Domestication and its Discontents

This Open Seminar will take place on Wednesdays in Term 1 at 2.30pm, starting Wednesday, 10 October  

The seminar focuses on the history of settlements from prehistory to today seen from the perspective of one of the most controversial issues of human history: the process of domestication. By domestication we mean the complex of practices that construct consensus and thus social order. Far from being expressed in clear ideological terms, domestication is rather a diffused force that shapes our life, orients our behavior, and controls shared knowledge. Such vantage point will allow us to problematize the omnipresent category of the ‘urban’ and look at how both architecture and daily rituals often become fundamental conduits of governmental power.

Image: Plan of an excavated block from the archaeological area of Mohenjo-Daro, from John Marshall, Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization (1931).

Schedule:

10 October : Village: Architecture and the Rise of Sedentary Forms of Life
17 October : City: Early Cities in the Near East and Indus Valley
24 October : Town: Planned Settlements in Ancient Egypt and China
7 November : Grid: The Principle of Rectangular Subdivision in Ancient Greece and Rome
14 November : Monastery: The Domestication of Landscape in Late Medieval Europe
21 November : Capital: The Emergence of Domesticity in the Early Nation States
28 November : Enclosure: Colonial Appropriation from Europe to Asia and the Americas
5 December : Park: Greening and Primitive Accumulation in the Modern Western City