Preface

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226711515.002.0007

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Preface

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https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226711515.002.0007

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xi–xiv

Published:

July 2020

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The tidal wave of studies on connectivity and network exchanges in the ancient Mediterranean world has amounted to nothing but a true paradigm shift in classical studies. Albert-László Barabási’s (2002) verdict that everything is connected to everything else, and that the connection matters, has fully arrived in our field. Along the way, scholars have established a potent theoretical framework that makes the tenets of globalization meaningful to the study of Greek and Roman antiquity. In both cases and, to be sure, under different premises, the exploration of sociocultural and economic exchanges in the Mediterranean, grounded in the distinctiveness of time, place, and culture, effected a knowledge advancement that is as extensive as it is exciting. A book on localism in ancient Greece might therefore appear against the spirit of the day.

Appearances can be deceptive. Globalization scholars recognize the importance of the local as a world where the strands of connectedness translate into real-life constellations, with all triggers and adaptations across the global/local binary. This is how, and why, the terms glocal and glocalization have entered the debate. In similar vein, the notion of “globalization from below” seeks to accentuate a bottom-up perspective on the process. Yet while the former part of the contraction glocal has received tremendous attention in scholarship, the latter continues to be neglected. Postcolonial theory has provided a forum for the development of ideas about the intrinsic value of local culture and “globalectics” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 2012). A full-fledged debate, however, remains out of sight. The most common view is to assign to the local the capacity to formulate counterstrategies and defend distinctiveness and individuality against the advancement of globalization—an intellectual figure that itself betrays an implicit primacy of the global over the local. The present book can and should be read as a complement to ongoing conversations about connectedness and globalization, and the forces they wield over humans across time. Indeed, as a sociocultural phenomenon with its own historical depth, the globalization paradigm requires that the local enter the scholarly dialogue as a quantity in its own right. The claim that is raised here is therefore straightforward, if not simple: that we should take the local seriously.

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