By Ankit Kawade Max Weber begins his treatise Ancient Judaism with the following comparativist premise: “The problem of ancient Jewry, although unique in the socio-historical study of religion, can best be understood in comparison with the problem of the Indian caste order.”[1] Weber’s premise of studying Jewish religious history in comparison with the caste order […]
By Emma Wordsworth Food, despite being both a biological necessity and a symbolic cultural touchstone, has only recently been recognised as a major historical force. As historian David Arnold persuasively argued in 1988, “food was, and continues to be, power in a most basic, tangible, and inescapable form”.[1] Certainly, in the early 1870s, the issue […]