3rd International Conference of the Research Network Imperium & Officium: 20-22 February 2013

Relevant selections from this Conference (just ended), organized by B Palme:
(blurb)

In addressing the theme of ‘Land and Power’ we wish to examine the power base of office-holding élites in pre-modern societies. As a tool of analysis we frame our questions in Weberian terms, distinguishing between exercise of power in a bureaucratic mode (ex officio) and power based on economic wealth and privilege in a patrimonial setting, with office being conferred as a consequence. Our focus will be on the interplay between economic power and bureaucratic rationality. In most pre-industrial societies, power and wealth was based on landownership and the control of food production: landownership as the basis of power of an office-holding élite is a recurring phenomenon in ancient states. We also seek to question whether such élites (especially in the periphery) were a force for cohesion or disruption from the point of view of the state, and to investigate the means by which the state sought to integrate and control office-holding élites, e.g. by the use of parallel and/or overlapping chains of command, or by co-optation through court offices and privileges.

Kaiser, Anna (Vienna): Flavius Athanasius, dux et Augustalis Thebaidis

Scheuble-Reiter, Sandra (Chemnitz): Military Service and the Allotment of Land in Ptolemaic Egypt

Mazza, Roberta (Manchester): Land and Power in Late Antiquity: The Egyptian Point of View

Palme, Bernhard (Vienna): From City Council to Senate: Landlords from Late Antique Egypt Becoming Imperial Aristocrats

Kehoe, Dennis (New Orleans): Urbanization, Land, and Political Control in the Roman Empire

Frantz-Murphy, Gladys (Denver): Environment and History in the Early Islamic Middle East

Manning, Joseph (New Haven): Patrimonial Power, State Power, and Land in Greco-Roman Egypt

Bsees, Ursula (Vienna): The Partition of Land and Power at the Periphery: Some Notes on the Agreements between St Catherine’s Monastery and Surrounding Bedouin