Political Landscape

1. Auflage 2003
ISBN: 978-0-520-23750-6
Verlag: University Of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 346 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 226 mm, Gewicht: 567 g

How do landscapes—defined in the broadest sense to incorporate the physical contours of the built environment, the aesthetics of form, and the imaginative reflections of spatial representations—contribute to the making of politics? Shifting through the archaeological, epigraphic, and artistic remains of early complex societies, this provocative and far-reaching book is the first systematic attempt to explain the links between spatial organization and politics from an anthropological point of view.

The Classic-period Maya, the kingdom of Urartu, and the cities of early southern Mesopotamia provide the focal points for this multidimensional account of human polities. Are the cities and villages in which we live and work, the lands that are woven into our senses of cultural and personal identity, and the national territories we occupy merely stages on which historical processes and political rituals are enacted? Or do the forms of buildings and streets, the evocative sensibilities of architecture and vista, the aesthetics of place conjured in art and media constitute political landscapes—broad sets of spatial practices critical to the formation, operation, and overthrow of polities, regimes, and institutions? Smith brings together contemporary theoretical developments from geography and social theory with anthropological perspectives and archaeological data to pursue these questions.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Adam T.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Soziale & wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen von Umweltfaktoren
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Politische Ethnologie, Recht, Organisation, Identität
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie Politische Geographie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Surveying the Political Landscape
1. Sublimated Spaces
2. Archaeologies of Political Authority
3. Geopolitics
4. Polities
5. Regimes
6. Institutions
Conclusion: Toward a Cartography of Political Landscapes

References Cited
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Adam T. Smith is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and in the College of the University of Chicago. He is the coeditor of Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond (2003).