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РЕЦЕНЗИИ И БИБЛИОГРАФИЯ REVIEWS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anthropology of Ancient Polis: Urban Landscapes and Practices
An International Seminar1
Victoria K. Pichugina Institute for Strategy of Education Development of the Russian Academy of Education, [email protected]
Yana A. Volkova RUDN University (People's Friendship University of Russia)
Abstract. This is an overview of the presentations and discussions conducted in the framework of the same-name international seminar, organized by the department of philosophy of the institute of Philosophy and Law SB RAS (Novosibirsk). This seminar is the second2 in a series of seminars where a wide range of issues relating to historical-pedagogical, historical-archaeological, and philosophical-anthropological research of the formation, development and evolution of urban educational spaces are discussed, each of them being a localization of a particular anthropological practice.
Keywords: educational landscape, ancient polis, anthropological practices of the city.
The seminar was conducted within the project "Education Spaces and Anthropological Practices of the Ancient and Modern City". A keynote speaker Prof. Emer. Lilian Karali (Athens University) gave a talk on the "Landscape and Seascape Ar-
1 The seminar was held on November 12, 2018 at the Institute of Philosophy and Law of Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science (Novosibirsk) in the framework of the project "Educational Spaces and Anthropological Practices of the Ancient and Modern City" funded by the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 18-78-10001). The language of the seminar was English. The seminar materials can be accessed at: https://youtu.be/gGzbtdw4k58; https://youtu.be/5OSG-Cp3j4U
2 The first seminar "Anthropology of the City's Educational Space: Practices and Images" was held on the 13th and 15th of September, 2018 at the Institute of Philosophy and Law of Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science.
EXOAH Vol. 13. 1 (2019) © V. Pichugina, Ya. Volkova, 2019
www.nsu.ru/classics/schole DOI: 10.25205/1995-4328-2019-13-1-382-385
V. Pichugina and Ya. Volkova / EXOAH Vol. 13. 1 (2019) 383
chaeology", in which she highlighted the issue of correlation between the human mind and human history, where everything happens at a specific place in a specific time period. Ancient Greek philosophers sought to define how we conceive the space. There exist different landscape types, including the natural, the anthropogenic and the cognitive, ideal, and idealized. Each type of landscape is composed of forms, colors, sounds, biotic and abiotic elements that interact with our cognitive and emotional experiences. Landscape and seascape archaeology, the subdisciplines of Environmental archaeology, study the ways in which people lived in past environments placing emphasis on the interaction between nature, man, alteration or modifications of landscapes and the impact of culture on the viability of natural resources and social evolution. According to Prof. Karali, the archeology of the ancient city and port, among other things, opens the door for the study of ancient educational spaces.
The presentation by Ass. Prof. Anna Afonasina (Novosibirsk State University) "Materialization of the Time in the Space of the City and Cathedral" became a chronological extension of the previous presentation as it raised an issue of the space of the medieval city, which to some extent absorbed the space of the ancient city.
In the era of the High Middle Ages, on the threshold of the Renaissance, the organization of urban space, the order of life in the city and the perception of time radically changed. Special instruments for measuring time began to appear in the cathedrals, they were called meridians. They differed from the mechanical clock since they measured time not on a day-to-day basis, but yearly, and were needed, in particular, to synchronize the mechanical clock and measure the noon correctly. On the one hand, meridians became a real miracle people were coming to look at from different places; on the other hand, they were an accurate and lasting instrument embedded in the body of the church, which provided it with new anthropologically-oriented practices. Ass. Prof. Afonasina's main talking point was that in the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period, the cathedral acquired a completely new function: it had once again become a focal point of the city's space, but not only as a religious center, but a place where the exact time was determined for both secular and religious purposes.
The presentation by Ass. Prof. Alexander Sanzhenakov (Institute of Philosophy and Law SB RAS) "Socrates as a Source of Two Kinds of Ancient Cosmopolitanism" discussed two different kinds of cosmopolitanism in ancient philosophy: the Stoic and Cynic ones. The speaker posed a question - What is the reason for this difference? - and answered it by stating that the main reason is Socrates' philosophy (and pedagogy!) and differences in adopting it by Cynics and Stoics. Though Socrates might be considered an opponent of cosmopolitanism, we, nev-
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ertheless, have pro arguments for Socrates' cosmopolitanism. At least, some researchers call Socrates "a moderate cosmopolitan", who treated Athens as a specific educational space for both insiders and outsiders. "Why did Stoics and Cynics, both inspired by Socrates, establish such different conceptions?" The speaker is convinced that the reason is that Cynics, in contrast to Stoics, did not absorb the educational part of Socrates' thoughts (which, on top of everything, included the famous "care of the self" concept). Stoics, on the contrary, paid great attention to education: a human being has to eradicate passions from his soul, keep clarity of the mind, etc.
In his presentation "Human Dimension of City", Prof. Sergey Smirnov (Institute of Philosophy and Law SB RAS) discussed one of the key problems of urban anthropology and urbanism related to the theme of human dimensionality of the city. The author investigated the concept of "human dimensionality" and identified three groups of criteria for the city's human dimensionality: the city from the perspective of the sacred beginning-source that generates the phenomenon of the city; the city in terms of social measure and the birth of the ancient polis as a meeting of citizens (citizenship and the voice of a citizen as a measure of the city); and the city from the standpoint of the physical, bodily space of the settling of the city. Prof. S. Smirnov provided a particular insight into the phenomenon of the city genesis in the categories of urban planning and anthropological practices.
The presentations by Prof. Victoria Pichugina (Institute for Strategy of Education Development of the Russian Academy of Education) "Educational Landscapes of the Ancient City: Back to the Future" and Ass. Prof. Andrey Mozhajsky (Moscow Pedagogical State University) were listened to in the record with the following discussion via Skype. In her presentation, Prof. Pichugina emphasized that among the areas that deserve attention, but are not sufficiently developed for various reasons, a special place is occupied by the phenomenology of the urban educational space. One of the components of any city's face is its educational image that does not result from a mere summing up of the localizations of the educational activity and is not always a product of urban planning policy. There are three subjects that are revealed in the corpus of ancient pedagogical texts and are related to one of the three questions that were posed to the person caring about his own education: How to build an ideal city? How to build yourself in the city? How to build a city in yourself? Educational strategies and models adopted in the pedagogy of different epochs show their active and each time unique dialogue with the ancient ideal of the city educational space through the lens of these three questions.
The presentation by Ass. Prof. Mozhajsky "Archaic Walls of the Greek Poleis: Interpretation of the Origins of Urban Landscape in the Case of Thebes" states that
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the Mycenaean past and traces of this past were the factors for developing of the city not only as a military, but also as a religious educational center from postpala-tial times to the archaic period. Leaders of a new community were trying to legalize their position in society by demonstrating their connection to the Mycenaean past. Notably, in the Archaic period, Mycenaean burials on the hills of Amphion, Kastel-lia, Ismenion and Kolonaki, located within a close range (100-300 m) from the northern, eastern and southern slopes of the Kadmeia, were included into the city limits, and this territory formed the primary urban space of Greater Thebes. These places continue to be used as places of worship even in the classical period. The Mycenaean fortification of the Kadmeia becomes the centerpiece from which the city is formed. In this formation a particular attention should be paid to the southeastern sector of Greater Thebes. Here, two most important sanctuaries were located during the Archaic period: the Temples of Apollo Ismenios and the Sanctuary of Herakles (excavated and explored by Dr. Aravantinos). We believe that the existence of these two sanctuaries predetermined the construction of the probable archaic wall in Greater Thebes covering this sector.
The seminar concluded with a discussion that allowed for the identification of further points of interdisciplinary research in the field of urban landscapes and practices. The seminar organizers and participants are open to suggestions regarding the format and content of the next seminar "Anthropology of the City's Educational Space: Models and Trajectories".
