Periodic Reporting for period 4 - SpaceLaw (Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition)
Période du rapport: 2022-11-01 au 2024-02-29
The project investigated the neglected issue of the development of administrative space in the European context with spatial analysis of power relations and meanings. The project’s two main research questions explored the confrontation of ideas and their contexts from the Roman Republic to modern Republicanism:
1) How the conflict between Republican ideals, political power and administrative practices transformed the spaces of administration?
2) How this conflict changed the social topography of Rome, the public and private spheres of governance?
The project explored the linkages between ideals and practices with regards to Republicanism, one of the foundational tenets of European societies. Values and ideals have a complicated relationship with space, both with regards to the build environment that comprises of the urban environment as well as the imagined spaces that are an integral part of the perceived spaces. Many of the complexities about space and ideas remain hidden due to the fact that our sources are predominantly written by elite men. Since they were not themselves hindered by restrictions based on status, especially freedom, gender or ethnicity, the ancient writers are by and large silent about them. Are they visible in the built environment and how?
One of the things that our legal sources reveal very little of are the practices of administration, the lived experience at what is now called the customer side of administration. How was the inevitable waiting, the delays that people who sought an audience with a magistrate, was experienced and do we know anything about the practices that developed? How was status and wealth, the resources and connections that come with them, a part of the administrative experience, such as the possibility of having a slave or a servant handle the waiting or use one’s connections to deal with the magistrate directly, for example over dinner. Studying these reveal fundamental truths about how our societies function and the structural iniquities within.
The overall objective of the project has been to produce an intellectual and social topography of Roman Republicanism and its later influence, exploring how values and ideas formed in ancient societies have influenced our understanding of good polity. One of the most interesting results of the project has been how contextual these understandings have been. Just as the project has discussed how the modern paradigm of the separation of public and private has been projected into the past, there have been presentist attempts at using the past to legitimate current forms of Republican thought. What the juxtaposition of the built environment and the ideas and ideals of Republicanism in the long historical perspective, through our investigations of the four Republican moments, shows is that ideas and their practical manifestations exist in a fluid relationship, one where power politics and economic realities are visible in different ways. The project, although historical, has important implications even today, as the earlier practices between public and private administration and administrative space are being transformed by the expansion of distance work and the privatization of public spaces.
1) How the conflict between Republican ideals, political power and administrative practices transformed the spaces of administration?
2) How this conflict changed the social topography of Rome, the public and private spheres of governance?
The project explored the linkages between ideals and practices with regards to Republicanism, one of the foundational tenets of European societies. Values and ideals have a complicated relationship with space, both with regards to the build environment that comprises of the urban environment as well as the imagined spaces that are an integral part of the perceived spaces. Many of the complexities about space and ideas remain hidden due to the fact that our sources are predominantly written by elite men. Since they were not themselves hindered by restrictions based on status, especially freedom, gender or ethnicity, the ancient writers are by and large silent about them. Are they visible in the built environment and how?
One of the things that our legal sources reveal very little of are the practices of administration, the lived experience at what is now called the customer side of administration. How was the inevitable waiting, the delays that people who sought an audience with a magistrate, was experienced and do we know anything about the practices that developed? How was status and wealth, the resources and connections that come with them, a part of the administrative experience, such as the possibility of having a slave or a servant handle the waiting or use one’s connections to deal with the magistrate directly, for example over dinner. Studying these reveal fundamental truths about how our societies function and the structural iniquities within.
The overall objective of the project has been to produce an intellectual and social topography of Roman Republicanism and its later influence, exploring how values and ideas formed in ancient societies have influenced our understanding of good polity. One of the most interesting results of the project has been how contextual these understandings have been. Just as the project has discussed how the modern paradigm of the separation of public and private has been projected into the past, there have been presentist attempts at using the past to legitimate current forms of Republican thought. What the juxtaposition of the built environment and the ideas and ideals of Republicanism in the long historical perspective, through our investigations of the four Republican moments, shows is that ideas and their practical manifestations exist in a fluid relationship, one where power politics and economic realities are visible in different ways. The project, although historical, has important implications even today, as the earlier practices between public and private administration and administrative space are being transformed by the expansion of distance work and the privatization of public spaces.
The project has embarked on an ambitious re-evaluation of the relationship between the administrative tradition and space through three main source materials, the Roman Republicanist tradition, the later reception and reinterpretation of that tradition and the topographical material or the physical manifestations of those traditions. During the project duration, we have analysed these materials and executed case studies on representative features. Based on these results and the extensive survey of sources, the project produced spatial models of the administrative activities and their historical development. During the Roman Republic, we discovered that instead of separation of activities between public and private, the centre of the city, the Forum and its environs, operated as one one enormous office where public affairs took place in public, and decisions and documents were posted in public. In contrast, for instance in the Renaissance Florentine Republic, similar ideals of Republicanism were reflected in administrative experiments which saw magistrates both living and working together in public offices. What the project has uncovered is that the spatial manifestations of Republicanism are immensely complex, where interpretations and misinterpretations of ancient key texts were used to justify very different arrangements and power relations. Through its examination of both the Roman Republican tradition and the three later Republican moments, the project has uncovered how different spatial arrangements stemmed not only from ideological or social aims, but also were based on deeper conceptions of space and spatial relations themselves. Despite this, it is apparent how Republicanism and its virtues of equality, active citizenship and legality are clearly manifest in the administrative spaces of different eras.
Many of the project publications have now appeared, including numerous articles, a monograph and a collected volume, with two doctoral theses, a monograph of the PI and a number of articles that are undergoing the publication process. The project has disseminated its results by participating in conferences and organising them, but also writing scientific and general interest publications on the project results and holding presentations in public events.
Many of the project publications have now appeared, including numerous articles, a monograph and a collected volume, with two doctoral theses, a monograph of the PI and a number of articles that are undergoing the publication process. The project has disseminated its results by participating in conferences and organising them, but also writing scientific and general interest publications on the project results and holding presentations in public events.
The project embarked on a multidisciplinary analysis of material, crossing disciplinary boundaries and placing heretofore unasked questions. It main result has been a new kind of model of the administrative space in Rome (published in Lopez Garcia 2023 and Tuori forthcoming) that combines information provided by the work of independent researchers about public administration, domestic space used for administrative spaces, the topography of fame and honour in the self-promotion of magistrates and the growth of archival and library spaces. It has sought to present a new, holistic model that seeks to combine material finds provided by topography and intellectual developments. The model argues that instead of a simple model of growing complexity from a small and homogenous city state to a multiethnic empire, the expansion of the Republican model was most prevalent in the local level, where it was exported throughout the Roman world. Even in the imperial centre, instead of the idea of deterioration, we are seeing growing involvement of persons of non-elite status. The model is completed, but this should be considered only first step in extrapolating the implications it has for historical interpretations and how to better elaborate the aspect of historical change, for instance the growth of data and data management during the Late Republic and Principate. This is now something that project members have been doing in the ongoing works that will be published in the coming years. In similar ways, the project results present future challenges in tracing the transformation of not just ideology but also the mindscapes, the ways of thinking about the world and things in it, that imperial thought brought with it.