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Thursday, April 16, 2009
Collaboration
This is where you can find others who are working on similar topics, make new friends, and collaborate on your papers. It dawned on me after our meeting today that you might well want to have anyone or everyone take a look at your drafts, so strictly speaking no need really to be working on the same topic. In the comments, just list your name, topic, email address, and we'll see how it goes. Cheers, MC
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I have spent the past week trying to understand Horden and Purcell's approach to the unity of the Mediterranean, rather than dip into sections 3, 4, and 5 in the text. Most of my time has been spent reading sections 1 and 2, specifically chapters 1-4. Here is my (crude) summary:
ReplyDeleteWhereas Pirenne envisioned Mediterranean unity in primarily economic terms (focusing on trade networks) and the Annales (Bloch,Braudel) identified environmental and communication factors as unifying aspects of the Mediterranean (what Horden and Purcell call the ecologizing and interactionist perspectives), Horden and Purcell claim that extensive diversity is what unifies the region through its micro-ecologies. Diversity both in the near limitless varieties in local geographies, but also in the diverse flexibility in the strategies of its inhabitants to exploit and overcome geographical and environmental limitations. Specifically, the necessity of its inhabitants to utilize various subsistence strategies (agriculture, pastoralism). Nor do cities defy their methodological approach, seemingly unified in geography and specialization, because they claim cities can have geographic and environmental diversity within them and its inhabitants employed a variety of strategies to make a living.
In short, the great diversity in geography and the subsistence strategies of its inhabitants within its 'micro-ecologies' is what unifies the Mediterranean as an historical object of inquiry and differentiates it from any other place on Earth.
Of course, I have yet to read chapter 5 (focusing on communication networks), section 3 (revolutions/catastrophe), or sections 4 or 5. If anyone has read those sections, please feel free to post something to fill in the missing pieces. Of course, I welcome anyone's interpretation of Horden and Purcell's contribution to Mediterranean unity as well.