This chapter examines employment social enterprises (ESEs), organizations that provide employment opportunities to individuals marginalized and excluded in the labor market. Employment social enterprises employ chronically unemployed and underemployed individuals, including formerly incarcerated individuals, immigrants, and opportunity youth. This chapter begins by exploring the history, evolution, and prevalence of ESEs. We then highlight two exemplar ESEs to illustrate the design and demonstrate the impact of these organizations. After examining community power and psychological empowerment within ESEs, we explore different models of ESEs and identify topics for future research.

To properly contextualise the bioarchaeological evidence presented in the chapters that follow, this chapter addresses pertinent issues of terminology and reception. Beginning with a consideration of terminology, key terms that are commonly used in discussions of ancient identity, such as ‘disability’, ‘deformity’, ‘poverty’, ‘class’, ‘status’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘ancestry’ and ‘race’, are defined and situated in their original cultural contexts. The focus then shifts to the Greek reception of marginalised persons by surveying the literary and visual evidence for Greek attitudes towards disabled people, non-elite individuals of low socioeconomic status and non-Greeks.

DEFINITIONS

Many of the terms and concepts explored in this book are far from self-evident. It is tempting to think that the concept of disability would have an ancient meaning similar to our modern understanding, but they simply do not equate. Indeed, scholars question whether the Greeks even recognised disabled people as a distinct group or class. To address issues of terminology, the sections that follow present definitions for key terms that will be used throughout this study of social marginalisation, namely disability, deformity, poverty, class, status, ethnicity, ancestry and race. Each concept is discussed in detail and situated within its original Greek cultural context.

Defining disability in the ancient G reek world

Today, ‘disability’ is generally defined as ‘any condition of the body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities (activity limitation) and interact with the world around them (participation restrictions)’. However, scholars are divided on the question of whether there was a word for ‘disability’ in the ancient Greek world and cannot agree on the corollary issue of whether the disabled were recognised as a distinct minor group. Some maintain that adunatos, which is often translated as ‘unable’, is the closest Greek equivalent to ‘disabled’. Walter Penrose supports this position through the assertion that those considered to be adunatoi were exempt from military service and given financial assistance in Athens (Lysias 24; Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 49.2; Penrose 2015).

The concept of disability is a cultural construct. By simple definition, ‘disability’ can describe any number of physical, mental or medical conditions that cause someone to be labelled as ‘different’ or ‘unfit’ by other members of their society. As a result, the notion of what is disabling can vary widely over time and across cultures (Roberts 2000: 46). For instance, rickets, which is caused by prolonged vitamin D deficiency, results in bowed legs, curvature of the spine and stunted growth. In the past, rickets was seen as a disabling condition because it would have impaired an individual's mobility and aptitude for physical labour. Today rickets is rare, but when it does occur, there are surgical and therapeutic interventions widely available to help restore mobility. Furthermore, the understanding of what constitutes a disability can even differ among groups within a culture. An apt illustration of this comes from Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts. Throughout most of the United States, deafness is (and has traditionally been) viewed as a disabling and socially isolating condition, but on Martha's Vineyard, congenital deafness was endemic for approximately 250 years (the last deaf resident died in the early 1950s; Groce 1985). There, the incidence of congenital deafness was thirty-five times more common than the national average, which prompted all residents – those who could hear as well as those who could not – to use sign language. The unique bilingual nature of the island created a situation in which communication barriers and social stigmas usually associated with deafness were non-existent, thus ensuring the complete social integration of those who, in other circumstances, would most likely have been considered disabled. Deafness, therefore, was not deemed to be a disability on the Vineyard. Indeed, when asked about the status of the deaf on the island, a woman who grew up in the early twentieth century candidly remarked ‘those people weren't handicapped. They were just deaf’ (Groce 1985: 5).

In order to better understand ancient Greek societal attitudes towards disabled people, this chapter reviews the bioarchaeological evidence of physical difference in the Late Archaic/Classical Greek world (ca. sixth to fifth/fourth centuries bce).

Matters related to ancestry and ethnicity are among the most complex and contested issues in archaeology. Ancestry and ethnicity are facets of social identity, and each person has multiple strands of social identities that influence or dictate their roles in society. These strands are often connected with age, gender, class, status, rank, profession and sexuality, among others, and they all function differently in social group contexts. Rank and gender, for instance, are often cited as the causes of division among social groups, whereas ethnicity and ancestry are more cohesive in nature and have the capacity to bring groups together and strengthen bonds (MacSweeney 2009). Although ancestry and ethnicity are commonly understood as immutable and rooted in biology, the reality is far more complicated. Genealogy, for example, can be fabricated, and ethnic affiliations can shift in response to sociopolitical stimuli such as conflict, violence and changing constellations of power. Ancestry and ethnicity are always defined in response to political systems, and like many other social identities, they are cultural constructs characterised by their dynamism, flexibility and selfdefinition (Smedley and Smedley 2005: 17; Derks and Roymans 2009b: 1–2).

Two prominent historical figures, Herodotus and Philip II, illustrate the complexity of ethnic identity. Herodotus was born in the 480s BCE in Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum, Turkey) in the geographical region of Caria. Historically, the people of Caria did not speak Greek – indeed, Homer describes the Carians fighting for Troy as barbarophonos, or ‘of incomprehensible speech’ (Iliad 2.867). However, it was in this land of non-Greeks, approximately 500 years prior to Herodotus’ birth, that the polis of Halicarnassus was founded by Doric-speaking Greeks. It did not remain a strictly Dorian city throughout its history, as there is strong evidence that a significant portion of the population identified as Ionian in the fifth century BCE when the city was a member of the Delian League. At this point, official documents from Halicarnassus were issued in Ionian, and Herodotus composed his Histories in Ionic Greek. So, the population of Halicarnassus was of heterogeneous Greek ethnicity. It is also safe to assume that Halicarnassus was home to people of non-Greek ancestry and ethnicity, as it would have been a zone of contact for Greeks, Carians and Persians (Cartledge 2002: 52–3; Herda 2013).

We know a great deal about the ancient Greeks. We know what they ate, how they worshipped and how they fought. We know the types of houses they lived in and what they were furnished with. We know their politics, their philosophies and their arts. Despite all of this, our understanding of ancient Greek culture remains incomplete. With few exceptions, our knowledge is shaped by the narratives of the extraordinary members of society – men of high status, privilege and power. From the works of Herodotus, an aristocrat from Halicarnassus, to Xenophon, the Athenian son of a wealthy equestrian family, our libraries are filled with the writings of the elite. These men, though accomplished in their own right, experienced life in a markedly different way from the multitudes of ordinary people with whom they shared a society and a culture.

Likewise, the material culture of the people located at the centre of society – those whose histories have defined sociocultural normality – tends to be studied more often than that of others. Partially this is an issue of preservation; for example, grand houses of stone survive better in the archaeological record than modest dwellings of wattle and daub. Nevertheless, the resulting effect is that those who exist outside of societal norms, who occupy the periphery rather than the centre, become marginal in both a social and a material sense (Turner and Young 2007: 298).

When applied to individuals and groups, ‘marginality’ or ‘social marginalisation’ references the social, economic, political and legal spheres where people who are disadvantaged struggle to gain access to resources, which leads them to be ignored, excluded or neglected (Gurung and Kollmair 2005: 10). Greek literary sources, for instance, suggest that marginalised individuals experienced social exclusion (Herodotus 7.231–2; Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 22; Plutarch, Aristeides 73–4 on ostracism; Bremmer 1983 on scapegoat rituals), legal discrimination (Demosthenes 57.3), criminalisation (Demosthenes 24.123; Forsdyke 2008), poverty (Lysias 24) and often premature death (Xenophon, Hellenica 1.7.35).

The archaeological reconstruction of marginalised populations is complicated by a number of significant factors. This study, which focused on the Greek mainland during the Late Archaic/Classical period, was primarily impeded by a lack of known skeletal assemblages dating to the time frame under consideration. Another serious challenge was the general ‘invisibility’ of burials belonging to marginalised persons, as the marginalised are generally absent from Greek cemeteries. Although the reasons for their invisibility are not entirely clear, this lacuna most likely stems from the widespread practice of burying the marginalised outside of common burial grounds. As a result, these non-normative burials are left undiscovered when cemeteries are excavated.

This study focused exclusively on marginalising factors that can be discerned from burial contexts, namely physical disability, low socioeconomic status and non-Greek ethnicity or ancestry. It was found that traditional methods used to identify these characteristics could be ambiguous. For instance, methods for detecting non-Greeks in funerary contexts have tended to focus on material culture and burial rituals, but these would not have detected non-Greeks buried in normative Greek fashion and would have misidentified Greeks who embraced en vogue non-Greek motifs or objects. Funerary monuments from Athens, for example, demonstrate that many non-Greeks chose to commemorate themselves in an Athenian manner, while some elite Athenians were opting for non-Greek motifs. Complexities such as these illustrate the greater need for the contextual analysis of burial assemblages and careful consideration of all forms of available evidence. It is also clear that previously studied skeletal material would benefit from re-examination, especially in the area of biomolecular studies. In particular, stable isotopic studies of carbon and nitrogen can reveal dietary patterns, and stable isotopes of strontium, oxygen, sulphur and lead can identify migrants and potential non-Greeks.

Though sparse, there is bioarchaeological evidence of marginalising factors in burial assemblages from the Greek mainland dating to the Late Archaic/ Classical period. There are very few examples of physical impairment that derive from a Late Archaic/Classical context in the Greek mainland. Although the paucity of evidence prevents a focused synchronic study of the social ramifications of physical difference, widening the scope and considering case studies from different time periods allows for a diachronic glimpse into the ways in which disabled people were treated over time in ancient Greek society.