This contribution aims to use social history and social theory to investigate political power and compliance with authority in ancient Western Asia, through the case study of Neo-Assyrian imperial building projects. Our first aim is to discuss the realities of construction work in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, focusing on the building process both through literary sources and archaeological data. Our second goal is to understand the role played by these building sites in the strengthening of local and supra-local political orders, in the consolidation of social group boundaries, and in the construction of political subjectivities of the ancient social actors involved. Our reflection sheds light on the new interpretative possibilities – and challenges – that integrating social theories, archaeological work, and language technology may create.

Racism continues to be both a widely discussed topic and continuing problem within many of our societies. Yet, most of the mainstream discourse on race lacks any reference to the actual concept of race itself. This has led to a situation in which racism is understood as systematic discrimination but race itself is generally treated as a neutral and unproblematized identity category instead of a political system of oppression. In this master’s thesis I will examine the ontological relationship between the concept of race and power. The main goal is twofold. Firstly, I will show that the relationship between race and power is an inherent one. Secondly, I will show that it is not only possible but necessary to take Whiteness as a vantage point as we examine this relationship. For while we are generally accustomed to approach the topic of racism and racial injustice through the experiences of people of color, Whiteness continues to remain in the margins of our political, social, and theoretical conversations. This, I claim, results from the normalization of Whiteness that has rendered White people unable to see how race functions and affects their daily lives. I will begin by briefly examining how the ideas of race and Whiteness were historically constructed and implemented as oppressive systems. This will help us establish that race was never discovered but constructed to serve a specific purpose. From here I move onto examine the relationship between race and power through the frameworks of class and state power. First, I look at Charles Mills’ argument for why racial power relations are distinct from and transcend those of class. After this I examine how Michel Foucault conceptualizes race as a necessary technology of power to the modern state. Then I move onto examine George Yancy’s method that not only forces Whites to see the workings of race but allows us to comprehend that there is no sense in making a distinction between “good” and “bad” White people. Finally, I present my own method of asking the ethically laden question: “Is there anything good about Whiteness?” I argue that any meaningful discussions on racism must theoretically examine the historical construction of race and the purposes that it has been used. For this reveals the ontological relationship between race and power as an inherent one. In addition, it is also crucial to comprehend that race is first and foremost a lived experience that affects the daily lives of countless people before any of our conceptual analysis. Thus, examining both the theoretical and the empirical level of race is a necessity for us to have any change to move beyond race. And I suggest that we start by asking “Is there anything good about Whiteness?” For an adequate answer to this question requires an understanding of what it is to be White. Which then necessitates a thorough theoretical understanding of the construction, history and workings of race.

This thesis examines the concept of political liberty (or freedom – the two terms are used as synonyms). In the first chapter I deal with the necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent to be considered free or unfree. This is an opinionated overview that lays the ground for the following sections but which does not reach firm conclusions. The second chapter deals with the value of liberty and asks in what way and to what extent liberty can be considered valuable. I conclude that liberty can be held to be valuable both instrumentally and constitutively but that not all freedoms are therefore equally valuable. In the final chapter I consider the measurement of freedom and conclude that epistemically, it may be possible to measure freedom in an overall sense. In practice, however, it is not possible at the current time nor for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, I argue that a non-evaluative measurement of freedom will lead to very counter-intuitive results. The second and third chapters of this thesis owe a special debt to two recent books on liberty that have, in my view, taken the debate to a higher level. The first is “A Measure of Freedom” by Ian Carter and the second is “The Quality of Freedom” by Matthew Kramer.

This thesis critically engages with various approaches to political inclusion. I show that certain difficulties in their perspectives on language as a candidate for conveying representation and recognition of new agents in public space can be observed. I focus on the moral limitations of these approaches, particularly the issue of articulating identities as a form of suppression; confining the political performance of individuals to frames of political identities; the problematic engagement of excluded agents in existing discourses that are embedded in particular power structures; and normative justification of moral permissibility concerning political agendas of new political agents. In the first chapter, I analyze the normative foundations of inclusion in the theories of Luce Irigaray (‘I-you’-identities), Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau (‘we-them’-identities), as well as the cosmopolitan political project (‘we’-identities) in detail. In the second chapter, I critically investigate and analyze strategies of inclusion by means of articulation in these approaches. Finally, the third chapter outlines problematic moral implications of these approaches in order to close a gap within the current scientific debate on this topic and provide foundations of possible future research. Questions addressed there include: Why favor inclusion at all? Which mechanisms of inclusion would be better than the existing ones? Should inclusion aspire to allow for differences and inclusion on terms that are insensitive to differences?