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Conclusions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2011

Cam Grey
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

The countrysides of the late Roman world contained a multiplicity of communities, each characterized by highly complex, interwoven systems of socio-economic interaction. Those systems involved relationships of reciprocity and mutual support that were transacted vertically with individuals of greater power, wealth, and status, and horizontally with individuals whose socio-economic circumstances were broadly commensurate. The character of a particular community emerged from the combination of horizontal and vertical alliances in specific circumstances, but it is clear that the social dynamics of rural communities in the late Roman world revolved first and foremost around maintaining a balance between the cohesion of the group and the conflicting desires and objectives of the individuals, families, and households of which it was composed.

This book has focused upon that tension, and used it as a tool for explicating the various social matrices that constituted the rural communities of the period. In particular, it has placed the twin phenomena of subsistence and social risk at the center of its analysis. The two are intimately linked: the management of subsistence risk is the principal objective of any peasant household, and characteristically entails among other things involvement in a collection of interactions and relations with other households. Those interactions expand the household’s pool of contacts for managing subsistence crisis, but they also increase the likelihood of conflict and disagreement between households. That conflict and disagreement is characteristically managed, negotiated, and defused using a range of strategies, including the mediation by the community of the behavior of its own members through gossip, exchange of goods, services, and expressions of mutual affection, and carefully staged communal activities, as well as recourse to figures of power and representatives of the state by the group or certain of its members.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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  • Conclusions
  • Cam Grey, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside
  • Online publication: 07 September 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511994739.012
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  • Conclusions
  • Cam Grey, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside
  • Online publication: 07 September 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511994739.012
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusions
  • Cam Grey, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside
  • Online publication: 07 September 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511994739.012
Available formats
×