem das Spektrum der Zivilisationen über die der intensi-ven Landwirtschaft hinaus ausgedehnt wird. Dieser Ansatz lässt sich mit theoretischen Erkennt-nissen von Karl Polanyi gewinnbringend kombinieren, um eine neue historische ökonomische Anthropologie anzuregen, die es uns ermöglicht, verschiedene Varianten des Sozialismus auf die Formen der sozialen Inklusion und der "imperialen sozialen Verantwortung" zurückzufüh-ren, die in der Achsenzeit entstanden sind. Der Aufsatz argumentiert weiterhin, dass die eu-rasischen Zivilisationen, die die "große Dialektik" zwischen Umverteilung und Marktaustausch hervorgebracht haben, angesichts der Widersprüche der heutigen neoliberalen politischen Ökonomie die beste Hoffnung sind, um die Spannungen des Kapitalozäns (angemessener wäre "Eurasiazän") aufzulösen. This introductory paper outlines a frame that places the dynamics of the Eurasian landmass (flexibly defined) at the centre of world history in the last three millennia. Concepts of culture area, civilization and world system are critically reviewed. Particular attention is paid to Axial Age theories, including both religious and secular variants of transcendence, and their role in
The anthropology of Eurasia in Eurasia
2003
This paper proposes reinterpretations of the concepts of cosmopolitanism and of Eurasia, both of which are commonly perceived negatively inside and outside anthropology. Cosmopolitanism is here understood as central to the character of anthropology as a comparative discipline, the antithesis of the ‘national ethnography’ (Volkskunde) tradition. It can be practised at various levels. On historical grounds, both short term and long term, it is argued that Eurasia is a highly appropriate level for comparative analysis. Eurasia is defined here as the entire landmass between the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic Oceans. In addition to Asia and Europe, Africa north of the Sahara is included on historical grounds. While some parts of this “mega-continent” are well represented in the anthropological literature, many have been neglected. Recognition of the unity of the whole has been hindered by Eurocentric preoccupations with civilisational differences and by the dominant research method...