Local Self-Governance in Antiquity and in the Global South

The nucleus of society is situated at the local level: in the village, the neighborhood, the city district. This is where a community first develops collective rules that are intended to ensure its continued existence. The contributors look at such configurations in geographical areas and time periods that lie outside of the modern Western world with its particular development of society and statehood: in Antiquity and in the Global South of the present. Here states tend to be weak, with obvious challenges and opportunities for local communities. How does governance in this context work?

The approach of the DFG Research Unit 2757 LoSAM is to deepen our understanding of different forms and impacts of local self-governance across time and space, from Antiquity to the Global South of the present (see Pfeilschifter et al. 2020). We are examining the relations to different levels of state governance as well as to other local groups as they develop over time; the scope and spatial contingency of forms of self-governance; its legitimization and interdependency with the organization and collective identity of the groups which carry them out.

Scholars from various disciplines (Classics, Theology, Political Science, Sociology, Social Anthropology, Human Geography, Sinology) analyse different kinds of local arrangements in case studies, and they do so with a comparative approach. The sixteen papers of this edited volume examine the scope and spatial contingency of forms of self-governance; its legitimization and the collective identity of the groups behind them; the relations to different levels of state governance as well as to other local groups. Overall, this volume makes an interdisciplinary contribution to a better understanding of fundamental elements of local self-governance and statehood.

The book is based on LoSAMs International Conference in 2021 and includes contributions by Dominique Krüger, Christoph Mohamad-Klotzbach, Rene Pfeilschifter, Gunnar Folke Schuppert, João Pedro Schmidt, Jana Hock, Valeria Tietze, Nestor Zante, Adrian S. Erben, Susan Thomschke, Fabian Knopf, Rotem Avneri Meir, Jan Willem van Henten, Jan R. Stenger, Francesco Cassini, Cary M. Barber, Daniel Syrbe, Anna S. Hauser, Anna Paula de Moraes Bennech, Matheus Jones Zago, Rogers Hansine, Inês Macamo Raimundo, Axel Prestes Dürrnagel, and Janneke Tiegna. The book is published by De Gruyter and can be found here.