Known Inhabited Worlds: Exploring “Ecumenes” as a Concept and Method for the Study of Regional and Global Processes

What ever happened to holism? This talk presents the results of work on a conceptual framework for the study of societies and history that is holistic, meaning it holds all elements of social process in a unifying concept. This "ecumenes approach" involves a method for description and analysis of human affairs that contains some classical elements together with some contemporary elements. The discussion explains the use of the original Greek concept oikoumene the "known inhabited world" in the works of Greek historian Herodotus and Greco-Roman geographer Strabo, to identify key features of the classical approach. It then develops the method further with reference to elements of comparative world-systems' theory, especially the idea of "nets of interaction", and the concepts of "social reproduction" and "regional systems" in global anthropology. The authors propose a model of multiple connected ecumenes for the pre-modern world. They demonstrate how this approach may be used to give account of the incorporation of particular peoples and regions into the global ecumene of today, making reference to case materials from Southeast Asia and the Pacific. This work on theory and method is part of a project that applies the ecumenes approach to several regions of the world, following an initial presentation at the Canadian Anthropology Society 2011 Annual Conference, and the main focus in the Lunch and Learn talk is to describe the method and ask for comments while the project continues.