Notes on "West" and "Western Civ"

Yes, I included this meme in the article.

I recently (like this morning) finished an article that examines three ways in which ancient Greece is used in support of white supremacism: orientalism, western civ narratives, and whitewashing ancient peoples. The article is for a volume called "Polarized Pasts" and has a word limit. Also, there is soooooo much material about Western civ that I had to delete about 3000 words worth. Instead of consigning it all to my digital trash bin, I thought I would post some of those cuts here as it seems to be a topic lots of people are interested in. But, you can probably see why it got edited out--too dense, etc. Anyway, let's go:

On Ian Morris' Why the West Rules...For Now

For some scholars there is nothing inherently racial or racist about the idea of a “West” and “Western civilization”. It can either be about values or geography. Ancient historian Ian Morris, for example, prefers a geographic definition of West, which he hopes will help him avoid falling into racist tropes. He devotes the better part of 100 pages in his book Why the West Rule—For Now coming up with a definition of “West” intended to show the fallacy of biological (and thereby race based) definitions of “Western”. Morris begins his quest to answer the question “Why does the West rule” by seeking to define it.

For Morris, the “West” (and “East”) is defined as:

…simply a geographic term, referring to those societies that descended from the westernmost Eurasian core of domestication, in the Hilly Flanks.[1] It makes no sense to talk about “the West” as a distinctive region before about 11,000 BCE, when cultivation began making the Hilly Flanks unusual; and the concept stars to become an important analytical tool only after 8,000 BCE, when other agricultural cores started appearing. By 4500 BCE, the West had expanded to include most of Europe, and in the last five hundred years colonists have taken it to the Americas, the Antipodes,[2] and Siberia. “The East”, naturally enough, simply means those societies that descended from the easternmost core of domestication that began developing in China by 7500 BCE. We can also speak of comparable New World, South Asian, New Guinean, and African traditions. Asking why the West rules really means asking why those societies descended from the agricultural core of the Hilly Flanks, rather than those descended from the cores in China, Mexico, the Indus Valley, the eastern Sahara, Peru, or New Guinea, came to dominate the planet (117).

For Morris, any divisions in culture are simply that, cultural, and a result of distinctive developments in these seven different core regions where agriculture and animal domestication become established. It is a fact of geography…except when it isn’t, of course. While Morris makes efforts throughout his discussion to dispute and ultimately refute what he calls “racial” theories of “Western” supremacy, he ever engages with the issue of how “race” and “culture” are intertwined. In fact, he assumes that “race” is itself about DNA and biology and not what we know it to be—a matter of social convention that seeks biological distinctions for cultural differences. As Angela Saini so eloquently shows, almost all theories of human cultural and “biodiversity” rest still on the categories created by race scientists in the 19^th century—Europe, Africa, and Asia.[3] Morris not only doesn’t challenge such racist thinking, his use of “simply geographic” distinction that then develops “cultural descendants” allows the core of racist distinctions between an “East” and “West’ to hide in plain sight and continue to be used by those who uphold a cultural superiority of “Western civilization” as built ultimately on a biological reality.

Although Morris attempts to make the idea of ‘Western’ stand geographically and rooted in a deep antiquity, he still adheres to a theory that Western civilization was something that becomes quintessentially (northern and western) European by the 16^th century, such that they could spread it through colonization to “the Americas, the Antipodes, and Siberia”. What this means is that the current definition of ‘Western” contains a decidedly non-cohesive geographic collection of spaces. As Sam Huntington states, the places that stand as the “West” since the 16^th century are identified purely by the association with northern European settler-colonialism and imperialism. An amusing (but accurate) map of the ‘West’ might look something like this (Fig. 3):

Don't worry! I also included this map in the article! It just didn't work here as part of this particular section

Because Morris is looking into the deep history of a division between “West” and “East”, he doesn’t situate the origins of “Western civilization” with the Greeks, specifically. In fact, between roughly 1000 and 100 BCE, Morris sees “West” and East” as roughly comparable in their achievements, eschewing a “Greek Miracle” or, as Kwame Anthony Appiah calls it “Golden Nugget”, at the core of most Western civilization narratives. But, Morris does gradually shift the “West” away from it Eurasian starting point (as he designates it) towards Europe, while designating China as the ultimate bearer of the title “East” in order to make this work. Ancient Iran and the Achaemenid Persians, the Orientalized eastern other of the 300 discussed at the beginning of this chapter, are a credited with pushing the West forward, but then Morris shifts to core of the West, recentering it at Rome. It’s a very clever sleight of hand that allows the technologies and cultural deep past of western Asia and Egypt to be appropriated and claimed as the inheritance of northern and western Europeans via the ancient Greeks and Romans, while paving the way for the modern rejection of those same regions as part of the West at all, something visible most clearly in the “clash of civilization” models.

By defining Western as he does, Morris, even though he disagrees with Huntington in important ways (he does not view Western civilization as inherently superior, for example), ultimately defines the “West” through the mechanism of colonization and imperialism, not unlike those who do advocate for a narrative of Western superiority—a position inextricably bound to white supremacism and racism because it posits behaviors and values originating in a single geographic and ethnic space as inherent and heritable immutable characteristics.

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[1] Hilly Flanks in the term used for the foothills regions within the so-called Fertile Crescent, the region that ranges across modern Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, eastern Egypt, Cyprus and the southeastern tip of Turkey.

[2] i.e. Australia and New Zealand.

[3] A. Saini 2019. Her interview with geneticist David Reich and discussion of the state of aDNA research is particularly illuminating.

West is Best? 

In response to the flap over Rep. Steve King’s remarks linking White nationalism, White supremacism, and Western civilization, Matt Lewis, senior writer for the Daily Beast wrote:

One could spend a lifetime studying the virtues of Western civilization, but it occurs to me that I should at least explain what I mean when I say those words. In general, we are referring to the norms and values that began in Western Asia and were developed and influenced by the Greeks, the Roman Empire, Judeo-Christian traditions, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment.

Due to a set of unique circumstances, this culmination of these events gave birth to innovative ideas like reason, tolerance, skepticism, individualism, natural law, human rights, liberal democracy, and an emphasis on science—in short, many of the virtues and values that a good “liberal” ought to endorse (not to mention the art and literature in the Western canon).

Ideas like “individualism” and “tolerance” transcend race and religion. Any baby (white, black, Asian, Hispanic—it doesn’t matter) born in America is assimilated into this culture; yet, we have had a difficult time exporting these values at the macro level. That’s because the miracle of Western civilization has nothing to do with genetics, but everything to do with culture and assimilation (emphasis mine).[1]

“Reason, tolerance, skepticism, individualism, natural law, human rights, liberal democracy, and an emphasis on science…” Lewis’s list of values supposedly unique to Western civilization is not one he invented, and is particularly popular among the non-specialist literati, like New York Times opinion writer and author David Books . He regularly bemoans the fact that students in colleges are no longer being taught the classics and a Western civilization curriculum, because:

This Western civ narrative came with certain values—about the importance of reasoned discourse, the importance of property rights, the need for a public square that was religiously informed but not theocratically dominated. It set a standard for what great statesmanship looked like. It gave diverse people a sense of shared mission and a common vocabulary, set a framework within which political argument could happen and most important provided a set of common goals.[2]

These value-based definitions are always presented as universal and something that people, regardless of background or context, can assimilate to. Assimilationism is, as Ibrham X. Kendi has argued, one of the dominant ways racist ideas are perpetuated—it assumes that one culture is superior and that others should want to assimilate to it and need to in order to be considered equal.[3]

The values based definition of Western civilization is not exclusively a product of popular opinion but aligns with the understanding of the concept as discussed by many historians, such as Niall Ferguson. In his book Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011), Niall Ferguson defines the “West” geographically as western, Europe and its direct colonies since, roughly, 1500, originating with the “Anglo-Saxon” states and expanding to eventually include the rest of western Europe. He recognizes the debt it owes to antiquity (calling “Western Civilization 1.0)” antiquity from Mesopotamia to ancient Rome),but defines the “West” mostly as “a set of norms, behaviors, and institutions” encompassed in these specific values:

1. Competition—a decentralization of both political and economic life, which created the launch-pad for both nation-states and capitalism

2. Science—a way of studying, understanding, and ultimately changing the natural order, which gave the West (among other things) a major military advantage over the Rest

3. Property rights—the rule of law as a means of protecting private owners and peacefully resolving disputes between them, which formed the basis for the most stable form of representative government

4. Medicine—a branch of science that allowed a major improvements to health and life expectancy, beginning in Western societies, but also their colonies

5. The consumer society—a mode of material living in which the production and purchase of clothing and other consumer goods play a central economic role, and without which the Industrial Revolution would have been unsustainable

6. The work ethic—a moral framework and mode of activity derivable from (among other sources) Protestant Christianity, which provides the glue for the dynamic and potentially unstable society created by apps 1 to 5.[5]

Of course, the problem with rooting a culture or “civilization” in values is that these values tend to be projected not as one among many sets of values held by diverse peoples in the world, but as superior values—which is precisely what Ferguson argues:

There are those who dispute that, claiming that all civilizations are in some sense equal, and that the West cannot claim superiority over, say, the East of Eurasia. But such relativism is demonstrably absurd.[6]

Ferguson also explicitly states that empire and colonialism are fundamental to Western civilization. He repeatedly makes clear that the “West” is a superior culture, that its rise was “the single most important historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ”,[7] and that the proof of this is in the pervasiveness of a ‘Western way of life”:

For some reason, beginning in the late 15^th century, the little states of Western Europe, with their bastardized linguistic borrowings from Latin (and a little Greek), their religion derived from the teachings of a Jew from Nazareth and their intellectual debts to Oriental mathematics, astronomy, and technology, produced a civilization capable not only of conquering the great Oriental empires and subjugating Africa, the Americas and Australia, but also of converting peoples all over the world to the Western way of life—a conversion achieved ultimately more by the word than by the sword (emphasis mine).[8]

In other words, the values that opinion writers like Lewis and Brooks identify as Western, but suggest are universal or that anyone can assimilate to are the ones that historians like Ferguson (and even Morris, even if unintentionally) link exclusively to not just a strictly European origin and perpetuation, but even an exclusively “Anglo-Saxon” and then more broadly western European source.

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[1] “How Steve King’s Idiotic and Odious Words Help the Left Destroy Western Civilization” The Daily Beast Jan. 11, 2019 (https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-steve-kings-idiotic-and-odious-words-help-the-left-destroy-western-civilization; accessed Jan. 13, 2020).

[2]Brooks “The Crisis of Western Civ” The New York Times, April 27, 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/the-crisis-of-western-civ.html; accessed Jan. 27, 2020).

[3] Kendi 2019, 24-34, esp, and 2018, passim.

[5] Ferguson 2011, 13.

[6] Ferguson 2011, 5.

[7] Ferguson 2011, 8.

[8] Ferguson 2011, 4-5.

AIASCS 2020 Handout

To access a PDF version of the handout for "Environment-based Identity and Athenian Anti-Immigrant Policies in the Classical Period", please click the title.

Decades Come and Go

People on Twitter and Facebook and other social media have been making lists of accomplishments, posting pictures, and generally thinking about the differences in their lives between 2009/10 and 2019/20. I actually started this blog a decade ago, but didn't really use it until 2017 (though I did post a few things in 2009 and 2012). It's been a pretty remarkable decade, though. Not just for me personally, but for the discipline of classics. We have seen some major shifts in scholarship, teaching, who is recognized as a classicist, and in who speaks out for classics--a new culture war is kind of upon us. We have seen the birth of Eidolon, of Classics and Social Justice, of MRECC,  of Mountaintop, of the Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus, of Sportula, of Paideia (and maybe its fall?), of Lupercal, of PHAROS, of classics making the Chronicle and inside Higher Ed for controversies more than I remember before 2010. Let's also not forget all the racism. We also saw the fall of Famae Volent into the abyss of crazy racism, misogyny and gods know what else (attempts to revive led to Novae Famae--defunct due to cess pit--and Novae Novae--don't know where it is at now).

BUT we haven't seen much change in who holds permanent positions, who gets tenured, and who gets promoted to full (men v women, white v non-white candidates). The stats on that are pretty much the same as they were in the previous decade (the data in the 2018/2019 survey in Adler/Jones TAPA article is close to what came from the 2013-2014 SCS survey which is not that much different from the SCS 2003-2004 survey). The field is still almost entirely white, majority male, majority male tenured/t-t, and super-majority male at full professor.

Also, the number of TT positions advertised in a given year has held steady at close to 40%, but that is a drop of 20% from the previous decade. This decade started with the Great Recession and programs have not recovered. That means that we have more people this decade in temporary positions than in permanent ones, fewer people on the tenure-track than trying to teach and research off it. It is something to remember when we think of what we have accomplished professionally--those of us who have TT and tenured positions are in the minority and we may have access to resources our colleagues do not.

BUT we should also remember that not all TT and T jobs look alike--some come with 4/4 teaching loads and no research support and pay under $50k a year (some have been posted for as little as $35k), while some temporary positions have half that load, pay more (sometimes by 20-30k) and can come with travel and research support. Not all people in tenured position teach a 2-2 (or less), get sabbaticals, and make remotely close to 6 figures.

With all this in mind, here is my last decade--a blend of the personal and he professional, since they aren't separate things, really.

2009-2010: After 6 years as contingent (got my PhD in 2003), I finally got a TT job and started Aug 2009. I also published my first monograph (expansion/revision of my diss), Athena's Justice, in October 2009. The start of my new job was also a start of a new life. After 7 years of marriage, I started the 2009-2010 academic year as a single parent (to a 4 year old) and separated. New town (moved there from New York state), new job, new start. Thanks to the joys of academia, my first monograph (and my first article from 2006) weren't going to count toward my tenure requirements. YAY! Teaching load was a 3-2, pay was reasonable ($54k with a $5k research fund for the first 3 years). I wrote a review of the 2nd edition of Sowerby's The Greeks that got some people laughing, this line in particular: "It is true that there is some pedagogical value in forcing students to check the sources in their textbook for accuracy, but it is perhaps not the best use of students' time in an introductory course." I am happy to report the 3rd edition is better.

Started dating Max! He was at Wayne State, which was not too far for regular visits.

2010-2011: Got into university housing! Which meant child and I could live in a small house instead of on top of each other in an apartment; she turned 5. Max started working at Vandy, a little too far for regular visits. I also gave a couple of papers and wrote a couple more reviews. I also started the Race and Ethnicity sourcebook and a few articles. But, as you can see, teaching 5 classes a year, being a single parent, and managing a long distance relationship didn't leave a lot of time for churning out the pubs. But, I was playing the long game.

2011-2012: KINDERGARTEN! And another year of long distance relationshipping.

Gave a few more papers, got an article rejection (still haven't published it; happened with another one in the following year, too), got the contract for the sourcebook, realized that another article I was writing really wanted to be a book instead, so I wrote up a proposal and asked some colleagues for recs on presses. Submitted the proposal. In the summer after, I had to prepare my 3rd year review file. If I was successful, I would have a semester sabbatical and another contract to take me through to tenure review.

This summer, I took my first ever trip to GREECE. Did research on what would become the Immigrant Women book. Spent my first time at ouzo hour at the ASCSA.

2012-2013: So, funny things happen in academia. I submitted my 3rd year review file and was, as far as I knew, never going to hear back from the press. So, I queried and it turns out they had emailed me a contract offer, but I NEVER GOT THE EMAIL. Also, the contract was pathetic--no royalties on the first 500 copies and then only 2.5% after that. I told them that I wanted 5% on the first 500 and 10% after that, which is what we were getting for the sourcebook (maybe-?-I think we got 7.5% on the first 500). Needless to say, I got the offer presses love to give to first time authors who need a monograph for tenure so will take anything, but they gave me what I asked for. I should have asked for more.

Regardless, I got reappointed. The child started playing sports. That was the beginning of the end of my free time.

2013-2014: RACE AND ETHNICITY IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD finally published! This book, while counting for very little in terms of tenure and promotion (because TRANSLATIONS) has been one of my pride and joys. Working with Sydnor Roy and Max on this was a labor of love (Sydnor, of course, got out of doing the set of proofs by going into labor! She had her priorities in proper order.). This book has fundamentally transformed the way I teach, my research, the way I view the discipline. It was simply transformative for me.  I also designed the cover. Cannot wait for time to do a second edition (with LOTS of inscriptions).

This was also the year basically all the things I had in the queue the first few years on the job started making their way to print. Published an article on Aeschylus' Persians, the Immigrant Women book went to press, I published a few more reviews, gave some more papers. I would have publications in print every year from this point on.

My divorce was finalized this year.

2014-2015: IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN ATHENS came out. It was a career changing book for me. First, it got me tenure, second, it is actually pretty good! It got me recognized despite not having a prestige PhD and working at a small school. Since its publication, I've been invited to lots of other things--publish, present, etc. It only happened more than a decade after getting my PhD. It's been a bit of a roller coaster since then.

This is also the year I bought a house. I bought it in the summer of 2014 after asking my Provost "Are you sure I should by the house right before I go up for tenure?" She told me to buy the house. I was very lucky in that the university cosigned my loan, which meant I did not have to have 20% to put down and I got a really good interest rate. My mom also gave me money from her retirement account for the down payment. Otherwise, I would not have managed it. I still, you know, owe money on student loans from grad school. Saving is hard.

In Feb 2015, after being notified of tenure, I was also asked to temporarily become a Museum Director (reader, I am still the director...). I think Max and I got married this Jan (2015)? Maybe it was Jan 2016? I can't remember.

2015-2016: Want me to direct your museum, university? Well, then, you have to help me out. Negotiated a SPOUSAL POSITION! YAY! And I started as a member of the WCC elected board. I had a sabbatical from teaching in the fall, but not from the museum. Also, I built my dining room table (oak, seats 8).

Also published an article and got the Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds out (2015 or 2016--I think it is technically December 2015). This one was edited with the incomparable Molly Jones-Lewis, a lecturer (now senior?) ar UMBC. She is amazing. Met her when I was finishing my PhD and she was starting hers. So much style (best knitter I know), so much depth of knowledge, so attentive to detail and just the best. This book was a labor of love and represents aspects of the ancient world I am still trying to learn more about. It may be my favorite thing I've done. Also, the cover is awesome. Molly picked the image.

I also was asked in this year to edit the Companion to the Reception of Aeschylus.

2016-2017: This is the year I went under contract for the sourcebook on women in Greco-Roman antiquity. Doing it with Max. Molly is doing the medical texts. We aren't done yet. Sorry.

May 2017, I published my first article for Eidolon. And revived my blog shortly thereafter. Took students to Italy for a summer course for the first time. So much awesome. And then a trip around Sicily by car.

Much of my personal life and professional life started to become a blur at this point. The museum sort of took up most free time and the child was playing multiple sports. She also started fencing summer 2017, which is a year round thing. So many sports. Luckily, my mom decided to retire from her job and moved to be near us and help out. Between her and Max now being with us, we had a good life.

2017-2018: More blur. More work. WCC co-chair. October saw the second Eidolon article and at the SCS, we organized the harassment panel and workshop (here's my opening talk and a great write up from Eidolon of the panel and here are the Workshop notes). Got asked to write a monograph on race and ethnicity in antiquity and its modern complications. I hope it will be done by summer 2020.

SUMMER 2018 = ASCSA SUMMER SESSION! After 2 weeks with the Denison students in Italy, I headed to Athens. I had to wait 13 years to go since the first time I applied was the year I managed to get pregnant. Now, with the child 13, I was able to leave her with her father and my mother for the 8 weeks I was gone. Best summer in a long time. Met Arkadia for the first time. Stunning.

2018-2019: The formative experience of this year was my concussion in October. I had to pull out of 2 publications, sleep a lot, figure out how to rebuild all my ADHD coping mechanisms. It was hard. I'm still not sure I'm fully recovered. But, I also joined Twitter (brain damage, right?) and I did manage to get the Companion to the Reception of Aeschylus out. Three people died and four others either pulled out or ghosted me (you know who you are) in the process of its production. But it got done and I like it. The cover image is a Rockwell Kent from the Denison Museum collection. Running the museum had become a huge weight around my neck. That did not stop me from gutting and renovating my kitchen.

This was the year the SCS went crazy. It started off GREAT! We had the WCC party, with free drinks for many! Sportula got a prize, Pharos got a prize. Cool papers and articles got prizes! Then the fun started. Racial profiling of the Sportula leadership, racist 'western civ' rant at the Futures of Classics panel (which had zero representation from K-12 or liberal arts schools, so interesting future anyway), Mary Beard's tone def speech, and the Twitter aftermath.  I wrote a little about it on the blog here and the Sarah Bond did a full round up of responses, including Dan-el Padilla Peralta's important commentary on what was said to him by the western civ lady.

Spring of 2019 was also the semester time forgot--I gave a dozen visiting lectures in 3 countries, 8 states. Needless to say, I need to slow it down. I also in the 2018-2019 year I did a number of podcast interviews and for media pubs. I took students to Greece! And followed it with another 6 weeks divided between research in Athens, vacationing on Crete (I have a friend from grad school I can stay with), and writing a conference paper in an apartment in Thessaloniki. It was a good summer, but the 3rd in a row my garden did not get planted. Nor did my screen porch get built.

2019-2020: It is this year. There is so much to do. The child is 14 and we have basketball, field hockey, fencing, cello, and just being a teenager. Max has learned how to let the cats feel like they are in charge, the women sourcebook is...we are working on it. More pubs in the queue, I've set an end date for the museum directorship (June 2021). Trying to slow down and take more time to myself and with the family. I am at a stage now where I try to defer to other people, recommend them instead of me. Use my energy to do things that are meaningful for me. I've slowed down on blogging. I can't explain why, but I just have. We will see if I pick back up again next decade. I do intend, however, to plant my garden come May.