Affiliation:
1. National University of Singapore, Singapore
Abstract
Orientalism continues to manifest itself in the humanities and social sciences today in a way that is different from the 19th and early 20th century. This presents challenges of doing social theory. Orientalism defines the content of education in the schools and universities of the world in such a way that the origins of ideas and concepts and the question of alternative perspectives are not thematized. It is this lack of thematization that explains the neglect of non-European thinkers and ideas. They are rarely given the same attention as European and American social theorists such as Marx, Weber and Durkheim. Furthermore, it should be stressed that Orientalism is a thought-style that is not restricted to Europeans or Americans. The social sciences are taught in the Third World too in a Eurocentric manner, contributing to the alienation of social scientists there from local and regional scholarly traditions. At the same time, university education in these countries generally does not attempt to correct the Orientalist bias by introducing non-Western thinkers. It is as if no significant ideas emerged from outside of the Western areas during the formative period of the social sciences beginning in the 19th century. There is a need to universalize the canon. This is the topic of this article.
Subject
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous),Anthropology,Cultural Studies
Cited by
4 articles.
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