Romanisation - Romanization ?!? - Congress

15.-17. Dezember 2017

 

Scarcely a historical phenomenon is so intensively discussed in the Classical Studies of the last decades as the processes that began since the expansion of Rome, which are generally subsumed under the concept of ‘Romanization’. A terminus however, whose far-reaching
implications for content are still to be questioned critically – especially since it is not infrequently based on the notion that the Imperium Romanum, in consequence of its increasingly powerful political dominance, has succeeded in obtaining, over time, an equally comprehensive cultural pre-eminence in the territories conquered by it, and the inhabitants resident there to a far-reaching assimilation, if not even self-abandonment of their own identity. In fact all of the so-called ‚totalitarian cultural concepts‘ already established since the eighteenth century have long since been properly seized by the premise that they are based on a largely homogeneity of cultures - that is to say, of largely static, outward-bound social behaviors, values, symbolic orders or religious models. And almost all contemporary scientific disciplines now understand the concept of ‚culture‘ as a much more dynamic entity, more permeable, as well as characterized by internal diversity. Nevertheless, traditional domination concepts are still virulent, especially in the political sciences, which is manifested by the fact that in theoretical discussions about the prerequisites and nature of formal empires there are always correspondingly stereotypical notions of a fundamentally strict ideological structure and practical realization of a politically and culturally dominant Imperium Romanum as a prototype for contemporary imperial systems. In light of this background, the conference aims to investigate some prominent processes characterized by the term ‚Romanization‘, both in terms of their potential forces of change, as well as in a focus on the resistances and limitations which they encounter, with the thematic focus on the so-called ‚Roman Greece‘, in order to elaborate as clearly as possible basic outlines of the phenomenon in a specific regional case study.

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Latest Revision: 2017-12-01
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