The Impact of Power on Contact Zones and Receptivity

Abstract

The concept of contacts zones, as developed in Ulf 2009, employs differentiating factors to embed the actors involved in the transfers of goods and ideas in their cultural and socio-political environments. Power exerted between people who transfer goods and ideas and those who receive them, is decisive for how receptivity is shaped by their recipients. To discover where power is situated in the complex processes of intercultural interactions, this paper leads attention to the societal characteristics that have an impact on the cultural actors. Referring to the change from the Greek enoikismoi within the scattered settlements of the local population(s) in the hinterland between the Gulf of Taranto and Brindisi to the emergence of recognizable Greek settlements along the coastline from the 8th to the 7th century BC, the example of the feast is chosen to highlight the accompanying change of the scale of power and its exertion. In the terminology of contact zones, a dense contact zone lacking a dominant partner turns into a Middle Ground. From the definition of the various contact zones derives, that the receptivity changed from free adaptation of so far unknown cultural elements to their own intentions and needs to conscious and intentional misunderstandings of the other’s cultural forms and behaviour to gain advantage over the exchange partner. Thus power is a growing factor in their relationship and becomes the more important when the Middle Ground is replaced by a dense zone of contact where one partner is able to dominate. Thereby, it becomes clear that the relationships in cultural transfers are not tied up with ethnic conditions or cultural superiority and inferiority, but determined by the type of contact zones which in turn are characterized by the tools of power involved.