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    Eurocentrism PP

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    cenni2cutie
    Eurocentrism views the world from a European perspective, believing European culture and values are superior. However, this viewpoint is problematic. Western values such as individualism and democracy are not unique to Europe and have contradictory aspects. Environmental factors ultimately shape history more than culture. Differences between societies are a matter of degrees, not principles, and values within societies also contain contradictions. Defining Western values as superior imposes an arbitrary version of European history.

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    Eurocentrism PP

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    cenni2cutie
    174 views10 pages
    Eurocentrism views the world from a European perspective, believing European culture and values are superior. However, this viewpoint is problematic. Western values such as individualism and democracy are not unique to Europe and have contradictory aspects. Environmental factors ultimately shape history more than culture. Differences between societies are a matter of degrees, not principles, and values within societies also contain contradictions. Defining Western values as superior imposes an arbitrary version of European history.

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    Eurocentrism views the world from a European perspective, believing European culture and values are superior. However, this viewpoint is problematic. Western values such as individualism and democracy are not unique to Europe and have contradictory aspects. Environmental factors ultimately shape history more than culture. Differences between societies are a matter of degrees, not principles, and values within societies also contain contradictions. Defining Western values as superior imposes an arbitrary version of European history.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as ppt, pdf, or txt
    174 views10 pages

    Eurocentrism PP

    Uploaded by

    cenni2cutie
    Eurocentrism views the world from a European perspective, believing European culture and values are superior. However, this viewpoint is problematic. Western values such as individualism and democracy are not unique to Europe and have contradictory aspects. Environmental factors ultimately shape history more than culture. Differences between societies are a matter of degrees, not principles, and values within societies also contain contradictions. Defining Western values as superior imposes an arbitrary version of European history.

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    Download as ppt, pdf, or txt
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    Eurocentrism

    Eurocentrism is the practice of viewing the world from a European perspective, with an implied belief, either consciously or subconsciously, in the preeminence of European (and, more generally, of Western) culture, concerns and values at the expense of non- Europeans. (wikipedia)

    EUROCENTISM

    One of the more drastic examples of a Eurocentric worldview has been formulated by Samuel Huntington in his well-known article A Clash of Civilizations?, published in Foreign Affairs. He claimed, that 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, p. 40)

    Jochen Hippler reviews Huntingtons article in:

    Eurocentrism (English version of Turkish article)

    He questions whether Western values makes any sense, and whether they are stable, or constantly changing? Western values he explains 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 is an arbitrary attempt to purge European history of its destructive and depressing aspects.

    Western Values

    Another problem, according to Hippler, with many of the values mentioned have less to do with Western culture but with economic modernization. The weakening of religion in Europe The growth of individualism & decline of the family All results of CAPITALISM and mechanization Western thinking at an earlier stage was driven by religious and mystical, superstitious narrow-mindedness. (Those characteristics in which we define Muslim or Hindu societies today).

    Environment molds History


    By: Jared Diamond, In: Guns, Germs & Steel

    Everything important that has happened to humans since the Paleolithic is due to environmental influences. All of the important differences between human societies, all of the differences that led some societies to prosper and progress and others to fail, are due to the nature of each societys local environment and to its geographical location. History as a whole reflects these environmental differences and forces, cultural factors affect the minor details.

    The

    essential argument made by Diamond is that all of history after the Ice Age happened in the temperate mid-latitudes of Eurasia. The natural environment of this large region is better for human progress than are the tropical environments of the world, or the temperate regions of South Africa, Australia and mid-latitude North and South America because they are much smaller than Eurasia and isolated from each other.

    Diamond distinguishes between the ultimate factors and the proximate factors The ultimate factors are environmental. The most important are natural conditions that led to the rise of food production. Those world regions that became agricultural early gained an advantage. The ultimate causes led, in later times, to regional variations in technology, social organization and health; these then, were the proximate causes of modern history.

    The ultimate causes include 3 environmental facts: 1: The shapes of the continents 2: The distribution of domesticable wild plants and animals 3: The geographical barriers inhibiting the diffusion of domesticates. Those with especially favorable environments: China and Europe, had the advantage. Some 500 years ago Chinas environment proved itself inferior to Europes in several crucial ways and EUROPE in the end was triumphant.

    Back to Hipplers view of Eurocentrism

    It is definitely a Eurocentric viewpoint to perceive all Western values : individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state,. Individualism as a Western value has been challenged with conformity psychological testing. Free markets is not really a value but a form of economic exchange and it is not just Western considering the oriental souk or bazaar. Similar things apply to other values, liberty & equality are not particular to the West, but are important concepts to Non-Westerners societies as well.

    While it is possible in principle to discuss distinct cultural ways of worldview and of values, this should be done from the starting point that all these views and values are in motion and full of internal contradictions. In hardly any society the values are undisputed. It may be possible to compare value systems of different countries or cultures, but it is a complex enterprise. Generally, speaking all differences will be more of degree than of principle. All societies know conformism & individualism and in all of them other contradictory values exist besides each other.

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