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IMC 2010: Sessions

Session 713: Creating Political Space: Perception, Construction, Representation

Tuesday 13 July 2010, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Fernuniversität Hagen
Organiser:Uta Kleine, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen
Moderator/Chair:Miriam Czock, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Paper 713-aMeasuring and Mapping the Empire?: Roman Traditions vs. Medieval Practice - The Evidence of the Corpus agrimensorum romanorum
(Language: English)
Uta Kleine, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen
Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 713-bPerceptions and Practices of Space in Communal Italy in the 12th Century
(Language: English)
Christoph Dartmann, Exzellenzcluster 'Religion & Politik', Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Index terms: Law, Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 713-cGeography between Tradition and Innovation: Symbolic and Empirical Aspects of Space in Gossuin de Metz's L'image du monde (13th Century)
(Language: English)
Georg Jostkleigrewe, Sonderforschungsbereich 'Symbolische Kommunikation & gesellschaftliche Wertesysteme', Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster
Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Science
Abstract

Space in its medieval sense is not simply a given entity, a natural frame in which social and political processes take place. Space has to be understood as the product of social activities as well as of human ideas about its nature and value. It is thus a cultural construction in which physical, political, and symbolic aspects are linked together. The papers of this section will look at different forms of political space: the urban territory, the Roman Empire (ancient and medieval) and the Orbis christianus as a whole.
They are organized around a common set of questions:
1. How is space experienced and classified? Here the aspects of exploration, appropriation, measurement, and naming will be touched.
2. How is space constituted as a coherent, delimitated, and culturally valorized unit? Here the focus lies on the interference between topographical realities, cultural patterns of perceiving and social/ ritual modes of defining and delimitating them.
3. How is space represented in language and image? Here the intellectual techniques of ordering and presenting spatial knowledge in texts and/ or maps will be examined. Special interest is drawn to the ways of adapting traditional (geographical or cartographical) knowledge to actual experiences.