Political Machine (eBook)

Assembling Sovereignty in the Bronze Age Caucasus

Adam T. Smith (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2015 | 1. Auflage
264 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-6650-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Adam T. Smith is professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University. He is the author of The Political Landscape and the coauthor of The Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies, Volume 1.

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The Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things-from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance-and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today.Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "e;machines"e; sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world. Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule.From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.7.2015
• Reihe/Serie: The Rostovtzeff Lectures
• Reihe/Serie: The Rostovtzeff Lectures
• Zusatzinfo: 25 halftones. 18 line illus. 1 table. 9 maps.
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte / Antike
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: Acquiescence • Agency (philosophy) • Anachronism • Analogy • Andiron • Antithesis • Archaeological Site • archaeology • Armenia • Armenian Highlands • authority • authorization • Automaton • ballot • Bronze Age • Bronze Age Caucasus • Bronze Age polities • Bronze Age villages • Brother Axe • burial • Calculation • Caucasus • Civilization • civilization machine • Commodity • Commodity Fetishism • counterprojects • critique • Deleuze and Guattari • Determination • Early Bronze Age • egalitarianism • Emblem • Empiricism • Epistemology • Erebuni • ethnography • Eurasian steppe • Exclusion • exile • Fetishism • field research • Furniture • Georges Bataille • Giorgio Agamben • Governance • Hannah Arendt • hearth • Historicity • Homo Faber • Household • Hovannes Toumanyan • human behavior • human body • Humanity • human science • Iconoclasm • Iconography • Institution • Iron Age • Jasmine Revolution • John Rawls • Late Bronze Age • Lecture • Liberalism • lifeworld • machine • Marxian economics • material culture • material flow • Materiality (interior design) • Middle Bronze Age • Mining • Modernity • mortuary ritual • Nagorno-Karabakh • Nationality • Neolithic • Nominalism • object matter • objects • Ontology • organized violence • Personhood • Philosophy • physical body • Physical property • Pierre Clastres • Political Economy • political interactions • political machine • Political Philosophy • political sovereignty • Political System • political theory • Political violence • Politics • Postmodernism • Prehistory • Principle • Public sphere • radical inequality • raw material • Requirement • Reverse Engineering • Ruler • self-recognizing community • sensibility • Slavery • Social Life • Social Practice • Social reproduction • Society • South Caucasus • Sovereignty • Soviet Union • Suggestion • Suzerainty • Technology • theory • Theory of Forms • The Various • things • Thomas Hobbes • Thought • tomb • Tunisia • Urartu • V. Gordon Childe • Voting machine • war • warfare • war machine • weapon system • Writing • Yerevan
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-6650-2 / 1400866502
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-6650-2 / 9781400866502