“We are the World” EUROCENTRISM AIM: How do we view world history? From what lens? How does this effect our Point of View? DO NOW: DEFINE THE TERM EUROCENTRISM Mr. Ott @ BETA 2012-13 – AP World
Dec 18, 2015
“We are the World”
EUROCENTRISM
AIM: How do we view world history? From what lens? How does this effect our Point of View?DO NOW: DEFINE THE TERM EUROCENTRISM
Mr. Ott @ BETA 2012-13 – AP World
EUROCENTRIC APPROACHTO WORLD STUDIES
EUROCENTRIC APPROACHTO WORLD STUDIES
NorthAmerica
SouthAmerica Africa
Australia
AsiaEUROPE
MULTICULTURAL APPROACHTO WORLD STUDIES
MULTICULTURAL APPROACHTO WORLD STUDIES
Conceptor Event
NorthAmerica
SouthAmerica
Africa
Australia
Asia
Europe
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.
STABLE EUROPEAN FAMILY STRUCTURES?
1ST DEFINITION OF EUROCENTRISM
is 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 EUROCENTRISM
A 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.
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.