In the Bosak-Schroeder passages, she brings up an interesting question about women's effect on the ancient world. Is it an active or passive way they influence the world around them? Bosak-Schroeder states how "women's bodies are often manipulated by women's wills and deployed by men for their own advantage, but women cannot be reduced to this deployment" (69). She goes on to describe how women form dynasties just by appealing to men. Bosak-Schroeder uses Candaules's wife as an example when she convinces Gyges to overthrow her husband so that she can rule the kingdom. There is also an emphasis on how important women's fertility was and how it played a role in the creation of the empires that fought in the Greco-Persian wars. Although women did not get enough credit for their influence on history, I would say that they played a very active role that was often overlooked in shaping the ancient world.
Weekly Forum
11 discussions
I find the Other Nature article very amusing as well as a lot to dive into. And this can be related to what is going in the real world especially on Birmingham-Southern College ground. Ethnographers are people who study human cultures especially related religion and social behavior.
We often see a wide variety of diversity everywhere we go especially at Birmingham-Southern. Because you have Hispanic, African American, Asian, Christianity, Muslims, and many more different varieties of culture. But this also shows the different views these people and culture have in hand of one another. And we have more access to these views to do good to our environment, as well as tackling issues.
In the Mixis Epikoinos passages, we learn a lot about how these groups of people view women and their role in society. The idea of having wives that are "common to all" is in deep contrast with our current views of what a wife is supposed to be. Viewing this idea on a timeline that ends with out current day, I think this can be related back to our discussion on Monday about Women's roles and if it is biological or asocial construct for women to be seen as the nurturers. In this time, women were passed around for the sole intention of having sex and bonding the men of a community. This could have been a root of the idea that this was women's purpose in life-- to serve the men and continuing, the babies that result from these practices.
In the Clara Bosak-Schroeder reading, we can get introduction into Greek ethnography. One aspect of this reading that I found veery enlightening was the statement that "for ancient Greek (and Roman) ethnographers, human culture cannot be studied apart from the other species and forces with which humans live." I found this section to be so interesting because over time, we have become disconnected from the nature around us, considering the two to be entirely different. If the idea of this connection stuck around, maybe our climate issue would not be so severe due to our constant analyzation of how humans and nature interact.
I found the Other Natures introduction to be particularly interesting because of its description evolution of modern anthropology and its comparison of anthropology to that of Ancient Greece. The idea that anthropologists can assert cultural dominance by suspending the cultures of other peoples in time seems intuitive, but this is profound observation of a subtle move which may often go overlooked. Further, reading Herodotus and Diodorus led to another interesting point: the Greeks focused much of their study on the sexual deviance of other societies, even as their own habits often fell into what modern Americans may consider sexual deviance. Yet the Greek account still pursues dominance by comparing the sexual habits of other societies to cattle (Hdt. 4.180.4) and otherwise dehumanizing these peoples.
It is also worth noting the frame of thought in which the Greeks portrayed the sexual habits of these other societies. While ancient societies often used sex as an establishment of dominance, the Greek establishment of cultural dominance includes an account of wife-sharing and communal child-rearing as a way in which these other cultures maintained equality amongst adults. In the lens of Other Natures, which notes that ethnographies of this sort can be seen as racist and domineering, this demonstrates the active attempt of the ancient Greeks to stamp out equality within their own society, creating a clear association between Greek attitudes and the prevailing attitudes of sexual dominance seen today.
"Since Greek enthrography was a genre controlled by elite men". Like much of our history and the historical accounts that have been written down for centuries have mainly been written by elite men and those in power. Men and those in power are obviously going to have a different account of events than those who are oppressed. We see examples of this in Herodotus's writings about women in Greek culture. "Scholars of Herodotus have tended to assume a set of pregiven cultural norms, like family loyalty, which women either reinforce or transgress." Herodotus assumes women are only around to be apart of family dynamics or not, like they are either mothers or sex objects. This idea is again reinforced by "Women's bodies are often manipulated by women's wills and deployed by men for their own advantage." Men use women's bodies for their own pleasure, but it's not fair to women in history or how greek enthrographies may have portrayed women.
Through sex, women changed history funnily enough. When Io is abducted it causes tensions to rise between Persia and Greece. Io is left alone and later found pregnant by the Phoenician ship captain. This of course led to conflicts but not without starting a new Greek-Phoenician line. So having sex literally changed history for both of these countries, whether for good or bad.
The one part that stood out to me was her story of watching the African women eat and her thoughts surrounding that. Often we fail to see the way of peoples culture and beliefs and it has a reflection on the way we view them. And while most people will judge or think wrong of a person doing something unusual , but instead she thought of why she was different.
While reading the Herodotus and Diodorus passages I was shocked by how overly emphasized sex was and how it almost said that a women must lay with a man because it is the most common thing. In addition to that it only spoke of how a man gets a women and has sex its never the other way around where a man must lay with a women or follow a certain custom.
I think that reading these two sources together helped me to understand each seperately. First, I read the the Mixis Epikoinos handout. It was very short but each description of the sexual and communal relationships of each of the groups was very to the point and easy to understand. When I was reading it, the one phrase that stood out to me the most was "they do not cohabitate but have intercourse like cattle". I think that this stood out to me as the most stark example of the general feel of the descriptions of each group: animalistic and separate. Each description seemed so to-the-point that it left out so much of the richness of all the cultures.
My understanding of the Mixis Epikoinos handout was really heightened by the Other Natures text. The idea of ethnographies. I had never heard of the concept before, but after reading about what they are (basically a short guidemap to a group of people) the Mixis Epikoinos handout made so much more sense. Also, my feelings that the Mixis Epikoinos handout had animalistic descriptions was proven correct. I thought it was interesting that the ancient ethnographies were more mixed with culture and their descriptions had more about what these people actually were like.
I really thought the section discussing how Greek ethnographies differ from the dominant white Western environmental discourse due to the separation of humanity and culture from nonhuman nature. Unfortunately, the white Western environmental separation of nature and culture has hindered all levels of environmental practice. The quote from William Cronon on page seven really stood out to me. It makes a clear connection to the separation of nature from humans and its effect on environmentalists very clear. He says that if we only think of nature as wild and untouched, nature doesn’t exist wherever humans are. There is no way to determine or visualize a way for humans to live sustainably or ethically with nature.
It was also interesting how that information was followed by information on the environmental discourse of Greek ethnography. The author mentions Greek ethnographies suggest that people are represented by both the culture and the material that surrounds them. She mentioned earlier that people were described by certain things they ate and where they took their cows to graze. The line that discusses how if a community is separated from other human communities, collaboration with nonhuman communities is encouraged. I think that idea is very interesting. Since this class started, I have been thinking about how nature went from something that was worshipped (yeah maybe with some fear thrown in there) and embraced, to people like the Puritans who were terrified of nature and thought it evil. I know Puritans are a much later group but that has just been something on my mind.
The practice of “sex in common” involves viewing women as communal objects for the male population. I adamantly disagree with the casualty of such a practice and fail to see the purpose behind its intended benefit. Herodotus, who surprisingly detects similar flaws in other customs, mentions there is a logical motivation behind a society practicing “sex in common.” Apparently, the motivation behind stripping women of any power within society is to ensure a brotherly comradery within the male population. Since women were so openly tossed around between men, the males in a “sex in common” society were considered to be one large family with women at their disposal to enlarge it. Not only does this concept create an unnecessary bond between men with too much power already, but it further limits the women already being suppressed.
Not only do women lose the ability to freely make decisions regarding their sex life, but they also are left with the absence of an important aspect of general human culture. Perhaps the most upsetting aspect of a society practicing “sex in common” is the inability of women to form a healthy, stable family dynamic. Today, the modern culture surrounding family life is centered heavily around a strong bond between family members which values a male and female presence equally. “Sex in common” only accounts for a male family dynamic, failing to provide women with any sort of such familiar bond. My only hope for the women that suffered such limitations is their ability to lean on each other for support and for any hopes of fulfillment or foundation.
Moodle Forum Post
Other Natures Environmental Encounters with Ancient Greek Ethnography
I found this excerpt fascinating. The concept of ethnography was foreign to me before I began reading but quickly, I realized how crucial this standard is for evaluating history. The first thing that came to mind when she began explaining the implications of analyzing Greek and roman history recorded hand in hand with imperialism and colonialism was De Bello Gallico which I translated in my Latin class in high school. Frequently, we would explore Ceasar’s musing of the Galls and their culture which was quite a stark contrast to his home, and he deemed barbaric. The crucial part of translating this and understanding was the context of the military reports as well as his own personal agenda.
Furthermore, I think Clara Bosak-Schroeder makes an important point in analyzing the discourse in which Greek and Roman historians record environmental thought and the tie they present with human culture and interaction. Especially for our class this is crucial in determining their views of the environment. Since records are accompanied by descriptions of culture or human practices, we are left with specific snapshots of what was actually occurring which offers more insight to their views than the later discourse surrounding nature. This common trend in Greek and Roman ethnography even reveals that in their thought process nature and culture worked hand in hand and had a symbiotic relationship of equal importance. I think this belief changed when the discourse changed, nature became something separate from us because we were no longer living in balance with it.
Ethnography, the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures, is not something I have learned or studied before. This topic reminded me of sociology but, with its own twist on Greek and Roman thought. I thought Clara Bosak-Schroeder's interpretation on this topic was interesting. When she saw the African women eating slop and insects she experienced a very natural feeling of why do I not live like this woman, but instead she realized that this was supposed to stand for an African way of life that transcended in time and space.
The Greeks and Romans then too came up with a way to catalog cultures and groups of people. A group I found most interesting was The Men of the Island and the Sun. This group does not marry but does hold common wives, and they raise their children as if they belonged to all of them. When the children are babies, the nurses often change them around, so that not even the mothers know their own offspring. They do this to ensure that mothers are not obsessed with honor. Diodorus explains this as expanding the idea of sex with communal child-raising. This idea is fascinating to me because in some modern societies having a child can be a mother's greatest accomplishment and then that mother cares for her child and her child only. But in this culture, once mothers bear children they are responsible to care for all of society's children like they are their own because they have no idea which child they originally birthed.