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HALL, Jonathan M. Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002. xviii + 312 pp. Cloth, $50.00-Good historical writing not only gives us insight into the past, it also loosens the hold the present has on us and enables us to engage that present with increased critical self-awareness. By exploring the relationship between ethnicity and culture in the formation of the self-consciousness of Greeks as Greeks (the idea of Hellenicity) in the ancient world, Jonathan M. Hall enables us to grasp more coherently the dynamic and complex ways that ethnic identities are formed (and fluctuate) and the different roles such identities can play in the elaboration of cultural identities. Such understanding is crucial for the world we live in because, as he notes in his opening discussion of the debates surrounding the sense of "Britishness," "ethnic and national categorization has assumed an increasing importance" (p. 5) within contemporary cosmopolitanism.
The basic set of questions that animates his study is formulated as follows: "Who did the Greeks-or Hellenes, as they called themselves-be lieve they were and why? On what criteria did they base their sense of Hellenic consciousness? In short, how 'ethnic' were the Greeks?" (p. 5)...