Globalization and interpreting visual culture

‘‘Globalization’’, ‘‘globalism’’, ‘‘the global’’, and other cognate words are in vogue in today’s media, economic analyses, political discourses, and scholarly communities. We are riding the wave of globalization – and so is the field of classics. World history has gained unprecedented popularity in academic literature while historians and archaeologists dealing with the classical world increasingly incorporate globalization terms, evoking a sense of new normativity. Frequently perceived as a classic cultural crossroads, Bactria has been coined as a paradigm of intercultural dynamics in the Hellenistic age – dynamics that are increasingly phrased in global terms. Globalization preoccupies, fascinates, and therefore sells in our contemporary intellectual landscape. Seen as the defining characteristic of modern-day society, globalization functions as both a descriptive and an analytical framework within which major questions and issues about being in the world are raised, reframed, and debated across various disciplines.