The Emergence of Roman Provincial Setting: Shifting Relationalities in SE Pannonia (original) (raw)
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Pervading Empire addresses the issue of diversity within the Roman Empire and promotes interpretations that go beyond general and often abstract theoretical framings. The baseline of the volume is the notion that reality is created by the endless and multi-directional relations of different human and inhuman actors, and that the sorts and modes of correlations create specific phenomena. The volume offers a variety of theoretically and methodologically well-informed geographical, chronological and thematic case studies, written by established and emerging specialists in the field of Roman Studies, on a range of different research questions such as the integration in the Roman world, inter-cultural perceptions, (mis)communications, transfers and exchanges, transformations of social structures and landscape, patterns of consumption and related identities and the dynamics in the sphere of religion among others. Thereby, Pervading Empire demonstrates the complex and fluctuating nature of the Roman world and emphasizes the fertility of such approaches within Roman Studies.
Hegemony and “relational associations” in the Roman Empire
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The paper continues the discussion about the characteristics, advantages, and limitations of the so-called ontological/material turn and posthumanist perspectives in archaeology. It specifically focuses on the application, possibilities of improvement, and usefulness of these theoretical approaches within Roman archaeology. After reviewing the current debate, the “pros and cons,” it is proposed that materialities, as well as relational associations composed of various kinds of entities in general, cannot be divorced from ideational aspects that humans inevitably bring in. Therefore, it is suggested that the critical synthesis of material-ideological antagonism is required, because it is impossible to separate relational associations (aka. assemblages, constellations) from power distribution, as well as that their qualities, capacities, and agency are not neutral, but, on the contrary, hegemonic. Some examples from the Balkan-Pannonian part of the Roman Empire are provided in an attempt to clarify the reasoning.
The Translation Zone: Between Actor-Network Theory and International Relations (2013)
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In 1981 Michel Callon and Bruno Latour provided one of the earliest formulations of what later became known as actor-network theory in a paper titled 'Mapping the Leviathan: How Actors Macro-structure reality and how sociologists help them do so'. Their intervention in social theory was, in part, an implicit critique of the dominant school of French sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. At the same time, their analysis resonated with Foucault's explorations of technologies of power and rationalities of government in the late 1970s. But they did not explicity use the term actor-network in their 1981 paper, and the parallels between their project and Foucault's were not addressed. At this time, Callon and Latour drew explicitly on the work of historian and philosopher of science, Michel Serres and, in particular, his concept of translation. In this paper I take a cue from this early paper to consider the challenge of translating actor-network theory into the field of international relations. My contention is that actor-network theory cannot be simply applied, as a theory, to the field of international relations. Rather we must pose the problem of the relation between actor-network theory and international relations in another way. What demands does the field of international relations make on actornetwork theory? How difficult, in other words, is it to translate actor-network theory into a form that makes it relevant to international relations? The paper is in three parts. First, I consider how the problem of translation has been addressed in actor-network theory. Secondly, I examine why the study of scientific practice, which lay at the heart of the early work of Callon and Latour, should be of particular relevance to international relations. Thirdly, I outline three ways in which the field of international relations may raise new questions for actor-network theory. Actor-network theory, as we shall see, is only translated, as actor-network theorists might expect, with difficulty.
European Journal of Social Theory
This article proposes complementing actor-network theory (ANT) with Niklas Luhmann's communication theory, in order to overcome one of ANT's major shortcomings, namely, the lack of a conceptual repertoire to describe virtual processes such as sensemaking. A highly problematic consequence of ANT's actualism is that it cannot explain the differentiation of economic, legal, scientific, touristic, religious, medical, artistic, political and other qualities of actual entities, assemblages and relationships. By recasting Luhmann's theory of functionally differentiated communication forms and sense-making as dealing with different types of virtual attractors calling for actualizations in concrete assemblages, I propose a symmetrical understanding of societal differentiation processes as based on the co-production of virtual attractors and actual assemblages.