Deciphering Globalization: Making and Knowing the World Through Things

The experience of living in a world constantly shaped by strangers, foreign customs, and unfamiliar objects dates back to the beginning of human history. This interconnectedness and interdependence among different value systems and cultures—what we now call globalization—has long served as both an inspiration and a challenge to individuals, communities and political entities.

This workshop aims to explore the diverse historical processes of globalization through the lenses of things. It focuses on the adaption, friction, and transformation caused by  things, both natural and human-made,  when they enter new social environments: the integration of Anatolian foodways into Chinese cuisine in the second millennium BCE and subsequent food globalization processes til the early modern era; the political and cultural encounters between the Mughal and Qing empires through technological and artistic exchanges driven by the production of Inner Asian minerals; the adoption of the Chinese furniture and ceramics into Euro-American lifeways since the 17th century; and the evolving values and aesthetic expressions of textile and silk production as it adapted to the global market in the 19th century.

Things, and the flow of them, remade the world by incubating ideas, creating demands, connecting markets, and blending cultures. By bringing together scholarship from diverse fields—history, archaeology, anthropology, and historical geography—this interdisciplinary workshop seeks to create an intellectual platform for a deeper understanding of globalization, both past and present, while envisioning the future of humanity in globalized social conditions.