Envy, Poison, and Death

At the heart of this book are some trials conducted in Athens in the fourth century BCE. In each case, the charges involved a combination of supernatural activities, including potion-brewing and cult activity; the defendants were all women. Because of the brevity of the ancient sources, and their lack of agreement, the precise charges are unclear; the reasons for taking these women to court, even condemning some of them to die, remain mysterious. This book takes the complexity and confusion of the evidence not as a riddle to be solved, but as revealing multiple social dynamics. It explores the changing factors—material, ideological, and psychological—that may have provoked these events. It focuses in particular on the dual role of envy (phthonos) and gossip as processes by which communities identified people and activities that were dangerous, and examines how and why those local, even individual, dynamics may have come to shape official civic decisions during a time of perceived hardship. At first sight so puzzling, these trials come to provide a vivid glimpse of the sociopolitical environment of Athens during the early to mid-fourth century BCE, including responses to changes in women’s status and behaviour, and attitudes to particular supernatural/religious activities within the city. This study reveals some of the characters, events, and local social processes that shaped an emergent concept of magic: it suggests that the legal boundary of acceptable behaviour was shifting, not only within the legal arena, but also with the active involvement of society beyond the courts

Envy, Poison, and Death

At the heart of this book are some trials conducted in Athens in the fourth century BCE. In each case, the charges involved a combination of supernatural activities, including potion-brewing and cult activity; the defendants were all women. Because of the brevity of the ancient sources, and their lack of agreement, the precise charges are unclear; the reasons for taking these women to court, even condemning some of them to die, remain mysterious. This book takes the complexity and confusion of the evidence not as a riddle to be solved, but as revealing multiple social dynamics. It explores the changing factors—material, ideological, and psychological—that may have provoked these events. It focuses in particular on the dual role of envy (phthonos) and gossip as processes by which communities identified people and activities that were dangerous, and examines how and why those local, even individual, dynamics may have come to shape official civic decisions during a time of perceived hardship. At first sight so puzzling, these trials come to provide a vivid glimpse of the sociopolitical environment of Athens during the early to mid-fourth century BCE, including responses to changes in women’s status and behaviour, and attitudes to particular supernatural/religious activities within the city. This study reveals some of the characters, events, and local social processes that shaped an emergent concept of magic: it suggests that the legal boundary of acceptable behaviour was shifting, not only within the legal arena, but also with the active involvement of society beyond the courts

Essays on hope and economic development

This thesis aims to introduce the economics of hope in an attempt to study the role of hope in economic development. It pertains to offering experimental evidence on the measurement, malleability and significance of hope in the process of improving academic achievement of primary school students in India. The thesis comprises of six chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of hope in the context of aspirations, internal constraints and education. Chapter 2 is a broad literature review underlining the need for treatment interventions that foster hope. Chapter 3 and 4 focus on the experimental set-up. Starting with the relationship between hope, effort and achievement, chapter 3 provides a theory of change and a proposition in which, hope increases effort. It also includes an exhaustive research protocol deviced to explain the data collection plan in the field. After discussing the theoretical underpinnings, Chapter 4 describes the research design and the empirical strategy employed to make causal inferences. In the process, I elaborate the survey instruments used to capture information on the various outcome variables, whilst stating the main hypothesis. Chapter 5 presents the main results of the Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT). Along with the available heterogeneity in the findings, pre-meditated robustness checks are also incorporated in this chapter. The results from chapter 5, their cost-effectiveness and implications on developmental policies are discussed in detail in Chapter 6. Potential extensions and the avenues of future research are also included in this chapter. It concludes by revisiting the main findings of the RCT and its contribution towards future developmental policy-making