Talk:Eurocentrism

From Academic Kids

Why is judeocentrism linked from here? Is there a relationship between the two? If so, can someone describe it, please? If not, I'll remove the link. Martin

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I remember clearly that there used to be a page called Americocentrism. If I am not mistaken, it was then turned into a redirect. Now it seems to have gone completely. Should this fact be seen as Americocentrism here at Wikipedia? 131.130.181.71 13:56, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

self-contradictory paragraph

Deleted text: (was 2nd paragraph)

Being subject to eurocentrist practices may lead to the perception that Western concepts are deemed universal, or superior, or at least fundamentally different from those in other cultures or civilizations.

How can a concept be considered universal if while at the same time fundamentally different? This doesn't make sense.

Is this a veiled reference to the concept which justifies or predicts the dominance of Western Civilivation as a consequence of the "uniquely Western" quest to improve itself as a whole? Toynbee (?) or other historians exalt the ancient Greeks as seeking "the good" in general terms. That is, they looked not only inward (to themeselves) but outward (to other cultures) for aspects with which they might better themselves.

Is this the aspect the sentence above deems fundamentally different: the West's anti-ethnocentric tendency to pick and choose the best elements of other civilizations?

Or is the sentence echoing the historian's exaltation of the "superiority" of Western culture as a consequence of its relentless drive to become better? -- Uncle Ed (talk) 16:36, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

More Bias

Interestingly enough, Afrocentricism, although nowhere near as damaging to the world's society as Eurocentricism has been, has been posted with more criticism than this article. I post valid critical response into the article and ALL of it is deleted. So it seems that criticism of Afrocentricism is permitted where it interferes with sound objective educational development, but criticism of Eurocentricism is avoided even though it has interfered with life libertiy and self determination, caused slavery, oligarchies, and racial division.

Another more offensive tradition in Eurocentric discourse and scholarship is for Eurocentric minded scholars to take a "European by default" approach to discussing the history of any mixed culture or ancient civilization that could possibly have had contact with European oriented peoples. By assuming that contact was made in antiquity, the Eurocentric scholar will assert that the culture or civilization was by default "European" or "Caucasoid" in antiquity, and that these characteristics were the foundations that caused civilizations like Egypt, Ethiopia, Israel, and many East Indian civilizations to flourish in history. Usually the tradition will assert a condition in stating that de-empathizes or minimizes the non-European influence by using words like "although" and "however" after facts had shown that subject matter in question is not European in nature. This conditioning is done to harmonize the psychological need of the Eurocentric minded to lay claim to everything meaningful in history. Most notably is the need to lay claim to the Biblical and ancient Egyptian histories that are in fact not Eurocentric histories.

poor stuff

For such an important concept, this is a very poor quality article which barely addresses the important issues. It also contains a lot of very garbled stuff (some of it added by the indignant anonymous contributor above). It's difficult to know what to make of paragraph like this:

For example, the very definition of a continent was expanded to separate the Eurasian continent into two parts, Europe and Asia as to place Europe itself into more prominence. In addition cartesian maps have been designed throughout history to center the northwestern part of Europe (most notably Great Britain) in the map.

What is a "cartesian map": one designed by Descartes? When was the "definition of a continent" expanded to divide up Eurasia to promote Europe? The Europe/Asia distinction dates back to the ancient world, before the extent of these landmasses were known and before "Eurocentrism" was a meaningful concept or "Eurasia" known to exist. So this is wholly false, historically. Anyway, the argument makes no sense. In itself, dividing the landmass no more promotes Europe than Asia. As for world maps, they were first created by Europeans, so naturally expanded to the left and right from Europe, as more of the world became known. As a historical process this is pretty much inevitable, and conforms to the way known non-European maps developed with the map-making country in the centre. But it so happens it's virtually impossible to divide up the world any other way without chopping through a large landmass. Try it with a globe. Paul B 14:52, 28 May 2005 (UTC).