Localism in Hellenistic Greece

Localism in Hellenistic Greece explores how local discourses were energized by local sentiments and prioritized the local as the critical source of communal orientation, offering new insights into lived experience in ancient Greece.

Format: Hardback
Length: 416 pages
Publication date: 05 January 2024
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

The Hellenistic age, spanning from the death of Alexander the Great to the emergence of the Roman Empire, was a period of immense cultural fusion and entanglement across the Mediterranean and Eurasian worlds. While the regions of central Greece and the Peloponnese have often been considered a cultural space left behind, recent scholarship has challenged this notion and explored the diverse and complex ways in which local communities in Hellenistic Greece interacted with the broader world. Localism in Hellenistic Greece, a book by Sheila L. Ager and Hans Beck, delves into the various processes that impacted these small-scale, local communities and examines how they positioned themselves in a swiftly expanding horizon. Drawing on notions of locality, localism, local tradition, and boundedness in place, the book explores the main hubs of Hellenistic Greece, from Thessaly to Cape Tainaron, and how polis and ethnos societies positioned themselves in this rapidly changing world. The book reveals how local discourses were energized by local sentiments and how they related back to the community and the place it occupied, prioritizing the local as the critical source of communal orientation. Engaging with debates about cultural connectivity and convergence, Localism in Hellenistic Greece offers new insights into lived experience in ancient Greece.

Weight: 798g
Dimension: 161 x 238 x 36 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781487548315