Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism has exerted widespread influence in humanities, social sciences, and even natural/physical sciences, but this was not always the case. From the mid-19th century onward, thinkers like Hegel and Marx established a tradition of differentiating a progressive "us" (Europe/West) from a traditional "them." This dichotomy framed non-Western societies as antimodels to be defamed. Sociological theories from the 19th/20th centuries also posited Western concepts like rationality and modernization as superior. While multiculturalism challenges Eurocentric views, the mentality of the West teaching meritocratic values to the rest still persists in some circles.

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Eurocentrism

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Eurocentrism

The writer Neal Ascherson suggested that on the shores of the Black Sea were born a pair of Siamese
twins called civilization and barbarism (Ascherson 1995, TK[AU 1: Please supply the page on which
that quotation is found. Also, please check what edition of the book you have. If its a different
year/publisher, etc., from what weve indicated in the Further Reading section, please supply the
details, and we will change the listing in the Further Reading section.] The observation about these
twins is surely incisive and universal, even if the Black Sea venue may be questioned. The civilized and
barbarian twins have had many births and rebirths in all times and places occupied by people. Moreover,
they have ever been co-terminus with centrisms<M>Greco-, Islamic-, Sino-, Euro-, U.S.-, Western- and
many others<M>each of which labeled all others barbarians. What distinguishes Eurocentrism (actually
Western-centrism, since Eurocentrism incorporates such geographically disparate regions as North America
and Australia as well as Europe) is that during the past century or more it has been accompanied by power,
which it has used to legitimate, extend, and maintain itself and its rule in the world.
In 1978 the literary critic Edward Said condemned ''Orientalism''<M>Western conceptions of the Islamic
world<M>as a grab-bag of ill-defined characteristics that are distinctive only in allegedly being nonWestern. Indeed, the very invention of Orientalism was not so much an attempt to say something about ''the
Orient'' as an attempt to delineate and distinguish ''the West" from "the rest," as the scholar Samuel
Huntington put it in his 1993 article Clash of Civilizations in the journal Foreign Relations. The media
immediately welcomed this formulation of an alleged clash between The West and (in particular) China and
Islam; and they have even more widely accepted it as an explanation of world events since the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001. However, Gernot Khler, a scholar of international relations and the world
economy, has suggested that the sort of thinking that leads to Orientalism or to theories of civilization
clashes goes hand in hand with the notion of global apartheid: The first is an ideological facet of the
second, just as the notion of the white man's burden" was an ideological facet of European colonialism
and imperialism.
Nor does it appear that decolonization of the second half of the twentieth century has put those notions to
rest in the sands of history. On the contrary, the rhetoric of leaders such as Britains Prime Minister Tony
Blair and the United States President George W. Bush is replete with claims that they are defending
civilization (with the unspoken assumption being that they mean Western civilization) against outside
threats<M>this in spite of the fact that many argue that some of their methods, such as Bushs doctrine of
preemptive war, threaten to destroy one of civilizations most precious gifts: international law and
institutions to prevent man from killing man in a general war of all against all.

The Historical Development of Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism currently exerts widespread influence in the humanities, social sciences, and even the natural
and physical sciences, but it was not always so. The 1911 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Current
English defined orient as The East; lustrous, sparkling, precious; radiant, rising, nascent; place or exactly

determine position, settle or find bearings; bring into clearly understood relations; direct towards;
determine how one stands in relation to one's surroundings. Turn eastward. By 1980, however, the
American Oxford Dictionary defined it simply as The East; countries east of the Mediterranean, especially
East Asia.'' The Orient as a model to be acclaimed and copied had become the antimodel to be defamed and
shunned. Such European luminaries as the philosopher Ren Descartes (1596<N>1650), the writer Voltaire
(1694<N>1778), and the economist Adam Smith (1723<N>1790), however, were still persuaded by the
former definition.
Although the French intellectual Montesquieu (1689<N>1755) was an early forerunner of the change to a
more negative image of the East, the major transformation in opinion came with the European industrial
revolution and colonialism, especially from the mid-nineteenth century, with those proponents of dialectical
change, G. W. F. Hegel (1770<N>1831) and Karl Marx (1818<N>1883). Their total Eurocentrism really
did turn views of the world on its head. They began a tradition in the humanities and social sciences of
differentiating the progressive us from the traditional them that continues to this day.
Historiography<M>even ''world'' history<M>in the West has been entirely Eurocentric, running only on a
westward track from ''the Orient" to Western Europe and America. Works in this vein include the
uncompleted Weltgeschichte (Universal History) of Leopold von Ranke (1795<N>1886), the twelvevolume Study of History (1934<N>1961) of Arnold Toynbee (1889<N>1975), who described the rise and
fall of twenty-one ''civilizations" and the arrested development of five others, and William McNeill's Rise
of the West, originally published in 1963. Nor is the history of science immune from a focus on the West:
The very notion of a seventeenth-century scientific revolution in Europe that is taken to be the basis of
Europes technological and industrial revolution tends to downplay scientific innovation or contributions
from other parts of the world.[AU 2: Okay?]

Eurocentrism in Sociology and Anthropology

From the 1850s this dichotomy of the West and the rest and attendant praise of things Western has been the
hallmark of all Western social theory. The nineteenth-century French "father of sociology" Auguste Compte
(1798<N>1857) and the British legal scholar Henry Maine (1822<N>1888) distinguished between
European "science" and "contracts," which allegedly replaced age-old "tradition." The French sociologist
mile Durkheim (1858<N>1917) distinguished "organic" and "mechanical" forms of social organization,
and the German sociologist Ferdinand Tnnis (1855<N>1936) alleged a transition from traditional
gemeinschaft (community) to modern gesellschaft (society). In the twentieth century the sociologist
and economist Max Weber (1864<N>1920) considered European rationality to be the essential ingredient
in Western success, as described in The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of Capitalism (1904<N>1905).
During the Cold War, the sociologist Talcott Parsons, who popularized Weber in the United States,
distinguished Western "universalist" social forms from the "particularist" social forms of other cultures, and
the anthropologist Robert Redfield found a contrast and transition between traditional "folk" and modern
"urban" society and a certain symbiosis between "low" and "high civilizations.[AU 3: Can we add a
sentence here saying explicitly that the good item in each dichotomy is always (or usually) equated

with what exists in the West?] The modernization theory that dominated postwar social sciences and
economics distinguished Western modernization from other cultures and regions traditionalism. The
economist W. W. Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth (1959) was a major vehicle for articulating
modernization theory and followed the same Eurocentric theoretical path from traditional to
postindustrialist society. As late as 1998, David Landes's best-selling The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
assured readers of the exceptionality of European culture.

Eurocentrism in the Twenty-First Century

In its present incarnation, Eurocentrism entails the successful, free-trading West teaching the rest of the
world the merits of a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps ethic, which will, proponents believe, bring the
wealth of the West to the poor rest.[AU 4: Your original conclusion is a little too of-the-moment for use
in the encyclopedia. Could you give us a sentence or two about the concept of multiculturalism (is it
just another way of condescending to the rest?) or about how the rest of the world is currently
reacting to this form of Eurocentrism?]
Andre Gunder Frank
Further Reading [AU: The titles here are drawn from your article, but can you recommend a work
other than Orientalism that attacks the notion of Eurocentrism?]
Ascherson, N. (1995). Black Sea. London: Cape.
Huntington, S. (1993). Clash of civilizations. Foreign Affairs, 72(3), pp 22<N>28.
Jones, E. (1981). The European miracle: Environments, economies and geopolitics in the history of Europe
and Asia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Landes, D. (1998). The wealth and poverty of nations: Why are some so rich and others so poor. New York:
W. W. Norton.
McNeil, W. (1963). Rise of the West: A history of the human community. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Rostow, W. W. (1961). Stages of economic growth: A non-Communist manifesto. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Toynbee, A. (1934<N>1961). A study of history. London: Oxford University Press.