Ancient World Seminar: Tazuko van Berkel (Leiden), 'Counting and Accountability: the politics of mathematics in Classical Athens'

How should a fifth-century Athenian adolescent treat his father when he turns out to be an addict beyond salvation? How does one end a civil war? How does one silence an opponent in court? In Classical Athenian public discourse, calculation often seemed to be the ideal solution: numbers don't lie, figures are more objective than gossip, counting means accountability and calculation is the supreme example of transparency. But just as often, the use of numbers and calculations in politics provoked distrust and cynicism. In this paper, we will see some aspects of the communicative logic of numbers and calculations in public discourse.

Dr. T.A. (Tazuko) van Berkel is currently holding a position as post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at Leiden University, where she is working on a VENI-project on the role of numbers and calculations as strategies of communication and persuasion in the political contexts of Classical Athens. Her research builds upon her doctoral thesis, called “The Economics of Friendship. Changing Conceptions of Reciprocity in Classical Athens” (cum laude), in which insights drawn from diverse fields of classics, ancient history, ancient ethics, economic anthropology, and philosophy of economics are combined.