"At the outset of the classes I teach, I always address the question of bias in the social sciences. In one course – on the history of the global economy – this is the central theme. It critiques Eurocentric biases in several leading Western accounts of the rise of the global economy.
This fall, I began my first lecture on Eurocentrism by asking my students, How Eurocentric is your day? I explained what I wanted to hear from them. Can they get through a typical day without running into ideas, institutions, values, technologies and products that originated outside the West – in China, India, the Islamicate or Africa?"
At college, my student will learn about modernity, ostensibly the source and foundation of the power and the riches of Western nations. Her professors in sociology will claim that laws based on reasoning, the abolition of priesthood, the scientific method, and secularism – hallmarks of modernity – are entirely of Western origin. Are they?
ReplyDeleteI have never attended any course where the professors claimed that any of the concepts mentioned are entirely of Western origin. I cannot believe that his college students were befuddled by his lesson at all. Sounds like Alam was availing himself of another opportunity to bash the West.
I never heard the Enlightenment attributed to China.
ReplyDeleteMolly, much of "western civilization" really derives from the east. Remember that the Aryan civilization emerged from Persia/South Asia. Latin, Greek, Greek mythology, even the western legal system, comes from the east.
ReplyDeleteActually, Europe is widely perceived as a declining power these days.
Today, I heard people saying that Chinese and Asians think Americans and even President Obama are weak and negotiating from a position of weakness. This is the first time in history that America has been perceived this way in Asia. Another Chinese person said, that Obama isn't seen as weak yet; but America is.
Kind of scary how the rest of the world is pushing America around these days. If they think America is week, imagine what they think of Europe. Not good at all. Many Asians regard Europeans as week and increasingly irrelevant.
'Islamicate'? No such word in my opinion. Can we have a ruling, Molly?
ReplyDeleteFirst time I hear it.
ReplyDelete