Pre-modern Societies Research Articles

Uma História Global antes da Globalização? Circulação e espaços conectados na Idade Média

A História Global costuma ser definida como a análise da globalização econômica, cultural, tecnológica, bem como dos processos que lhe são associados: a emergência de uma sociedade de consumo planetária, a exploração do espaço, a ameaça nuclear, os riscos tecnológicos, os problemas ambientais etc. É evidente que, nessa acepção, a História Global não se adequa ao estudo das sociedades pré-modernas. Os fenômenos, desafios e ameaças que ocupam aqueles que adotam a História Global no estudo das sociedades anteriores ao século XVII não são os mesmos aos quais se interessam os estudiosos da Globalização. O objetivo deste artigo é discutir as possibilidades e os limites da História Global para o estudo das sociedades anteriores ao processo de Globalização.

One and Many: Parish Church Planning in Late Medieval England

Recurrent in architectural historiography is the notion that large-scale building projects in premodern societies were inherently elite undertakings. In One and Many: Parish Church Planning in Late Medieval England, Zachary Stewart examines a well-known but inadequately studied exception to this rule: themedieval parish church. He focuses on formally integrated parish churches built in England during the two centuries between the Black Death (1348–49) and the HenricianReformation (1534–47), a paradigmatic example being the grandmarket church of St. PeterMancroft inNorwich (ca. 1440–65). Analysis of the facture, form, and function of these buildings, whose flexible configuration can be compared to the modern “open plan,” suggests that they empowered a broad spectrum of individuals to negotiate the complex relations that defined the parish as a one-and-many social entity.

In This Issue

Other| September 01 2020 In This Issue Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2020) 79 (3): 246. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.3.246 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation In This Issue. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 September 2020; 79 (3): 246. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.3.246 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search In Reconstructing the Sacred Experience at the Sanctuary of Hekate at Lagina, Amanda Herring traces aspects of ancient worshippers' experience at this Hellenistic sanctuary. As the sanctuary was located 10 kilometers outside the closest city, Stratonikeia, most visitors would have traveled to Lagina only when they participated in state-sponsored festivals. Lagina represents the only monumental temple dedicated to Hekate and the only site at which the goddess had a central role in the local pantheon. The rites and rituals practiced there were thus unique to the site and required a specific type of architectural framework. Drawing on theories of cultural biography and experiential architecture, Herring argues that the complex's architectural design and sculpted decoration conveyed an intricate yet cohesive message of political and cultural alliances, a message made accessible via ritualized experience of the space. Recurrent in architectural historiography is the notion that large-scale building projects in premodern societies... You do not currently have access to this content.

Local Food and Transnational Science

This article focuses on new boundary issues that have emerged from the encounter of modern science from abroad and local foodstuffs exemplified by the caterpillar fungus in Republican China (1912–49). The caterpillar fungus was believed in premodern Chinese society to be able to reversibly transform from a blade of grass to a worm, thereby crossing boundaries between two species. It had different uses, ranging from a culinary ingredient to a medicinal substance, and in this way also crossed boundaries of identity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, scientific scholarship from Japan began to bring new perceptions of the fungus to Chinese society through translation. Modern science expanded human vision into the microscopic structure of the caterpillar fungus, and deconstructed it into two nontransformable species grouped with other similar species. The Chinese term for it also entered the Japanese language. However, the category of the term was broadened, crossing the boundary between the caterpillar fungus and other similar species, thereby indicating semantic boundaries of shared vocabulary. As local food or material culture in Republican China engaged scientific attention, the caterpillar fungus as a disenchanted wonder of nature sometimes transformed into a scientific wonder, eliciting new explorations within different scientific boundaries. The new scholarship led to tensions and negotiations between domains of knowledge about this organism but would not necessarily drive out the vernacular culinary or medical expertise. The emergent boundary issues overall depict both rupture and continuity in modern Chinese food knowledge.

Introduction Providence and Circumstance, Reverence and Deference: Preliminary Remarks on ‘Kinship’, ‘Patronage’, ‘Power’ and Conditions of Opportunity

Abstract This preliminary overview aims primarily to make plausible that kinship is an attribution, that is, that it is tied to observations as uses of distinctions. However, observation is contingent, not arbitrary, and it both requires and generates ontologies on a case-by-case basis. The claim that kinship is resolvable into ‘relatedness’ runs into this very impasse of the notion of indifferent arbitrariness. For if kinship were indeed merely a synonym for relatedness, i. e., for inclusions, the question would arise as to what is excluded and what is not excluded concerning which arrangement. However, if one follows the suggestion made here that kinship is a medium of communication in which forms, i. e., distinctions, can be inscribed, one can turn to the classical functionalist question of how these forms have been deployed culturally and across social-evolutionary ruptures, and perhaps functionally equivalently. If it is the case that kinship is based on distinctions, the question of their respective social environments also becomes interesting for the observers of these observations. Therefore, the sketch also refers to attributions and contextures as conditions of the possibility of distinctions in this case. Thus, patronage can be brought into play as a phenomenon in the environment of kinship. As a hypothesis, it is formulated that patronage parasitically participates in the genealogical and functional forms of differentiation of pre-modern and modern societies, respectively.

The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Future of Economic Inequality

The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Future of Economic Inequality Walter Scheidel (bio) how will the current pandemic affect the development of income and wealth inequality in the United States? Throughout recorded history, such disparities were particularly sensitive to massive shocks to the established order. (I discuss the historical record in The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, Princeton University Press, 2017.) In the first half of the twentieth century, industrialized mass mobilization warfare and communist revolution reduced inequality on a large scale. The world wars did so by reducing returns on capital, precipitating aggressive government intervention in the private sector, supporting bargaining by workers, and raising taxes on large incomes and fortunes. Communist regimes pursued greater equality as one of their principal goals, which they achieved through a combination of expropriation, redistribution, collectivization, and economic planning. Two different leveling forces operated in premodern societies. The more common of the two, state collapse that brought down established wealth and power elites, is no longer relevant for modern highincome societies. On occasion, catastrophic pandemics also greatly lowered inequality. In the late Middle Ages, the Black Death killed so many people in Europe that labor became scarce and surviving workers were able to earn higher real wages while demand for elite assets such as land fell, narrowing the gap between rich and poor. [End Page 293] The experience of past plagues raises the question of whether the current pandemic might have the potential to reverse disequalizing trends that have been active for several decades. We can already rule out any traditional Malthusian consequences: fatality rates will be far too low to raise workers' wages. If anything, lingering unemployment is likely to have the opposite effect. Policy responses will therefore be of crucial importance. Judging from history, we may expect diversity in outcomes. During the late medieval plague, elite groups that sought to resist worker demands were sometimes unable to do so and had to accept higher labor costs and revocation of established privileges. England is a classic example. In other cases, elites maintained a united front against workers and compelled them to abide by the status quo or even less favorable arrangements. This was the case in Central and Eastern Europe and in Egypt. While modern societies and political systems are obviously very different, the underlying logic still applies. Policy responses will be critically shaped by prevailing power structures in the political, financial, and corporate domains. This in turn will determine to what extent elites' desire to return to business as usual—which since the 1980s has involved growing economic inequality—will succeed. Regarding the United States, current conditions leave little room for optimism. While the dislocations associated with the pandemic have led to renewed calls for overtly redistributive measures such as universal basic income and wealth taxes, it is doubtful that the highly polarized two-party system could implement such ideas. In the end, much depends on the overall scale and duration of the crisis. If science and the pharmaceutical industry deliver effective treatments and vaccines, and if quantitative easing combined with temporary emergency patches for workers and businesses prevent a more prolonged economic meltdown, a return to some version of the status quo is a plausible outcome. This in turn suggests that the current heightening of existing inequalities by mass unemployment, underemployment, precariousness, and debt is unlikely to fade during the recovery, resulting in persistent and possibly even increased inequality down the line. [End Page 294] History suggests that the most disruptive crises led to transformative and equalizing change. In the present context, this might require prolonged failure to contain the virus and/or a global depression. Such developments might raise levels of immiseration and popular discontent enough to shift the general discourse toward more radical solutions, such as socialized healthcare, nationalizations, more invasive regulation, basic job or income guarantees, and higher and more progressive taxation. The indicators available at the time of writing do not seem to favor such a trajectory. For now, it seems more likely that the coming years will bear greater similarities to the unequal recovery from the Great Recession than to the changes brought about...

Placing Blame for Devastating Disease

Placing Blame for Devastating Disease Dorothy Nelkin (bio) and Sander L. Gilman (bio) in october 1985 a long article entitled "panic in the west: or, what Hides Behind the Sensationalism of AIDS" appeared in Literaturnaya Gazeta, the official journal of the Soviet Writers Union. Shortly thereafter the journal printed a detailed interview on the same topic with Professor S. Drozdov, the director of the Research Institute of Poliomyelitis and Encephalitis in Moscow.1 The theme of both articles was the same—AIDS was the result of a virus, man-made by the biological warriors at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in conjunction with the scientists at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. That blame for this dread disease was placed on a political adversary is not very surprising in light of the freeze on American-Soviet relations during the summer of 1985. More fascinating are the associations evoked by the political cartoonist for Pravda, D. Agaeva. His cartoon represents an American general paying for a test tube of AIDS virus supplied to him by a venal-looking scientist. Swimming about in the test tube, representing the power of the AIDS virus, are a multitude of tiny swastikas; the dead, the victims of AIDS, appear in the cartoon as concentration-camp victims, their bare feet echoing the death-camp photographs of bodies stacked like cordwood with only their feet showing. Placing the blame for AIDS on America worked only until the Soviets, in the climate of glasnost in late 1986, admitted that they too had indigenous cases of the disease. But during 1985 and early 1986 [End Page 335] the Soviet press was projecting an image of the United States as fascist and degenerate. Some Russians viewed homosexuality as a pathological reflex of late forms of capitalism and AIDS as a reflection of Western government and society. Thus, in one powerful image, the Pravda cartoonist managed to draw an association between American imperialism, Nazi fascism, and dread disease. The placing of blame has been a pervasive theme in the popular discourse on AIDS. Since 1981, when the first case of AIDS was identified, blame for the disease has been placed variously on dangerous lifestyles, on immoral behavior, on intravenous drug use, on "poppers," on the CIA, on dioxin and Agent Orange, on government policies, on Haitians (by the American media), or on Americans (by the French). Blaming has always been a means to make mysterious and devastating diseases comprehensible and therefore possibly controllable. Even when disease was routinely assumed to be caused by "God's will," "the Lord's wrath," or "occult influences," people looked for the behavior that was to blame for divine judgment and retribution. It is commonly assumed that modern scientific understanding of infection and contagion has neutralized such folkloric views of disease, that the political and moral judgments that were so characteristic of premodern societies are relics of the past. But diseases are never fully understood. And so we still make moral judgments for misfortune. We still point the finger of blame.2 In a situation of communal anxiety, locating blame for disease is in effect a strategy of control. If responsibility can be fixed, perhaps something—discipline, prudence, isolation—can be done. Locating blame is in effect a quest for order and certainty in an anxious and disruptive situation. It is a particularly pervasive syndrome when science and medicine are perceived as impotent. Thus the rhetoric of blame is most evident today in the discourse on the causes of diseases such as AIDS or cancer, while historically it appeared in discussions of leprosy, syphilis, or plague. These are situations where medical science has failed to serve as a source of definitive [End Page 336] understanding and control, so people try to create their own order and to reduce their own sense of vulnerability. In effect, placing blame defines the normal, establishes the boundaries of healthy behavior and appropriate social relationships, and distinguishes the observer from the cause of fear. Categories of blame often reflect deep social-class biases. Illness is frequently associated with poverty and becomes a justification for social inequities. But blaming is also a way to create psychological as well as social boundaries. For...

Is Religion Coming Back as a Source for Antisemitic Views?

The most violent American and European antisemites in the 21st century, including not only Jihadists but also white (and black) supremacist terrorist, made some reference to religion in their hatred of Jews. This is surprising. Religious antisemitism is often seen as a relic of the past. It is more associated with pre-modern societies where the role of religion was central to the social and political order. However, at the end of the 19th century, animosity against Judaism gave way to nationalistic and racist motives. People such as Wilhelm Marr called themselves antisemites to distinguish themselves from those who despised Jews for religious reasons. Since then, antisemitism has gone through many mutations. However, today, it is not only the actions of extremely violent antisemites who might be an indication that religious antisemitism has come back in new forms. Some churches have been accused of disseminating antisemitic arguments related to ideas of replacement theology in modernized forms and applied to the Jewish State. Others, from the populist nationalist right, seem to use Christianity as an identity marker and thus exclude Jews (and Muslims) from the nation. Do religious motifs play a significant role in the resurgence of antisemitism in the 21st century?

A motivação das decisões sobre revista nas primeiras décadas dos Supremos Tribunais de Justiça no Brasil e em Portugal (1834–1866)

No presente estudo realiza-se uma análise comparativa das motivações empregadas nas decisões proferidas em recursos de revista pelos Supremos Tribunais de Justiça do Brasil e de Portugal, na segunda metade do século XIX. Para isso se contextualiza historicamente o entendimento doutrinário predominante nas culturas jurídicas dos dois países acerca do dever de motivação das sentenças, verificando-se que na sociedade do antigo regime o dever de motivação era considerado instrumento acessório, necessário somente para a preservação do direito régio. Em seguida, emprega-se o método de análise de conteúdo para avaliar suas especificidades quanto às características dos recursos (origem, matéria, fundamentação) e das partes recorrentes (gênero, estatuto social). Foram identificadas correlações entre as características dos recorrentes, as matérias recorridas e os tipos de fundamentação empregados, e ao final concluiu-se que as decisões proferidas no período indicam tratar-se de uma jurisprudência de transição, a meio caminho entre a fundamentação pluralista do antigo regime e a fundamentação legalista típica da modernidade.

Review of periodical articles

One of the great interpretive arcs of history as an academic discipline is the opposition between pre-modern and modern societies. Stimulated by post-modern theory, historians have done much in the past decades to expunge the ideological baggage of history as a ‘great march of civilization’, but they continue to imagine the industrial revolution as a great hinge between two distinct epochs. For all its merits, this perspective also creates problems. Burdened by hindsight, medievalists and modernists are often inclined to understand a case-study as either a prefiguration of a nineteenth- or twentieth-century development, or as its foil. Some of the most important publications on the history of medieval European towns published in 2019 were about destroying such assumptions.

Distinctions and Differentiations between Medicine and Religion

Abstract This special section of Asian Medicine brings together three scholars of the history of healing practices and medicine in premodern Asian societies to explore whether and how emic boundaries between religion and medicine were drawn in different historical contexts. In this introduction, we use the example of ancient Japan in an attempt to show how first steps towards a separation of religion and medicine can be identified, even when they have not yet been clearly differentiated institutionally or distinguished conceptually as distinct fields of action. By doing so, we operationalize the macro-sociological question central to the ‘multiple secularities’ approach, namely how ‘secular’ fields of action—here, curing disease—emancipate themselves from ‘religion’ in premodern ‘non-Western’ societies. We propose to look for differences in the framing and interpretation of healing activities, for the ascription of either (professional) competence or (religious) charisma to the healers, to ask whether the activities are to be interpreted as a social function or service, and to identify the sources of authority and legitimacy. This is followed by a brief summary and discussion of the contributions by Selby, Czaja, and Triplett.

Review: The Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World, edited by Sabine R. Huebner and Christian Laes

Sabine R. Huebner and Christian Laes, ed., The Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 434 pp. ISBN 9781108470170. $130.00. “All the single ladies” will not be surprised nor will their male and gender fluid counterparts: there was never a time in history without persons who lived the single life, however defined. What is surprising is that the single life has received comparatively scant scholarly attention, especially in the premodern period. Indeed, as Christian Laes observes, “sociocultural research on the single life in the Roman empire has been virtually absent so far” (21). Once one considers how to define “the single life,” however, the relative scarcity of scholarly investigation becomes easier to fathom. What is “the single life?” In his detailed and sophisticated introduction to this important volume Christian Laes makes it clear that Christian asceticism is not what is primarily at issue (though it does of course play a role), but rather something akin to “not married and not in a sexual partnership” without a religious motivation to forgo either and while of an age at that allows for both. In other words, many human beings experience such a situation at some point in the course of their life, for example while not yet married or no longer married because of being widowed or divorced. But does that mean they live a single life? After all, they could be part of an extended family; does that count? In short, analyzing the single life in premodern societies such as the Roman and Later Roman world poses significant conceptual and methodological challenges. As Laes points out, even in today's Western industrialized societies that form the basis of his comparative analysis (3–5), the single life encompasses such potentially contradictory elements as “the legal fact of not being married or not being in an exclusive relationship” (whereby being in an exclusive relationship is only sometimes a legal fact); “living alone and the possible …

PERUBAHAN SOSIAL BUDAYA MASYARAKAT PEDESAAN PASCA REVOLUSI HIJAU

It is assumed that changes in village community will become even clearer if related to changes in village society at this time. Changes in society will look good in the fields of education, economics, social relations and other fields. Modernization is a change in society that moves from traditional conditions or from pre-modern society to modern society. The process of change was driven by various community efforts in fighting for their hopes and ideals, namely changing lives and existing livelihoods for the better. General characteristics of modernization are related to the fields of social social traditions, population science and technology and social mobility. The various fields are proceeding so as to achieve new patterns of behavior that are manifested in the life of modern society. Major changes that have taken place since the post-green revolution, villages in Southeast Asia have undergone fundamental changes. Rural life and the fulfillment of the needs of life of rural people in Southeast Asia have undergone a fundamental change, can no longer assume that the fulfillment of rural life needs are obtained from agriculture, nor can it assume that rural people face and expect their future in the field agriculture, these events affect each other or the interconnection between rural and urban areas, such as increased movement of rural people to cities or vice versa (urbanization and migration), the shift from agriculture to non-agriculture (agrarian-industrial transformation), as well as increased aspirations and education (social mobility Another thing that seems to change is lifestyle in the form of material, in this case related to household appliances, vehicles and communication tools.

The Imperialization Of Technology Against The Values Contained In Batik Nusantara

Technology has made humans to the point of an era called the modern era. Especially when the discovery of a fact that through human technology, it is able to uncover a variety of potential that has not been revealed, hidden, and suppressed in premodern society. But along with that achievement, technology has had a very significant negative impact on humans themselves, more specifically on human-made creative products such as those in batik. The purpose of this study is to describe the forms of technological imperialization of the archipelago batik, and to findout the impact resulting from the imperialization of the technology. This research uses descriptive qualitative research methods. The first source uses primary data sources in the form of batik of the archipelago and is supported by secondary data sources in the form of books that become references relating to this study. Data collection techniques in this study were observation, interviews, discussion, documentation, andliterature. From the results of research conducted, the researchers obtained research results, namely: 1) The form of technological imperialization of the archipelago batik is the creation of digital printing batik cloth and the discovery of fractal batik motifs 2). The impact resulting from this realization is the collapse of historical values, local wisdom, moral and spiritual values that exist in batik. Therefore, batik experienced desacralization.

Compassion, Self-Sacrifice, and Karma in Warfare: Buddhist Discourse on Warfare as an Ethical and Soteriological Instruction for Warriors

In premodern warrior societies, religions often provided the institutional basis for an ethics and soteriology for warriors, for whom fighting was a social role. This paper examines a Buddhist case in ancient India. I focus particularly on the discourse related to warfare in the middle-late period Mahāyāna scripture, the Satyakaparivarta, and elucidate its ethics and soteriology for kings. In the Satyakaparivarta, a king is encouraged to be a bodhisattva, who is mindful of impermanence and compassionate, who is not greedy, hateful, or delusional, and who protects sentient beings in conformity with the Ten Good Deeds. The text also teaches how a righteous king such as this, who employs warfare as a last resort to protect his people, can be saved from rebirth in hell, which occurs as a karmic retribution for his engagement in warfare. This discourse consists of elements such as compassion, self-sacrifice, and karma, which are derived from traditions both within and outside Buddhism and arranged so as to allow a king to play his role and still attain salvation. Buddhist discourse on warfare has multiple aspects. Exploring its ethical and soteriological aspect will be conducive to clarifying a form of Buddhism as a redemptive institution for warriors, which previous studies did not conduct sufficiently.

Soviet Modernity and Modernity of Soviet Period

The article discusses the concept of multiple and entangled modernity that is proposed instead of universal Western-type modernity that is criticized by the modernity discourse. We argue that the concept of multiple modernity is broadened by the concept of entangled modernity. The latter explains the multiplicity of modernities and the theoretical possibility of a certain universal model of modern society through the global interaction of societies. From the point of view of entangled modernity, a certain universality of societies arises not from the structural evolution of society itself, but from the interaction of modern and pre-modern societies. The concept of entangled modernity allows one to analytically distinguish between the Soviet modernity and the Soviet period modernity, which can be used to describe the modern Lithuanian society of the Soviet period. The modern Lithuanian society of the Soviet period is the result of an interaction of the modern Lithuanian society with the Soviet project of modern society that was forcibly implemented by local social agents of the occupied society.

The Growth of Awareness and Introspection in History. Mystical Interpretations of Mental Activities and of Social or Physical Incidents

Historians, philologists and scholars of antiquity have described how people in pre-modern societies tend to see their own thought processes, decisions and actions as being influenced and made by external forces. It was recognized early on that this mystical interpretation of actions could be an indication of a different structuring of the archaic psyche. It was claimed that this psyche was characterized by a lower reflexivity. Modern cross-cultural psychology has the experimental methods and theoretical concepts to test these bold theses of historians. In particular, Piagetian psychology has carried out countless experiments on people from pre-modern societies, which have served to test the level of reflexivity. Pre-operational thinking is characterized by irreversibility, i.e., by the lack of ability to grasp the starting and end points of actions and the transformations of objects that occur in perception. This corresponds to a lack of introspection and reflexivity. It is therefore possible to connect the merely descriptive procedures of historians and social scientists with the experimental test methods of psychologists. One arrives at surprising results that go so far as to better understand the internal psychology of the people depicted in the Homeric epics.

Belief in Metamorphosis

The idea that the borders between different natural species can be easily bridged by metamorphoses was central to the ancient worldview. Humans were believed to be able to undress their human appearance and to transform into any beast whichever, or, conversely, animals were believed to appear as human beings. This belief permeated daily life and ritual practice. The notion of metamorphosis was also central to ancient metaphysics: it affected ideas regarding creation and maintenance of the cosmos, as well as birth and death of living beings. This article demonstrates that developmental psychology can explain both the universal existence of this belief in premodern societies and its disappearance in modern societies. People staying on the preoperational stage cannot avoid believing in metamorphosis because it is an inevitable part of the cognitive patterns of this stage. People staying on the concrete and formal operational stages are in fact no more able to share these ideas because the notion of the invariance of natural kinds is an inevitable part of higher psychological stages. The article points to the fundamental importance of developmental psychology for ethnological research, especially for the study of ancient worldview.

Von der Metapher zur Methode

Summary From Metaphor to Method. Network Analysis as an Instrument for Research into Pre-Modern Societies The paper introduces an important and promising branch into the field of the rapidly evolving Digital Humanities, the Social Network Analysis (SNA). SNA can be defined as the application of the graph theory to the problem of modelling and analysing social structures. The network paradigm stresses the importance of relational aspects in history and it fits very well into pre-modern mentality and social practices. In a weakly institutionalised face-to-face society, social entanglements and interactions were absolutely crucial. Today, the development of modern computer technology and the ubiquity of the World Wide Web as well as social networks such as Facebook promote the application of this research paradigm. The article alludes to recent research contributions and discusses frequent methodological objections against the use of SNA in medieval and early modern history studies. In a second step, medieval network thinking and networking strategies which can be found for instance in genealogical sources and humanistic exchange of letters are discussed as possible objects of historical network research. Finally, a preliminary case study demonstrates how techniques of Text Mining and SNA can be applied to the investigation of late medieval Vatican registers, providing new insights into the money transfer (payment of annates) between Germany and Rome during the pontificate of Pope Sixtus IV. (1471 - 1484).

Dwarf, Eunuch, and Banker: The Intuitions of the Modern State in Westeros

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the mechanisms of the interaction of power, money, and knowledge in the context of the pre-modern society described by George Martin in A Song of Ice and Fire. The author notes that Martin created an almost unique picture of a society roughly corresponding to Europe of the late Middle Ages, deprived of the state, but drunk with its intuitions and forebodings. In the framework of this society, personal loyalty, love, physical strength, and beauty, that is, the qualities inherent in most of the main characters, become the main values. However, the future turns to other people; the dwarf Tirion Lannister cares about the welfare of the common people, the eunuch Varis personifies the power of knowledge, and the financiers Petir Bailish and Ilirio Mopatis represent the power of money. Finally, Daenerys Targaryen, after the death of her husband and the birth of her dragons, also becomes not so much a real woman as a living symbol of the upcoming new world order. Her attributes are the absolute power represented by the dragons, and the complete equation of the citizens of the future state, symbolized by the army of impeccable eunuchs. Thus, the confrontation between old and new, and between feudalism and modernity in Martin’s novel is not only at the level of socio-political constructions, but also at the level of aesthetic opposition. Moreover, the gain, most likely, remains with the ugly new times.