Cognitive Perspectives on Israelite IdentityCognitive Perspectives on Israelite Identity breaks new ground in the study of ethnic identity in the ancient world through the articulation of an explicitly cognitive perspective. In presenting a view of ethnicity as an epistemological rather than an ontological entity, this work seeks to correct the pronounced tendency towards 'analytical groupism' in the academic literature. Challenging what Pierre Bourdieu has called 'our primary inclination to think the world in a substantialist manner,' this study seeks to break with the vernacular categories and 'commonsense primordialisms' encoded within the Biblical texts, whilst at the same time accounting for their tenacious hold on our social and political imagination. It is the recognition of the performative and reifying potential of these categories of ethno-political practice that disqualifies their appropriation as categories of social analysis. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 12 | |
Chapter 2 NATIONALIST ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE CULTURE HISTORICAL PARADIGM | 46 |
A THEORETICAL REVIEW | 77 |
Chapter 4 ETHNICITY AS COGNITION | 101 |
Chapter 5 ETHNICITY AND MATERIAL CULTURE | 126 |
Chapter 6 ISRAELITE IDENTITY AND ARCHAEOLOGY | 157 |
Chapter 7 ISRAELITE IDENTITY AND THE HEBREW BIBLE | 192 |
DEFINING THE BOUNDARIES | 216 |
CONCLUSION | 237 |
| 241 | |
| 269 | |
| 270 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Albright AmAntiq analysis analytical ancient and/or Anthropology approach archaeological culture Archaeology argued assumption Baggara Barth basis behaviour belief Biblical Archaeology Biblical Studies Binford biological Boas boundaries Brubaker Cambridge certainly classi¿cation cognitive con¿rm conÀict concept constitutes constructivist context critique de¿ned de¿nition Deuteronomy Dever distinct dominated doxa doxic emphasis added entity essentialist essentially ethnic groups ethnic identity evolution evolutionary Finkelstein focus Franz Boas German Gil-White habitus Hebrew Bible human Ibid identi¿cation ideology inÀuence individual instrumentalist interpretation Iron Age Israel Israelite Kabyle Kossinna logical London material culture Mayes maywell Merneptah stele Merneptah’s Miller mode Mullen nature normative objective one’s ontology particular Pentateuch perception perspective Pierre Bourdieu political practical prehistoric primordial primordialist race racial reÀected relations relationship scholars scienti¿c Shef¿eld signi¿cant social world society Sociocultural Evolution sociology speci¿c stele structures theoretical Theory thesis tion traditional University Press Wacquant Whitelam Yahweh York