untitled

THE GODS OF POLITICS IN EARLY GREEK CITIES

in order to barter one commodity for another, although perhaps in another study I shall
return to those different kinds of assembly.
Anyone who decides to observe and compare needs to delimit his or her field, choose
a particular ‘‘framework,’’ a notional domain. In my case, this, for better or for worse,
has been the field constituted by ‘‘the procedures for expressing in words a particular idea
of what is in the common interest of all those who have deliberately assembled to discuss
this.’’ It will no doubt be pointed out that the assumptions underlying that formula are
more Greek than African. Maybe. But at any rate, my starting point is ‘‘the wish to meet
together in an assembly, to discuss matters of common interest.’’ I have called this a
‘‘framework’’ or ‘‘notional field.’’ It might, at a pinch, be called a paradigm. But this point
of departure of mine is different from the, to my mind, somewhat heavy-handed para-
digm of civic humanism introduced by my colleague at The Johns Hopkins University,
John Pocock: his is a construction in which the Prince acts as a political agent, surrounded
by associates tailor-made for a Florentine society, in the shape of citizens, rhetoricians,
and inspired legislators. It is, to be sure, an excellent paradigm for the post-sixteenth-
century Anglo-Saxon world. It is as inappropriate for the Amerindian world, Cossack
societies, or the tiny Greek cities, however, as is, for example, the category of ‘‘empire’’
and others of that kind commonly found in encyclopedias. I would say that ‘‘the wish to
assemble around the Common Good’’ constitutes a paradigm that is neither too local nor
too general. It seemed to me to open up a set of questions, many of them very concrete,
that would be helpful to an observer of practices seen in perspective. Who initiates the
process of assembling a group? Can it be anyone in the group, or should it be an elder, a
man with authority, an individual endowed with supernatural powers, or an elected
leader? Where is the assembly held? Each time in a different place? In a space that is
marked off? In a fixed, specially arranged, even built-up venue? In a place that has been
ritually designated? Ritually designated secretly? Or solemnly? Who opens such an assem-
bly? How is it brought to a close? Who presides over it, and how? Is it preceded by a more
select committee? If so, of what kind? Is there a formal agenda? How does one gain
permission to speak? Using what gestures? If there is an argument or a debate, what form
does it take? Do speakers contradict one another? Do they adhere to a model created by
the assembly? What is its tempo? Does it reach a formal decision? If so, does it do so by
consensus? By a vote? What kind of vote? A show of hands? A written vote? A secret vote?
A majority vote? What constitutes a quorum? And how does a quorum relate to the total
membership of the assembly?
As you can see, we need to devote considerable thought to the early processes that
created something that might have turned into a ‘‘political domain.’’ Historians and eth-
nologists exchange questions and subquestions like these for a particular purpose, namely,
to set up an experiment: by means of precise mechanisms, to acquire a perspectival view
on a whole series of societies as widely different as the Italian communes of the Middle
Ages, the Buddhist communities of Japan, the FrenchConstituants, the Cossacks who

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