Eurocentrism

A False Understanding of Universality?

Samuel Huntington: The Clash of Civilizations. 1999

Samuel Huntington “A Clash of Civilizations?”

A drastic examples of an actual eurocentric worldview.

Citation: “Western concepts differ fundamentally from those prevalent in other civilizations. Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures.” (Huntington 1993, 40)

– Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civilizations?. In: Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993: 22-49.

Makes the term “Western” values any sense?

individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state Whatever these values may be, they obviously are not stable. And they are full of contradictions.

“Western” values …

have developed considerably over time, and have kept changing

E.g. three generations of Human Rights• Declaration 1948• Social Pact 1966• Resolution on the right of development

1986

History teaches us that …

“Western thinking” at an earlier stage was basically driven by religious and mystical narrow-mindedness, by superstition in its Christian or non-Christian versions, by all the things that the West today believes are specific for Muslim or Hindu societies.

The following examples are taken from

Hippler, Jochen: Anstatt einer notwendigen Satire: Eine kleine Polemik zum Clash of Civilizations nebst einigen Anmerkungen zum Islamismus. In: • http://www.jochen-hippler.de/

Aufsaetze/Clash_of_Civilizations _-_Polem/clash_of_civilizations_-_polem.html (07.08.06)

Stable European Family Structures?

Family StructuresWhile stable family structures have been very important until into the twentieth century, today family cohesion has lost most of its meaning and importance. Even being married does not matter very much any longer, at least in big cities of Europe.

In many of them, some one third of the household are single persons and one third of all marriages end in divorce.

Just a few decades ago this would have been unthinkable.

Family Structures

But what does it imply for “Western values”? Are family values not any longer part of them, after they were for centuries?

Strong pro-human rights tradition in Europe versus Fascism and Stalinism

Western “values” have entailed both freedom and repression,

both human rights and the holocaust, and both streaks of traditions have fought with each other. To define “Western values” only as the positive side of this double faced history is an arbitrary attempt to purge European history of its destructive and depressing aspects.

Economic Moderinzation

Many of the “values” mentioned may have less to do with “western” culture, but with economic modernization.

Results of Capitalism, of Mechanization, of the Market Mechanism

The weakening of religion in Europe, the growth of individualism, or, again, the decline of the family, all not necessarily are “Western values” at all, but results of capitalism, of mechanization, of the market mechanism. In this case they would just appear “Western”, because these phenomena have first happened on a large scale in Europe, but they would in fact be above cultural specifics.

“Western values” is not anything stable or homogenous

These trends would then not constitute European values, but shape them. Only the societies affected would obviously perceive them as something forming part of their “original” identity.

The Charge of EurocentrismIn the 1960s a reaction against the priority given to a canon of „Dead White European Males“ provided a slogan which neatly sums up the charge of Eurocentrism (alongside other important -centrisms).

Anti-Western Idea in the 1960s

The fall of Universal History and the rise of Multicultural World History

An anti-Western attitude stating, that the single most important phenomenon of modern world history is the imperialist expansion of Europe against the development of societies situated in the periphery.

1st Definition of Eurocentrismis the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing emphasis on European (and, generally, Western) concerns, culture and values at the expense of those of other cultures. Eurocentrism is an instance of ethnocentrism, perhaps especially relevant because of its alignment with current and past real power structures in the world. Eurocentrism often involved claiming cultures that were not white or European as being such, or denying their existence at all.

2nd Definition of EurocentrismA set of scientifically proved criterias and categories for dealing with the others, constituting their particular inferiority

e.g. Friedrich Willhelm Hegel‘s Hirarchy for the comparision of world regions

• America is inferior to Africa due to the comparative short sature of the american flora and fauna

• Asia is inferior to Europe, because it is old aged and exhausted

• Africa is inferior to Europe due to its lack of civilization

Gerbi, Antonello. Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, 1750-1900. 1955. Trans. Jeremy Moyle. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1973.

3rd Definition of Eurocentrism

Emerges in the slipstream of universality = the mayor myth of „The West“

• Raimon Panikkar (1995) Religion, Philosophy and Culture. In: polylog. Forum for Intercultural Philosophy = http://them.polylog.org/1/fpr-en.htm (2006-09-12)

demanding MULTI- and INTERCULTURALITY

Every Culture Creates Its Own Myths

Western Culture ...

... states that there was no myth in its culture

but a basis = sciences

There are no Cultural Universals

„Each culture possesses a cosmovision and reveals the world in which we live (…). Each culture is a galaxy which secretes its self-understanding, and with it, the criteria of truth, goodness, and beauty of all human actions.

• Panikkar 1995

There are no Cultural Universalsi.e. concrete meaningful contents valid for all the cultures, for mankind throughout all times. What one calls human nature is an abstraction.

And every abstraction is an operation of the mind which removes (abstracts) from a greater reality (as seen by this mind) something (less universal) which it considers as important. There cannot be cultural universals, for it is culture itself which makes possible (and plausible) its own universals.“

• Panikkar 1995

Culture is a Subject

„By saying that there are no cultural universals, we are using a way of thinking which is foreign to the modern "scientific" mentality, in which predominates (when not dominates) simple objectivity (and objectibility) of the real. Culture is not simply an object, since we are constitutively immersed in it as subjects (…) , i.e. subjectivity, essentially belongs to the human being.“

• Panikkar 1995

The Conquering Myth

 It is very revealing to inquire whence and why a "mythology" was born (not the narrative, mythos-legein) as a rational science about others' myths (legends). All those who do not come from the South or the Center of England speak English with an accent: only the "natives", of course, speak without an accent ... Everything which did not fit into the mental framework of what is called the Enlightenment, which flourished precisely when the West had politically "conquered" more than three quarters of the planet, has been called primitive myth, and still nowadays, "on the way to development". Panikkar 1995

Examples of such a critique

Tzvetan TodorovCarlos Castaneda

Pluralism and Interculturality

„Cultural respect requires that we respect those ways of life that we disapprove, or even those that we consider as pernicious. We may be obliged to go as far as to combat these cultures, but we cannot elevate our own to the rank of universal paradigm in order to judge the other ones.  (…) one of the cements of interculturality.“

• Panikkar 1995

Against Eurocentric History

Andre Gunder FRANK: ReOrient. Global Economy in the Asian Age. University of California Press 1998. obligatory reading: Chapter 1, p. 1-51.

Against Eurocentrism

Frank 1998,7:

19. Jh.: leadership not hegemony shifted to the west 21. Jh.: leadership not hegemony shifted again to the east

Thesis of Eurocentrism in Western historiography

National histories formed nation states in Europe and America „… serving the ideological, political, and economic interests of their ruling classes.” (XIX)

„If any regions were predominant in the world

economy before 1800, they were in Asia.“ (Frank 1998, 5)

Adam SMITH (1776): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

“…was the last major (Western) social theorist to appreciate that Europe was a Johnny-come-lately in the development of the wealth of nations.” (Frank 1998, 13)

Frank against Eurocentrism„We need more than global terminology. We also need global analysis and theory” (Frank 1998, 38). „…history makes people more than people make history…“ (Frank 1998, 41).„globological perspective“ (Frank 1998, XV).„We must analyze the whole, which is more than the sum of its parts“ (Frank 1998, XV).

Prominant References in Frank 1998

ClassicsFernand BraudelKarl PolanyiWerner Sombart

CoevalsEdward SaidSamir AminSidney MintzEric WolfJanet Abu-LughodJohn K. FairbankMartin Bernal