ABSTRACT

What then is the advantage of calling a process of complex connectivity ‘globalization’ if it doesn’t really have to be fully global? It is a move that says not everything has to be connected, but everything could be. And if everything under the sun is up for grabs, then there is no a priori starting point – no assumed ‘core’ from which one then traces zones of influence and hence peripheries. This is very liberating for cultural analysis, because it allows a move away from civilizational histories that emphasise boundaries and boundedness, no doubt under the influence of our modern nation-states (Flood 2009: 2). With the focus instead on the cultural entanglements created by constant mobility and connectivity, we create much more dynamic and emergent histories. This flattening effect in globalization thinking is basically achieved by putting all ‘cultures’ for analysis in ‘one single cultural container’ (Versluys 2014: 12). So for the Roman world, for example, which is Versluys’ focus, one does not start at Rome as the core and work out – one treats the entire world touched by Rome as a zone of intra-cultural, rather than intercultural, connectivity. The ‘globe’ is not the scale of this container, but perhaps Eurasia is – and so a centralizing term like Romanization is quite inaccurate in fact, and is currently resisted by

many Roman specialists. Still, a more decentring term like ‘Eurasianafricanization’ is unlikely to catch on. So perhaps Romanization 2.0, as Versluys calls it, simply has to recognize itself as a decentred phenomenon – just as we should not get too hung up on the global in globalization, likewise for the Roman in Romanization.