Böcker av Harald Haarmann

Outlines a panorama of ancient civilizations, including the still little-known Danube civilization, now identified as the oldest advanced culture in Europe. In a comparative view, a new paradigm of research and a new cultural chronology of civilizations in the Old and New Worlds emerges, with climate change shown to be a continual influence.

When we maintain the modern separation of the philosophical from the spiritual and neglect the spiritual currents, our comprehension of Plato's intentions as manifested in his philosophical discourse remains greatly obscured. This study aims at achieving a balance.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

Plato (ca. 427 ca. 347 BCE), the preeminent Greek philosopher, has been extensively studied. A major field of Plato s comprehensive work is his political philosophy, which is multifaceted and multidimensional. The discourse on gender issues forms an integral part of it. In this context, one is surprised to notice that Plato s elaborations have been interpreted in quite contrasting ways. In some feminist discussions of classical philosophy, Plato s intellectual enterprise is evaluated as reflecting Greek male chauvinism. Such identification carries all manner of stereotyping, and this is neither enlightening nor helpful for an overall understanding of Plato s teachings and his world of ideas. In the scholarly literature, one can make the surprising discovery that Plato s contribution to the understanding of gender roles in society slips the attention of authors who specialize in this topic. Plato was neither feminist in the modern sense nor a sexist. Plato was not a liberal thinker, and he did not take the initiative to make a case for women s liberties. And yet, he elaborates amply on issues of what is subsumed under women s liberation in our time: What else would we call a philosopher who, under the conditions of Greek society in the classical age, advocated for the participation of women in sports competitions and approved of the access of women to public offices, even to political leadership? In this study, priority lies in reconstructing Plato s ideas on women s roles viewed against the zeitgeist of gender issues in Greek society of classical antiquity. The analysis shows that Plato s speculations about gender and gender issues in an ideal society were nothing short of revolutionary. What has been produced up to the present regarding Plato's positions on the agenda of gender are disparate studies whose scope falls short of the whole range of angles from which Plato himself approached the issues, and the study of gender issues in Plato has remained unsystematic so far. In this book Plato on Women, Harald Haarmann provides the first systematic analysis of Plato's positions on gender and the role of women in an ideal society. The intention is to achieve a balance in the investigation of Plato's dialogues and to fill gaps by highlighting those texts that have remained understudied, Plato's last dialogue Nomoi ("e;Laws"e;) in particular. This text, the longest of Plato's dialogues, is now considered, together with the Politeia ("e;Republic"e;), to range among the most important sources of Plato's political theory. The introduction of the Laws, which make up about one fifth of Plato's work, into the comparative study of Plato's philosophical enterprise does not only contribute to an enrichment of the whole text corpus but also provides the possibility to broaden the perspective on particular topics, women's roles in society, for one. The ways in which Plato elaborates on women's roles illustrates that, in light of his concept of true justice, gender issues become detached from the contemporary clich of "e;natural law"e; by which women's status in society was allegedly determined. In this book, a new approach to Plato's philosophical endeavor is presented, one which calls upon an internal reconstruction of historical realities and of cultural conditions during Plato's lifetime, and of its zeitgeist, at the same time avoiding judgmental stereotyping and the forceful projection of modern biased positions into antiquity. Here, Plato's mature reflections on gender equality in an ideal society are contrasted with the real mirror image of women's role in Greek society of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The present reconstruction is intended as a contribution, on the one hand, to identify the cultural embedding of Plato's enterprise and, on the other hand, to specify the typical markers of Platonic philosophy. Readers may discover a "e;new"e; Plato. Plato on Women is a major contribution to political philosophy and gender studies as well as an important book for collections of Plato's works and scholarly literature focusing on this philosopher.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

This study documents various historical instances in the development of the concept 'Common Good'. The author reflects about Plato's theory of Forms, which is infused with the idea of good, as the first principle of being.

This book by renowned anthropologist Harald Haarmann illuminates the acquisition of knowledge, and the meanings underlying forms of knowledge, in a broad temporal scope, ranging from the Neolithic through the modern era. Spiritual knowledge is at the heart of this work, which views myth and religion encoded in Neolithic female figurines and revived in the contemporary primitive artwork of artists such as Constantin Brancusi and Henry Moore. Within such a framework, this study employs the knowledge and insights of the relatively new, and very important, interdisciplinary field of archaeomythology, which ties together information from archaeology, DNA studies, mythology, anthropology, classical studies, other ancient language studies, and linguistics. This study does so with a wealth of information in these fields, offering meaningful resolutions to many questions regarding antiquity, and shedding light upon several previously misunderstood phenomena, from the true function of Stonehenge (that its purpose was not astronomical), to the fact that there could not have been a mass movement of agriculturalists from Anatolia to Europe (this is a currently hotly contested issue), to important Eurasian religious beliefs and mythological motifs (with an excellent discussion of shamanism), to systems of writing (with a wonderful discourse upon ancient writing systems), religious expression, and mythology of the exceptionally significant cultures of Old Europe (Neolithic southeastern Europe). The book further discourses upon the legacy of this culture in Minoan and then Greek culture, Old European (pre-Indo-European) lexical items (that is, substrate vocabulary) in Greek, and finally the preservation of Neolithic spirituality in Modern Art. With this interdisciplinary approach, the study demonstrates that all of the subjects of this study are interconnected, in a powerful wholeness. Ancient knowledge, Ancient know-how, Ancient reasoning is an unprecedented study that will appeal across many disciplines, including archaeology, mythology, anthropology, classical studies, ancient language studies, and linguistics. The book also includes several images, maps, and tables that will prove helpful to the reader.

Providing a multifaceted view of modern Finland, this book describes its history, culture, language, geography, natural history and the mythology of early peoples. Topics include Fenno-Scandia inhabitants and their environment, traditional naturalism and modern environmentalism, and the salient features of "Finnishness", including an analysis of the Finnish educational system and gender equality.

Contrary to a prevalent belief of the Western world that democracy, agriculture, theatre and the arts were the attainments of Classical Greek civilisation, these were actually a Bronze Age fusion of earlier European concepts and Hellenic ingenuity. This work considers both the multicultural wellspring from which these ideas flowed and their ready assimilation by the Greeks.