The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds

About this book

"The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds explores the various ways in which environment was considered to define and shape ethnicity and identity, taking its cues from developments in early natural philosophers and historical ethnographies. Defining 'environment' broadly to include not only physical but cultural environments, natural and constructed, the volume includes contributions on a diverse range of topics that address the multifarious ways in which environment was understood to shape culture and physical characteristics of peoples as well as the ways in which the ancients manipulated their environments to achieve a desired identity. The volume includes studies not only of the Greco-Roman world, but also ancient China and the European, Jewish and Arab inheritors and transmitters of classical thought. In recent years work in this area has been confined mostly to the discussion of texts that reflect an approach to the barbarian as 'other.' This volume takes the discussion of ethnicity on a fresh course. The theories represented in this volume contextual the concept of the barbarian within rational discourses such as cartography, medicine, and mathematical sciences, an approach that allows us to better see the more varied and nuanced approaches to ethnic identity that abounded in antiquity. The innovative and thought-provoking material in this volume realise new directions of study for identity in the Classical and Medieval worlds"--Provided by publisher.