© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/18741665-12340065
Journal of Egyptian History 13 (2020) 29–76
brill.com/jeh
Egyptology and Global History: Between
Geocultural Power and the Crisis of Humanities
Juan Carlos Moreno García
CNRS (France), UMR 8167 (Sorbonne University)
jcmorenogarcia@hotmail.com
Abstract
Globalization, the decline of Western hegemony, and the rise of new political and eco-
nomic actors, particularly in East Asia, are concomitant with the emergence of more
encompassing historical perspectives, attentive to the achievements and historical
trajectories of other regions of the world. Global history provides thus a new frame-
work to understanding our past that challenges former views based on the cultural
needs, values, and expectations of the West. This means that humanities and social
sciences are subject to intense scrutiny and pressed to adapt themselves to a changing
cultural, academic, and intellectual environment. However, this process is hindered by
the gradual loss of their former prestige and by the increasing influence of economics
in the reorganization of the educational, research, and cultural agenda according to
market-oriented criteria. The result is that the mobilization of the past increasingly
conforms to new strategies in which connectivity, trading, and diplomatic interests,
as well as integration in dynamic flows of wealth, appear of paramount importance.
Egyptology is not alien to these challenges, which will in all probability reshape its very
foundations in the foreseeable future.
Keywords
archaeology – Egyptology – eurocentrism – geocultural power – global history – higher
education – humanities – nation-state