Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism is the practice of viewing the world from a European perspective and with an implied belief, consciously or subconsciously, in the pre-eminence of European culture. The term was coined in the 1980s, referring to the notion of European exceptionalism, a worldview centred on Western civilisation, as it had developed during the height of the European colonial empires since the early modern period. The term became prevalent in the discourse during the 1990s, such as in the context of decolonisation.

Terminology

The term Eurocentrism (French eurocentrisme) was coined, in 1988, by Samir Amin, an Egyptian-French educated Marxian economist from Egypt, director of the Institut Africain de Développement Économique et de Planification from 1980.

The earlier adjective Europe-centric came into use in the early 20th century. The term appears in precisely that form in the writings of the right-wing German writer Karl Haushofer during the 1920s. For instance, in Haushofer's 'Geo-Politics of the Pacific Space' (Geopolitik des pazifischen Ozeans), Haushofer contrasts this Pacific space in terms of global politics to the 'European' and 'Europe-centric' (europa-zentrisch)(pp. 11–23, 110-113, passim).

The term Europocentrism appears in the 1970s in the Marxist writings of Samir Amin as part of a global, core-periphery or dependency model of capitalist development. 'Eurocentrism' appears only by 1988, in the titles of Amin's books, as the definition of an ideology.

European exceptionalism

During European colonial era, encyclopedias under "Europe", often sought to give a rationale for the predominance of European rule during the colonial period by referring to a special position taken by Europe compared to the other continents.

Thus, Johann Heinrich Zedler, in 1741, wrote that "even though Europe is the smallest of the world's four continents, it has for various reasons a position that places it before all others.... Its inhabitants have excellent customs, they are courteous and erudite in both sciences and crafts".^{[source needs translation]}

The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie (Conversations-Lexicon) of 1847 still has an ostensibly Eurocentric approach and claims about Europe that "its geographical situation and its cultural and political significance is clearly the most important of the five continents, over which it has gained a most influential government both in material and even more so in cultural aspects".^{[source needs translation]}

European exceptionalism is widely reflected in popular genres of literature, especially literature for young adults (for example, Rudyard Kipling's Kim) and adventure literature in general. Portrayal of European colonialism in such literature has been analysed in terms of "Eurocentrism" in retrospect, such as presenting idealised and often exaggeratedly masculine Western heroes, who conquered 'savage' peoples in the remaining 'dark spaces' of the globe.

History

Origin in colonialism

Further information: The European Miracle, Great Divergence, Age of Exploration, Colonialism, and Western World

See also: Roman Empire, Renaissance, The Enlightenment, and The Reformation

Further information: Dutch Golden Age, Spanish Golden Age, Britain's Imperial Century, and Portuguese Empire

Early Eurocentrism can be traced to the Renaissance during which the revival of learning based on classical sources were focused on the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations since they were a significant source of contemporary European civilisation.

The effects of the verity of European superiority increased during the period of European imperialism, which started slowly in the 15th century, accelerated by the Scientific Revolution, the Commercial Revolution, and the rise of colonial empires in the "Great Divergence" of the Early Modern period, and it reached its zenith in the 18th to 19th century with the Industrial Revolution and a Second European colonization wave.

The progressively mechanised character of European culture was contrasted with traditional hunting, farming and herding societies in many of the areas of the world being newly conquered and colonised by Europeans, such as the Americas, Asia, Africa and, later, the Pacific and Australasia. Many European writers of this time construed the history of Europe as paradigmatic for the rest of the world. Other cultures were identified as having reached a stage that Europe itself had already passed: primitive hunter-gatherer, farming, early civilisation, feudalism and modern liberal-capitalism. Only Europe was considered to have achieved the last stage.

For some writers, such as Karl Marx, the centrality of Europe to an understanding of world history did not imply any innate European superiority, but he nevertheless assumed that Europe provided a model for the world as a whole. Others looked forward to the expansion of modernity throughout the world through trade, imperialism or both.

The colonising period involved the widespread settlement of the Americas and Australasia with European people and the establishment of outposts and colonial administrations in Africa and parts of Asia. As a result, the majority populations of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand typically trace their ancestry to Europe.

The longitude meridians of world maps based on the prime meridian, placing Greenwich, London in the centre, has been in use since 1851. Various other prime meridians were in use during the Age of Exploration. The current prime meridian has the advantage that it places the International Date Line in the Pacific, inconveniencing the smallest number of people.

"European miracle", a term coined by Eric Jones in 1981, refers to the surprising rise of Europe during the Early Modern period. During the 15th to 18th centuries, a "great divergence" took place, comprising the European Renaissance, age of discovery, the formation of the colonial empires, the Age of Reason, and the associated leap forward in technology and the development of capitalism and early industrialisation. The result was that by the 19th century, European powers dominated world trade and world politics.

Early anticolonialism

Even in the 19th century, anticolonial movements had developed claims about national traditions and values that were set against those of Europe. In some cases, as China, where local ideology was even more exclusionist than the Eurocentric one, Westernisation did not overwhelm longstanding Chinese attitudes to its own cultural centrality, but some would state that idea itself is a rather desperate attempt to cast Europe in a good light by comparison.

Decolonization

Further information: Decolonization and Peters World Map

World map in the Mercator projection

Worldmap in the Gall-Peters projection.

The traditional Mercator projection greatly distorts areas far from the equator, making the Arctic, the Antarctic and, to a lesser degree, also Europe, North America and Northern Asia appear disproportionately large compared to areas close to the equator, such as Africa or Central America. The Peters World Map seeks to present a more realistic depiction of the continents' relative sizes.

Debate since 1990s

Further information: White privilege, white guilt, Afrocentrism, Sociology of race and ethnic relations, Cultural relativism, Multiculturalism, and Race in the United States

In treatises on historical or contemporary Eurocentrism that appeared since the 1990s, Eurocentrism is mostly cast in terms of dualisms such as civilized/barbaric or advanced/backward, developed/undeveloped, core/periphery, implying "evolutionary schemas through which societies inevitably progress", supposedly with a remnant of an "underlying presumption of a [supposedly] superior white Western self as referent of analysis" (640). Eurocentrism and the dualistic properties that it labels on non-European countries, cultures and persons have often been criticized in the political discourse of the 1990s and 2000s, particularly in the greater context of political correctness, race in the United States and affirmative action.

There has been some debate on whether historical Eurocentrism qualifies as "just another ethnocentrism", as it is found in most of the world's cultures, especially in cultures with imperial aspirations, as in the Sinocentrism in China; in the Empire of Japan (c. 1868-1945), or during the American Century. James M. Blaut (2000) argued that Eurocentrism indeed army beyond other ethnocentrisms, as the scale of European colonial expansion was historically unprecedented and resulted in the formation of a "colonizer's model of the world".

Eurocentrism has been a particularly important concept in development studies. Supposed Eurocentrism has been criticised as a form of cultural relativism claiming the universal desirability of concepts like "development", democracy, human rights and technological progress while it ignored potentially beneficial concepts and knowledge found in non-Western societies. Thus, proponents of political Islam have proposed a notion of "Human Rights in Islam", subject to Islamic law, as a challenge to the universality of human rights as based in European Humanism.

Proponents of political Hinduism have posited a notion of Integral Humanism, based on specifically Hindu values as transcending the western dichotomy of capitalism vs. communism.

The notion of cultural relativism, questioning the ultimate subjectivity of the Western tradition of academia that developed alongside the scientific revolution, has become widely popular within western academia itself by the later part of the 20th century and has become part of the discourse of postmodernism.

Brohman (1995) argued that Eurocentrism "perpetuated intellectual dependence on a restricted group of prestigious Western academic institutions that determine the subject matter and methods of research".

The separation of Eurasia into Europe and Asia criticized as Eurocentric by Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen in their book, The Myth of Continents (1997): "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. A better (if still imperfect) analogy would compare France, not to India as a whole, but to a single Indian state, such as Uttar Pradesh." The logical inconsistency of the traditional continent system is uniquely apparent in the case of India, which, despite occupying its own tectonic plate and having clearer boundaries than traditionally defined Europe (via the Himalayas), is still not considered a separate continent.

Eric Sheppard, in 2005, argued that contemporary Marxism has Eurocentric traits when it supposes that the third world must go through a stage of capitalism before "progressive social formations can be envisioned".

"Afrocentrism" vs. "Eurocentrism" continues to play a role in the political discourse on race in the United States and "Critical Whiteness Studies", aiming to expose "white supremacism" and supposed "white privilege".

In academia

African scholars, such as Molefi Asante, have argued that there is a prevalence of Eurocentric thought in the processing of much of academia on African affairs. On the other hand, in an article, 'Eurocentrism and Academic Imperialism' by Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi, from the University of Tehran, states that Eurocentric thought exists in almost all aspects of academia in many parts of the world, especially in the humanities. Edgar Alfred Bowring states that in the West, self-regard, self-congratulation and denigration of the ‘Other’ run more deeply and those tendencies have infected more aspects of their thinking, laws and policy than anywhere else. Luke Clossey and Nicholas Guyatt have measured the degree of Eurocentrism in the research programs of top history departments.

Philosophical methods are well suited for unpacking the political, ontological, and epistemological conditions that foster racism and hold white supremacy in place. However, on the whole, philosophy as a discipline has remained relatively untouched by interdisciplinary work on race and whiteness. In its quest for certainty, Western philosophy continues to generate what it imagines to be colorless and genderless accounts of knowledge, reality, morality, and human nature

— Alison Baile, "Philosophy and Whiteness"

Challenging Eurocentric models

During the same period that European writers were claiming paradigmatic status for their own history, European scholars were also beginning to develop a knowledge of the histories and cultures of other peoples. In some cases, only one locally established history was accepted, such as the Aryan invasion theory for the origin of Vedic culture in India, which has been criticised for having at one time been modelled in such a way as to support claims for European superiority. At the same time, the intellectual traditions of Eastern cultures were becoming more widely known in the West, mediated by figures such as Rabindranath Tagore. By the early 20th century, some historians, such as Arnold J. Toynbee, were attempting to construct multifocal models of world civilizations. Toynbee also drew attention in Europe to non-European historians, such as the medieval Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun. He also established links with Asian thinkers, such as through his dialogues with Daisaku Ikeda of Soka Gakkai International.

At the same time, non-European historians were involved in complex engagements with European models of history as contrasted with their own traditions. Historical models centering on China, Japan, India, Persia, Arabia and other nations existed within those cultures, which, to varying degrees, maintained their own cultural traditions, but countries that were directly controlled by European powers were more affected by Eurocentric models than others were. Thus, Japan absorbed Western ideas while it maintained its own cultural identity.

Even in the nineteenth century, anticolonial movements had developed claims about national traditions and values that were set against those of Europe. In some cases, as China, where local ideology was even more exclusionist than the Eurocentric one, Westernisation did not overwhelm long-established Chinese attitudes to its own cultural centrality. In contrast, countries such as Australia defined their nationhood entirely in terms of an overseas extension of European history. It was, until recently, thought to have had no history or serious culture before colonization. The history of the native inhabitants was subsumed by the Western disciplines of ethnology and archaeology. In Central America and South America, a merger of immigrant and native histories was constructed. Nationalist movements appropriated the history of native civilizations, such as the Mayans and Incas, to construct models of cultural identity that claimed a fusion between immigrant and native identity.

See also

• Americentrism
• History of Western civilization
• Orientalism
• Pan-European identity
• The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics
• Universalism in geography
• Western culture

Bibliography

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• Preiswerk, Roy; Dominique Perrot (1978). Ethnocentrism and History: Africa, Asia, and Indian America in Western Textbooks. New York and London: NOK. ISBN 0-88357-071-8. 
• Rüsen, Jörn (2004). "How to Overcome Ethnocentrism: Approaches to a Culture of Recognition by History in the Twenty-First Century". History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History (43:2004): 118–129. 
• Trevor-Roper, Hugh (1965). The Rise of Christian Europe. London: Thames and Hudson. ASIN B000O894GO. 
• Samir Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale, Monthly Review Press, 1974.
• Samir Amin: L’eurocentrisme, critique d’une idéologie. Paris 1988, engl. Eurocentrism, Monthly Review Press 1989, ISBN 0-85345-786-7
• J.M. Blaut: The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. Guilford Press 1993. ISBN 0-89862-348-0
• J.M. Blaut: Eight Eurocentric Historians. Guilford Press 2000. ISBN 1-57230-591-6
• Karl Haushofer, Geopolitik des pazifischen Ozeans, Berlin, Kurt Vowinckel Verlag, 1924.
• Vassilis Lambropoulos, The rise of Eurocentrism: Anatomy of interpretation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993
• Ella Shohat; Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: multiculturalism and the media, Routledge 1994, ISBN 0-415-06325-6
• Jose Rabasa, Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism (Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory, Vol 2), University of Oklahoma Press 1994
• Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: multiculturalism and the media, Routledge 1994
• Ilia Xypolia, Eurocentrism and Orientalism, The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, 2016.

External links

• Eurocentrism in Mathematics