McDonald Annual Lecture 2024 - Professor Alfredo González Rubial

The Thirty-Sixth McDonald Annual Lecture was given by Professor Alfredo González Rubial (Incipit - CSIC)
"Modernity and the end of globalization"
Abstract:
Western expansionism from the late fifteenth century onwards is most often described as a linear story of increased global integration. This is true both for celebratory and critical perspectives. It is also true for historical archaeology, which is largely predicated on notions of mobility and connectivity. In this talk, I would argue instead that these narratives misrepresent the complexity of Western capitalist and imperial expansion, as well as its local effects in different parts of the world. In many places, the onset of modernity implied the collapse of alternative globalizations or suprarregional networks and the isolation of communities that had been hitherto strongly connected, all of which is quite obvious in the archaeological record. I suggest that to better understand modern globalization it is necessary to approach it as a non-linear process and from the point of view of those societies that were cut off from the rest of the world after the fifteenth century. For that, it is necessary to bridge the divide between prehistoric, medieval and historical archaeologies. I will exemplify my points with case studies from the Indian Ocean world.

[@changedNameSorry]

Absolutely brilliant lecture that seriously challenges overcome conceptions on globalisation, while it gives new and maybe less ideological perspectives on famed "non-European" ideas of non-linear, "cyclical" development or James C. Scott's theories on the formation of so called "indigenous" groups as a result of State evasion. The video deserves nevertheless a title that reflects some its contents.