Le « centre » et la « périphérie » en question : deux concepts à revoir pour les diasporas

Abstract

This paper intends to reexamine two highly debatable notions in the current historiographical field. It would be interesting to question their pertinence for a world defined by a massive spreading in the Mediterranean and by abundant movements of population. In these conditions, where is the centre ? Where begins – and where ends – the periphery ? If we consider that the centre was the “metropolis”, we are confronted to the multiplicity of cities having this status. As for the “periphery”, we should set up if it was geographical or symbolical, since Alexandria, by example, claims the status of centre of the Hellenistic world while she is placed on its fringes. It would be then more judicious to state about “centres” and “peripheries”, in a multi-polar world which is marked by the most diverse exchanges, both with the other Greeks and the local populations. With the last ones, in particular, the Greeks are maintaining highly various relations, pointing up the birth of a particular culture, the Middle Ground.

Keywords

• centre
• periphery
• networks
• space
• Mediterranean
• negociation