Europe and Asia Beyond East and
West
This is a timely volume that explores Europe in its relation to Asia in a
way that moves beyond simplistic notions of West and East. Rejecting the
idea of a clash of civilizations, the contributions highlight the interlinked
nature of Europe and Asia and attempt to identify cosmopolitan moments
of openness.
From both a historical and a contemporary perspective, it is shown that
both Europe and Asia are not based on fixed cultural or geographical
foundations. The East is also in the West. Rather than look at Europe and
Asia in terms of separate worlds, they can be seen in terms of cultural
struggles common to both. A general theme is that the idea of the West as
an ideological, cultural and geopolitical construct is becoming increasingly
questionable when applied to the current situation, which is one in which
West and East are mutually linked. The articulation of a new European
identity that includes a recognition of the non-European is now one of the
major chances for Europe to define its identity in the world.
Chapters are thematically organized under four headings:
•
•
•
•
A post-Western world
Asia in Europe: Encounters in History
Between Europe and Asia
Otherness in Europe and Asia
This major new title will be of great value to students and researchers in
the fields of Sociology, European Politics and History, and Cultural
Theory.
Gerard Delanty is Professor of Sociology, University of Liverpool. His
recent books include (with Chris Rumford) Rethinking Europe: Social
Theory and the Implications of Europeanization (Routledge, 2005);
Community (Routledge, 2004). He has edited Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory (Routledge, 2005) and (with Krishan Kumar)
The Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (Sage, 2006).
Routledge/European Sociological Association studies in
European societies
Series editors: Thomas P. Boje, Max Haller, Martin Kohli and
Alison Woodward
1 European Societies
Fusion or fission?
Edited by Thomas P. Boje, Bart van Steebergen and Sylvia Walby
2 The Myth of Generational Conflict
The family and state in ageing societies
Edited by Sara Arber and Claudine Attias-Donfut
3 The End of the Welfare State?
Responses to state retrenchment
Edited by Peter Taylor-Gooby and Stefan Svallfors
4 Will Europe Work?
Integration, employment and the social order
Edited by Martin Kohli and Mojca Novak
5 Inclusions and Exclusions in European Societies
Edited by Martin Kohli and Alison Woodward
6 Young Europeans, Work and Family
Futures in transition
Edited by Julia Brannen, Suzan Lewis, Ann Nilsen and Janet Smithsen
7 Autobiographies of Transformation
Lives in central and eastern Europe
Edited by Mike Keen and Janusz Mucha
8 Europe and Asia Beyond East and West
Edited by Gerard Delanty
Europe and Asia Beyond
East and West
Edited by Gerard Delanty
!l
Routledge
~
Taylor&Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2006 by Routledge
Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2006 Selection and editorial matter, Gerard Delanty; individual
chapters, the contributors
Typeset in Sabon by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.tandfebooks.com,
has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non
Commercial- No Derivatives 4.0 license.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN13: 978-0-415-37947-2 (hbk)
Contents
Notes on contributors
Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction: the idea of a post-Western Europe
viii
xiv
1
GERARD DELANTY
PART I
A post-Western world
1 Europe from a cosmopolitan perspective
9
11
ULRICH BECK AND GERARD DELANTY
2 Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias
24
GÖRAN THERBORN
3 Civilizational constellations and European modernity
reconsidered
45
GERARD DELANTY
4 Oriental globalization: past and present
61
JAN NEDERVEEN PIETERSE
PART II
Asia in Europe: encounters in history
5 Contested divergence: rethinking the ‘rise of the West’
JOHANN P. ARNASON
75
77
vi Contents
6 Discovering the world: cosmopolitanism and globality in the
‘Eurasian’ renaissance
92
DAVID INGLIS AND ROLAND ROBERTSON
7 Revealing the cosmopolitan side of Oriental Europe: the
eastern origins of European civilisation
107
JOHN M. HOBSON
8 Europe and the Mediterranean: a reassessment
120
THOMAS W. GALLANT
9 Europe and Islam
138
JACK GOODY
10 Citizenship East and West: reflections on revolutions and
civil society
148
BRYAN S. TURNER
11 Middle Eastern modernities, Islam and cosmopolitanism
161
MASOUD KAMALI
PART III
Between Europe and Asia
179
12 Borders and rebordering
181
CHRIS RUMFORD
13 Europe after the EU enlargement: ‘cosmopolitanism by
small steps’
193
WILLIAM OUTHWAITE
14 Turkey between Europe and Asia
203
E. FUAT KEYMAN
15 Russia as Eurasia: an innate cosmopolitanism
215
RICHARD SAKWA
16 Out of Europe but not in Europe: Israel between ethnic
nation-state and Jewish cosmopolitanism
NATAN SZNAIDER
228
Contents vii
PART IV
Otherness in Europe and Asia
241
17 Europe’s otherness: cosmopolitanism and the construction
of cultural unities
243
HEIDRUN FRIESE
18 Is there such a thing as Eurocentrism?
257
RÉMI BRAGUE
19 Rethinking Asia: multiplying modernity
269
ALASTAIR BONNETT
20 Critical intellectuals in a global age: Asian and European
encounters
284
FRED DALLMAYR
21 Chinese thought and dialogical universalism
305
TONG SHIJUN
Index
316
Notes on contributors
Johann P. Arnason is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and was until recently editor of the journal Thesis
Eleven. He has published widely on social theory and historical sociology. Recent publications include: The Peripheral Centre: Essays on
Japanese History and Civilization (TransPacific Books 2002); Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions (Brill
2003); (co-edited with Bjorn Wittrock) Eurasian Transformations,
Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries: Crystallizations, Divergences, Renaissances (Brill 2004); and (co-edited with S. N. Eisenstadt and Bjorn Wittrock) Axial Civilizations and World History (Brill 2005).
Ulrich Beck is Professor for Sociology at the University of Munich, and the
British Journal of Sociology Professor at the London School of Economics and Sciences. From 1995 to 1998 he was Distinguished
Research Professor at the University of Cardiff. From 1995 to 1997 he
was member of the Future Commission of the German Government.
His interests focus on ‘risk society’, ‘individualization’ and ‘reflexive
modernization’. His most recent research activities include a long-term
empirical study of the sociological and political implications of ‘reflexive modernization’, which explores the complexities and uncertainties
of the process of transformation from first to second modernity. Specifically he is working on a sociological framework to analyse the ambivalences and dynamics of ‘cosmopolitan societies’. Some of his major
publications include: The Cosmopolitan Vision (Polity 2006); Power in
the Global Age (Blackwell 2005); (with E. Beck-Gernsheim) Individualization (Sage 2000); Brave New World of Work (Polity 2000); World
Risk Society (Polity 1999); and What is Globalization? (Polity 1999).
Alastair Bonnett is Professor of Social Geography at the University of
Newcastle. He is the author of Radicalism, Anti-racism and Representation (Routledge 1993); Anti-racism (Routledge 2000); White Identities:
International and Historical Perspectives (Pearson 2000); How to
Argue (Pearson 2001); and The Idea of the West: History, politics and
culture (Palgrave 2004).
Notes on contributors ix
Rémi Brague is Professor of Philosophy at the Univerité Paris 1-Sorbonne
and at the University of Munich. He has also taught at Boston University. His books include The Wisdom of the World: The Human
Experience of the Universe in Western Thought (Chicago University
Press 2003) and Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
(St. Augustine’s Press, Indiana 2002).
Fred Dallmayr is Packey J. Dee Professor in the departments of Political
Science and Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame (USA). He
holds a doctorate from Munich University and a PhD from Duke University (USA). Among his recent publications are: Beyond Orientalism
(State University of New York Press 1996); Alternative Visions
(Rowman & Littlefield 1998); Achieving our World: Toward a Global
and Plural Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield 2001); Dialogue Among
Civilizations (Palgrave/Macmillan 2002); Peace Talks: Who Will
Listen? (University of Notre Dame Press 2004); and Small Wonder:
Global Power and its Discontents (Rowman & Littlefield 2005).
Gerard Delanty is Professor of Sociology, University of Liverpool, UK and
has written on various issues in social theory and general sociology. He
is editor of the European Journal of Social Theory. His publications
include Inventing Europe (Macmillan 1995); Social Science (1997; new
edition 2005); Social Theory in a Changing World (Polity Press 1998);
Modernity and Postmodernity (Sage 2000); Citizenship in a Global Age
(Open University Press 2000); Challenging Knowledge: The University
in the Knowledge Society (Open University Press 2001); (with Patrick
O’Mahony) Nationalism and Social Theory (Sage 2002); Community
(Routledge 2003); (edited) Adorno: Modern Masters 4 vols (Sage 2004);
(edited with Piet Strydom) Philosophies of Social Science (Open University Press 2003); (with Chris Rumford) Rethinking Europe: Social
Theory and the Implications of Europeanization (Routledge 2005); and
has edited the Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory
(Routledge 2005) and (with Krishan Kumar) The Handbook of Nations
and Nationalism (Sage 2006).
Heidrun Friese is currently working on a research project on ‘Modernity
and Contingency’ at the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur
l’Allemagne, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris and is
teaching at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am
Main. Recent publications include: (co-edited with Giuseppe Bronzini,
Antonio Negri and Peter Wagner) Europa, Costituzione e Movimenti
Sociali (Manifestolibri 2003); (as editor) Identities: Time, Boundaries
and Difference (Berghahn 2002); (co-edited with Antonio Negri and
Peter Wagner) Europa Politica: Ragioni di una Necessità (Manifestolibri 2002); and (as editor) The Moment: Time and Rupture in
Modern Thought (Liverpool University Press 2001).
x Notes on contributors
Thomas W. Gallant holds the Hellenic Heritage Foundation Chair of
Modern Greek History at York University, Toronto. Professor Gallant
received his PhD from Cambridge University in 1982. Previous to
receiving the HHF Chair at York in 2002, for seventeen years he was
professor of Greek history and anthropology at the University of
Florida. He has published six books and over forty scholarly articles.
His most recently published books are: The 1918 Anti-Greek Riot in
Toronto (CHHS 2005); Modern Greece (Arnold 2001); and Experiencing Dominion: Culture, Identity and Power in the British Mediterranean (University of Notre Dame Press 2002). Experiencing Dominion
won the 2003 Modern Greek Studies Association’s Best Book Prize. He
is currently completing two books, Murder on Black Mountain: Love
and Death on a Nineteenth Century Greek Island and Violence,
Honour and Masculinity in Nineteenth Century Greece.
Jack (John) Rankine Goody was born in 1919 and educated at St. John’s
College, Cambridge. He has conducted fieldwork in Ghana, India and
China; and he has written extensively on literacy, the family, the Bagre
myth of the LoDagaa, and on cuisine and the culture of flowers. His
most recent work is: The East in the West (Cambridge University Press
1996); Islam in Europe (Polity Press 2003); Capitalism and Modernity:
the Great Debate (Polity Press 2004); and The Theft of History (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
John M. Hobson is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the
University of Sheffield. He has published five books, the two most
recent of which are The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge University Press 2004) and (co-edited with Steve Hobden)
Historical Sociology of International Relations (Cambridge University
Press 2002). He works at the intersection of IR/IPE theory and Global
History/Historical Sociology, with a primary interest in the issue of
inter-civilizational relations, past and present. To this end he is currently finishing a co-edited book called Everyday IPE: How Everyday
Actors Transform the World Economy (with Len Seabrooke).
David Inglis is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Aberdeen.
He writes in the areas of social theory and the sociology of culture. He
has particular interests in the history of modes of consciousness, with
reference both to modernity and ancient civilizations. Among his
publications are: Confronting Culture: Sociological Vistas (Polity 2003);
The Uses of Sport (Routledge 2004); Culture and Everyday Life (Routledge 2005); and, with Roland Robertson, Globalization and Social
Theory: Redefining the Social Sciences (Open University Press 2006).
Masoud Kamali is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at Uppsala
University (Centre for Multiethnic Research) and MidSweden University (Department of Social Policy). He has published many books and
Notes on contributors xi
papers in English, Persian and Swedish. Several of his books and articles
deal with the questions of modern social movements in Islamic countries. Among his publications are: Multiple Modernities, Civil Society
and Islam: The Case of Iran and Turkey; and Revolutionary Iran: Civil
Society and Islam in the Modernization Process. His current research
continues to investigate civil societies, movements and multiple modernities in Muslim countries, in particular he is carrying out a comparative analysis of Iranian and Turkish paths to modernization. In
addition, he is leading a major European project, The European
Dilemma: Institutional Patterns and Politics of ‘Racial’ Discrimination,
in which eight European countries are engaged.
E. Fuat Keyman is Professor of International Relations at Koç University,
İstanbul. He is also the director of the Koç University Center for
Research on Globalization and Democratic Governance (GLODEM).
He works on democratization, globalization, international relations,
Turkish politics and Turkish foreign policy. He has produced many
books and articles, both in English and in Turkish, in these areas. He is
the author of Globalization, State, Identity/Difference: Towards a Critical Social Theory of International Relations (Humanities Press 1997);
Turkey and Radical Democracy (Alfa 2001); Remaking Turkey: Globalization, Modernity and Democratization (Lexington, forthcoming);
and a co-editor of Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions
and Turkish Experiences (Routledge 2005).
Jan Nederveen Pieterse is Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, and specializes in transnational sociology, his
research interests incorporating globalization, development studies and
cultural studies. He is the author of: Culture and Globalization
(Rowman & Littlefield 2004); Development Theory: Deconstructions/
Reconstructions (Sage and TCS 2001); Racism and Stereotyping for
Beginners (Dutch 1994); White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks
in Western Popular Culture (Yale UP 1992); and Empire and Emancipation: Power and Liberation on a World Scale (Praeger 1989, Pluto
1990); and the editor of Global Futures: Shaping Globalization (Zed
2000); World Orders in the Making: Humanitarian Intervention and
Beyond (Macmillan and St Martin’s 1998); Emancipations: Modern
and Postmodern (Sage 1992); and Christianity and Hegemony (Berg
1992).
William Outhwaite is Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex.
He is the author of various books including: Habermas: A Critical
Introduction (Polity Press 1994); The Future of Society (Blackwell
2006); and (with Larry Ray) Social Theory and Postcommunism (Blackwell 2005). He is the editor of the following: The Habermas Reader
(Polity Press 1996); (with Tom Bottomore) The Blackwell Dictionary of
xii Notes on contributors
Twentieth-Century Social Thought (Blackwell 1993); The Blackwell
Dictionary of Modern Social Thought (Blackwell 1993); (with Luke
Martell) The Sociology of Politics (Edward Elgar 1998); and (with Margaret Archer) Defending Objectivity (Routledge 2004). He is currently
working on a book on society and culture in Europe.
Roland Robertson is Professor of Sociology and Global Society at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He is also Director of the Centre for the
Study of Globalization at the same university, as well as being Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh,
USA. He is the author of a number of books, the most well known
being Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (Sage 1992),
which is currently being revised for its second edition. He recently coedited (with Kathleen E. White) the 6-volume set Globalization: Critical
Concepts in Sociology (Routledge 2003), and is co-author (with David
Inglis) of Globalization and Social Theory: Redefining Social Science
(Open University Press 2006). He has held visiting teaching positions in
various countries, his works have been translated into over a dozen languages, and he also serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals.
Chris Rumford is Senior Lecturer in Political Sociology in the Department
of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of
London. His most recent publications include (with Gerard Delanty)
Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the Implications of Europeanization (Routledge 2005) and The European Union: A Political Sociology
(Blackwell 2002). He has recently edited special issues of European
Journal of Social Theory on ‘Theorizing borders’, and Comparative
European Politics on ‘Rethinking European Spaces’. He is currently
editing two books, Handbook of European Studies (Sage) and Cosmopolitanism and Europe (Liverpool University Press), and is completing a book for Routledge entitled Cosmopolitan Spaces: Europe,
Globalization, Theory.
Richard Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent. He has published widely on Soviet, Russian and postcommunist affairs. Recent books include: Soviet Politics in Perspective
(Routledge 1998); Postcommunism (Open University Press 1999); The
Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (Routledge 1999); (coedited, with Bruno Coppieters of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel) Contextualising Secession: Normative Aspects of Secession Struggles (Oxford
University Press 2003); and Putin: Russia’s Choice (Routledge 2004).
His current research interests focus on problems of democratic development and the state in Russia, the nature of post-communism, and the
global challenges facing the former communist countries.
Natan Sznaider is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Academic
College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo in Israel. His recent publications include: (co-
Notes on contributors xiii
authored with Daniel Levy) The Holocaust and Memory in the Global
Age (Temple University Press 2005); ‘Money and Honor: About the
impossibility of honorable restitution’ in D. Diner (ed.) Restitution as
New World Politics (Berghahn 2005); (co-authored with Daniel Levy)
‘Forgive and not Forget: Reconciliation between forgiveness and resentment’, in E. Barkan and A. Karn (eds) Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation (Stanford University Press 2005); (co-edited
with Ulrich Beck and Rainer Winter) Global America: The Cultural
Consequences of Globalization (Liverpool University Press 2003); and
(co-authored with Daniel Levy) ‘The Institutionalization of Cosmopolitan Morality: The holocaust and human rights’, in Journal of Human
Rights (2004), 3(2): 143–57.
Göran Therborn is Director of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study
in the Social Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden. His recent books include:
Beyond European Modernity: The Trajectory of European Societies,
1945–1995 (Sage 1995); Between Sex and Power: The Family in the
World, 1900–2000 (Routledge 2004); and two edited volumes, Asia
and European Globalization (Brill 2005) and Inequalities of the World
(Verso 2006).
Tong Shijun is Professor of Philosophy of East China Normal University in
Shanghai and Deputy President of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He was at the University of Marburg in 1998 and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University in 2001–2002. Among his
publications are Epistemology and Methodology in the Post-Hegelian
European Philosophy of 19th Century (Bergen 1993) and Dialectics of
Modernization: Habermas and the Chinese Discourse of Modernization
(Sidney 2000). He has translated into Chinese Hilary Putnam’s Reason,
Truth and History and Jürgen Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms.
Bryan S. Turner was Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge (1998–2005), and is currently Professor of Sociology in the Asia
Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He is the research
leader of the cluster on globalization and religion, and is currently
writing a three-volume study of the sociology of religion and editing the
Dictionary of Sociology for Cambridge University Press. A book on
human rights and vulnerability is to be published in 2006 by Penn State
University Press. Recent publications include Classical Sociology (Sage
1999) and The New Medical Sociology (W. W. Norton 2004). With
Chris Rojek, he published Society & Culture: Principles of Scarcity and
Solidarity (Sage 2001), and, with June Edmunds, Generations, Culture
and Society (Open University Press 2002). With Engin Isin, he edited
the Handbook of Citizenship Studies (Sage 2002).
Preface and acknowledgements
This volume is based on a conference held at Schloss Elmau, Bavaria 4–7
April 2004. I would like to thank Mr Dietmar Müller-Elmau for his generous sponsorship of the conference.
The chapters published in this volume have been extensively revised and
are all previously unpublished. Some of the original papers have not been
included and others have been added in order to create a thematically
integrated volume.
I would also like to thank Gerhard Boomgaarden of Routledge for his
interest and support in preparing this volume. I am also grateful to two
referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the book.
Gerard Delanty
Introduction
The idea of a post-Western Europe
Gerard Delanty
This volume explores new expressions of European self-understanding in a
way that challenges previous conceptions, which have been dominated by
the dichotomous ideas of West and East and the more recent post-Cold
War ideological notions of the ‘clash of civilizations’, the ‘end of history’,
the ‘new world order’ and the ‘axis of evil’. The idea of the West as an
ideological, cultural and geopolitical construct is becoming increasingly
irrelevant to the current political situation as far as Europe and Asia are
concerned. The West is no longer the main site of cultural and political
defence or of community. With the spread of Western civilization throughout the world, that civilization has ceased to be Western, but has become
globalized.1 It has also ceased to be specifically European. One of the consequences of the globalization of Western civilization is that there is
nothing essentially distinctive about the West in a cultural sense. Christianity, itself divided between the Latin and Orthodox traditions, is no longer
the cultural marker of the secular societies in Europe today.2 As a geopolitical entity the West is no longer as homogeneous as it was for much of the
second half of the previous century (see Bonnett 2004). Capitalism and
democracy are also now global forces and exist in a huge variety of forms
throughout the world. Europe, American and the West have become disentangled.
The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolically marked the end of an internal
East–West divide within Europe. With the end of this internal separation,
in which the terms East and West were most vividly defined, there is the
beginning of a wider collapse of the distinction. Nonetheless, while notions
of the decline or the end of West are as old as the very notion of the West,
and may indeed be part of the definition of the West, as the Abendland, to
speak of the end of the West makes little sense. Even though the East–West
distinction within Europe has become less important, to an extent a political West survives the globalization of the cultural West. The ‘West versus
the Rest’ defines much of global political struggles of the present day.
Occidentalism – opposition to the West – is a significant movement in
many parts of the world and a force that keeps alive the notion of the
West, which is generally associated with the United States but also includes
2 Gerard Delanty
Europe (see Buruma and Margalit 2004). Such anti-Westernism is of
course to be found as much within the West as outside it. China cannot be
included within the West, which may come to be defined more closely with
respect to China not least because that is the way China views the rest of
the world. The West may not exist in Europe, but it exists for much of the
non-Western world which has conjured up an image of the West. In this
respect what is more significant than the West versus East divide is the
North versus the South conflict over global justice.
The resulting situation for Europe is twofold. On the one side, Europe
has become a more clearly defined geopolitical area that is part of, but distinct from, the West, while on the other side current developments and a
longer view of history suggest a conception of Europe as a multifaceted
reality that has been steadily moving eastwards and now covers much of
the former communist East (Zielonka 2002). Since the eastern enlargement
and the growing importance of relations with neighbouring countries, the
European project lacks closure. European integration has given Europe a
clearer cultural and political identity, but it has not led to a more homogeneous Europe or a common political project. Europeanization has led to
greater contestation over the meaning of Europe (Delanty 1995). Whether
due to civilizational encounters in earlier periods, the process known as the
‘westernization of the world’, imperialism and its consequences, or the
globalization of markets, communication and culture, the shape of Europe
cannot be accounted for by purely internal factors or by reference to the
unity of the West. The EU itself also lacks a clear project and there is no
European-wide consensus on what values Europe is based on. The resulting uncertainty of the identity of Europe may be seen less as a sign of crisis
than an expression of a questioning attitude and a more critical kind of
self-understanding that may be more responsive to the challenges facing
Europe. For example, it is not possible to claim that there is widespread
public or elite consensus on the identity of Europe as something that
excludes Islam. Current debates are more symptomatic of uncertainty than
the comfort that comes from a clearly defined set of values. There is an
unavoidable recognition that neither self nor other are easily defined.
An issue of major significance now is the relation of Europe to the nonEuropean, a relation which must be seen in terms of a model of mutuality
and interlinking worlds of shared universes of discourse. This discursive
dimension of East–West relations has been much neglected.
This book is addressed to non-dichotomous relations of Europe and
Asia from both the historical and contemporary perspective. The contributors address the possibility of a European–Asian cosmopolitanism that is
not constrained by the dangers of Eurocentric ‘Orientalism’ or antiEuropean ‘Occidentalism’. Invoked in this is a cosmopolitan conception of
civilizational encounters rather than a clash of civilizations. Encounters
can take a variety of forms, including violent clashes and conflicts, but
there are also dialogic encounters and ones entailing mutual borrowings as
Introduction 3
well as forms of co-development.3 As several contributors point out, such
encounters should be seen as an expression of modernity, which as a globalized condition takes a variety of forms, many of which are civilizational
(see Eisenstadt 2003; Ben-Rafael and Sternberg 2005; Gaonkar 2001). The
notion of cosmopolitanism is relevant here in the sense of a concern with
the mutual implications of different social and cultural worlds. As much of
cosmopolitan theory suggests, it is no longer possible to exclude the
perspective of the other from the self. For example, the struggles going on
in the Islamic world are not separate from struggles going on in Europe.
The East is also in the West. Rather than look at Europe and Asia in terms
of separate worlds, they can be seen in terms of cultural struggles common
to both. The notion of a civilizational constellation captures one aspect of
this European and Asian cosmopolitanism, namely a continental unity in
diversity.
The contributors – sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers and
historians – show, from a variety of perspectives, that the conventional
equation of Europe both with the West and with modernity must be questioned. Both in terms of new conceptions of modernity and current developments in European integration as well as the wider context of globality,
the very meaning of Europe must be re-imagined in a more cosmopolitan
direction (see Beck and Grande 2006; Delanty and Rumford 2005;
Rumford 2006). The most significant, and until now most unexplored,
aspect of this is the possibility of European–Asian cosmopolitanism.
Several contributors draw attention to earlier expressions of East–West
links in history and to current developments in Asia that call into question
assumptions of a great divergence. The history of Europe and Asia can be
seen in terms of mutual borrowings, a point made with considerable force
by John Hobson in his chapter in this volume (see also Hobson 2004; Ravi
et al. 2004; Mozaffari 2002). Even in the more qualified terms of Johann
Arnason’s analysis, the interactive dimension of the relation cannot be
neglected. In the context of current debates about Islam and Europe such
questions are particularly important. This book offers a view of Islam as
integral to Europe, which should be seen in terms of a civilizational constellation rather than a single civilizational model (Bulliet 2004; Goody
2004). This notion of Europe as a constellation of diverse cultures as
opposed to a shared common community of fate can be related to the idea
of a post-national constellation as advocated by Jürgen Habermas, whose
social theory of political community in Europe also stresses the cosmopolitan dimension of the inclusion of the other (Habermas 1998, 2001).
One of the aims of this volume is to establish the basis for a wider
social theory of Europe in which questions of post-national community are
linked more closely to notions of cosmopolitan community. Until now
most of this debate, such as Habermas’s contribution, has been confined to
internal European developments. This is also reflected in Rémi Brague’s
conception of a European ‘eccentricity’ based on borrowing from other
4 Gerard Delanty
cultures to a point that there is no essentially fixed or immutable identity
to Europe other than a culture of ‘secondarity’, as he terms it in his contribution to this volume (see also Brague 2002). Building on such important
insights, an attempt is made in this book to show that such a perspective,
which can be termed cosmopolitan, is not confined to Europe, but has
a wider application for post-universalistic societies. This is clearly a
consciousness that is more advanced in the societies of Europe in the
present day and which is one of the major expressions of European selfunderstanding.
There are many reasons why a book on this topic is timely. One reason
is that with the expansion of the European Union eastwards and southwards, economic and political encounters with Asia and especially
Eurasian societies will become more important than they have been for
much of the twentieth century, which was an epoch dominated by the
global conflict of Russia and America.4 Today this dichotomy has crystallized into a number of different encounters, leading to new Euro-Asian
relations sustained by transnational migration, trade, changing foreign
policy, multiculturalism and tourism. In this case the example of Turkey is
particularly illustrative of the changing geopolitical contours of Europe.
Current developments in Turkey – the prospect of EU membership, the
election in 2002 of the Islamist Justice and Development party and the
impact of global civil society – point to a significant reconfiguration of
what had been a Western-oriented nation-state within an Asian cultural
world. The anti-Westernism of the Turkish Islamist movement has now
moved in the opposite direction. In this case there is an important example
of the Europeanization of Turkish Islam. Viewed in the context of a wider
transformation of the Eurasian world and growing tensions between
Europe and the United States, the significance of such developments points
to a questioning of a clear separation of West and East. Europe may
becoming less Western at precisely the same time Eurasia is becoming less
Eastern and that something like a ‘post-Western’ Europe is emerging.5 For
the first time it is possible to speak of Europeanization emerging to rival
Americanization, as far as the transformation of European societies is concerned, since current societal change in Europe cannot be understood in
terms of Americanization.6 The idea of a post-Western Europe does not
mean that Europe is ceasing to be Western, but suggests that Europe
cannot be defined entirely in terms of a unitary notion of Western civilization or by reference to a political design called the West. This is precisely the case too with Asia, which like Europe must be seen in plural
terms, a point made by Göran Therborn in his contribution to this volume.
As he points out, although we are accustomed to emphasizing the diversity
of Europe, the much larger expanse of Asia is even more pluralized than is
Europe.
In addition to the changing geopolitical context there is major societal
transformation occurring in a Europe that is perhaps best conceived of in
Introduction 5
terms of a constellation of diverse elements – cities, regions, nations,
groupings of different kinds, cultural and political flows and translations –
rather than as a system of enduring cultures and a civilizational order
rooted in Western values. As a result of internal diversification, crosscultural interpenetration, the impact of globalization and the growing
momentum of post-national trends, European societies can no longer be
understood in terms of national models but also they cannot be simply
defined as exclusively Western. As Jack Goody argues in his chapter in this
volume, Islam, often regarded as un-European, if not antithetical to
Europe, is now a part of many European societies and it is doubtful that
xenophobic currents will succeed in channelling post-liberal anxieties into
a vision of Europe defined against Islam. The articulation of a new European identity that includes alterity is now one of the major chances for
Europe to define its identity in the world. Essential to this tendential cosmopolitanism must be a new relation to Asia. The following chapters
explore this problem.
The chapters in Part I provide a general theoretical context for the
volume as a whole. With a focus on issues of modernity, globalization and
cosmopolitanism these chapters explore a conception of globalization that
takes into account the Asian perspective. Part II is concerned with a
rethinking of the legacy of history in order to identify what may be called
cosmopolitan moments. This is a pronounced theme in several chapters.
Other chapters offer different interpretations of links between Europe and
Asia. Part III shifts the emphasis to the zones between Europe and Asia,
with chapters on Turkey, Russia and Israel as key examples of Eurasian
borderlands. Other chapters concern the broader question of changing
borders and European enlargement. Finally, the chapters in Part IV
explore some of the philosophical aspects of the notion of otherness that
has been central to all chapters in this volume. The key theme in these
chapters is a notion, which can be associated with the cosmopolitan imagination, of an otherness within the self. This is reflected in different ways
with respect to both the idea of Asia and the idea of Europe, neither of
which are based on fixed foundations in culture or geography.
Notes
1 According to Hardt and Negri the West has been replaced by Empire, which is
not constrained by territorial limits and is formless and decentred (Hardt and
Negri 2000).
2 Christianity may be the site of one of the most important cultural differences
between Europe and America, for the United States is one of the most religious
societies in the world.
3 For some literature on this see Bulliet (2004), Clarke (1997), Deutsch (1991),
Diogenes (2003) and Dallmayr (1996).
4 On current developments between Europe and Asia see Lawson (2003) and
Preston and Gilson (2001).
6 Gerard Delanty
5 See Delanty (2003) on the idea of a ‘post-Western Europe’. See also Delanty and
Rumford (2005).
6 On the Americanization of Europe, see De Grazia (2005).
References
Beck, U. and E. Grande (2006) Cosmopolitan Europe, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ben-Rafael, E. and Y. Sternberg (eds) (2005) Comparing Modernities: Pluralism
versus Homogeneity, Leiden: Brill.
Bonnett, A. (2004) The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History, London:
Palgrave.
Brague, R. (2002) Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, South
Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press.
Bulliet, R. W. (2004) Islamo-Christian Civilization, New York: Columbia University Press.
Buruma, I. and A. Marglit (2004) Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its
Enemies, London: Penguin Press.
Clarke, J. J. (1997) Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and
Western Thought, London: Routledge.
Dallmayr, F. (1996) Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-cultural Encounter,
New York: State University of New York Press.
De Grazia, V. (2005) Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentiethcentury Europe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Delanty, G. (1995) Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality, London: Macmillan.
Delanty, G. (2003) ‘The Making of a Post-Western Europe: A Civilizational Analysis’, Thesis Eleven, 72: 8–24.
Delanty, G. and C. Rumford (2005) Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the
Implications of Europeanization, London: Routledge.
Deutsch, E. (ed.) (1991) Culture and Modernity: East–West Philosophic Perspectives, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Diogenes (2003) ‘From East to West – Civilizations in a Looking-Glass’, Diogenes,
Special Issue, 50(4).
Eisenstadt, S. N. (2003) Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, Vol.
1 and 2, Leiden: Brill.
Gaonkar, D. P. (ed.) (2001) Alternative Modernities, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Goody, J. (2004) Islam in Europe, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1998) The Inclusion of the Other, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (2001) The Postnational Constellation, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000) Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Hobson, J. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lawson, S. (2003) Europe and Asia-Pacific: Culture, Identity and Representations
of a Region, London: RoutledgeCurzon.
Mozaffari, M. (ed.) (2002) Globalization and Civilizations, London: Routledge.
Preston, P. and J. Gilson (eds) (2001) The European Union and East Asia, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Introduction 7
Ravi, S., M. Rutten and G. Beng-Lan (eds) (2004) Asia in Europe; Europe in Asia,
Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies.
Rumford, C. (ed.) (2006) Europe and Cosmopolitanism, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Zielonka, J. (ed.) (2005) Europe Unbound: Enlarging and reshaping the boundaries of the European Union, London: Routledge.
Part I
A post-Western world
1
Europe from a cosmopolitan
perspective
Ulrich Beck and Gerard Delanty
Since its foundation in the post-Second World War period the European
Union was a project that was shaped by the circumstances of its origins. It
was primarily a product of the clashes within Western Europe and in
particular between France and Germany. Given the wider context of the
Cold War, it was never envisaged by its founders that it would ever be
more than an alliance of the major Western European powers. Initially this
was of course to be confined to economic cooperation, but increasingly it
became a political and finally a social and cultural project, albeit within
the limits of the narrowly defined Western Europe of the Cold War era.
Gradually more and more countries were incorporated into the EU and
since the Single European Act this project has moved far beyond its original justification.
Although the Single European Act may have been the decisive point at
which the break with the earlier inter-governmental project had been
made, today the European project has entered an entirely new phase that
was never anticipated even after the end of the Cold War: the extension of
the EU to include much of central and eastern Europe has now reached the
point of possible inclusion of a country that has generally been regarded as
Asian.
The debate about Turkey and Europe raises major questions about the
identity of Europe and the rationale of European integration. This is not
just a debate about the incorporation of yet another country into a transnational political organization. It is a debate about the raison-d’être of a
polity and culture. Whether or not Turkey eventually becomes a member
of the EU cannot be predicted at the present time, but – and the indications are now highly likely that it will – it is evident that the East–West
divide has now ceased to be an inner European one but goes beyond the
Cold War East and West divide. It has become a question of defining the
relation of Europe to Asia, which must now be posed in terms of political
community. In addition to this, there is also the growing importance of
wider European–Asian relations that have arisen as a result of the economic rise of Asia. What is interesting in this development is a double
logic to Europeanization, which operates on internal as well as on external
12 Ulrich Beck and Gerard Delanty
dimensions. The argument advanced in this chapter is that the external
dimension is coming increasingly to the fore today and the future of Europeanization will depend to a large degree on successful external cosmopolitanism. The perspective suggested by this is a view of Europeanization in
terms of internal and external cosmopolitanism.
From transnationalism to cosmopolitanism
The earlier enlargements of the European Union – the incorporation of the
British Isles, southern, Nordic and central and eastern countries from the
1970s – accompanied a gradual movement towards the transnationalization of the nation-state. While there is nothing to indicate that this
transnationalization of the state will cease, the current situation is one that
suggests something else is also going on and which cannot be fully understood without taking a different perspective. We may term the current situation one of cosmopolitanism as opposed to transnationalization since
what is referred to here is not merely a matter of the transformation of
statehood but a transformation in the political subjectivity of Europe. The
kind of subjectivity emerging today can be termed cosmopolitan in view of
its open-ended nature and the fact that it is not underpinned by a substantive identity such as ‘a people’ but a multiplicity of identities and projects.1
There are at least four major developments in Europeanization that are a
feature of the present day and which are indicative of cosmopolitanism.
First, as mentioned, the nation-state is not being replaced by a suprastate. The modernist drive to create homogeneous structures such as territorial states with a unitary structure is not being replicated on the
European level. While the debate on the nature of statehood will continue,
it is evident that the EU is not a larger version of the traditional state. The
nation-state itself is undergoing tremendous change and for this reason we
do not see a dilemma of nation-state or supra-state. This dualism is simply
the wrong way to view the current situation. In terms of statehood, the EU
is a mixed polity. The creation of interdependencies in every field of politics is not just a form of cooperation which ultimately leaves the nationstates concerned untouched, as the inter-governmental perspective implies.
Instead, Europeanization transforms state power and national sovereignty
to their very core. The mixed nature of the EU is likely to grow as a result
of relations with neighbouring countries. The result of this is not something that can be easily encapsulated in a constitutional design and underpinned by a straightforward appeal to a European people. The European
polity has often been described as a reflexive form of integration (Eriksen
2005; Eriksen et al. 2005).
Second, the interpenetration of European societies is now a reality.
European societies are becoming more and more mixed as a result of a
common currency, migration, tourism, a transversal web of cheap airlines,
and the common feeling of inhabiting the world risk society. Several
Europe from a cosmopolitan perspective 13
decades of European integration have also enhanced the process, which it
must be emphasized is not leading to a single European Society any more
than it is leading to a supra-state that transcends national states but to different degrees of interpenetration. Resulting from this is a common European public culture. The term is used in the specific sense to refer not to a
common European identity but to common concerns and common modes
of communication. Although Europeans do not share a common language
or read the same newspapers and watch the same TV programmes –
despite the existence in almost every country of Who Wants to be a Millionaire – they do share certain debates and share certain critical moments.
Culture, which is a system of communication, can also be analysed in
terms of modes of communication, such as repertories of justification.
Looking at European public culture in terms of arguments – including disputes over the nature of Europe – offers in a certain sense a level of analysis that captures the cosmopolitan dimension of cultural commonality. It is
in this sense that Habermas’s notion of Europe as a post-national constellation of communicative spheres makes sense (Habermas 1998, 2001,
2003). This point will be returned to below when we discuss democratization. As far as identity is concerned, there is now considerable evidence
to show that a European identity is not emerging to replace other kinds of
identity but exists along side a wide range of other kinds of identity
(Herrman et al. 2004).
Third, following from the previous point, Europeanization cannot be
separated from globalization. There is a tendency to view Europeanization
as a reaction to globalization. But this betrays the illusion that globalization can stop at the frontier of the EU. It is a mistake too to suppose that
the EU is not vulnerable to the pressures of globalization. Inside and
outside cannot be distinguished in a way that separates Europeanization
and globalization. Europeanization should rather be viewed as an instance
of globalization. The nature of security, for instance, is no longer one that
can rely on an Outside from which the Inside must be protected. The
implications of this will be discussed in more detail in the final section of
this chapter.
Finally, mention can be made of the geopolitics of Europe, which does
not have one centre but several and has changing relations of centres to
peripheries. It is possible to see the field of Europe as made up of different
‘Europes’. In addition to Old Europe (the major Western nation-states)
and New Europe (post-communist countries) there are the older geopolitical spatial configurations, such as Central Europe and East Central
Europe. Other examples are mega-regional blocs, such as Nordic Europe,
Iberia and TransAlpine region. In addition there is the complex web of
post-imperial relations that connect Europe to the post-colonial world.
More than half of the world’s dependencies – some 30 states – are under
the direct rule of EU member states (Böröcz and Sarkar 2005: 164). In
terms of geopolitics, the global, the national and the European dimensions
14 Ulrich Beck and Gerard Delanty
interact to produce a complex field of borders and rebordering out of
which emerge hard and soft borders, open and closed ones, with different
degrees of spatial intensity by which regions, networks and flows operate.
Another example of the changing relation of the centre to the periphery in
Europe is the emergence of a new kind of governance whereby the EU
expands its governance beyond the member states to neighbouring regions.
Such regions, while being formally excluded from legal membership, are
part of a networked political system in which ‘fuzzy borders’ come into
play (Lavenex 2004: 681). Examples of this are accession association (for
potential members), neighbourhood association (Mediterranean and near
eastern countries), development co-operation (Africa and wider Asian
countries) and various kinds of cooperation (see Lawson 2003; Piening
1997). In this context it makes little sense to speak of borders exclusively
in terms of the legal boundaries of a given territory. Stein Rokkan referred
to these relations on cores and peripheries as a European system of cleavages (Rokkan 1999, cited in Eder 2006).
The first conclusion, then, is that Europeanization entails a process of
societal transformation, which can be termed cosmopolitanism to refer to
the lack of closure in it due to its multi-levelled orders of governance and
its multi-directional expansion. The cosmopolitanism suggested by this
should not be equated simply with pluralism. While diversity is an important component of the mosaic of European societies, there is also a process
of interaction going on. The interpenetration of societies, the interlinking
of different orders of governance, the impact of globalization and transnational movements of all kinds results not just in more diversity, but in
societal transformation. Cosmopolitanism is thus not a matter of coexistence, as in multiculturalism, or cultural dialogue, since the various
levels and actors co-evolve and as they do emergent realities are produced.
Furthermore, the resulting cosmopolitanism, which is variously internal
and external, is not a matter of convergence into a uniform framework
since the movement itself produces its own terms. There is not a prior plan
– such as a master plan or institutional design – or an underlying identity
that explains everything. The debates of the present day about the constitution and borders of the EU are an example of this reflexive logic to
Europeanization.
Cosmopolitanism and democratization: European public
culture
One aspect of democracy that people most commonly associate with the
notion is parliament, which is the representative voice of a sovereign
people. Viewed in such simple terms it could be argued that there is no
European democracy because the European Parliament is not a sovereign
institution. This is too simple a view of democracy, which also consists of
public debates and civil society outside the formal arena of the state. As a
Europe from a cosmopolitan perspective 15
cosmopolitan project, Europeanization entails more not less democracy. In
European public culture new discourses about political community are
being articulated. These discourses are not controlled by any one social
actor and in them competing conceptions of political community are
worked out. Actors constantly have to re-situate themselves as the discourses lack fixed reference points. The debate about the draft European
Constitution is a pertinent example. This is a process of contestation, persuasion and power in which multiple actors were involved. What is clear
from this is that there are no authoritative definitions of what constitutes
the ‘we’ of the political community and also there is no clear definition of
who the ‘Other’ is.
As previously suggested, Europe is now indefinable for precisely these
reasons; both Self and Other are not easily defined in ways that can lead to
a clear-cut identity that could be encapsulated in a constitution or in a territorially defined polity. Europeans are divided on whether Europe
includes Turkey and they are divided on whether Europe can be defined by
Christianity. They are divided on whether Europeanization is good or bad
and what its limits should be. Much of this is an expression of democratic
self-criticism, but much of it is fuelled by xenophobia and a failure to see
the connection between the reality of cosmopolitanism and the expansion
of democracy.
All of a sudden, a European discourse of origins is on everyone’s lips.
Those who want to keep the Turks out discover that the roots of Europe
lie in the Christian West. Only those who have always been a part of this
‘occidental community of shared destiny’ is ‘one of us’. This becomes clear
when we ask ‘Where do you stand on Turkey?’, which has become
the critical question of European politics. It divides opinion and ignites the
conflict between the old national and a new cosmopolitan Europe. The
term ‘cosmopolitan Europe’ can be understood as precisely the negation of
this sort of territorial social ontology which seeks to block all paths to the
future. The idea of a ‘cosmopolitan Europe’ has an empirical meaning in
drawing attention to the diverse and ever-changing world in which we live,
for example, that the Turks some people want to keep out have long since
already been inside. Turkey arrived in European space a long time ago, as
a member of NATO, as a trading partner, as one pole of transnational
forms of life. Moreover, large parts of Turkey are Europeanized.
To allow a Christian-occidental principle of ethnic descent to be resurrected from the mass graves of Europe is to fail to understand Europe’s
inner cosmopolitanism. It is to deny the reality of the roughly 17 million
people living in the EU who cannot recognize this ethnic-cultural heritage
of ‘Europeanness’ as their own, because they are Muslims or people of
colour, for example, yet who understand and organize themselves culturally and politically as Europeans. The history of the eastern contribution
to Europe and the contribution of migrants to the cultural dynamics and
moral self-understanding of a cosmopolitan Europe has yet to be written.
16 Ulrich Beck and Gerard Delanty
In the world of the twenty-first century there is no longer a closed space
called ‘the Christian West’. With growing transnational interconnections
and obligations, Europe is becoming an open network with fluid boundaries in which the outside is already inside.
There is no doubt that the current state of the European Union deserves
criticism. But where can we find suitable standards of criticism? They
cannot come from the national self-image or from laments over the loss of
national sovereignty. The concept of a cosmopolitan Europe makes possible a critique of EU reality which is neither nostalgic nor national but
radically European. The reality of Europeanization is the reality of
democratization. It was not too long ago that many of the present EU
member states were anything but democratic. Germany ceased to be a
totalitarian state after 1945 while Greece, Portugal and Spain made the
transition to democracy only in the 1980s. The process by which the
central and Eastern European countries made the transition to democracy
since 1990 was enhanced by the accession to the EU. In addition to establishing a framework for peace and democracy in post-war Europe, the EU
has now the capacity to influence democratization in its neighbouring
countries. This is evident in Bulgaria and in Romania. Nowhere is this
more evident than in the case of Turkey, where the impact of democratic
reforms has been extensive. It is also evident that the EU is able to use
effectively further enlargement in the Balkans as an instrument of foreign
policy. The prospect of eventual membership for Croatia, and likely membership in the near future for Serbia, has been a huge inducement for
democratization. This is also becoming evident in the case of Ukraine, one
of Europe’s least democratic countries. With this capacity to develop
democracy in neighbouring countries the EU has the means to become an
important power. The prospect of Europe becoming such a cosmopolitan
player will be discussed below.
There is a further democratizing dimension to European public culture
that must be highlighted: the culture of resistance that was created after
the Second World War. While much of this heritage has been claimed by
national identities, there is a dimension that has a strong cosmopolitan
side to it. Cosmopolitan Europe was consciously initiated after 1945 as the
political antithesis to a nationalistic Europe and its moral and physical
devastation. This cosmopolitan Europe is a Europe which struggles
morally, politically, economically and historically for reconciliation. The
adjective ‘cosmopolitan’ stands for this openness limited by the critique of
ethnonationalism which clamours for recognition of cultural difference
and diversity.
The creation of an international court from its origins in the Nuremberg
Trials was the first step in the direction of a cosmopolitan Europe (see Fine
2000). It is remarkable that it was a creation of legal categories and a judicial procedure beyond national sovereignty. This made it possible to
capture the historical monstrosity of the systematic, state-organized exter-
Europe from a cosmopolitan perspective 17
mination of the Jews in legal concepts and court procedures. It can and
must be interpreted as a primary source of the new European cosmopolitanism that has a powerful external dimension. Cosmopolitan Europe
expresses a genuinely European self-contradiction in a moral, legal and
political sense. If the traditions from which colonialist, nationalist and
genocidal horror originate are European, then so are the evaluative standards and legal categories in terms of which these acts are proclaimed as
crimes against humanity before a global public. The dilemmas of an institutionalized cosmopolitanism are especially evident in the commemoration
of the Holocaust. In this sense, the commemoration of the Holocaust is a
monitory memorial against the ever-present modernization of barbarism
(Levy and Sznaider 2002). The negativity of modernity and European
awareness of it is not merely a pose, an ideology of the tragic. It reflects
the historical invention of a modernity distorted by the nation and the
state which has inexorably developed the potential for moral, political,
economic and technological disaster like a chamber of horrors of a real
laboratory without concern for its own destruction. The mass graves of the
twentieth century – of the two World Wars, the Holocaust, the atomic
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Stalinist death camps
and genocides – testify to this. As Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider have
argued, radical, self-critical European commemoration of the Holocaust
does not destroy, but rather constitutes, the identity of Europe. Paradoxically formulated, it can enable Europe to find its continuity in its break
with the past. In the commemoration of the Holocaust, the break with the
past draws its power for the future. What is at stake is the institution of
future-oriented forms of memory for a cosmopolitan self-critique of
Europe in opposition to national founding and warrior myths. A similar
challenge is posed, incidentally, by post-colonialism and also by the
nascent revolutionary consequences of developments in human genetics,
nanotechnology and electronic communication.
However, it would be a mistake to see all criticism of Europeanization
as anti-democratic. The relationship between the intensification of Europeanization and the rise of neo-nationalism and right-wing populism has
often been noted. While European nation-states are becoming caught up in
processes of mutual absorption, combination and synthesis, the national
imagination reigns more than ever in people’s heads, as a sentimental
ghost, a rhetorical gesture, in which the fearful and bewildered seek a
refuge and a future. What is going on here is a diverse cacophony of
voices, not all of which are due to the inherent appeal of nationalism.
What needs to be appreciated is that the relation between elites and masses
has changed.
It is this change that lay at the core of the momentous No votes in May
2005 when the French and Dutch voters overwhelmingly rejected the draft
EU constitution. The event – the first popular hard choice for the test of
the EU – marked a fundamental turning point in the relation of the masses
18 Ulrich Beck and Gerard Delanty
to the elites. This was the first major revolt in the history of the EU of the
masses against the elites. But the revolt was not due to a simple reflex of a
primordial and backward national identity – a demos backed up by an
ethnos – revolting against the cosmopolitanism of the elites. The masses do
not constitute a substantive peoplehood but are, as in these cases, a diverse
coalition of social interests mobilized by democratic processes. The relation between elites and masses has changed in the following respects. First,
the elites can no longer rely on traditional forms of authority and deference; second, the popular arguments for European integration as enhancing the national interest have been challenged by global threats which did
not exist at the time of the Treaty of Rome; third, paradoxically a more
advanced level of formal democratization – including widespread availability of information – has allowed the elites to be challenged in ways that
were not possible during earlier stages in European integration; and finally,
contemporary culture is more diverse than before, making it more difficult
for consensus to be achieved.
The case of the constitutional crisis in 2005 is an example of the masses
not only rejecting the messages of the elites but of articulating different
positions with a wider field of contestation. This field is likely to grow in
the future and as it does so a European public culture of democratic contestation is likely to become more important in framing the terms of
national politics. Unavoidably the global context will be more present. To
this external dimension to the cosmopolitan nexus we now turn.
Europe and the rise of Asia: globalization as
cosmopolitanism
The relevance of a cosmopolitan perspective for the present day is not
simply due to factors specific to the internal transformation of Europe.
Attention must also be paid to external context. Of particular interest and
much neglected is the relation of Europe to Asia. The relation with the
United States has been much discussed and there is no doubt that
the formative phase of European integration has been closely tied to the
United States and a Western orientation. The United States has itself been
a strong advocate of European integration and clearly American business
and political elites see a strong Europe as part of an American-led West.
The relation of Europe to America cannot be easily described since it
has many dimensions, ranging from a general acceptance of a Western way
of life and belief in the values of freedom and the worth of the individual
to more political alliances. It has been widely commented that since 11
September 2001 the relation has grown more tense. Although this has
often been exaggerated, since most European countries continue close relations with the United States, there are clear signs of a rift. First, as the
memory of the Second World War fades, so too does the symbolic role of
America as the saviour of Europe. Especially since the fall of communism,
Europe from a cosmopolitan perspective 19
Europe has slowly evolved its own public culture which cannot be seen as
a consequence of Americanization. European culture can be seen in terms
of cosmopolitanism, as examples from sport, media, health and transport
attest (Roche 2006). Second, the European tradition of social solidarity
and social justice is stronger than in the US and is increasingly becoming
more and more a basis of a European model of society (Rifkin 2004). It is
possible to envisage the social question becoming the driving force in the
future. The present crisis concerning the European constitution is one such
example of how a debate about the constitution became a debate about
capitalism and the free market eroding social and economic securities.
Third, there are clear political differences between Europe and America on
issues of human rights and global justice. It is likely that these differences
will grow in the future due, on the one side, to the growing momentum of
the Europeanization and, on the other, the rise of an increasingly unilateralist and militaristic United States. Finally, there is the longer perspective
of history. The United States emerged out of very different historical circumstances – a settler and largely agrarian society whose spirit of
independence was closely linked to millennial religious movements, a weak
state, the absence of feudalism and monarchy – than did European states
whose traditions of revolution were very different. Although the EU was
not born out of a revolutionary act of liberation as such, the values that
underpin it express the European republican, radical and cosmopolitan
currents. Viewed in historical perspective it is possible to envisage further
differences between Europe and America.
What is becoming clear is that the unitary notion of the West is increasingly irrelevant to the current situation. Europe and America do not constitute the West in any meaningful sense. But rather than speak of the
decline of the West, it is more accurate to speak of its fragmentation and
global restructuring. It is possible to see in this a re-orientation of Europe
as a power between America and Asia. With the United States becoming
more and more a supra-power – albeit one that does not have unlimited
military power – the opportunities are created for Europe to become a
cosmopolitan power. The critical factor in this is the relation to Asia.
Like Europe, Asia is also changing, although at an unprecedented rate
and far more than anything like what is happening in Europe (Sharma
2005). It would not be inaccurate to refer to change in Asia as Westernization, since on one level that is clearly what is occurring, but it is too
simple. The tremendous transformation of Asian societies, in particular
India and China in recent years, cannot be seen simply in terms of the
adoption of a Western way of life. The new Asian world is in part a
product of diverse histories and vastly different societies. As these societies
become more and more economically and technologically advanced
the rest of the developed world will have to reconsider their relations
to Asia. Given the wider context of the globalization of markets, Asia will
be a major power in the world. Countries such as India and China will
20 Ulrich Beck and Gerard Delanty
overtake Japan in economic influence. China is already third largest producer of manufactured goods. In demographic terms these countries will
overtake Europe as a new global social dynamic comes into play. By 2020
the population of China is expected to be 1.4 billion and the population of
India is expected to reach 1.3 billion. The implications go beyond trade
and manufacture. As Asian countries become more prosperous the
implications for energy are huge and pollution will increase due to inefficient use of energy and weak environmental protection. The political
implications are also likely to be far-reaching as parts of Asia become marginalized from the rising centres. Inevitably new political alignments will
emerge with the scales of global power shifting from the West to Asia.
The diversity of Asia – which is greater than in Europe – will prevent
anything like a common political community emerging comparable with
the EU (see Oommen 2004; Therborn in this volume). However, regional
trade organizations such as Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) are comparable
in terms of its economic influence (see Preston and Gilson 2001). Trade
within Asia is growing at nearly three times the global rate and already
there is pressure from Asian countries for more free trade agreements. Since
the first ASEM in 1996, the EU has been developing relations with Asian
countries and Asian transnational organizations (see Lawson 2003). It may
be suggested that as the relation with Asia becomes increasingly more
important, opportunities will arise for Europe to become more selfconsciously cosmopolitan. Trade is clearly central to this but there are also
wider social, cultural and political questions at stake. Just as Europe–
American relations defined the identity of Europe, so too will Europe–Asian
relations define the identity of Europe. This is the opportunity for Europe
to give a new meaning to its cosmopolitanism, one in which the external
dimension will complement the internal one in important ways.
The danger however exists for a protectionist reaction against trade
liberalization. There is no easy solution to this as Europeans can legitimately expect protection from cheap imports from Asia. The position of
the UK government encourages trade liberalization and the movement of
Western firms to Asia has already made a huge impact on European
industry. But cosmopolitanism is not simply a matter of open markets.
The combined labour population of India and China is almost 2.4 billion
allowing these countries to produce a huge volume of manufactured
goods and increasingly too services at a fraction of the cost in Europe.
With low levels of social and environmental protection, Europe is put on
the defensive by an unfettered capitalism in Asia and a corporate culture
in Europe wishing to escape the restraints that exist within the EU. What
is the solution?
It would appear from the current debate that Europe either embraces
the liberal global market in open terms with the result that a nationalist
reaction will be triggered or Europe maintains protectionist barriers which
guarantee social and economic securities but at the price of erecting a
Europe from a cosmopolitan perspective 21
Fortress Europe. So Europe can retreat into its social democracy to protect
itself from an Asian capitalism that is not restrained by democracy. If it
does, the creation of a Fortress Europe will in turn only serve to provoke
anti-European sentiments in Asia. Rather than choose between these two
positions, there is a third option for Europe to pursue and which is congruent with its cosmopolitan currents.
This option would be to devise cooperative links with Asian countries
whereby Europe can use its influence to exert Asian governments and firms to
promote social protection for workers and to devise safer and more environmentally sustainable modes of production than is presently the case. Only by
recognizing the reality of the world risk society which both Europe and Asia
inhabit, and the global gains in the promotion of democracy and social
justice, can genuine cooperation be achieved. The availability of cheap labour
in Asia may be an attractive resource for Western firms, but for Asian firms it
does not solve all problems. As Asian countries become more developed with
capital-intensive manufacturing they will come to depend increasingly on
Western technological expertise until they can create their own knowledgebased economies: cheap labour is only one cost in industrial production in
knowledge-based economies. Firms in India and China are already short of
qualified workers and are often forced to move operations to Europe. The
resulting global interdependence may lead to less exploitative labour relations. It is thus possible to suggest that European countries through the EU
and European–Asian summits such as ASEAN and the World Economic
Forum should promote ways of controlling capitalism, such as developing
and extending a corporate culture of global responsibility.
One of the achievements of European modernity was in creating
dynamic relations between the market, the state and civil society. Promoting such positive models of modernity to Asia is an example of cosmopolitanism and not of Eurocentric nationalism. The achievement of European
modernity was that the rule of the market was always limited by democracy. In the present day, globalization has released capitalism from such
limits in much the same way as colonialism allowed Europeans to plunder
the rest of the world. Bringing globalization under the control of
cosmopolitan politics is the only way Europe and Asia will survive in the
world risk society. This will not be easy, but it is difficult to see an alternative. It is undoubtedly the greatest challenge of the EU, which until now
has been successful in opening markets within Europe without undermining social securities. Already the EU is gradually extending the free movement of goods, capital and services to those countries within its
neighbouring regions. It is not impossible for the EU to find ways of
responding to the challenge of globalization without surrendering the
commitment to social justice that is already being challenged within
Europe by nationalist reaction.
The point of the present discussion can be summed up as follows. Until
now Europe has been mostly defined in terms of its historical relation with
22 Ulrich Beck and Gerard Delanty
the United States. With the expansion of the EU east and southwards, on
the one side and on the other the changing identity of the US as a global
military power, the Western alliance is likely to become weaker. While
Europe of course still remains more tied to the US, the question of its relation to Asia will become more important in the present century. The
opportunity exists for Europe to devise new relations with Asia at a time
when Asia is itself undergoing major change.
Conclusion: the reality of cosmopolitanism
The national outlook not only misunderstands the reality and future of
Europe. It reduces the solution to two options: a federal state (federalism)
or a confederation (inter-governmentalism). Both models are empirically
false. Understood in normative and political terms, they deny the very
thing at stake now and for the future: a cosmopolitan Europe. Our main
conclusion then is that cosmopolitan realism implies that Europe will
never be possible as a project of national homogeneity. To build the
common European house according to the national–international logic is
neither realistic nor desirable; on the contrary, it is counterproductive.
Only a cosmopolitan Europe which (as its founders intended) both overcomes and acknowledges its national tradition – overcomes it by acknowledging it (and hence excludes a national Greater Europe, but celebrates
national diversity as an essential characteristic of Europe) – is both European (in the sense of non-national) as well as national, because it is pluralnational, hence European. The internal cosmopolitan project that has been
a feature of much of Europeanization until now must be complemented by
a strengthening of what can be called an external cosmopolitanism.
We have argued that a cosmopolitan Europe cannot be created only
from within Europe; it must also involve an engagement with Asia. As discussed above, already a movement in the direction of a cosmopolitan
engagement with the Outside can be discerned in the way in which the
enlargement of the EU is serving to democratize foreign policy in the
neighbouring regions of Europe. In this blurring of the difference between
Inside and Outside there is also a rescaling of the difference between Self
and Other. Increasingly Europe is being defined on its borders (Balibar
2004). Instead of being the edge of Europe, the border has become the
point at which the political community becomes conscious of itself. The
upshot of this is that the cosmopolitan perspective complements the view
that the Other cannot be excluded since it is already part of the Self. In
other words, Europe can no longer be defined by the exclusion of Asia,
which is already part of Europe.
Note
1 On cosmopolitanism and Europe see Beck (2006) Beck and Grande (2006),
Delanty (2005), Delanty and Rumford (2005) and Rumford (2006).
Europe from a cosmopolitan perspective 23
References
Balibar, E. (2004) We the People of Europe: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Beck, U. (2006) The Cosmopolitan Vision, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. and E. Grande (2006) Cosmopolitan Europe, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Böröcz, J. and M. Sarkar (2005) ‘What is the EU?’, International Sociology, 20(2):
153–73.
Delanty, G. (2005) ‘The Idea of a Cosmopolitan Europe: On the Cultural Significance of Europeanization’, International Review of Sociology, 15(3): 405–21.
Delanty, G. and C. Rumford (2005) Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the
Implications of Europeanization, London: Routledge.
Eder, K. (2006) ‘Europe’s Borders’, European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2).
Eriksen, E. O. (ed.) (2005) Making the Euro-Polity: Reflexive Integration in
Europe, London: Routledge.
Eriksen, E. O., E. Fossum and A. J. Menendez (eds) (2005) Developing a Constitution for Europe, London: Routledge.
Fine, R. (2000) ‘Crimes Against Humanity: Hannah Arendt and the Nuremberg
Debates’, European Journal of Social Theory, 3(3): 293–311.
Habermas, J. (1998) The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Habermas, J. (2001) ‘Why Europe Needs a Constitution’, New Left Review, 11,
Sept./Oct.
Habermas, J. (2003) ‘Toward a Cosmopolitan Europe’, Journal of Democracy,
14(4): 86–100.
Herrman, R. K., T. Risse and M. B. Brewer (eds) (2004) Transnational Identities:
Becoming European in the EU, New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lavenex, S. (2004) ‘EU External Governance in “Wider Europe” ’, Journal of
European Public Policy, 11(4): 680–700.
Lawson, S. (2003) Europe and Asia-Pacific: Culture, Identity and Representations
of a Region, London: RoutledgeCurzon.
Levy, D. and N. Sznaider (2002) ‘Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory’, European Journal of Social Theory, 5(1): 87–106.
Oommen, T. K. (2004) ‘Socio-Politician Transition in the Indian Republic and the
European Union’, European Journal of Social Theory, 7(4): 519–37.
Piening, C. (1997) Global Europe: The EU in World Affairs, London: Reiner.
Preston, P. and J. Gilson (eds) (2001) The European Union and East Asia, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Rifkin, J. (2004) The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future is
Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, New York: Tarcher/Penguin.
Roche, M. (2006) ‘Cultural Europeanization and the “Cosmopolitan Condition”’, in C.
Rumford (ed.) Cosmopolitanism and Europe, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Rumford, C. (ed.) (2006) Cosmopolitanism and Europe, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Sharma, R. (ed.) (2005) India and Emerging Asia, London: Sage.
2
Post-Western Europe and the
plural Asias
Göran Therborn
Seriously relating Europe and Asia today seems to require two fundamental intellectual operations. One is to distinguish current Europe from the
“West”, both as a historical signifier and as a contemporary notion of allegiance, or denunciation, as “Western civilization” or as “West-toxification”
or “occidentalism” (see Buruma and Margalit 2005). The other is to take
systematic account of the incomparable plurality of Asia. That is, while
Europe historically as well as today can be grasped as (approximately) one
unit, Asia is irreducibly divided, now as yesterday.
On the basis of these considerations, this chapter will end by looking
into tendencies of future positions and relations of Europe and the Asias in
the world. Such tendencies have to be seen in the shadow of the imperial
cloud of the American superpower, in particular of the recent US manifestations of what had better be called Occidental Despotism. Both the global
tendencies affecting Europe and the Asias, and the current thrust of the
USA will call for important cultural adjustments of Europe.
The sketch below is framed in terms of structural contours and
abstracted shapes of trajectories, its author being well aware of his lack of
the linguistic competence and deep cultural erudition characteristic of the
great Eurasian scholarly traditions, including that of classical Orientalism,
often too easily dismissed by fast readers of Edward Said, another great
scholar. While rarely explicitly invoked, there is a frequent practice of
licentia sociologicae – of sociological licence to write on topics without
proper research – of which non-sociologists, and also several sociologists,
are justly suspicious. However, it may also be argued that within proper
limits, bird’s eye topographies and profiles may add something to close-up
and profoundly penetrating studies. In the world of today, the methodological nationalism constitutive of modern historiography, political science
and sociology is a hindrance to new cognitive discoveries.
Europe and the “West”
The old European, and to some extent also Asian, conception and discussion of “East” and “West” underwent a crucial mutation after 1945. The
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 25
historical cultural dichotomy became one party’s designation of the Cold
War divide. Among the dominant political currents of Western Europe and
North America, and their allies and clientele in the rest of the world, “the
East” became “the Eastern bloc”, i.e. the Communist world. Above all,
“the West” in this perception now became synonymous with the United
States and its allies. Europe, in this world view, became only a part or an
appendix of the USA.
In American discourse this notion of the West survived the Cold War. Its
tenacity is well illustrated by Samuel Huntington’s (1996) important and
influential The Clash of Civilizations. There is no European civilization, only
a “Western” one, which is supposed to divide Europe into, on one hand, an
extension of North America, and, on the other, an “Orthodox” civilization,
comprising Greece and the legacy of Orthodox Christianity. In Europe,
however, first the thaw and then the end of the Cold War, and the advancing integration of Western Europe, led to a re-emergence of “Europe” from
under the shadow of the “West”. Instead of “Western” values, “Western”
culture and “Western” civilization, the mainstream literature, sustained by
EU research funding, now begins to focus on “European” values, culture
and civilization, and their roots. This did not amount to a denial of the
West, or any critique of “Westbindung” (bonding with the USA), only to an
affirmation of a European identity of its own.
Any dialogue today on the traditional conception of East and West
cannot escape the decisive Cold War transformation of it. From a notion
roughly synonymous with Europe, the international power constellation
and the geopolitics after 1945 made it, for practical purposes, a synonym
of the USA. In this way, the question of the West has become a key part of
questions about the possibilities of Europe, about its autonomy, and about
its position and future in the world.
Recent developments have been contradictory in this respect. The Cold
War East–West division became irrelevant with the collapse of European
Communism. The enlargement and the deepening in the 1990s of what the
Anglo-Saxons liked to call the “Common Market” into a European Union,
as the world’s most potent trading entity and with an increasing
coordination of its foreign policy, meant a re-assertion of “Europe” as distinctive from “the West”. Under the Chairmanship of Jacques Delors and
of Jacques Santer, the European Commission also affirmed a European
social model, derived from the two major reformist traditions of Continental Western Europe, Social Democracy and Christian Democracy.
In the negotiations over a Spanish, Portuguese and Greek entry to the
(predecessor of) EU, the principle was established that only effective democracies could become members of this Europe in the making. This was the
first time ever that democracy was made a sine qua non qualification for
membership of an inter-state organization. Democracy, ethnic minority
rights, and social rights including trade union rights, became crucial guidelines for post-Communist Eastern Europe aspiring to EU membership.
26 Göran Therborn
However, in the last 5–10 years the distinctiveness of the EU is eroding,
by internal corrosion as well as by external shelling. The social conception
of Europe, once a widely shared part of European political identity,
common to Christian as well as to Social Democrats and to the Gaullists,
is being ideologically abandoned, even if the institutions are still in place,
in Western Europe and even in part of Eastern Europe. Tony Blair and his
entourage have been the pivots in swinging Europe to the neoliberal right,
obliterating the formal European Social Democratic ascendancy in the late
1990s. German Christian Democracy hoisted the flag of neoliberalism by
selecting the Director of the IMF as the new German President. Now, the
October 2005 German elections showed, there is no majority for neoliberalism, as there was never a popular majority for Mrs Thatcher. But the
Christian Democratic Soziallehre is clearly on the wane.
The United States has, on the whole, been supportive of the European
project. In the Cold War the latter was both perceived and intended as a
contribution to the war of the West. But after the end of the Soviet Union,
divergent world views and strategies have developed. While Europe has
emphasized negotiations, agreements, law and exchange (or trade), the
USA has concentrated on military force, military alliance and ideological
confrontation.
NATO, the American Cold War alliance, which was never committed
to democracy but included Fascist Portugal and militarist Turkey – and
but for some stern European opposition would have included Fascist Spain
as well – has not only been kept after the end of the Cold War. It has been
expanded enormously, in its range of operations as well as in its membership. It has been changed from a North Atlantic defensive military alliance
to a political instrument for legitimating new US wars of attack, in Kosovo
and in Afghanistan, and is also in spite of European opposition used for
providing auxiliary occupation forces in Iraq to the extended US empire.
The violent, deadly, but largely symbolic attack on the World Trade
Center, the Pentagon and some other, never certainly identified, US target
in September 2001 ripped “the West” apart, and created-cum-highlighted
differences between Europe and the USA, and among European political
elites. The dramatic event also brought forth renewed efforts at re-affirming
a Western civilization and Western values. In sober thought, this underlines the urgency of clarifying the current relations of Europe and “the
West”.
The Bushmen and the re-launching of Occidental Despotism
The Bush regime of the US, saw “9/11” as the proper moment to declare a
Third World War, labelled the “War on terrorism”. While explicitly siding
with the USA in combating the few scores of Islamist radicals taking on
the superpower of the world, most Europeans have had difficulties in
seeing it as a full-scale “war”. The current course of the USA has, on the
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 27
one hand, fundamentally divided the West by cutting off connections to a
crucial contemporary European norm, the rule of law.
The Bush government is asserting the USA as the world ruler, above any
law, intervening anywhere in ways it sees fit. Its legal advisers even argue
that the American President as commander on chief is unbound from any
constitutional or human rights constraints. The latest US wars have blatantly flaunted the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention on Prisoners
of War. The USA has opposed the International Criminal Court, and has
forced its clientele states to recognize the exemption of the United States
from any war crimes prosecution. What we are witnessing here is the rise
of an Occidental Despotism.
The American war has both undermined Europe, and, unintendedly,
reinforced it. Europe has been undermined by the British unconditional
support of the war and of its repressive implications. The enormous,
historical task of unifying Eastern and Western Europe, on the agenda
with the 2004 enlargement of the EU, was sidelined for the American strategic aim of West-binding Turkey in the EU. Similarly, the American
Kosovo war had precipitated a much larger and accelerated eastern
enlargement of the EU than planned. However one should evaluate the
intrinsic value of these openings, it is clear that both the popular legitimacy and the institutional capacity of the EU have been over-extended by
these cavings-in to American demands and time-schedules.
On the other hand, there is the widening rift between current American
policy and the European legal tradition, pre-1914 and post-1945. The
European state system generated very early a legal framework transcending the various polities – it would be anachronistic to call it international
law. Originally it derived from the coexistence of a number of powerful
princes and a common Christian religion. In the seventeenth century it was
secularized as ius gentium, the law of peoples. It was no protection against
state violence, although it did gradually raise some regulation of wars and
of their aftermath. International law is the basis of the European Union –
with the effet direct of European nation upon member states – as well as
the Council of Europe (see Therborn 2002).
The new Atlantic gap was highlighted in late October 2005, when the
EU started an inquiry into the revelations of the Washington Post and
other US media of secret American torture chambers in Poland and
Romania. The US rejection of the Geneva Convention on humane treatment of prisoners of war, and of the International Criminal Court, has not
been publicly endorsed by a single European government. On the contrary,
the official position of every government is the opposite of the Washington
view.
The liberal democratic US reaction to the dramatic but basically symbolic attack of 11 September 2001 should make the violence of popular
revolutions, like the Russian Bolshevik in 1917–1920, more understandable, if not necessarily more pardonable. When an overwhelming
28 Göran Therborn
superpower, with no serious rival for power in sight, finds it necessary to
protect liberalism by worldwide abductions, a global network of torture
centres and concentration camps, and two full-scale wars of invasion,
what could reasonably be expected of a socialist revolution in a despotic
country besieged by an array of foreign armies – British, Czech, French,
German, Japanese – as well as by an armed and amply-officered domestic
counter-revolution?
The recent American embrace of Occidental Despotism – reverting to
the times of the Indian wars and expulsions and to the invasions of Cuba
and The Philippines a century ago – is one major part of the recent
undoing of the Euro-American “West”.
The other is the rise of Christian fundamentalism (and of Jewish militantism) in the USA, while secularism is widening and deepening in
Western Europe. In spite of post-Communist promotion of official religion, Europe is, with a few national outliers – Croatia, Ireland, Lithuania,
Poland – the most secularized part of the world, whereas the USA is one of
the most God-believing and God-invoking (Inglehart et al. 2004: 12,
F050ff).
In summary, with the rise of USA, Europe was no longer synonymous
with the West. Indeed Europe became a “dispensable” part of the West, to
which only the United States was the “indispensable nation”, as Clinton’s
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it. But with the recent culturalpolitical divergence, Europe is no longer meaningfully part of a common
North Atlantic West. Europe is coming to itself, but it is still struggling
with Western ties and allegiances.
Above both Europe and Asia there is an imperial cloud under which
any serious East–West discussion today takes place, and which the latter
has to relate to. The consequences are direst for West Asia, also the weak
centre of the violent resistance to the American empire. In Central Asia,
imperial geopolitics is propping up the authoritarian regimes, paying them,
arming them, legitimating them. Where the attempts to enlist Japan and
South Korea as imperial auxiliaries will lead is difficult to tell, but the
encouragement of Japanese armed interventions overseas is likely to
increase regional tension and worries. China is likely to concentrate on its
own growth for the foreseeable future. There will be more attempts to
draw India into the American orbit, which are likely to increase domestic
conflict.
One Europe, several Asias
Like the East–West distinction, the Europe–Asia comparison has to be
deconstructed. Europe may be seen as one, but Asia cannot. How to show
that argument as non-arbitrary? There are at least three different basic criteria, each having its own time-span, which may be used. One refers to
conscious historical cultural legacy. What is the classical canon of the
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 29
culture? Its classical, perhaps sacred, language(s), its classical literature and
its philosophy. The classical legacy seem to be less difficult and arbitrary to
handle for modern purposes than the concept of civilization, however
defined. The second concerns the trajectory into the modern, the timing
and, above all, the line-up of forces for and against, and the shape of their
struggles. In brief, the roads to modernity. As the current weight and value
of the classics and the route to modernity cannot be determined a priori, it
will appear wise to deploy also a third criterion, the recent and current
pattern of political, economic and cultural relations. On all three criteria
we can discern some unity or singularity of Europe. On none of them, is
there one Asia – although all parts of the continent may be located within
a world system.
In terms of civilization as well as in terms of roads to modernity it is
meaningful to talk of Europe in singular, although the continent is not flat
like a shopping-mall parking-lot, and its political divisions seem to be currently increasing. There is a sense, in which we may talk about one
Europe, and not primarily because of the enlargement of the European
Union of May 2004. In terms of world history, Europe is basically one
civilization, with a common Antiquity or Classicism – of philosophy, art
and architecture – derived from the city states and empires of Greece and
Rome 2,500 to 1,500 years ago, and a common Christian religion,
although deeply divided for a thousand years.
It is sometimes argued that Eastern Europe falls outside this civilization,
for not having had the resurgence of this Antiquity in what in Europe is
called the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However,
this was the time, after the fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Ottomans
in 1453, that the religious and political authorities of Muscovy began to
refer to Moscow as the “Third Rome”, that Italian builders were recruited
to build the main churches of the Kremlin, albeit in a Russian style with
only secondary Italianate elements (Kaufmann 1995: 30ff). The border
treaty of Nerchinsk between Russia and China in 1689 was negotiated in
Latin and Manchu with the help of Jesuit interpreters (Spence 1990: 67)
From the eighteenth century Greek-Roman architecture became part of
Russian imperial Classicism, while French became the language of the
Russian court and nobility. Most of the showpieces of the new capital of
St Petersburg were built by Italian architects, for example, the Alexander
Nevsky monastery by Trezzini, the Senate and the Synod by Carlo Rossi,
the Winter Palace by Rastrelli (Pilipenko 1993). Germanic as well as Slavic
Europe were outside the Roman empire, and Sweden did not even exist on
the maps of Ancient geographers, but later on an Ancient legacy of Latin
and Greek was learnt and claimed all over European high culture.
There is a basically common European road to modernity, beginning
with Britain in the seventeenth century, with its scientific breakthroughs
and its political civil wars, and winning the centre stage through the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the French Revolution, but then
30 Göran Therborn
having to fight its way all through the long nineteenth century, and only
becoming victorious with the outcome of the First World War. This is a
road of endogenous development, of internal conflict, civil wars and revolutions. Dynasties – with the brief eighteenth-century qualification of
“Enlightened Absolutism”, stretching from Lisbon to St Petersburg – aristocracies and all established churches (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant)
were against a rupture with traditional sources of authority. Burghers, artisans, secular intellectuals, dissident aristocrats and, increasingly, the big
city populace, the new industrial workers and nationalistically aroused
peasants were in favour. European modernity was no inherent emanation,
and it had to fight its way forward. But the conflicts, violent or peaceful,
revolutionary or reformatory, were usually internal to existing polities,
and from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution increasingly
involved class conflict, while Europe’s modern war paths were largely
shaped by the vicissitudes of colonialism overseas. To this day, the democratic party systems of Europe have a class-rooted left–right cleavage
pattern.
Europe also has a common, traumatic twentieth-century history, being
the main theatre of the two World Wars and of the global Cold War – all
three originating and decided in Europe. This traumatic war experience
has had two important consequences in particular. One is the drive for
overcoming the violent divisions of the past, first of the Franco-German
wars, which led to the creation of what is now the European Union, then
of the Cold War division of Germany into German Reunification, and
third, of the Cold War “Iron Curtain”, to be overcome in part (if not fully)
by the “Eastern enlargement” of the EU in 2004. Left out after 2004 are
Bulgaria and Romania, which have been given clear prospects of later
membership, the remaining states of the former Yugoslavia, Albania,
Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine, whose European future is still uncertain,
and, in the cases of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, still controversial.
Second, pioneered by post-Second World War Germany, twentiethcentury history has taught Europe guilt. European culture has become
significantly preoccupied with digging up, commemorating and redeeming
its crimes of the past; mainly, but by no means exclusively, the Nazi genocide and the collaboration or collusion with it, and also the dictatorship of
Communism, the dirty Cold War by the West and the crimes of colonialism.
Europe’s loss of its colonies and of its Big Powers have been remarkably
little traumatic, although they do form a very relevant background to the
Rome Treaty of 1957, which launched the European Economic Community. Those losses, and in particular the former, were overshadowed by the
unprecedented boom of the European economies after the war, which
already in the early 1960s made the European continent a magnet of immigration, reversing an almost 500-year-old tradition of out-migration.
European civilization as well as European modernity have a strong universalistic, missionary streak. Christianity is a world religion of salvation,
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 31
and European explorers, traders and conquerors were usually from the
very beginning accompanied by Christian missionaries, who ventured into
Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and East Asia by the sixteenth century.
The European scientism and the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were also explicitly universalistic, which did not exclude a
high respect and admiration for some non-European cultures, the Chinese
in particular, revered by some of the greatest minds of the European
Enlightenment, like Leibniz and Voltaire. But universalism is inherently
self-righteous. In the twentieth century, European Communism, Social
Democracy and Liberalism have all continued this universalistic
Europeanness.
This common European legacy of classicism, modernity and twentiethcentury traumas has always been full of conflict, opposing interpretations
and exclusivist claims. The commonality of Europe is by no means a cultural emanation, but a commonality of conflict, of war, as well as of bargaining, truces and compromise. It has resulted in the current European
Union, which is now bridging one of the most ancient cultural divides of
Europe, the Trieste–St Petersburg line, separating Eastern and Western
European marriage systems. The line can be traced back to the Eastern
limits of the Germanic expansion eastwards in the early Middle Ages (see
Therborn 2004: 144ff). Also in this way “Europe” has become postWestern.
The plurality of Asia
There is no Asia in the same sense. “There is no common tradition in Asia
to define the Great Books of the East”, as the American Orientalist de Bary
put it in a valiant attempt to construct an Asian canon (de Bary 1990: 42).
Not even the wonderful Pan-Asian journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies has
a fully Pan-Asia basis, restricting itself to the huge area from India to
Japan (inclusive). The range of the grand Singaporean millennium conference “We Asians” (Kwok Kian-Woon et al. 2000) is the same, repeating
the stretch a century earlier by Okakura Tenshin and a couple of other
Japanese artists going to Calcutta and linking up with Bengali culture for a
Pan-Asian effort. When Okakura (1903) opened his Ideals of the East by
saying “Asia is one”, he was proclaiming a new Japanese intellectual programme, against the anti-Asianness of the early Meiji modernizers, who
with Fukuzawa Yukichi called for a dissociation with Asia, “datsu-A ron”.
But he was thinking primarily of the Sinic and the Indic civilizations (see
Karatani 1993). The Japanese concept of “the East”, toyo, which was
established as a topic of historiography on par with “the West” from the
1890s, did formally include Eurasia east of Europe, while excluding what
is now seen as Southeast Asia, and was in fact centred on Sino-Japanese
relations (Tanaka 1993).
While recognizing that there has been a continental Asian group at the
32 Göran Therborn
UN and that there are continental Asian Games, Koh refrains from trying
to define anything commonly Asian, concentrating instead on talking
about “East Asia”. The great Sino-American Confucian scholar Tu
Weiming recently summarized Asia as “East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia” (interviewed in Hutanuwatr and Manivannan 2005: I:137), a
restriction also adopted (without motivation) by an ambitious German orientalist overview of the continent (Weggel 1989). In Chinese, the concept
of Asia is derived from the English name of the continent. Then it so
happens that the characters used to render the English word-sound may be
read as “Inferior Continent”, surrounding the Central Kingdom (China). (I
owe the former insight to the German Sinologist Christoph Harbsmeier,
oral communication, the latter to Korhonen 2002.)
How many Asias exist that are more or less equivalent to “Europe” is a
question hardly raised seriously before, and one that is unlikely to have a
non-controversial answer. De Bary and Bloom (1990) opted for four
“major traditions”, the Islamic, the Indian, the Chinese and the Japanese.
Any number higher than three, and any further sub-division, can expect at
least some objections. Let us start with the three irreducible Asias.
The West, the East and the South
West Asia is clearly one Asia, the birthplace and the centre of Islam, with a
culture historically further shaped by the Arabic script, by a learned knowledge of the Arabic language and Arab-language learning of law, history and
science, by Persian poetry and other secular culture of refinement, and by
Turkic military prowess and command language. Architectural styles came
to differ, mainly between a Western one developed by the Ottomans and
one spreading east from Persia, but monumental building had a common
base, centred on military fortresses for the rulers and mosques and madrasas
(schools) according to the same planning principles. It was a society
moulded by mounted warriors, pastoralists and merchants, knit together by
caravans and their routes across deserts and steppes. In the sixteenth to
eighteenth centuries this was a civilization stretching from the Balkans and
Morocco to what is today Uzbekistan and Bangladesh. Its main political carriers then were the Ottoman and the Mughal empires with Persia and
smaller-scale emirs and khans between them or on the margins.
While the Mughals of India finally succumbed to the British, the main
West Asian road to modernity was one of Reactive Modernization, initiated and directed from above under acute external threats, and largely
imported from abroad. The Ottomans and after them Atatürk and the
nationalists of Turkey led the way, followed by the Persians/Iranian rulers,
and by Arab monarchs and nationalists. In the twentieth century, major
parts of this Asia have become the world’s premier rentier economies,
whose enormous oil wealth has made possible peculiar blends of modernity and tradition, political and religious.
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 33
Contemporary West Asia is fractured, a fact highlighted by Turkey’s
bid to join Europe, about a century after Japanese nationalists discussed
whether modern Japan should leave Asia. The post-World War establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine furnished a common enemy, but the USbacked and US-financed formidable Israeli army has repeatedly defeated
any Arab unity. The oil economies are similar and competing rather than
complementary, although they have occasionally formed a functioning
cartel. Attempts at Islam-based cooperation have not been very successful
either, due to the divisions between the mostly Sunni Arabs, the Shia Iranians and the secularized Turks.
At the other end is East Asia, the realm of the Sinic civilization, from
Korea to Vietnam, with the Middle Kingdom at its centre, having a
common elite culture of a secular Confucian classical canon and a
common script and language of erudition, conveying a common corpus of
ethics, aesthetics and poetry. Well into the twentieth century the Chinese
characters could function, like medieval European Latin, as a common
means of communication between intellectuals of the region. There was
also a similar Buddhist tradition. The pre-modern East Asian commonality
was nevertheless varied and complex, most easily summed up in the development of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese scripts below the supreme
culture of classical Chinese. In addition, the Shogun’s Edo was not built
according to the same strict symmetrical principles as imperial Beijing
(compare the maps of seventeenth-century Edo in McClain and Merriman
1994: 20ff with any of Beijing).
Whatever arguments may be marshalled in favour of separating modern
Japan from this East Asia, Japan clearly shared its classical background
with China (and the rest of East Asia). Until the nineteenth century the
Japanese elite saw China as their cultural centre, and even intellectual pioneers of Japanese cultural nationalism, like Aizawa – who wrote the intellectual rationale for the external closure edict of 1825 – or Shiratori,
initiating oriental history in the first decades of the twentieth century, formulated their theses in classical Chinese terms. Japan had now become the
Middle Kingdom and the base of true Confucianism, respectively (Wakabayashi 1986; Tanaka 1993).
Japan was the first and the most successful example of Reactive Modernization, so rapidly successful that it soon became a colonial ruler, the
only non-European in modern history. As a colonial power it was also
more successful or progressive than anybody else, manifested in the development of schooling and the economy of Korea and Taiwan. Should this
unrivalled Japanese success be interpreted as a break up of East Asia? I
don’t think that would be a very fruitful, and certainly not an analytically
parsimonious, approach to Asia. Qing and Republican China did embark
on the same route of Reactive Modernization, very much under Japanese
inspiration, and was never really colonized. The Japanese aggression and
Soviet example and support did introduce a large-scale European-type
34 Göran Therborn
class struggle into China. But after the end of Maoism China has
embarked on a new wave of modernization from above with the help of
Chinese émigré (and Japanese) capital.
The roads to modernity did diverge in East Asia, with colonialism by
the French and Japanese, with Communism and massive class conflict.
However, since the 1980s they are converging again, without ending in
one single lane.
The region was kept together by its involvement in the big global wars
of the twentieth century, hot and cold, although on opposite sides in the
Second World War and in the Cold War. This de facto integration through
conflict is a basis for the extensive economic ties of the countries of the
region, ties which have been deepened and strengthened in recent decades
because of the booming markets of South Korea, Taiwan and, then and
above all, China, in part also Vietnam. The weakness of the region is the
absence of any post-nationalist politico-cultural reconciliation between
Japan and Korea, and between Japan and China.
Between those two wings of Asia, there is the Indic civilization, the core
of current South Asia, with its own classical language, Sanskrit, its own
classical canon of huge epics, holy Vedic scriptures, and legal code, the
Law of Manu, and with an ancient tradition of polytheistic religion, of
mathematics and of science. There is also something else common to South
Asia, perhaps even more important: a tradition of multiculturalism, of
coexistence of different religions – Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism,
Zoroastrism, Christianity, earlier Buddhism – of many different languages
and several scripts, and of a complex, heterogeneous culture different from
political power. A great deal of the latter originated in the Muslim warrior
cultures of Central Asia, for instance the Sultanate of Delhi and its successor the Mughal empire, founded by a fugitive from Samarkand, Babur.
More indigenous Indian polities were also multilingual. The Vijayanaga
state, important between 1340 and 1565, was ruled by speakers of Tulu
and Kannadu, but its court literature was mainly written in Telugu, Tamil
and Sanskrit (Pollock 2001: 400–1). On the eve of Indian colonial subjugation Sanskrit became a dying language, like eighteenth-century Latin.
The administrative language in Bengal and other parts of the decaying
Mughal empire was Persian, the first literary language of the great early
nineteenth-century Bengali intellectual Rammohan Ray (Robertson 1995:
24ff). The Mughals developed their own variant of Islamic architectural
splendour, in imperial mausolea and fortresses (the Taj Mahal and the Red
Fort, for example), as well as in mosques, alongside the gaudy-coloured,
sculptured Hindu temples.
South Asia had to travel the typical Colonial Road to Modernity: conquest, occupation, identification with the aggressor (the conquering
culture) and rebellion against the role model by turning his own model
against him. The South Asian variant had remarkably little anti-colonial
violence – but more ethno-religious communal violence at the times of
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 35
Partition, between India and Pakistan, and later between Bangladesh and
Pakistan – and a remarkable cultural complexity and sophistication. The
alliance of the thoroughly British-educated modernizer Nehru and the critical Indianist anti-modernist Gandhi foregrounds a picture, to which their
opponent the Anglicized Muslim lawyer Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, makes up a fitting addition. Half a century after independence,
English remains the main public language, although South Asian polyglotism also remains impressive. Cricket has been adopted as the national
sport.
In spite of a body of regional cooperation, which regularly assembles
government ministers and leaders for talks, there is hardly any regional
economic integration. However, the countries remain geopolitically locked
into each other. India and Pakistan have their constantly running, albeit up
and down, conflict over Kashmir, once a wonderful summer resort to
Mughals and British alike. India helped Bangladesh to independence
against Pakistan, but has opposite water interests to its smaller and poorer
neighbour.
Between these three major regions of Asia there have, of course, been
contacts and exchange, but no commonalities corresponding to GrecoRoman Antiquity, Christianity, Latin and later French languages, and
inter-marrying dynasties and aristocracies in pre-modern Europe, or to the
European modernity of scholars, scientists and philosophes from the seventeenth century and on to the Enlightenment and beyond, of the French
revolutions (of 1848 and 1830 as well as of 1789), nineteenth-century
nationalism and historicism, or the big wars of the twentieth century, hot
and cold.
Many of the most important inter-Asian encounters occurred very early,
and then declined in significance, or were discontinued. Between India and
China the most fruitful exchanges took place in the seventh century CE,
plus and minus a couple of centuries. Culturally, the Chinese import of
Buddhism and translations of sacred and scientific texts from Sanskrit was
the high point (see Sen 2005: ch. 8). After the Chinese Tang dynasty contacts tended to dry up. Under British rule India became a major supplier of
opium to nineteenth-century China.
Muslim missionaries from West Asia arrived in Beijing, and Arab and
Chinese military commanders battled each other in today’s Uzbekistan
(near the ancient city of Talas or Taraz, north-west of Samarkand) in 751.
The Arabs won a decisive victory, and the Chinese were confined to
current Sinkiang (Soucek 2000: 67ff). Islam and the Arabic script became
enduring features of Central Asia.
The Silk Road of caravans connected West and East Asia across the
deserts, steppes and mountains of Inner Asia. It provided the basis of the
wealth and the cultural florescence of oasis cities like Bokhara. Its strenuous plodding could connect, but not unite, the two wings of Asia, and
after the seventeenth-century it fell into decline.
36 Göran Therborn
What we now call Central Asia would have been the pivot, if there had
been one Asia. Bold attempts were made, and not without success, but never
for very long. Most successful were the Mongols of Genghiz Khan and his
grandsons, who were by the end of the thirteenth century ruling Inner Asia
from the Yellow Sea to the Black Sea. They were succeeded by another
formidable commander of mounted warriors, the Turkic Tamerlane (as
Amir Temur the patron saint of current Uzbekistan). But Temur died, in
1405, at the very beginning of his China campaign, and the Timurids held,
for a good century, a basically West-cum-Central Asian empire, from
today’s Afghanistan to the Black Sea (see Soucek 2000: chs 7–8).
The centre and the southeast
If one should extend the division of Asia beyond the number of three, two
more might very well be added, Central and Southeast Asia.
In spite of its sparse population Central Asia may be singled out as a
fourth Asia. Its continental significance has derived primarily from its premodern Mongol and Turkic warriors. Bokhara and Samarkand were also
major cultural centres of West Asian civilization, from the ninth century of
al-Bukhari, the most renowned and revered editor of hadith, i.e. of sayings
of the Prophet Muhammad, to the fifteenth-century statesman and
astronomer Ülugbek (or Ulug Beg), whose astronomical calculations were
translated into Latin by English seventeenth-century scholars, on proud
display today in the little museum at his former observatory in Samarkand.
The authors of today’s literary classics of Central Asia wrote in Arabic,
and were part of a West Asian culture, to whose centres, Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Shiraz, they also travelled. A case in point is the tenth-century
philosopher al-Farabi, now beginning the display at the Kazakhstani Book
Museum in Almaty – which ends with literature on the 60th anniversary of
the victory in the Great Patriotic War, 1945 – and adorning the tenge banknotes of Kazakhstan. The plundered wealth of Temur and his successors
was used to turn Samarkand into a wonder of Islamic architecture,
drawing on expertise and resources from Azerbaijan to India.
The “classicism” characteristic of Central Asia cannot be formulated in
literary terms. It was the far-ranging military exploits fostered by its harsh
nomadic culture that produced Genghiz Khan and the Genghisids, Tamerlane and the Timurids, and Babur, the descendant of them both, who
founded the Mughal empire. But the Mongol rulers left little culture
behind them, the rule of the Timurids was rather short. Immediately after
Temur’s death the imperial capital was moved from Samarkand to Herat,
and the Mughal empire became more Persian than Central Asian. In other
words, if it had been only for its short-lived and often destructive powerful
empires, Central Asia might have been left as a (virtually) empty hole in
the middle of Asia.
However, it had a distinctive path to modernity, combining elements of
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 37
(Russian) colonialism and European class conflict. Modernity came to
Central Asia with the Russian Revolution, igniting Russian railwaymen
and soldiers of Tashkent and other centres of what had in the late nineteenth century become Russian Turkestan, and young Central Asian
nationalists rebelling against the emirs and the khans protected by crumbling Czarism. The legacy of the Russian Revolution is now viewed critically, but it is not denied and denounced. Victory in the Second World
War is regarded as a national victory in the post-Soviet states of Central
Asia. When Lenin was taken down in the (then) capital of Kazakhstan,
Almaty, he was replaced by two female war heroes of the Second World
War. The last pre-perestroika Communist leaders of Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan, Kunaiev and Rashidov, respectively, are naming major boulevards in Almaty and Tashkent. The party boss who Gorbachev fired for
corruption has posthumously become a consensual national statesman.
The Kazakhstan opposition recently placed a basket of flowers at the official post-independence monument of Kunaiev (The Kazakhstan Monitor
28 October 2005: 2).
Enormous gas and oil findings in above all Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, with some much smaller ones in Uzbekistan, are approximating
the region to its ancient cultural configuration, West Asia. Like the latter,
Central Asia today is no region with a common voice. While inter-state
wars have not arisen – unlike the Caucasus and former Yugoslavia – previous contacts have thinned. There are no longer any direct train or bus connections between the two largest cities, Tashkent and Almaty, and visas
are required to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, the latter country turning
itself into the isolationist North Korea of the area. The Central Asian University has significantly become the law faculty of the State University of
Tashkent. The unity that occurs is mainly part of big power games. The
Russians are proposing a Eurasian Gas Alliance, and the Chinese and the
Russians are pushing their regional security interests in the Shanghai
Group (assembling two Eurasian big powers and Central Asia except for
Turkmenistan). The Americans have a military base in Kyrgyzstan, at an
airport named after the country’s national poet, Manas. The smartest
players try to turn the big power courting to their own advantage. Kazakhstan and its President Nasarbaiev definitely belong to that class. A
recent example of it is the internationally released film of the modern
Kazakh national epos Nomads. It has three directors, a Russian, an American and a Kazakh.
The case for Southeast Asia as a fifth Asia would also have to be
complex. Though richly endowed with ancient high culture, it has no
common classicism. Its classics include Javanese high Malay culture (of
music, literature, etiquette), the norms of adat, influences of Hinduism in
the Indonesian archipelago – still visible in the temple ruins of Borobodur
in Java, and in the predominant culture of Bali and Lombok – later on followed by Islam, also coming by Indian merchants. They also include
38 Göran Therborn
enduring Buddhism in today’s Sri Lanka (a major centre historically),
Myanmar and Thailand – with its ancient sacred language of Pali, its scriptures and characteristic architecture – a Catholic Christian input into The
Philippines, and a Chinese culture with pre-modern ancestry in the region.
Its road to modernity was mainly colonial, with different colonial rulers –
Dutch, British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, even American – but the
region also includes Siam, today’s Land of the Thais, which took the slow
lane of Reactive Modernization.
Why single out Southeast Asia then? For two reasons mainly. First, a
global study of the family in the twentieth century (Therborn 2004)
revealed an interstitial region between the Indic and the Sinic civilizations,
and at the crossroads of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Confucianism and
Hinduism, upon a receptive and mellowing Malay culture. The stern patriarchies of the main Asian civilizations, and even of Hispanic Catholicism,
had softened in this area, from Sri Lanka to The Philippines, due mainly to
Malay customs and to Buddhist insouciance with respect to family
matters.
Second, in ASEAN, Southeast Asia has currently the only really functioning institution of regional cooperation, economic and political, on the
continent. It was established in 1967, out of earlier Malaysian and Filipino
initiatives, largely as a conservative, Cold War outfit, not unlike the EEC,
with an edge against China, as Chinese as well as Communist. A very large
part of modern economic development has been pushed and carried by
more or less assimilated Chinese capitalists, producing ethnic tensions
much less lethal but culturally rather similar to those of Germans and
Jews, and Turks and Armenians (see Chua 2003).
Part of Southeast Asia is also a cross-roads where the different Asias
actually meet. The Singapore invocation of Asian values may have something hollow about it, coming from a city-state that has embraced its colonial (British) background more thoroughly than any other Asian state,
including naming the business class of Singapore Airlines, Raffles Class,
after the British colonial founder of the city. But it may also be seen as
coming out of a regional watch-tower. Neighbouring Malaysia is in fact
the meeting ground of all the major cultures of Asia. Alongside its Southeast Asian Malay majority, it has very sizeable Chinese and Indian (Tamil)
minorities. Through its increasingly emphasized (majority) Muslim character, it is also connected to West Asia, and to the latter’s holy places and
educational centres of Islam. In the wake of West Asian withdrawal from
an increasingly unreliable and hostile America and Europe, Malaysia is
also wooing West Asian capital. Islam bridges cultures. The first democratic President of Indonesia after the bloody dictatorship of general
Suharto, Abderrahman Wahid (aka Gus Dur), was educated in Cairo and
in Baghdad.
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 39
Declining Europe, rising Asias
Recent “globalization” discourse to the contrary, contiguous space, transnational regions has become more important, at least in some respects.
Trade flows, for instance, have become more inter-regional, in Europe, in
East Asia, in North and South America. South and West Asia have little
intra-regional trade, but also there, like in Africa, East and Southeast Asia,
and in the Americas, are tendencies towards more regional political cooperation. Europe has here been an important source of inspiration (see
Therborn 2006). Trans-national popular culture has strong regional profiles, with an East and Southeast Asian circuit of pop music, film and television. In South Asia there is an Indian radiation across national political
barriers, there is an African music scene, a common Arab culture – whose
gravity is shifting from Egypt to the Gulf – and a Latin American framework with Mexican and Brazilian centres. Europe has several regional cultural features and institutions, ranging from the European Song Festival to
the Franco-German Arte Channel.
In this context of trans-national regionalization, the prospects of
regions acquire their significance. A demographic-cum-economic perspective here predicts a long process of European decline of relative wealth and
power in the world, a rise of China and of East Asia generally, except for
Japan, and a rise of India and South Asia. For the foreseeable future, the
United States can be expected to maintain itself much better than Europe.
There are three crucial factors here: the size of the population, the age
composition of it and the effects of age on economic growth. Western
Europe and Japan have for decades had a fertility rate well below replacement, and this is now beginning to affect population developments seriously. The post-Communist trauma of Eastern Europe has also led to a
precipitous decline of the birth rate there. Russian and Ukrainian populations are already declining, while immigration is still offsetting the natural
decrease of Germany and Italy. The USA is the only significant part of the
developed world that is roughly on replacement level – mainly due to the
fertility of Hispanic and other recent immigrant women (see UNFPA 2005:
111ff; Therborn 2004: 288ff). A UN prognostic gives a hint of the future
numbers involved (Table 2.1).
Europe, Japan and Russia are bent on becoming the big demographic
losers of the new century, with declining populations, and, in particular
and particularly serious, declining working-age populations (Bloom et al.
2002: table 3.1). From contemporary projections of population and of
economic growth China may come to dwarf its Russian and Japanese
neighbours. In 1900 Europe housed a quarter of the world’s population, in
2000 one-eighth, and in 2050 it is predicted to harbour only one-fifteenth
of the human beings of the earth. South Asia, and perhaps also SubSaharan Africa, are heading for overtaking East Asia as the most populous
region of the world. The natural riches of Africa and the demonstrated
40 Göran Therborn
Table 2.1 Regional population prospects of the world 2000–2050 (in millions)
Prognosticated population
in 2050
Change
2000–2050
Sub-Saharan Africa
Latin America & Caribbean
Northern America
USA
Eastern Asia
China
Japan
South Asiaa
India
Pakistan
Southeast Asia
Indonesia
West Asia and North Africaa
Europeb
Russia
1,680
806
438
397
1,665
1,462
109
2,345
1,572
344
800
311
920
603
104
⫹1,045
⫹280
⫹120
⫹111
⫹173
⫹177
⫺19
⫹933
⫹547
⫹199
⫹170
⫹97
⫹457
⫺123
⫺44
World
9,322
3,186
Source: UNFPA (2001).
Notes
a Afghanistan and Iran here transferred to West Asia.
b Enlarged EU and the Balkans.
productive capacity of India make it not inconceivable that their population weight may in the end get an economic base to stand on. The West
Asian–North African heartlands of Islam are likely to become demographically heavy-weight, although the educational changes just started may
bring down the current estimates. Their economic future is even more
uncertain.
The balance of power in the world will be affected, not only by the distribution of missiles and other weapons of mass destruction, but also by
population movements.
So far, ageing has attracted much more attention than population
decline and shifts of demographic weight. Even under assumptions of continued immigration and of some recuperation of the fertility rate, the
future of Europe and Japan looks rather grey. By 2000, there were already
more people aged 65 and older than there were children under 15 in
Japan, and in Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain. In 2015 this appears
likely to be the case over the whole of Europe (UNDP 2002: table 5). The
UN Population Division (UNFPA 2000: table A11) for 2050 predicts that
one Japanese in three will be 65 or more, as well as almost one in three
(29%) of the inhabitants of the current European Union. The median age
of Japanese and Europeans will be 49 and 48, respectively. The US prognostic is one in five being 65 or older.
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 41
Ageing populations have natural difficulties in being innovative and
dynamic. There are recent tendencies in theories of economic development
to emphasize the importance of the age composition of a population for
the growth of its economy. Other things being equal, a large and growing
proportion of prime-age people, say 20 to 40, is conducive to economic
growth, whereas large proportions of old people or of children tend to
slow it down (see Bloom et al. 2002).
Now, demography, like all the social sciences, is subject to the inexhaustible whims of human creativity, so these long-term predictions have
wide margins of uncertainty. However, the tendencies pointed to above do
provide a reasonable starting point for reflections about the future of
Europe and Asia. A relative decline and a relative rise, respectively, then
seem to be what should be expected. But within such a framework, what
are the main regional options? And, what will be the cultural implications
of the shifts of positions in the world?
The necessity and the options
Europe is bound for a relative decline of power. But its world significance will also depend on its own choices. A focus on continental
integration and a development of the European social pattern and of the
European tradition of international law will make it an influential world
player, a kind of Scandinavia writ large. The important Asian and
North African immigration could be given a chance to stimulate a multicultural Renaissance. On the other hand, a neglect of continental
integration, an abandonment of the specific social form of capitalism,
and an abdication from defending principles of law and human rights,
in favour of an alignment with the USA, as a Hilfspolizei in the American crusades around the world, and of attempting to emulate American
domestic markets, may contribute to a defence of a “Western civilization” in the American sense. But that option, not unrealistic, is likely
to accelerate the decline of Europe, economically, socially, culturally
and politically.
Currently, Europe is drifting, without any responsible leadership in
sight. No part of Asia is yet ready to do anything more in the world than
to raise itself, which is of course both legitimate and important.
In the longer run important cultural adjustments will be called for. Both
European and Asian civilizations had better become learning civilizations.
The European or “Western” canon will not be able to maintain universalistic claims. Asian forms of cognitive thought, of aesthetics and of values
will no longer be ignorable or marginalizeable. From the experimental psychology of Richard Nisbet (2003) we are beginning to catch a glimpse by
hard evidence of interesting, fundamental differences of cognition. East
Asians, for instance, tend to perceive the world more in contextual, relational, contradictory and spatial terms than Euro-Americans, who focus
42 Göran Therborn
more on actors’ dispositions, on objects and their categorization, on
abstract rules and on an excluding logic of either/or. These and other
similar findings likely to emerge into view will require some cultural reorientation.
East and South Asian values and worldviews will become more important and more widespread, although their concrete content cannot be
extrapolated from their ancient civilizations. Questions like Tu Weiming’s
(in Hutanuwatr and Manivannan 2005: I:154) are likely to be raised with
mounting insistence:
Why should we have more emphasis on liberty than on justice? Why is
there too much emphasis on rationality at the expense of compassion
and sympathy? Why is there such a strong emphasis on legality rather
than on civility? Why is there too much emphasis on individual rights
rather than on individual responsibility? Why is there too much
emphasis on individualism rather than a stronger emphasis on the
communal, or on the idea of a person as a centre of relationships
rather than as an island of individualism?
But Asian values will also have to confront the coming wealth and
power of the region, a task which the thought-rich collection of interviews
on The Asian Future (Hutanuwatr and Manivannan 2005) avoids because
of its perspective of “Alternatives to Consumerism”. Asia is actually more
likely to have to manage a rising and spreading consumerism, than to
follow the alternative of a “simple lifestyle” advocated by some of its
greatest minds.
India and, in particular, China have little of the cultural universalism
and sense of mission propelling European and American empires. Ceteris
paribus this will mean a more peaceful world, with less violent interventions. But it will also make the development of international law and
global governance more difficult.
The Islamic world shares the sense of mission with Euro-American
Christianity. The crusaders and the jihadis are of the same kin. But the
long-term global influence of Islam will largely depend on the outcome of
the current violent resistance and of the American aim at crushing it. For
Islamic influence to spread, terrorism has to stop, without West Asia being
pulverized by the USA.
Sooner or later, the big powers of Asia, China and India will have to
confront, in one form or other, the American mission to rule the world.
The rational interest of Europe will be to stay out of that conflict, to step
out of the “Western” shadow and out of the imperial cloud.
Post-Western Europe and the plural Asias 43
References
Bary, W. T. de (1990) “Asian Classics as ‘The Great Books of the East’ ”, in W. T.
de Bary and I. Bloom (eds) op. cit: 25–60.
Bary, W. T. de and I. Bloom (eds) (1990) Approaches to the Asian Classics, New
York: Columbia University Press.
Bloom, D., D. Canning and J. Sevilla (2002) The Demographic Divided: A New
Perspective on the Economic Consequences of Population Change, New York:
RAND.
Buruma, I. and A. Margalit (2005) Occidentalism, London: Penguin.
Chua, A. (2003) World on Fire, London: William Heineman.
Huntington, S. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Hutanuwatr, P. and R. Manivannan (eds) (2005) The Asian Future, 2 vols,
London: Zed Books.
Inglehart, R. et al. (eds) (2004) Human Beliefs and Values, México: Siglo XXI.
Karatani, K. (1993) “The Discursive Space of Modern Japan”, in M. Miyoshi and
H. D. Harootunian (eds) op. cit: 288–315.
Kaufmann, T. D. C. (1995) Court, Cloister and City: Art and Culture of Central
Europe, 1450–1800, London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Koh, T. (2000) “Opening Address”, in Kwok Kian-Woon et al. (eds) We Asians,
Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society, pp. 9–14.
Korhonen, P. (2002) “Asia’s Chinese name”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 3(2): 253–70.
Kwok Kian-Woon et al. (eds) (2000) We Asians, Singapore: Singapore Heritage
Society.
McClain, J. and J. Merriman (1994) “Edo and Paris: Cities and Power”, in J.
McClain, J. Merriman and K. Ugawa (eds) op. cit: 3–40.
McClain, J., J. Merriman and K. Ugawa (eds) (1994) Edo and Paris, Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Miyoshi, M. and H. D. Harootunian (eds) (1993) Japan in the World, Durham:
Duke University Press.
Nisbet, R. (2003) The Geography of Thought, London: Nicholas Brealey.
Okakura, K. (1903) The Ideals of the East, London: John Murray.
Pilipenko, V. (1993) St Petersburg, Saint Petersburg: Zvezda Library.
Pollock, S. (2001) “The Death of Sanskrit”, Comparative Study of History and
Society, 43(2): 392–419.
Robertson, B. C. (1995) Raja Rammohan Ray, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
Sen, A. (2005) The Argumentive Indian, London: Allen Lane.
Soucek, S. (2000) Inner Asia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Spence, J. (1990) The Search for Modern China, New York: W. W. Norton.
Tanaka, S. (1993) Japan’s Orient, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Therborn, G. (2002) “The World’s Trader, the World’s Lawyer”, European
Journal of Social Theory, 5(4): 403–18.
Therborn, G. (2004) Between Sex and Power: Family in the World, 1900–2000,
London: Routledge.
Therborn, G. (2006, in press) “Europe and Asias: In the global political economy
and in the world as a cultural system”, in G. Therborn and H. Khondker (eds)
Asia and Europe in Globalization, Leiden: Brill.
44 Göran Therborn
UNDP (2002) Human Development Report 2002, New York.
UNFPA (2000) Replacement Migration, New York.
UNFPA (2001) The State of the World Population in 2001, New York.
UNFPA (2005) The State of the World Population in 2005, New York.
Wakabayashi, B. T. (1986) Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in EarlyModern Japan, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Weggel, O. (1989) Die Asiaten, München: C. H. Beck.
3
Civilizational constellations and
European modernity reconsidered
Gerard Delanty
The idea of civilization has made a return to the contemporary scene.
What is noteworthy about the idea of civilization today is the emphasis on
the plural: it is a matter of civilizations. The universalistic notion of civilization went into gradual decline over the last twenty years or so as a
result of four major discourses, which can be summed up as discourses of
civilizational mastery, civilizational hybridity, clashes of civilizations and
civilizational cross-contamination.
The first can be associated with Edward Said’s orientalist thesis, which,
as is well known, claimed that Western civilization required for its selfdescription a notion of another civilization that was less developed or
superseded by the Western civilization (Said 1979). In this view, which laid
the foundation for postcolonialism, the very notion of civilization required
a binary relation of self and other whereby it was the self, the West, that
created the terms of the relation and thus established its mastery over the
other, the Orient. This thesis has been much discussed and it will suffice to
state that the significance of the orientalist thesis is that it introduced a
notion of civilization that highlighted the relational dimension of West and
East and, moreover, suggested a view of civilization as a term of discourse.
Where Said drew attention to the discourse of mastery in the constitution of civilizations, the next generation of postcolonial thought stressed
the hybrid nature of civilizations and the capacity of the dominated to
resist. Building on Said’s notion of an orientalist discourse of mastery,
postcolonial scholarship influenced by the confluence of postmodernism
and globalization theory noted the mixed character of civilizations.
Notions of hybridity, creolization, cross-fertilization, globalization and
entangled modernities suggested a view of East and West as mutually
implicated in each other and, moreover, stressed the political role of the
subaltern in resisting the West (Chakrabarty 2002; Nederveen Pieterse
2004). The emphasis shifted to resistance.
From an entirely different background, Samuel Huntington introduced
the popular theory of civilizations locked in a primordial clash as a result
of incommensurable religious worldviews (Huntington 1996). With the
decline of oppositional political ideologies, such as capitalism/democracy
46 Gerard Delanty
versus communism, civilizations become the new scene for geopolitics with
clashes between the Christian West and a resurgent Islamic and Confucian
East shaping world politics. Although some aspects of this have been discredited – such as the assumed link between Islam and Confucianism – the
argument has some resonance in the current political situation and has been
very influential (see Burke 1997). In any case, the notion of a clash of civilizations has itself drawn attention to tensions between cultural models and
collective identities that have a basis in civilizational routes to modernity.
Finally, a more recent conception of civilizational relations has emerged
around the notion of Occidentalism. Where Huntington stressed the defensive stance of the West and the need to adjust to the post-Cold War
context, the Occidentalist charge, as stated most forcibly by Ian Buruma
and Avishai Margalit, highlights the rise of a non-Western countercivilization arising in the East and which paradoxically had its intellectual
origins in the West (Buruma and Margalit 2004). This is a thesis of civilizational cross-contamination: the bad ideas of the West found their
expression in non-Western civilizations and have given rise to a powerful
and authoritarian counter-civilization, which is principally represented by
radical Islamism. A different version of this is represented by Asianism,
with the Russian Eurasianist movement being the chief example of this
anti-Western current based on a notion of the uniqueness of Russian civilization as distinctly un-Western (Billington 2004).
In their very different ways what is suggested here is a picture of civilizations in tension, whether through violent conflict, resistance or
mastery. Undoubtedly far too big claims are made for civilizations as
actors akin to states and as having unified and coherent identities. Civilizations are much more diffuse and some of the most violent conflicts have
been within them, not between them. Civilizations are not cultures and nor
are they, as Buruma and Margalit imply, systems of ideas, but what has
been called ‘families of societies’. The very term the West is now questionable and it is doubtful that Europe and the United States form a common
culture (Bonnett 2004). The postcolonial thesis avoids to some extent
some of the more extreme claims, albeit at the cost of overstating colonial
hybridity or generalizing national cases to a wider notion of civilization
and, moreover, does not adequately account for civilizational encounters
not shaped by colonial relations, as in East Asia, or precolonial relations
with the East. It is not the aim of this chapter to dismiss these positions.
Rather the purpose is to identify a cosmopolitan conception of civilizational interactions. The aim of this exercise is to draw attention to the
hermeneutical dimension of civilizations in dialogue. To do this the notion
of a civilizational constellation will be proposed and applied to what will
be called European–Asian inter-civilizational cosmopolitanism. In proposing such a notion, the intention is not to deny the fact that the interactions
of civilizations have often been violent and nor is it intended to over-play a
harmonious conception of civilizational interactions. Civilizations and
Civilizational constellations and modernity 47
wider civilizational constellations have indeed, as Johann Arnason (2003)
has argued, destructive dimensions and constitute fields in which radical
interpretations of the world are articulated.
The intellectual background to this is threefold: comparative sociological civilizational analysis, focusing on the work of S. N. Eisenstadt
and Johann Arnason; critical hermeneutical philosophy; and theories of
cultural translation. This will be briefly clarified before the notion of a civilizational constellation is introduced with some remarks concerning the
European context of application. The implications of this for an intercivilization cosmopolitanism will be considered by way of conclusion.
Multiple modernities and civilizational analysis
In contrast to the contemporary discourses of civilizations in tension, a
hermeneutical conception of civilization can be associated with the comparative sociological analysis of Benjamin Nelson, who introduced the
notion of civilizational encounters into what had been a universalistic
understanding of Western civilization and various cyclical notions of civilization (notably Spengler and Toynbee). Drawing from, but going beyond,
Weber’s comparative studies on the religious origins of the major world
civilizations, Nelson was interested in the relations between civilizations in
terms of cultural encounters (Nelson 1976, 1981). Weber’s own concerns
did not lie in hermeneutics, given his preoccupation with tracing the development of processes of rationalization, which he believed to be universal
and dominated by formal and instrumental rationality as embodied in
capitalism and law. Nelson’s framework emphasized the plurality of civilizations as embodied in different forms of consciousness. This theory of
civilizational encounters was not at the expense of a notion of universalism
or an overriding concept of modernity. Although incomplete and tending
to ignore the economic and political structures of civilizations, his
approach had the merit of highlighting cultural encounters and also drew
attention to the suggestive notion of a civilizational complex.
Nelson’s pioneering work in comparative historical sociology was
reflected in the theory of world history, as developed by William McNeil.
He argued that a global perspective on world history had been established
on the basis of earlier works but the full implications of this had not been
realized (McNeil 1980). Accordingly his aim was a strong argument for
civilizations in the plural and driven by communicative cultural links
between multiple centres of power. We have also in this the suggestion of a
communicative concept of culture. Civilizations develop through borrowings and learning. Although McNeil did not explicitly advocate a
hermeneutical concept of civilizational interrelations, it was implicit in his
approach. In addition, his world history approach provided a sound basis
for a pluralistic theory of civilizations as well as a theory of globalization
as having its roots in civilizations (see Mozaffari 2002; Robertson 1992).
48 Gerard Delanty
Along with Nelson and McNeil, Fernand Braudel can also be mentioned as a pioneer in civilizational analysis. In his studies of the Mediterranean, Braudel portrayed the interaction of a plurality of civilizations
within the unity of the Mediterranean: Christian, Jewish, Islamic and
Orthodox civilizations interacted and the cross-fertilization of their cultures produced the world of the Mediterranean which he associates with
the multi-ethnic Roman Empire (Braudel 1972/73, 2002). Braudel never
developed his concept of civilization, which remained a vague, suggestive
notion entailing both unity and pluralism within it and at the same time
included an inter-civilization dynamic that was creative and transformative. Cultural trade, diasporas, translations, cultural diffusions and
cross-fertilizations produced the world of the Mediterranean and its civilizations. Finally, for the purpose of this brief sketch, the work of Eisenstadt has been significant in preparing the ground for a new theory of
civilizational analysis that is now best represented by the work of Johann
Arnason.
The study of the Axial Age civilizations, a term borrowed from Karl
Jaspers, provided a context for an analysis of the relations between cultural, civilizational visions and institutional frameworks (Eisenstadt 1986;
see also 1983, 1987). Eisenstadt argued that the Axial Age civilizations
were characterized by a sharp distinction between the social division of
labour and the charismatic dimensions of the social order. In these civilizations cultural visions are never fully encapsulated in social structures
because they are borne by social groups – autonomous cultural elites such
as intellectuals – who emerge as distinct social actors. This point is connected with the argument that there is a close connection between
autonomous cultural elites and new types of social movements, such as
sects and heterodoxies, which articulated alternative visions of social order
in their collective identities. What in fact crystallizes with the Axial Age is
a fundamental tension between the transcendental and the mundane orders
and, more importantly, different conceptions on how to institutionalize
such heterodox visions. The quest for major social reorganization driven
by the transcendental visions – as expressed in ideologies and collective
identities – as interpreted by particular social groups has made the entire
world potentially subject to continuous social, political and cultural reconstruction. What emerged, then, with the Axial Age was a cultural predisposition towards social transformation as a result of an entirely new
conception of social agency. Where this has been the case there has been a
strong tendency towards revolution.
Not all civilizations have been shaped by an Axial Age transformation.
Eisenstadt has been struck by the fact that the uniqueness of Japanese civilization did not have an Axial Age discord between the transcendental and
the mundane. This has been the subject of a major study of Japanese civilization (Eisenstadt 1996).
On the basis of the civilizational theory of the Axial Age, in the course
Civilizational constellations and modernity 49
of the last five years or so Eisenstadt has developed an entirely new conception of modernity as multiple (Eisenstadt 2003). Modernity emerged
out of the cultural and political programme of one Axial Age civilization,
the Christian-European civilization; it manifested itself first in various heterodoxies which all sought to bring the Kingdom of God to earth. These
revolutions gave rise to the belief in the possibility of bridging the gap
between the transcendental and mundane orders; they were based on the
belief in the capacity of conscious human agency to realize in the mundane
orders some of the transcendental and utopian visions. In the Great Revolutions from the wars of religion in the seventeenth century to the Enlightenment these heterodoxies and the modern secular equivalents moved the
new transcendental vision closer to the centre where they became institutionalized in, what can be called, a ‘second Axial Age’ and thus ceased to
be marginal sectarian projects. According to Eisenstadt, this all began in
Europe, but spread to the rest of the world. Beginning with America, the
fundamental legacy of the Axial Age has been taken up by different groups
and institutionalized in numerous different ways. This legacy, which constitutes a new civilization, is ‘modernity’. But modernity is not able to
overcome the basic antinomies or contradictions of the Axial Age and
entails the continuous reinterpretation and reconstruction of its themes,
especially those produced in the tension between the totalizing and pluralistic conceptions of human experience and social life. It is not just for this
reason that modernity did not give rise to a homogeneous civilization. The
civilization of modernity, which developed first in Europe, spread to the
entire world but crystallized in numerous forms. The resulting condition of
multiple modernities challenges the classical theories of modernization and
signals a particular view of the contemporary world in terms of a multiplicity of cultural and political projects.
Whereas Eisenstadt tends to see modernity as a distinct civilization,
Johann Arnason in a major work on civilizational theory argues for a pluralistic theory of civilization and a related argument concerning multiple
modernities (Arnason 2003). Briefly, Arnason’s position is one that brings
a strong hermeneutical dimension to civilizational analysis. Although this
is implicit in the work of Eisenstadt, it was not developed. Arnason’s starting point is Castoriadis’s theory of the imaginary component in cultural
models of interpretation, which are a central feature of the selfconstitution of every society (Castoriadis 1987). For Arnason, Castoriadis
broke new ground in philosophy and had an important message for the
analysis of civilization in that his notion of a radical social imaginary can
be seen as the mechanism that lies at the core of civilizational encounters.
In this approach civilizations are contested grounds in which different
visions of the world emerge and undergo transformation, central to which
are dynamics of encounters and syntheses.
The multi-dimension, pluralist dimension of civilizations is much more
evident in Arnason’s approach, which is based on the key insight that
50 Gerard Delanty
civilization unity is compatible with a plurality of political centres and cultural models. Civilizations are ‘families of societies’, not holistic units and,
unlike Eisenstadt, he stresses not ‘cultural programmes’ but ‘cultural problematics’. Although Arnason does not make the claim, it could be argued
on the basis of his ideas that a civilization is marked not by a worldview as
such but by a particular logic of imaginary signification. Thus a civilization
is not defined by an unchanging set of cultural values or systems of belief
but formations of the long durée open to significant change and adaptation
to new conditions (Arnason 2003: 304). The hermeneutical trust of this is
clear: civilizations are internally plural and exist within a plurality of civilizations and all are based on frameworks of interpretation which can be
appropriated in different ways by many social actors within and beyond
the contours of the given civilization. Such frameworks constitute fields of
interpretation for more or less radical interpretations of the world. For this
reason Arnason is doubtful about the application of civilizational analysis
to cosmopolitanism (see his chapter in this volume).
However, the connection with modernity is a central aspect of his argument. Modernity is the major example of internal conflict and contested
identity, he claims, and as such it bears the imprint of the fundamental
tension of the imaginary significations of civilizations. The divergent patterns of modernity should thus be seen as combinations of civilizational
complexes. The argument can be summed up in his own words as the
endeavour ‘to link the civilizational perspective to an important but underdeveloped theme in the theory of modernity: the dynamics of tensions and
conflicts, between basic orientations (such as the cumulative pursuit of
power and the more ambiguous moves towards autonomy) as well as
between divergent institutional spheres – economic, political and cultural –
with corresponding interpretative frameworks’ (Arnason 2003: 49–50).
This emphasis on the self-transformative capacity of societies is thus
grounded in a pluralistic vision of civilizations and of modernity.
Critical hermeneutics and cosmopolitan possibilities
The previous analysis attempted to show that there is considerable support
within comparative historical sociology for a conception of civilization
that highlights the plural and hermeneutical aspects of civilizations. The
work of Eisenstadt and Arnason, in addition, makes a connection with civilizational analysis and notions of multiple modernities. One of the
implications of this is a view of civilization as critical of both postcolonial
and occidentalist notions of Eurocentrism, that is the assumption or accusation that Western civilization is inherently based on universalistic
premises and that therefore the very notion of civilization is inseparable
from a logic of mastery. The aim of this chapter is to develop this by
demonstrating, both theoretically and empirically, a view of civilizational
encounters pointing in the direction of a new cosmopolitanism. A
Civilizational constellations and modernity 51
hermeneutical conception of civilizational encounters suggests a cosmopolitan political standpoint. Two dimensions of this will be taken in order to
clarify the theoretical foundations of such a cosmopolitanism: first, the
critical hermeneutics as formulated by Jürgen Habermas and Paul Ricouer
and, second, Rémi Brague’s critique of Eurocentricism. What we have here
are two very different critiques of the Eurocentrist fallacy with demonstrations of a certain cosmopolitanism inherent in the European civilization.
The notion of critical hermeneutics is best associated with the work of
Habermas and Ricouer, who in their different ways have outlined the
foundations of a hermeneutical philosophy that is characterized by a
strong critical thrust. Critical hermeneutics as developed by Habermas
draws attention to the transformative dimension of human communication, for the act of interpretation entails evaluation, reflection and critique
(Habermas 1987, 1996, 1998). In this view, culture is constantly being
scrutinized by an emancipated rationality, the bearers of which are enlightened and open up communicative spaces for society as a whole. In Habermas’s communication theory it is the very nature of language, which is the
ground of culture, that cultural frameworks of meaning can be critically
interrogated. Under the conditions of modernity this becomes an enhanced
capacity and is the hallmark of modernity itself, which Habermas more or
less equated with critical reflection and learning. In his social theory,
modern European civilization was the first to give expression to a
hermeneutical culture of critique and reflection. In constitutional law,
radical social movements, democracy and modernity unfolded in the form
of a struggle of communicative reason versus the instrumental reason of
capitalism and authoritarianism.
In Habermas’s work a critical hermeneutical conception of culture gives
a privileged place to Europe as the site of its emergence, but the implication is a limited universalism which can be seen as the basis of cosmopolitanism. According to Habermas, because this culture emerged in Europe it
does not mean it is specifically European, for all societies have the learning
capacity for critical reflection. This is a universalistic position to the extent
to which it is based on the thesis that the capacity for critical self-reflection
is present in the very nature of human communication and that, moreover,
every society and civilization has a capacity for self-critique. It is a limited
universalism in that it makes no claims as to which cultural values should
be considered important. In short, it is a universalism of communicative
reason as embodied in democracy. Although Habermas’s approach is not
necessarily free of Eurocentrism, there is the basis of a cosmopolitan vision
of cross-civilizational hermeneutics in it that has not been properly
developed by Habermas (Delanty 1997). The tendency in his thought more
recently is towards a position that simply posits that people can transcend
cultural contexts of particularity to engage in discursive dialogue that is
free from culturally specific limits. From the perspective of democratic
theory this is no doubt interesting and important, but from the point of
52 Gerard Delanty
view of a social theory of civilizational encounters and the search for a
wider cosmopolitanism it leaves unresolved the question as to the cultural
foundations of inter-civilizational encounters. Nevertheless, the basis of
critical hermeneutics has been established and there is considerable value
in building up this to develop the notion of multiple modernities. As
argued in the previous section, the analysis of the roots of a hermeneutical
conception modernity in civilizations and civilizational encounters is the
key to a genuine cosmopolitan theory of modernity.
Where Habermas asserts the inherent cosmopolitanism of communication as tendentially trans-civilizational and the essence of any intercivilization encounter, Brague has offered a quite different position, which
can be briefly discussed. As noted above, Habermas’s idea of critical
hermeneutics is located on the level of discourse rather than on the level of
cultural imaginaries or the distinctive cultural models of civilizations. In
contrast, Brague sees within European civilization a distinctive culture
characterized by a logic of distantiation from its own origins, the result of
which is that this European culture can only see itself through the eyes of
the other. Thus what distinguishes Europe is its mode of relating to itself,
which is one of distance, Brague claims. Europe constantly has to confront
a consciousness of having borrowed everything from sources that can
never be regained. Brague associates with Rome an eccentric culture that is
based on nothing more than the re-working of the culture of others. The
Romans were the bearers of innovation and brought innovation itself to
the centre of culture. His thesis is that Europe distinguishes itself from
other cultural worlds by its particular mode of relation to its own: ‘the
appropriation of what is foreign’ (Brague 2002: 90). The fundamental trait
of modernity therefore is contained in Europe’s relation to its past. This is
a relation that is essentially hermeneutical: the past cannot be known, but
it can be interpreted. European culture thus is a culture of, what he calls,
‘secondarity’. In this view, European culture is by its nature inherently
cosmopolitan, since to travel along its route is to go back to non-European
sources: ‘For Europe, the source is what is external’ (Brague 2002: 137).
The relation to a European Self must therefore be a relation to an Other.
What Brague has done is to draw attention to the form of European
culture in order to demonstrate that culture is more than what is carried as
content. The distinctive feature of the form of European culture in his
provocative characterization is the mode of transmission.
Brague may be going too far in claiming that this hermeneutical mode
of cultural transmission is distinctively Roman. We cannot enter into an
assessment of that claim here. It can be suggested, however, that what he
has pointed to is a feature of modernity that is present to varying degrees
in all cultures, namely the tension between the present and the past along
with the consciousness of globality, which brings with it different visions
of the world. This theme has been at the centre of philosophical work on
hermeneutics and the confluence of European and Indian thought (Dall-
Civilizational constellations and modernity 53
mayr 1996), studies on the Enlightenment and the East (Clarke 1997;
Osterhammel 1998) and recent historical sociology that draws attention to
the Eastern origins of Western civilization (Hobson 2004). The main point
to be made in the present context concerns the implications of a hermeneutical understanding of civilizational interactions for cosmopolitanism. This
will now be briefly commented on.
Cosmopolitan thought has now moved beyond the limits of earlier conceptions of cosmopolitan to recognize that there is a plurality of cosmopolitan projects and that therefore we should conceive of cosmopolitanism in
the plural (Breckenridge et al. 2002; Cheah and Robbins 1996; Vertovec
and Cohen 2002). Both the Ancient and Enlightenment conceptions of cosmopolitanism were Eurocentric in the assumption that the context of cosmopolitanism was Europe and that cosmopolitanism was a civilizing force
in the world. Enlightenment cosmopolitanism reflected the superiority of
the French language and has often been associated with a particular kind
of individualism, suggesting the capacity of every individual to transcend
their immediate social context. Current theorizing on cosmopolitanism has
moved beyond this limited horizon to what might be called a postuniversal cosmopolitanism that is critical and dialogic with diversity as the
goal rather than the creation of a universal order, such as a cosmopolis.
This is a view that enables us to see how people were cosmopolitan in the
past as well as now and how different cosmopolitanisms existed before
and despite Westernization. The message in all cosmopolitan philosophy is
the challenge of living in a world of diversity and a belief in the fundamental virtue of embracing the values of the other.
Cultural translations and multiple modernities
We have now reached the main contention of this chapter. One of the
central dynamics that characterizes the cosmopolitan and hermeneutical
logic of civilizational encounters is cultural translations. The notion of a
cultural translation includes a hermeneutical dimension as well as a
cosmopolitan orientation.
It has been widely recognized that translation is not a simple act of
replication. As Hans-Georg Gadamer has argued, ‘every translation is at
the same time an interpretation’ (Gadamer 1975: 346). The very idea of
translation refers to something that transcends both self and other. In
Gadamer’s words: ‘The horizon of understanding cannot be limited either
by what the writer had originally in mind, or by the horizon of the person
to whom the text was originally addressed’ (Gadamer 1975: 356). Translation can never overcome the fundamental gulf between two languages he
argued in this seminal work on the nature of truth, tradition and interpretation. Translation arises, he argues, because of a need to bridge this gap,
but it cannot overcome it. While Gadamer makes the point that translation
is never the norm in ‘ordinary communication’ (which is based on mutual
54 Gerard Delanty
understanding of a shared language), or even when one speaker is speaking
a foreign language, it is increasingly becoming the space in which many
forms of communication are played out. Migration, globalization, and
new information and communication technologies have changed the
nature of communication to a point that cultural translation has become a
central category.
The capacity for translation – of languages, memories, narratives,
experiences, knowledges, identities, religion – is the basis of communication, tradition and cultural possibility and entails a continuous process of
social construction. The nature of translation is that it entails a relation to
an otherness. This can be to another culture, the past, to a universal
culture or whatever is experienced in terms of a cultural logic of distance
or loss. Translation arises in the first instance because of the fact of cultural difference and plurality, but never overcomes the fact of difference.
As Gadamer has argued, translation can never overcome the fundamental
gulf between languages (Gadamer 1975). Translation occurs because of
the fact of difference. Cultural translations cannot be discussed without
considering some of the negative aspects that may arise from cultural difference; that is, the dislocations of culture, mutations and even pathologies
than can result when cultures meet each other. Whether we are talking
about secularization, vernacularization, the ‘invention of tradition’, or
multiculturalism, cultural translations can have a destructive or unsettling
moment built into them, producing reifications, racisms, misunderstandings, symbolic violence or misrecognition. It is the nature of cultural translations that they destroy stable reference points and constitute new
locations; producing costs as well as benefits for those who live in their
margins. This is to address the question of ‘failures’ of translation; whether
failures will result in self-conscious critical awareness, in acts of resistance
or empowerment (Clifford 1997: 182–3).
If cosmopolitanism entails the capacity to view oneself from the eyes of
the other, then cultural translation might be the medium in which one
views one’s own culture as foreign (Ricoeur 1995, 1996). This is a medium
which is in particular a feature of modernity. While the capacity for translation has always existed, at least since the advent of writing; it is only
with modernity that translation, or translatability, has itself become the
dominant cultural form. Prior to modernity, translation served the function of communication and was not the basis of a given culture. The tendency to multiplicity within modernity was always present, but is only
becoming fully apparent today when the logic of translation has extended
beyond the simple belief that everything can be translated into a universal
global culture to the recognition that every culture can translate itself and
others. Modernity should thus be defined neither in the singular nor in the
plural as such; it is a condition that arises as a result of universal translatability and expresses itself in the belief that every culture can translate itself
and others. Modernity is specifically defined by a mode of cultural transla-
Civilizational constellations and modernity 55
tion in which culture is itself a mode of translation. Modernity might be
seen as a condition in which the form of culture is one of translation. The
encounter of self and other, local with the global, past and present takes
multiple forms, determined largely by the forms of cultural translation
influenced by civilizational patterns and historical interactions and conflicts. Globalization – as a process that intensifies connections, enhances
possibilities for cultural translations and deepens the consciousness of
globality – is the principal motor of modernity.
The idea of a civilizational constellation and the multiple
modernities of Europe
The term constellation, as used by Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno,
refers to a juxtaposed rather than a fixed or integrated cluster of changing
elements, which do not have a common foundation or underlying
meaning. It is relevant to the notion of civilizational encounters discussed
in this chapter and will be considered in what follows with respect to
Europe. A civilizational perspective on Europe draws attention to two
important matters. First, Europe consists of several civilizations and not
one and should be understood as a constellation of interacting civilizations. Second, the multiple dimensions and routes to modernity within
Europe can be related to the diversity of its civilizations.
Viewed as a civilizational constellation Europe consists of three civilizations: the Western Judaeo-Christian, Russian-Slavic and Islamic Turkish
civilizations. Within each of these of course are a wide diversity of societies
and state traditions. Confining the designation civilization to the first of
these under the general heading ‘European Civilization’ reduces the term
civilization too much to purely cultural expressions, quite aside from what
in the view of many are ideological characteristics associated with the
term. Associating the term with the West presents as many difficulties, for
Europe refers to something broader than the geopolitical notion of the
West. Moreover, viewing Europe as a civilizational constellation shifts the
focus away from states as the major reference points in European history.
Although states have been the major actors in shaping history, a perspective on civilizations highlights the cultural, geographical and political
factors that together have been constitutive of modernity. Modernity
cannot be explained exclusively by reference to state formation but
requires reference to other matters such as consciousness of globality. One
of the major shortcomings in the recent literature on multiple modernities
is precisely this tendency to relate modernity to the nation-state with the
result that the multiple condition of modernity is ultimately a multiplicity
of national routes to modernity (Eisenstadt 2000, 2003; Gaonkar 2001). A
civilizational approach avoids a purely numerical view of modernity while
at the same time recognizing the multiple nature of modernity.
There is an additional reason why a civilizational approach to Europe is
56 Gerard Delanty
timely. There are changing perceptions of European civilization in the
direction of its Eastern origins and global connections (Jardine and
Brotton 2000; Brotton 2002). In an assessment of the ‘rise of the West’
thesis, John Hobson has argued that the origins of European civilization
were in the appropriation of Eastern civilizations (Hobson 2004). Jack
Goody has argued that Islam must be viewed historically as part of Europe
(Goody 2004). The case for a multiple conception of European civilization
made in this chapter draws from these arguments and, more specifically,
the claim that a large part of the European civilization has itself been
formed in relation to two Eurasian civilizations, the Russian and Islamic
civilizations. Underpinning all three was the Judaic tradition, which cannot
be exclusively related to the Western Christian tradition. European civilization has been formed by precisely the interaction, cross-fertilization,
cultural borrowing and diffusions of its civilizations. For this reason it is
plausible to claim that Europe must be seen as a constellation consisting of
links rather than stable entities or enduring traditions or an overarching
civilizational idea. The following remarks are for reasons of space
necessarily brief.
The main components of the European civilizational constellation can
be said to be the Western Judaeo-Christian, Russian-Slavic and Islamic
Turkish civilizations simply because of their pivotal role in world history
and European history in particular. By civilization is meant a family of
societies, or a constellation of societies, formations of the long durée which
are open to significant internal changes and adaptable to new circumstances (Arnason 2003: 304). A civilization has a foundation in material
life and while not reducible to a specific spatial location, it can be related
to a geopolitical field. This definition reduces the number of possible entities to a few. The Renaissance was not a civilization in itself but part of a
wider civilization, indeed one that in the view of Jardine and Brotton was
an inter-European civilization. Judaism in itself is not a civilization, but
a culture and diaspora. Civilizations are loosely defined categories that
nevertheless have a tangible form, in geopolitics, culture and material life.
Often their form becomes coherent only in the longer perspective of
history.
In a departure from conventional wisdom the contention of this chapter
is that Europe is as much Eastern as it is Western. Russia is part of the
European civilizational constellation, which includes an Asian dimension.
The Slavic dimension of course was part of a wider cultural world that
was divided between East and West, with the Poles being amongst the
most Western of the Slavs. Southern Russia has been part of Europe far
longer than many regions which we consider to be core European countries. Through the Byzantine heritage and Orthodox religion Russia preserves a distinct European inheritance (Arnason 2000; Buss 2004). Yet,
Russia also represents a civilization in its own right – Slavic, Eurasian – in
the sense that it is distinct from Western civilization. This mix of European
Civilizational constellations and modernity 57
and Asian components was the defining feature of Russian civilization and
the basis of its route to modernity through the synthesis of the Western
(the national state tradition), Eurasian (Slavic) and classical (Byzantine)
traditions.
Islam is also part of the European civilizational constellation. Islam like
Christianity is not in itself a civilization, owing to the great diversity of its
forms. Only in combination with other forces did Islam and Christianity
constitute civilizations. Throughout the Middle Ages, both Spain and
Russia were under Islamic rule, but these expressions of Islam did not give
rise to a civilization and eventually disappeared, while leaving important
traces. However, Islam did give rise to a civilization that had a major
European component. The Ottoman Empire was a multi-ethnic and multinational trans-continental empire that brought Islamic civilization into the
heart of Byzantine Europe. It is a key part of the European civilizational
constellation and is today principally represented by Turkey. Islam has the
same roots as the Judaeo-Christian civilization and has played a key role in
European history, not as an enemy but as a cultural mediator.
Whether Islam is part of Europe is a question that is being asked more
and more today in light of the growing number of Muslims within
Western Europe, EU intervention in the Kosovo War on behalf of Albanian Muslims, and the likely entry of Turkey into the European Union. Jack
Goody has argued Europe has never been entirely isolated and purely
Christian (Goody 2004: 14). The Mediterranean face of Europe, which
Braudel argued formed the basis of European civilization, is becoming
more and more important in the wider trans-continental redefinition of
Europe.
The upshot of a civilizational approach is that the cultural diversity of
Europe can be seen as an expression of the interaction of the civilizations
that make up Europe. Rather than reducing such diversities to nationstates, a civilizational analysis suggests a deeper and also a wider level of
analysis. Civilizations are developmental, cumulative and multi-linear. Furthermore, modernity can itself be conceived as a multiple condition, with
the divergent patterns of modernity to some extent grounded in civilizational frameworks. Modernity in Europe must be regarded as both multiple and hybrid. There is no single European modernity, but several; even
though one of these, the Western European one, played a decisive role in
shaping the wider European civilizational constellation. However, the
argument must go beyond multiplicity and hybridity to a clearer statement
of the interactive and transformative impetus that is the key dynamic of
modernity.
Relating the diverse forms of modernity to civilizational frameworks, a
more deeply rooted historical sense of modernity as a transformative
project becomes more plausible. One important aspect of this is the role of
civilizational encounters since, as previously argued, the European civilizations have not been separated from each other, but are part of what has
58 Gerard Delanty
been called a civilizational constellation. For this reason, too, the modernities that developed in Europe have borne the imprint of their civilizational
context and encounters.
This argument goes beyond the claim that the civilizations of Europe
are connected as a result of cross-fertilization, borrowings and encounters
of various kinds. The stronger claim, which is not to be equated with
hybridity, is that modernity itself was shaped by the hermeneutical interaction of the civilizations of Europe. In this view, the essential point is less
the multiple expressions of modernity than the civilizational dynamic that
gave to modernity its pluralism and self-transformative impetus.
Conclusion
This chapter has tried to defend the idea of civilizations as fluid and constituted in interactions with other civilizations. Europe itself is a fertile
ground for such an analysis, which calls into question both the idea of civilizations locked in combat and the notion of a single universal Western
civilization. The civilizations of Europe are plural and characterized by
cultures and political centres that extend beyond Europe. Contrary to the
notion of the clash of civilizations, the borders of European civilization are
vague (Morin 2002; Zielonka 2002). The civilizations of Europe have
developed in interaction with each other, not in isolation. This hermeneutical notion of civilizations’ encounters is not intended to replace the militaristic and colonial narrative with a dialogic one. Rather the aim is to
identify common roots and shared histories of an inclusive Europe of
cosmopolitan possibilities.
The implication of such an approach points towards a European–Asian
inter-civilizational cosmopolitanism. With the borders of the EU moving
closer to Russia and with the eventual entry of Turkey, extending into
Asia, the identity of Europe is becoming more and more ‘post-Western’
(Delanty 2003). This is not an anti- or a non-Westernism, but a condition
defined increasingly by the legacy of an earlier modernity which will have
to be negotiated with other modernities. There is no evidence of a clash of
civilizations. The differences between the 15 new member countries and
the older 15 member states fall within the extremes that already exist
within the latter group (Laitin 2002). It is less a clash of civilizations than
a reconfiguration and reconstruction of modernities. If the West is under
threat it is more likely to be because of growing differences within it. The
United States and Europe no longer constitute a common Western Civilization. With Europeanization moving eastwards and a more inclusive
European Union taking shape, the differences between Europe and an
increasingly militaristic United States are growing.
Finally, then, what is Europe? Europe is a term that is best used to refer
to the relation amongst things that are different and all that constitutes its
reality is precisely the mode of relating to otherness, a relation that
Civilizational constellations and modernity 59
includes a relation to its own history. The European civilizational constellation is a structure that is apparent only in multiple links. As a result of
centuries of cultural translations, the civilizations of Europe are overlapping and interpenetrating.
References
Arnason, J. (2000) ‘Approaching Byzantium: Identity, Predicament and Afterlife’,
Thesis Eleven, 62: 39–69.
Arnason, J. (2003) Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical
Traditions, Leiden: Brill.
Billington, J. (2004) Russia in Search of Itself, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Bonnett, A. (2004) The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History, London:
Palgrave.
Brague, R. (2002) Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, South
Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press.
Braudel, F. (1972/3) The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age
of Philip II, London: Fontana.
Braudel, F. (2002) Memory and the Mediterranean, New York: Vintage Books.
Breckenridge, C. A. et al. (eds) (2002) Cosmopolitanism, Durham, NJ: Duke University Press.
Brotton, J. (2002) The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burke, V. L. (1997) The Clash of Civilizations: War Making and State Formation
in Europe, Cambridge: Polity.
Buruma, I. and A. Margalit (2004) Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its
Enemies, London: Penguin Press.
Buss, A. (2004) The Russian Orthodox Tradition and Modernity, Leiden: Brill.
Castoriadis, C. (1987) The Imaginary Institution of Society, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provencializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cheah, P. and B. Robbins (eds) (1996) Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling
Beyond the Nation, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Clarke, J. J. (1997) Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and
Western Thought, London: Routledge.
Clifford, J. (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Dallmayr, F. (1996) Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-cultural Encounter,
New York: State University of New York Press.
Delanty, G. (1997) ‘Habermas and Occidental Rationalism: The Politics of Identity, Social Learning and the Cultural Limits of Moral Universalism’, Sociological Theory, 15(3): 30–59.
Delanty, G. (2003) ‘The Making of a Post-Western Europe: A Civilizational Analysis’, Thesis Eleven, 72: 8–24.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (1983) Tradition, Change and Modernity, New York: Wiley.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (ed.) (1986) The Origins and Diversity of the Axial Age Civilizations, New York: SUNY Press.
60 Gerard Delanty
Eisenstadt, S. N. (ed.) (1987) Patterns of Modernity, Vol. 1: The West, London:
Pinter.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (1996) Japanese Civilization in a Comparative Perspective,
Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (ed.) (2000) Daedalus, Special Issue on Multiple Modernities,
129(1).
Eisenstadt, S. N. (2003) Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, Vol.
1 and 2, Leiden: Brill.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1975) Truth and Method, London: Sheed & Ward.
Gaonkar, D. P. (ed.) (2001) Alternative Modernities, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Goody, J. (2004) Islam in Europe, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2, Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse
Theory of Law and Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1998) The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Hobson, J. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huntington, S. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World
Order, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Jardine, L. and J. Brotton (eds) (2000) Global Interests: Renaissance Art between
East and West, London: Reaktion Books.
Laitin, D. (2002) ‘Culture and National Identity: “The East” and European
Integration’, West European Politics, 25(2): 55–80.
McNeil, W. (1980) Poly-ethnicity and National Unity in World History, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Morin, E. (2002) ‘European Civilization: Properties and Challenges’, in M. Mozaffari (ed.) Globalization and Civilizations, London: Routledge.
Mozaffari, M. (ed.) (2002) Globalization and Civilizations, London: Routledge.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2004) Globalization and Culture, New York: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Nelson, B. (1976) ‘Orient and Occident in Max Weber’, Social Research, 43(1):
114–29.
Nelson, B. (1981) On the Roads to Modernity, New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Osterhammel, J. (1998) Die Entzauberung Asiens, Munich: Beck.
Ricoeur, P. (1995) ‘Reflections on a New Ethos for Europe’, Philosophy and Social
Criticism, 21(5/6): 3–13.
Ricoeur, P. (1996) Oneself as Another, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Roberston, R. (1992) Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, London:
Sage.
Said, E. (1979) Orientalism, New York: Vintage.
Vertovec, S. and R. Cohen (eds) (2002) Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Zielonka, J. (ed.) (2002) Europe Unbound: Enlarging and Reshaping the Boundaries of the EU, London: Routledge.
4
Oriental globalization
Past and present
Jan Nederveen Pieterse
The critique of Eurocentrism has gone through several rounds. The first
round was primarily a critique of Orientalism. Edward Said and Martin
Bernal, among others, focused on cultural bias and racism in Eurocentric
history. Others addressed Eurocentric biases in development thinking
(Samir Amin, Paul Bairoch, Stavrianos) and historiography (Eric Wolf,
James Blaut, Jack Goody).
In the second round, history from the viewpoint of the global South
such as Subaltern Studies in India and revisionist history of Africa contributed different perspectives. In addition, global history generated critical
historical studies that document the significance of in particular Asia and
the Middle East in the making of the global economy and world society.
Janet Abu-Lughod focused on the Middle East, Marshall Hodgson on the
world of Islam, K. N. Chauduri on South Asia, Andre Gunder Frank on
East and South Asia, Kenneth Pomeranz, Robert Temple and Bin Wong on
China, Eric Jones on Japan, and Anthony Reid on Southeast Asia along
with many other studies. This body of work not merely critiques but overturns conventional Eurocentric perspectives and implies a profound
rethinking of world history that holds major implications for social science
and development studies.
These studies break the mould of Eurocentric globalization that dominates the globalization literature. Eurocentric globalization is geographically centred on the West and preoccupied with recent history: post-war
(in most economics, political science, international relations and cultural
studies), post-1800 (most sociology), or post-1500 (in Marxist political
economy and world system theory).1 In history curricula the latter periods
figure as the ‘modern’ and ‘early modern eras’. In this view, the radius of
globalization is typically if not invariably from the West outward. The oriental globalization literature adopts a longer time frame and reverses this
relationship: the radius is principally from the East outward. In this discussion I review the arguments of oriental globalization in the past and draw
out some of their implications. In the second section I turn to contemporary oriental globalization and ‘the rise of Asia’ and discuss the continuities
between oriental globalization past and present.
62 Jan Nederveen Pieterse
Oriental globalization past2
Arguably, the recent global history literature converges on a single major
thesis: the Orient came first and the Occident was a latecomer. Andre
Gunder Frank’s ReOrient settles on 1400–1800 as the time of ‘Asian hegemony’: ‘The two major regions that were most “central” to the world
economy were India and China’ (1998: 166). This centrality was based on
‘greater absolute and relative productivity in industry, agriculture, (water)
transport, and trade’ and was reflected in their favourable balance of
trade, particularly of China (127). Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence
offers meticulous comparisons of developments in China and Britain that
confirm this thesis and argues that the great divergence of Europe from the
rest of the world is a myth. Geoffrey Gunn (2003) draws attention to
exchanges between Southeast Asia and Europe from the sixteenth century
onward as part of ‘first globalization’, while A. G. Hopkins (2002) and
John Hobson (2004) synthesize this literature.
In general outline the Orient first thesis runs as follows. Global connections may go back to 3500 BCE or earlier still, but 500 CE may rank as the
start of oriental globalization and 600 as the beginning of the big expansion
of global trade. This timing is based on the revival of camel transport
between 300 and 500. At the time the global economy was centred on the
Middle East with Mecca as a global trade hub. For instance, in 875 Baghdad
ranked as a ‘water-front to the world’ linked to China (Hobson 2004: 40).
Other sources concur: ‘Around 900 CE ibn Khordãdbeh, postmaster of the
Arab province of al-Jibãl in Persia, compiled his eight-volume Book of the
Roads and Countries as a guide for the postal system. He described roads
and sea routes as far as Korea, giving detailed directions, distances, weather
conditions, and road security’ (Hoerder 2002: 31). The Middle East
remained the ‘Bridge of the World’ through the second millennium, but by
1100 (or later, by some accounts)3 the leading edge of accumulation shifted
to China, where it remained until well into the nineteenth century.
According to Hobson, in China’s ‘first industrial miracle’, ‘many of the
characteristics that we associate with the eighteenth-century British industrial revolution had emerged by 1100’ (2004: 50), with major advances in
iron and steel production, agriculture, shipping and military capabilities.
From Japan to the Middle East, the East was the early developer – far
ahead of Europe in agriculture, industry, urbanization, trade networks,
credit institutions and state institutions. Many historians concur that ‘none
of the major players in the world economy at any point before 1800 was
European’ (Hobson 2004: 74).4
Europe was not only a late developer, but Eastern ideas and technologies enabled European feudalism, the financial revolution in medieval Italy
and the Renaissance: ‘oriental globalization was the midwife, if not the
mother, of the medieval and modern West’ (Hobson 2004: 36). This much
had been established in studies of science and technology, as in the work
Oriental globalization 63
of Needham (1956) and Goonatilake (1999). The profound influence of
the Islamic world on the European Renaissance is on record as well. Many
studies such as Donald Lach on the role of Asia in the making of Europe
document the Asian influences on Europe and the Enlightenment (e.g.
Marshall and Williams 1982; Nederveen Pieterse 1994). What the recent
studies add to this picture is an emphasis on political economy and economic institutions.
In Marshall Hodgson’s words, the Occident was ‘the unconscious heir
of the industrial revolution of Sung China’ (in Hobson 2004: 192).
Hobson dates China’s central role earlier, to about 1100, and extends it
later than Andre Gunder Frank does. In shares of world manufacturing
output, according to Hobson, China outstripped Britain until 1860 and
‘the Indian share was higher than the whole of Europe’s in 1750 and was
85 percent higher than Britain’s as late as 1830’ (77, 76). In terms of GNP
the West only caught up with the East by 1870; in terms of per capita
income, a less representative measure, the West caught up by 1800. I will
discuss three specific critiques of Eurocentrism that the recent studies contribute and then give an assessment of this literature.
One of the cornerstones of Eurocentrism is the idea that in the fifteenth
century after the return of Zheng He’s naval expeditions China turned
away from maritime trade and that this caused its gradual decline and
opened the way for the expansion of European trade in Asia. The revisionist literature argues that the closure of China (and also Japan) is a myth
and the diagnosis of decline is likewise mistaken. It is true that China did
not choose for the path of maritime expansion or empire, but Western
historians have mistaken the official Chinese imperial legitimation policy
of upholding the Confucian ideal and condemning foreign trade with the
actual trade relations, which continued and flourished. That China
remained the world’s leading trading power shows in the ‘global silver
recycling process’, in which ‘most of the world’s silver was sucked into
China’ (Hobson 2004: 66; Frank 1998: 117).
Another cornerstone of Eurocentrism is Oriental despotism (and variations such as Weber’s patrimonialism). In contrast, the revisionist literature argues that states such as China and Japan had at an early stage
achieved ‘rational’ institutions including a ‘rational-legal’ centralized
bureaucracy, minimalist or laissez-faire policies in relation to the economy
and democratic propensities, while the European states during the
1500–1900 ‘breakthrough period’ were far less rational, more interventionist and protectionist, and less democratic: ‘eighteenth century China
(and perhaps Japan as well) actually came closer to resembling the neoclassical ideal of a market economy than did Europe’ (Pomeranz 2000: 70).
Light taxation and laissez-faire attitudes to enterprise were common in the
East long before the West, and throughout the period of comparison trade
tariffs were consistently far higher in the West than in the East, which
shows that the Oriental despotism thesis is faulty.
64 Jan Nederveen Pieterse
A centrepiece of Eurocentrism is the judgement that other cultures
lacked the European commitment to enterprise and accumulation. Weber
highlighted the Protestant ethic and described Islam and Confucianism as
obstacles to modern development. But many observers since then have
noted the origins of Islam amid a trading culture and the penchant for
commerce in the Islamic world (e.g. Turner 1994; Kazim 2000; Wolf
2001).
Viewing Confucianism as an obstacle to development involves historical
ironies too: what ranked as an obstacle in the early twentieth century was
recast in the late twentieth century as the Confucian ethic hypothesis to
account for the rise of the Asian Tigers. An additional irony is the influence of Confucianism on European thinking. That behind Adam Smith
stood Francois Quesnay and the Physiocrats is a familiar point; but the
Physiocrats’ critique of mercantilism was inspired by Chinese policies and
the philosophy of wu-wei or non-intervention, which goes back to well
before the common era (Hobson 2004: 196; Marshall and Williams 1982).
Thus, Confucius (or rather, a European version of Confucius) ranks as a
patron saint of the Enlightenment.
What is the significance and status of the oriental globalization literature at this stage? There are echoes of dependency theory in this body of
work for if it wasn’t European genius or other endogenous factors that
turned the tide, the role played by colonialism and imperialism in changing
the global equation must be larger than is acknowledged in Eurocentric
perspectives. One thinks of Eric Williams’s work on slavery, Walter
Rodney on Africa and other studies. But recent global history generally
interprets the nineteenth-century advance of the West in terms of wider
combinations of geography and history. Dependency theory was structuralist, while the recent revisionist history rejects a global structural
approach (such as world system theory) and reckons with contingency and
devotes attention to agency and identity formation: ‘material power in
general and great power in particular, are channeled in different directions
depending on the specific identity of the agent’ (Hobson 2004: 309).
Dependency thinking came out of the era of decolonization, while the allegiance of revisionist history is to global history rather than to history
viewed through the lens of a particular region and time period. It looks
past Fernand Braudel’s ‘Mediterranean world’ and past world-system
theory and its preoccupation with the Low Countries and the Baltic, to
wider horizons in the tradition of William McNeill’s global history. This
literature is part of a wider literature that situates globalization in the long
durée (Nederveen Pieterse 1989, 2004a; Robertson 2003).
At times there is a rhetorical surcharge to this literature, which reflects
its character as a polemical position. This comes across in a recurrent
problem: though the portée of its findings is that the East–West divergence
is a fiction and is really a continuum, at times the oriental globalization
literature reverses the current of Eurocentrism by centring the East and
Oriental globalization 65
marginalizing the West, thus replaying East–West binaries in reverse.
Addressing this problem and taking global history beyond East–West binaries is the thrust of other studies (Lieberman 1999, 2003; Pomeranz 2002;
Whitfield 2003; Bayly 2004). At times, as one would expect, this involves
the theme of Eurasia (Moore 2003).
The oriental globalization literature is uneven in that it represents a
kind of retroactive Sinocentrism and Indocentrism. For various reasons
China, India and the Middle East have been more extensively studied and
are more salient than other areas. There is frequent mention of the ‘AfroAsian global economy’, but the African part remains sketchier than the
Asian side. Also Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Mongol Empire
often fall between the cracks of the world’s major zones. The oriental
globalization thesis needs to integrate finer grained regional histories. Janet
Abu-Lughod also suggests triangulation with local histories, but notes,
‘We can never stand at some Archimedean point outside our cultures and
outside our locations in space and time. No matter how outré we attempt
to be, our vision is also distorted’ (2000: 113).
It is interesting to note how the paradigms of the present are the lenses
through which history is read and reread (see Zurndorfer 1997). Eighteenth-century Europeans admired China for its ‘enlightened despotism’,
while in twenty-first-century accounts what matters is ‘rational institutions’ and laissez-faire economic policies, thus echoing the current status of
rational choice and neoclassical economics.
While the oriental globalization literature has grown rapidly and is
increasingly substantial, it is by no means dominant. Mainstream thinking
continues to view the West as the early developer and the East and the
global South as laggards or upstarts. At the turn of the millennium –
following the Soviet demise, the Asian crisis and neoconservative belligerence in Washington – American triumphalism, though increasingly hollow,
sets the tone as part of an entrenched ‘intellectual apartheid regime’. The
Washington consensus is as steeped in Orientalist stereotypes and historical myopia as the neoconservative mission to bring freedom and democracy to the world. Eurocentric economic history à la David Landes (The
Wealth and Poverty of Nations) and Roberts (Triumph of the West)
rhymes with Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations, Bernard Lewis’s
account of Islam (What Went Wrong?), Fukuyama’s ideological history
(The End of History) and Mandelbaum (The Ideas that Conquered the
World). A general mindset of Western triumphalism informs IMF and
World Bank policies (economics without history, without anthropology) as
well as American aspirations in the Middle East (politics without
memory), as if development and democracy are virtues that the West
chanced upon first and only.
Besides the usual ignorance and arrogance, there is something deceptive
about Eurocentrism-as-policy, a trait that Ha-Joon Chang (2002) summed
up as Kicking Away the Ladder. In the nineteenth century, free trade was
66 Jan Nederveen Pieterse
used as a means to deindustrialize colonial economies and now WTO
statutes and free trade agreements that uphold the intellectual property
rights of multinational corporations seek to short-circuit industrialization
in the global South. In this regime of truth, institutionalized amnesia and
intellectual apartheid serve as instruments of power.
As the oriental globalization literature overtakes the indulgent Westcentric view of globalization, perhaps the global realignments that are now
gradually taking shape will also catch up with the material side and the
political economy of American supremacism. This diagnosis of the ‘global
confluence’ arrives on the scene at the time that China, India and East Asia
are re-emerging as major forces in the global economy; historiography
catches up with the present just when the present is coming full circle with
past trends in the world economy. But a synthesis that is yet to take shape
is that of the historical oriental globalization thesis with the cutting edge of
contemporary globalization in the making. On this point I will make some
tentative notes.
Oriental globalization present
We’ve had a couple of hundred bad years, but now we’re back.
(Economist in Shanghai, cited in Prestowitz 2005: 225)
Globalization isn’t what it used to be. Paul Kennedy noted, ‘we can no
more stop the rise of Asia than we can stop the winter snows and the
summer heat’ (2001: 78). According to cautious IMF estimates, China’s
GDP is likely to pass that of Japan around 2016 and approach the size of
the US by 2040, or earlier in terms of its domestic purchasing power
(Prestowitz 2005: 74). The Indian economy is also moving ahead swiftly.
In a structural fashion economic advantages are moving east and to newly
industrializing societies. Asian demographics include young populations –
unlike in Europe, the US and Japan – with great social densities and fast
rising levels of education, growing technological capabilities and rising
levels of development. Other variables in the rise of Asia are geographic
proximities and what Abdel-Malek calls ‘the depth of the historical field’.
At times there is mention of the possibility of hegemonic rivalry and American military intervention; but let’s note that these are generally not variables that are amenable to geopolitical intervention.
A different global equation is in the making and Asia plays a central
role in this along with the emerging BRIC countries, including Brazil and
Russia, countries such as South Africa and the wider radius of oriental
globalization. The question I want to ask is what is the relationship
between oriental globalization past and present. To what extent and in
which ways does oriental globalization in the past form the basis of, shape
and inform oriental globalization in the present? To what extent and in
what sense is the rise of Asia not just a rise but a come-back? This is a
Oriental globalization 67
question of limited status for obviously the discontinuities are as interesting as the continuities. New patterns, combinations and hybridities arising
from the interactions with Western societies and the adoption of new technologies are as interesting as continuities with the past. Yet they are also
enabled by continuities with the past, so there is merit to raising this
question.
With respect to culture and civilization, continuities between oriental
globalization past and present are commonly recognized. Confucianism in
the circle of Sinic influence and the idea of a neo-Confucian ethic are part
of this (Tu Weiming 2000). The Teen Murti school in New Delhi has been
concerned with Indic civilization rather than just India (Kumar and
Chandhoke 2000). Continuities with regard to nationhood and states are
also widely recognized. China ranks among the ‘continuous nations’ with
a national identity and state existence stretching back to well before the
Common Era (Abdel-Malek 1981; Cohen 2000). Besides these fairly
common points of reference, we can consider the role of trade routes and
migrations and diasporas. These are brief notes, pending the patient revisiting of regional histories, focusing on Asia rather than on the wider radius
of oriental globalization.
This kind of inquiry is not uncommon. In the Annales school and
Braudel’s work the long durée refers to long-term structural and institutional changes. Evolutionary economics and institutional economics
address institutional legacies as part of economic dynamics; a strong
instance of this is path dependence. Robert Putnam (1993) argues that the
success of administrative decentralization in northern Italy and its failure
in southern Italy since the 1970s was in large measure attributable to the
history from medieval times onward of city states in the North in contrast
to kingdoms in the south and other forms of governance that involved less
civic allegiance. Thus, configurations going back to medieval and Renaissance times account for contemporary dynamics even though other political and economic configurations have intervened.
State capability and ‘bureaucratically coordinated capitalism’ is widely
recognized as a crucial component in the rise of East Asia (Weiss 1996).
Dedicated public service and skilful civil servants cannot be fully understood without the long legacy of political Confucianism.
In language, culture and arts, the civilizational interconnections persist.5
The Indo-European languages are a case in point (Mallory 1991). History
is part of the cultural and institutional capital of nations. The theme of
continuity is well on the map in Asia and overseas. References to the depth
of civilization and the interspersion of the traditional and the modern, and
the idea that the rise of Asia is a Renaissance (Ibrahim 1996) are common.
These continuities are symbolically acknowledged or intimated in the
recurrent use of the Silk Routes metaphor, which is often more than a
metaphor and also a memory and a future project (Abdel-Malek 1994;
Wood 2003). When opening the new Ceyhan oil pipe line from the Black
68 Jan Nederveen Pieterse
Sea to the Mediterranean in July 2005 the President of Turkey referred to
it as ‘the new Silk Road’. The Asia–Europe intergovernmental meetings
have also been viewed as ‘new Silk Routes’ (Brennan et al. 1997). The
‘new Silk Roads’ images that reinvoke historic continuities and geographic
contiguities remind us that the links of past times ramified widely and that
the ripples of past waves of globalization still linger.
Traces of old accumulation treasure and savvy persist in collective
memory, circumstances and artefacts. In many places the remnants of old
trade infrastructures and institutions still exist and at times the new trades
reactivate ancient trade routes and old nodal points. From Kaifeng in
China to Damascus and Istanbul, remnants of the Silk Roads still exist: the
actual roads and ports (Broeze 1989), the caravanserais, the ruins or
remains of forts, palaces and temples (Whitfield 2004). Through most of
Asia and the Middle East, as in much of Europe, the physical traces of
thousands of years past are just around the corner. The current industrial
and commercial buzz in Asia has been foreshadowed in the great Asian
bazaar of old times. The industriousness and savvy of Asian markets,
abuzz with merchants and workshops, trade emporia and far flung trade
networks, is part of a deep infrastructure of social densities that predates
capitalism.
Migration and diaspora routes serve as two-way carriers of knowledge
and technology, language, skills, goods and investments. They also play a
major role in Asia’s resurgence. In China’s rapid rise as an industrial
exporter, investments by the Chinese diaspora from the Pacific Rim back
into the mainland play a significant part, notably from Taiwan (Chen
2005; Liu 1998; Seagrave 1996). In India, the role of the NRIs or nonresident Indians as investors and intellectual and social capital is also
rapidly growing and actively courted. These relations reactivate old migration links that wire Asian countries with worldwide links. Scholars and
entrepreneurs in India are rediscovering their many civilizational and economic links with the Arab world and with Persia and Central Asia
(Shanker 2005). The trails of the Mughals and the Parsi traders were twoway routes then and may be so again (Nederveen Pieterse 2003). India
now seeks to re-establish its links with Central Asia as an avenue of commerce and energy supplies.
In mapping the Southwest Silk Road, Bin Yang (2004) discusses the
ancient confluence of China, India and Persia in trading and civilizational
networks. The ancient trading links between Yunnan, Burma and India go
back to 200 BCE. Routes of trade and migration between China and Southeast Asia also have great historical depth (Thapar 1992; Sugiyama 1992;
Dobbin 1996) and carry over into present times (e.g. Yamashita and Eades
2003). Xiangming Chen (2005) focuses on the role of cross-border and
regional social capital in Asian economies and maps processes of debordering and re-bordering over time. He traces trade and migration
routes back to the seventeenth century and finds that some areas of high
Oriental globalization 69
activity in the past such as the Pearl River delta are active also now. These
inquiries show that cultural and economic efflorescence, past and present,
has been typically a cross-border or regional phenomenon. Yet most
history, particularly since the nineteenth century, is the history of nationstates and statistics record data primarily in nation-state units.
Arif Dirlik (2000) criticizes Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’
thesis and contends that the tensions refer instead to capitalist competition
between different cultural centres. Dirlik’s view is certainly more pertinent
than that of Huntington; but it invites two qualifications. One is obvious;
of course the relations are not just those of rivalry but also of collaboration. The second is that capitalism and capitalist rivalry themselves are categories with limited or contingent explanatory validity. Andre Gunder
Frank’s historical work eventually led him to look beyond capitalism as a
central explanatory category:
Far from arguing that capitalism is five thousand years old, I suggest
that we should dare to abandon our belief in capitalism as a distinct
mode of production and separate system. Why? Because too many big
patterns in world history appear to transcend or persist despite all
apparent alterations in the mode of production. It therefore cannot be
the mode of production that determines overall development patterns. . . . World history since 1500 may be less adequately defined by
capitalism than by shifts in trade routes, centers of accumulation, and
the existence/nonexistence and location of hegemonic power.
(Frank 1996: 44)
Earlier I noted that
This implies a profound challenge to critical political economy; it suggests that many explanations that are held to be fundamental are in
fact conjunctural and reflect not just limitations of geography but also
limitations of the time frame. Global political economy may overcome
the limitations of geography, but the limitations of time are of a different order; it makes a profound difference whether the time frame of
explanation is from 1800 or from 1000 BCE or 500 CE.
(Nederveen Pieterse 2005: 386)
The study of oriental globalization past and present shows that in economics and technology just as in culture and civilization, the taken-forgranted units of analysis – such as nation-states, capitalism – are but
provisional approximations, conceptual conventions that in seeking to map
the ebb and flow in time and space may lead us astray as much as guide us.
It is not surprising that history of the long durée should unsettle our analytical categories, such as the nation-state and capitalism, for concepts are
embedded in time. Decolonization involves epistemic decolonization
70 Jan Nederveen Pieterse
(‘emancipate yourself from mental slavery’) and the decolonization of
imagination. It is interesting that the road to epistemic emancipation runs
as often via history as via theory.
The idea of regional technological independence (e.g. Chamarik and
Goonatilake 1993), past or present, is probably a fiction. Silk production
was exported from China to the Ottoman Empire and Europe, porcelain
making travelled from China to Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries (witness Delft, Wedgwood, Sèvres), Chinese agricultural technologies revolutionized English agriculture, and Indian textile crafts
imbued British textile production (as in Paisley, Scotland). In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, industrial skills and technologies journeyed
from West to East. In the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Asian
technologies travel West again (such as Japanese Toyotism and Indian
software). This back and forth motion of technologies and the overlaps
between old and new routes of trade and migration in the long durée
suggest underlying affinities.
Between oriental globalization in the past and the present, oriental globalization has circled the globe. Eurasia was part of the terrain that was traversed (Moore 2003 traces the role of Eurasia from the eleventh century)
and Eurasia makes a come-back in the present, in discussions of capitalisms and Asian–European dialogue (Nederveen Pieterse 2004b). Seen
from the viewpoint of oriental globalization past and present, European
development, Eurocentrism and occidental globalization appear as
episodes and phases in a much wider multicentric global process.
Notes
1 On social science disciplines in relation to globalization studies and the periodization of globalization, see Nederveen Pieterse 2004a, chapters 1 and 4.
2 An earlier version of this section appears in Theory Culture and Society, 2005.
3 According to Kazim (2000) the Arab world remained dominant in world trade
until 1500.
4 The East was also expansive; Hobson argues that the ‘Afro-Asian age of discovery’ preceded Columbus and Vasco da Gama by about a millennium (2004:
139).
5 Yo-Yo Ma has turned from interpretations of Bach and Brahms, to a long-term
Silk Road project with the cooperation of musicians from Turkey to China in
the Silk Road Ensemble.
References
Abdel-Malek, A. (1981) Civilizations and Social Theory, 2 Vols, London: Macmillan.
Abdel-Malek, A. (1994) ‘Historical Initiative: The New “Silk Road” ’, Review,
17(4): 451–99.
Abu-Lughod, J. L. (2000) ‘Book Review of A. G. Frank’, ReOrient: Journal of
World History, Spring: 111–14.
Oriental globalization 71
Bayly, C. A. (2004) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914, Oxford: Blackwell.
Brennan, B., E. Heijmans and P. Vervest (eds) (1997) ASEM Trading New Silk
Routes: Beyond Geopolitics and Geo-economics: Towards a New Relationship
Between Asia and Europe, Amsterdam, Transnational Institute and Bangkok,
Focus on the Global South.
Broeze, F. (ed.) (1989) Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th–20th
Centuries, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Chamarik, S. and S. Goonatilake (eds) (1993) Technological Independence: The
Asian Experience, Tokyo: UN University Press.
Chang, H.-J. (2002) Kicking Away the Ladder, London: Anthem.
Chauduri, K. N. (1990) Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilization of the
Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Chen, X. (2005) As Borders Bend: Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim,
Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield.
Cohen, W. I. (2000) East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement
with the World, New York: Columbia University Press.
Dirlik, A. (2000) ‘Reversals, Ironies, Hegemonies: Notes on the Contemporary
Historiography of Modern China’, in A. Dirlik, V. Bahl and P. Gran (eds)
(2000) History After the Three Worlds: Post-eurocentric Historiographies,
Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 125–56.
Dobbin, C. (1996) Asian Entrepreneurial Minorities: Conjoint Communities in the
Making of the World-economy, 1570–1940, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
Frank, A. G. (1996) ‘The Underdevelopment of Development’, in S. Chew and R.
Denemark (eds) The Underdevelopment of Development, London: Sage, pp.
17–55.
Frank, A. G. (1998) ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goonatilake, S. (1999) Toward a Global Science, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Gunn, G. C. (2003) First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500–1800,
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Hobson, J. M. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hoerder, D. (2002) Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hopkins, A. G. (ed.) (2002) Globalization in World History, New York: Norton.
Ibrahim, A. (1996) The Asian Renaissance, Singapore: Times Books.
Kazim, A. (2000) The United Arab Emirates AD 600 to the Present: A Sociodiscursive Transformation in the Arabian Gulf, Dubai: Gulf Book Centre.
Kennedy, P. (2001) ‘Maintaining American Power: From Injury to Recovery’, in S.
Talbott and N. Chanda (eds) The Age of Terror: America and the World after
September 11, New York, Basic Books, pp. 53–80.
Kumar, R. and N. Chandhoke (eds) (2000) Mapping Histories: Essays Presented to
Ravinder Kumar, New Delhi: Tulika.
Lieberman, Victor (ed.) (1999) Beyond Binary Histories: Re-imagining Eurasia to
c.1830, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Lieberman, Victor (2003) Strange Parallels: Vol. 1: Integration of the Mainland:
72 Jan Nederveen Pieterse
Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Liu, H. (1998) ‘Old Linkages, New Networks: The Globalization of Overseas
Chinese Voluntary Associations and its Implications’, The China Quarterly, 155:
582–609.
Mallory, J. P. (1991) In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology
and Myth, London: Thames & Hudson.
Marshall, P. J. and G. Williams (1982) The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment, London: Dent.
Moore, R. I. (2003) ‘The Eleventh Century in Eurasian History: A Comparative
Approach to the Convergence and Divergence of Medieval Civilizations’, Journal
of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 33(1): 1–21.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (1989) Empire and Emancipation: Power and Liberation on
a World Scale, New York: Praeger.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (1994) ‘Unpacking the West: How European is Europe?’, in
A. Rattansi and S. Westwood (eds) Racism, Modernity, Identity: On the Western
Front, Cambridge: Polity, pp. 129–49.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2003) ‘Social Capital and Migration: Beyond Ethnic
Economies’, Ethnicities, 3(1): 5–34.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2004a) Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange,
Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2004b) Globalization or Empire?, New York: Routledge.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2005) ‘Paradigm Making While Paradigm Breaking: Andre
Gunder Frank’, Review of International Political Economy, 12(3): 383–6.
Needham, J. (1956) Science and Civilization in China, 2 Vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pomeranz, K. (2000) The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the
Modern World Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pomeranz, K. (2002) Beyond the East–West Binary: Resituating Development
Paths in the Eighteenth Century World, Journal of Asian Studies, 61(2): 539–90.
Prestowitz, C. (2005) Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth
and Power to the East, New York: Basic Books.
Putnam, R. D. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Robertson, R. (2003) The Three Waves of Globalization: A History of a Developing Global Consciousness, London: Zed.
Seagrave, S. (1996) Lords of the Rim, London: Corgi Books.
Shanker, S. (2005) ‘From the Silk Route to the IT Highway’, International Herald
Tribune, May 25: 9.
Sugiyama, J. (1992) ‘From Chang an to Rome: Transformation of Buddhist
Culture’, in The Significance of the Silk Roads in the History of Human Civilizations, Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, pp. 55–60.
Thapar, B. K. (1992) ‘India’s Place on Ancient Trade Routes’, in The Significance
of the Silk Roads in the History of Human Civilizations, Osaka: National
Museum of Ethnology, pp. 117–26.
Tu Weiming (2000) ‘Implications of the Rise of “Confucian” East Asia’, Daedalus,
129(1): 195–218.
Turner, B. S. (1994) Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, London: Routledge.
Oriental globalization 73
Weiss, L. (1996) ‘Sources of the East Asian Advantage: An Institutional Analysis’,
in R. Robinson (ed.) Pathways to Asia: The Politics of Engagement, St
Leonard’s: Allen and Unwin, pp. 171–201.
Whitfield, S. (2003) ‘The Perils of Dichotomous Thinking: Ebb and Flow rather
than East and West’, in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East And West,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Whitfield, S. (ed.) (2004) The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith, Chicago:
Serindia Publications.
Wolf, E. R. (2001) Pathways of Power, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wood, F. (2003) The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yamashita, S. and J. S. Eades (eds) (2003) Globalization in Southeast Asia: Local,
National, and Transnational Perspectives, New York: Berghahn.
Yang, B. (2004) ‘Horses, Silver and Cowries: Yunnan in Global Perspective’,
Journal of World History, 15(3): 281–322.
Zurndorfer, H. T. (1997) ‘China and “Modernity”: The Uses of the Study of
Chinese History in the Past and the Present’, Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient, 40(4): 461–85.
Part II
Asia in Europe
Encounters in history
5
Contested divergence
Rethinking the “rise of the West”
Johann P. Arnason
Interpretations of the distinction between East and West are more or less
explicitly linked to historical accounts of changing constellations and interrelations. Even when the dichotomy is grounded in meta-historical meanings or principles, there is room for a narrative of self-discovery, oblivion
and articulation. But the most influential and intellectually productive
approach to this problematic allows for a more formative historical factor.
The “rise of the West” is – despite widely divergent views on details –
commonly seen as a world-historical process which changed the relationship between the ascendant region and the rest of the world, while at the
same time transforming both sides. As I have argued elsewhere (Arnason
2003), a suitably redefined concept of the West is separable from the much
less tenable notion of a uniform or undivided East, and the same must
apply to the historical model to be discussed here. One of the questions to
be raised when comparing its different versions is to what extent they still
reflect a residual influence of the dichotomy.1
The “rise of the West” has been one of the key themes in twentiethcentury scholarship on world history; William McNeill’s classic work
(1963) is perhaps the best-known example (and by the same token,
McNeill’s reconsiderations and second thoughts – set out in later essays –
are particularly relevant to further debate). The following discussion will
treat this model as a Denkfigur which sums up historical experience from a
specific perspective, but must for that very reason be subject to revision
from what McNeill calls the “moving platform of the present”; as I shall
try to show, some inherited assumptions need rethinking both on the basis
of growing historical knowledge and in light of current trends; but reflections in that vein will also have to deal with the problems and limits of an
underlying conceptual framework.
To put the issues in perspective, it should be noted that scenarios for a
counter-offensive have also figured prominently in twentieth-century discourses on contemporary history. The “rise of the rest” (Amsden 2001)
has sometimes been proclaimed in sweeping and totalizing “tricontinental”
terms, but the more serious arguments tended to focus on Asian responses
to Western ascendancy. Visions of an Asian resurgence – imminent or in
78 Johann P. Arnason
progress – were not uncommon during the shorter twentieth century; Bolshevik hopes for revolutionary mobilization throughout Asia, after the
failure in Europe, were perhaps the first variation on this theme. In the last
quarter of the century, the success of East Asian developmental states
inspired a very different line of analysis and speculation, with a more specific regional focus (but not incompatible with the search for alternatives
to Western models). On the other hand, the fin de siècle also saw a revival
of simplistic and polarizing ideas on both sides. The notion of the “anglosphere” as a distinctive and superior civilization, destined to reshape the
world, is an intellectually impoverished and ideologically inflated version
of the rising West. At the other end of the spectrum, some parts of the
postcolonial nebula seem to identify with the pursuit of ideological power
on metropolitan ground, and with the mythical transfiguration of this
strategy into a part of the supposedly global struggle against imperialism.
But for the purposes of constructive debate, it seems best to bypass the
battle between anglospherics and postcolonials. I will therefore try to disregard the ideological conjuncture and focus on questions that should –
although certainly not irrelevant to issues in world politics – not be subordinated to any kind of political apriorism.
The first section will recapitulate the most salient conclusions that can
now be drawn from comparative historical research. On this basis, the
idea of a “rise of the West” seems defensible as a macro-historical construct, but it must be reformulated with a view to avoiding short-circuits
and misconceptions that have often gone together with it. The notion of a
self-contained process is no less misleading than the now more fashionable
reduction of Western success to a mere reflection of failure in other quarters. There is no tenable monocausal explanation of the “great divergence”, no valid reason for crediting the West with any kind of inherent
radical exceptionalism, and no precisely datable turning-point that would
mark the beginning of irresistible ascent. A whole series of historical constellations set an emerging West apart from other Eurasian regions and
gave it some decisive advantages over rivals and victims; the overall
dynamics of the process can only be understood in a global context of
intercivilizational encounters with mutually formative effects. Such perspectives are now often subsumed under the label of cosmopolitanism (but
the present writer should confess in passing that he belongs to those who
remain unenthusiastic about this particular use of the term: it seems more
suited to ideological demarcation than to scholarly work). The second
section then moves on to discuss more controversial points. If comparative
history helps to make a balanced case for the “rise of the West”, it is also
true that critical reflection on the driving forces and social-historical
dimensions of the process in question will open up horizons of contested
meaning beyond the narrative basics. Culture matters, but so do the structures of social power and the changing ways of wealth creation; the
ongoing conflict of interpretations within each of these thematic fields will
Contested divergence 79
inevitably translate into rival readings of history, not least of macrohistorical processes on the scale to be considered here.
Situating the West: internal and external contexts
The “rise of the West” should be understood as an abridged label for three
sets of historical developments: the emergence of Western Europe (or
Western Christendom, to use a more adequate term for the formative
phase) as a distinctive civilization; the achievement of global supremacy –
technological, economic, political and ideological – by this civilization and
its trans-Atlantic offshoots; and the diffusion of Western models, often
reinterpreted in significantly variant ways, throughout the previously nonWestern world. All three processes are discussed in the literature on the
subject (even if their relative weight varies widely), and there are good
reasons to retain the triple focus. A strong emphasis on the second theme –
the breakthrough to global primacy – is evident in recent scholarship, but
it should not obscure the importance of the other two. If it is now increasingly accepted that the expanding West gained a decisive edge over other
civilizations at a later date than the received view would have it, this does
not mean that earlier innovations and transformations on a more limited
scale were insignificant. The marginality of Western Christendom in the
overall Eurasian context did not prevent it from developing specific capacities and institutions that could later serve to sustain new initiatives in a
changed global environment. An exclusive concern with the climactic
phase would therefore screen out a whole range of relevant questions. Similarly, no account of the “rise of the West” would be complete without an
analysis of the dynamic that gave a global but at the same time contested
meaning to historical forces set in motion by the West (not on its own, but
more effectively than by other actors in the field). As will be seen, this
problematic has to do with the relationship between Westernization and
modernization, and with the place of Western patterns within the framework of “multiple modernities” (both early and advanced).
This provisional definition should suffice to mark out a field of inquiry.
The next step is to note the most basic criteria to be met by an up-to-date
interpretation; they may be seen as minimal conclusions emerging from
advances in comparative history and historical sociology.
First, the “rise of the West” must be analysed as a multi-dimensional
process. This point has a twofold meaning. On the one hand, it concerns
the sources and the driving forces of the process. In that regard, it reaffirms an insight clearly formulated by Max Weber, but often ignored by
his critics and not always fully understood by his disciples. In the introduction to his collected essays on the sociology of religion (arguably the most
seminal statement on “the rise of the West”, even if it does not use that
expression), Weber refers to the “concatenation of circumstances” (Verkettung von Umständen – Weber 1963: 1) that has shaped the distinctive
80 Johann P. Arnason
developmental path of Western civilization. In every phase and at every
juncture, decisive turns have been due to interactive combinations of
mutually irreducible factors, rather than to any single underlying principle
or orientation. A brief recapitulation could begin with Western Christendom’s roots in the radically different cultural tradition symbolized by
Athens and Jerusalem, brought together in the setting of a mutating
Roman Empire and reactivated in other contexts at later stages. The
decomposition of imperial structures in the West led to the rise of kingdoms with more or less marked ethnic identities, alongside the gradual
consolidation of a religious power centre on a civilizational scale; this constellation became the background to the medieval maturing of Western
Christendom as a distinctive civilization. During the High Middle Ages,
new strategies and patterns of state formation interacted with the sociocultural dynamic of urban communities in quest of autonomy, as well as
with a progressive articulation and institutionalization of potentialities
inherent in the Christian universe of meaning. Finally, the phase that
brought about a global breakthrough was – as Weber saw – characterized
by the interplay of the three modernizing mega-machines: industrial
capitalism, the post-absolutist bureaucratic state and organized science.
The same applies to the epoch-making results and global ramifications
of the process: they are best understood in terms of multiple trends
without systemic coordination. The world-transforming inventions of the
West include not only the union of capitalism and science that led to the
institutionalization of permanent technological progress, but also new
techniques of control and mobilization, perfected in the course of state
formation and taken to extremes in totalitarian projects, and the cultural
polarization of Enlightenment and Romanticism (to which there seem to
be only limited analogies elsewhere), together with the ideological formations that grew out of it. On the international level, new patterns of economic interdependence were pioneered by the West, and models of
political organization were diffused across cultural boundaries; but on the
other hand, the “rise of the West” (in the broad sense defined above)
involved the appropriation of Western countercultures and protest ideologies by non-Western forces striving to combine emulation and resistance.
These points may seem elementary, but they must be reiterated against the
pervasive economism of contemporary thought.
Second, the “rise of the West” was – as McNeill stressed in one of his
retrospective essays – a long-term process (McNeill 1986). His perspective
is implicit in a definition that links the technological and geopolitical takeoff to the long durée of medieval and early modern Western Europe. The
most obvious way to clarify it is to single out successive turning-points
which have set lasting preconditions for later developments. It is now
widely agreed among historians that the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE
saw the definitive crystallization of Western Christendom as a distinctive
civilization; although it has proved more difficult to identify the specific
Contested divergence 81
factors at work and explain the dynamic of their interaction, the “papal
revolution”, i.e. the consolidation of the Catholic Church as an integrative
institution on a civilizational scale, can safely be singled out as a crucial
part of the process. No similar case of centralized ideological power –
alongside political fragmentation – can be found in any other civilizational
context. Within this institutional framework, religious conflicts could have
a correspondingly far-reaching impact. The realization of their schismatic
potential depended on a variety of other factors; but the unparalleled civilizational bifurcation that resulted from the sixteenth-century split of
Western Christendom could only happen in the historical setting that had
taken shape during the first half of the millennium. The most acute phase
of religious conflict coincided with another turning-point: early modern
European expansion. It is true that traditional views on the European conquest of the Americas have come in for de-mythologizing criticism, but one
basic fact remains indisputable: this was the first case of trans-oceanic
empire-building, and it paved the way for further distinctive developments.
The slave plantation economy of the New World should, as C. A. Bayly
(2004: 41) argues, be included in the category of “industrious revolutions”
that preceded the industrial one: they represented “a flexible, financially
sophisticated, consumer-oriented, technologically innovative form of
human beastliness” (it is perhaps worth recalling that both the prehistory
and the proper history of the rising West were marked by episodes of
particularly pronounced dependence on slavery: this applies to crucial
phases of classical antiquity, but also to the role of the slave trade in the
early medieval European economy [McCormick 2001], and to the controversial but clearly not insignificant contribution of trans-Atlantic slavery to
the “great divergence” that put the West ahead of the rest). But there was
more to the trans-Atlantic opening than a new chance to rationalize
exploitation. Comparative historical approaches (Eisenstadt 2003b; Veliz
1994) have increasingly highlighted the New World transformations of
European civilizational premises, as well as the contrasts between Angloand Ibero-American versions of this pattern. Seen as a case of civilizational
divergence, the Atlantic divide within the West invites comparison
with other examples, but next to no work has so far been done on such
questions. One crucial aspect of a broader picture may be noted: intraimperial differentiation created preconditions for imperial schisms of a
new kind, which could in turn draw on European ideological traditions
and re-interpret them in new contexts. This would seem the most adequate
view of the New World breakthroughs to independence.
The imperial schisms resulted from multiple developments, but they
took place in a specific socio-political and geopolitical setting that should
be included among the most salient junctures of the long-term process in
question. The historical experience of European absolutism – not least the
tension between a far-reaching rationalization of state strategies and an
attempt to reinvigorate the idea of sacred kingship – and the democratic
82 Johann P. Arnason
response to it interacted with the rivalry of states in pursuit of imperial
power; this complex dynamic culminated in a conjuncture of revolutions
and wars at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the
nineteenth. These events preceded the decisive impact of the industrial
revolution (to the extent that a commercial middle class was involved, we
can speak of a connection with the “industrious revolutions”), but they
added up to a formative moment on a world historical scale. As C. A.
Bayly’s recent analysis (2004) shows, the progress of governmental
activism – accompanied by the rise of “critical publics” in various guises –
was not unique to Europe; but the same author traces a process which
transformed difference in degree into more radical regional innovations
with global consequences. French historians have described this aspect of
the “rise of the West” as “occidentalisation de l’ordre politique” and as a
“greffe de l’Etat” (Bayart 1996), worldwide transfer of a Western invention. Such terms must be qualified to stress the importance of interaction –
asymmetric, but less so in some cases than others, and far from insignificant on the global scale.
This observation brings us to the last general point: the “rise of the
West” is best understood as an interactive process. To put it another way,
the dichotomy of internalist or externalist accounts is misguided. It is true
that both these supposed alternatives are represented in recent work (Jones
2003 is often quoted as a prime example of the internalist view, whereas
Frank 1998 takes the externalist one to caricatural extremes). But the only
viable approach is one that allows for changing combinations of factors
internal and external to the West as a civilizational complex.
To clarify this claim, let us briefly revisit McNeill’s evolving interpretation of world history. He had from the outset taken an emphatically interactionist view: both the trajectory of civilization in the singular and the
vicissitudes of the variants which can be singled out as civilizations in their
own right were to be analysed in terms of the hypothesis that learning new
skills from strangers was the main driving force of historical change. The
“rise of the West” appeared as the last of several successive shifts from one
civilizational centre to another, and it had begun with intensive learning
from other civilizations, before going on to develop new skills and
resources that ensured a decisive advantage. In a much later essay
(McNeill 1990), he found the original approach insufficient and proposed
to take the interactionist perspective one step further: as he now saw it,
interaction between separate civilizations gave rise to trans-civilizational
constellations or “ecumenical world-systems”. The first formation of that
kind was the ancient Middle Eastern ecumene, and the “global cosmopolitanism” that had prevailed since the mid-nineteenth century could be seen
as the final stage. For present purposes, it may be useful to recast both
parts of the argument. The learning of skills is one aspect of the broader
problematic of intercivilizational encounters, which can also involve other
kinds of one-sided or mutually formative contact; as for the second step, it
Contested divergence 83
is perhaps best to drop the notion of a world system (a “conceptual misalliance”, as an early and acute critic [Zolberg 1981] suggested), and allow
for a variety of intercivilizational constellations. The interactionist
perspective would then take into account not only the direct impact of
civilizations on each other, but also the effects of changes to the overall
constellations which they share.
The emphasis on interaction is not meant to pre-empt answers to specific
questions about historical transitions and turning-points. It is, for example,
a matter of debate among economic historians whether it makes sense to see
the industrial revolution in Britain as a response to more competitive artisan
techniques of textile production elsewhere, and to what extent it was
financed by wealth generated through trade and exploitation outside
Europe. No general considerations will settle such controversies. But in the
overall perspective, the interactionist view is a necessary corollary of the two
preceding points. A long-term perspective must take into account the changing relations between Eurasian civilizations, and the impact of intercivilizational dynamics on European development; only a multi-dimensional frame
of reference, allowing for cultural as well as political and economic factors,
can do justice to the varying levels and mechanisms of these macro-regional
connections. A more detailed narrative would have to start with the transformation of the Roman world (this formulation, which has now to all
intents and purposes replaced the traditional picture of a “decline and fall of
the Roman Empire”, sums up a paradigm shift of major dimensions, and its
long-term implications have yet to be fully clarified). Western Christendom
emerged as one of three successor civilizations, alongside Byzantium and
Islam, and its distinctive characteristics were not unrelated to this broader
background (one point worth noting is that the superior dynamism of the
two less directly affiliated successor civilizations, Islam and Western Christendom, clearly had something to do with more innovative mixtures of traditions). And although the details of the record are debatable, further
interaction with the Byzantine and Islamic worlds was of some importance
to the medieval transformations of the West. Evidence of that can be found
at very different levels of socio-cultural life: from the early medieval slave
trade with the Islamic world (see the above reference to McCormick) to the
reappropriation of classical sources (crucial to the twelfth-century renaissance) through Byzantine and Arabic intermediaries. A new constellation
took shape with the Mongol conquest of most of Eurasia. Western Christendom was one of the marginal regions left outside the short-lived Eurasian
empire; it was less seriously threatened than the others, and it briefly
developed a more diplomatic and inquiring relationship with the ascendant
power. But it can also be argued that in the longer run – after an initial
destructive impact – the Mongol input gave a new lease of life to Islamic
empire-building (Hodgson’s “gunpowder empires”), most obviously in the
case of the Ottomans, who were to initiate a new phase of the conflict
between Islam and the West.
84 Johann P. Arnason
Early modern European expansion, beginning with the long sixteenth
century, gave a new twist to the whole process. But as debates during the
last quarter of a century have shown, the notion of a Europe-centred and
unilaterally imposed world system is very misleading: European powers
acquired new possessions and established networks of new footholds
around the globe; they gained access to pre-existing channels of exchange;
and when they opened up new channels (as they did through conquest of
the Western hemisphere), the consequences were largely beyond their
control. Economic historians now seem to agree that the impact of American silver on the East Asian economic zone and its unfolding “second
commercial revolution” may have been more important than any intraEuropean effects.
Finally, the interactionist perspective has a direct bearing on the most
recent phase. The “rise of the West”, in the most comprehensive sense,
involves not only attempts to reproduce Western models in order to
counter Western expansion or escape Western control, but also borrowings from Western counter-cultural traditions by non-Western societies in
search of strategic prescriptions for change and revival; in the most
significant cases, combinations of Western and indigenous inputs give rise
to alternative projects that challenge the ascendant West. This derivative
rise of the “West against the West”, exemplified by the Communist
regimes of the twentieth century, was a world-historical episode of major
dimensions. It took different turns and came to different ends in Russia
and China; their respective exits from Communism can now serve as starting-points for a retrospective comparison of the roles played by Western
influences and Westernizing aspirations in the history of these two revolutionized and reconstructed empires.
Reinterpretations
So far, I have only summarized basic lessons of comparative historical
inquiry, with particular reference to the “rise of the West” and the current
requirements for a tenable account of it. My line of argument was loosely
aligned with McNeill’s narrative. More specifically, the above considerations do not go beyond the view that subsumes the “rise of the West”
under a more general historical pattern. The trajectory that began on the
Western Eurasian frontier and continued across the Atlantic had a more
global impact than any earlier rise to primacy, but did not amount to a
radical departure from precedent. Nor is there any compelling reason why
it should be the last of its kind. McNeill’s version of the story culminated
in a global ecumene, but his original model does not seem incompatible
with the prospect – suggested by various writers on more or less plausible
grounds – of East Asia overtaking the West and becoming (at least in some
respects) the vanguard of development.
A closer look at conceptual frameworks and their theoretical implica-
Contested divergence 85
tions will shift the focus to a more contested field. As I shall try to show,
this leads to stronger emphasis on unique aspects of the “rise of the West”,
but also – paradoxically – to conclusions that undermine the very idea of
regional hegemony and indicate other ways to make sense of the process in
question. The West appears less as a dominant part of the world than as a
vehicle of forces or principles that follow a global logic and find their most
adequate expression on a global scale. Here I can only indicate some key
themes of an open debate. They are most easily identified in relation to the
three points made above: the multi-dimensional, long-term and interactive
character of the process in question. Each of these three aspects can be –
and has been – qualified or problematized in ways that raise far-reaching
questions.
Notwithstanding the historical evidence of a multi-dimensional
dynamic, it can be argued that one factor has been decisive and tended to
absorb all the others. The “rise of the West” is, above all else, a matter of
power and its multiple sources. The Western pursuit of power has, on this
view, been uniquely successful on three levels. From the maritime skills
evident in early European expansion to the pioneering of industrial transformations, the superior resources of European powers gave them a decisive advantage over other civilizations, including the previously more
advanced ones. This shift in the global balance of power forced the nonWestern contestants to import or imitate models first invented by the
winning side. In other words, the Western pursuit of power triggered preventive or defensive Westernization in widely varying settings, with correspondingly different outcomes. Finally, the borrowing of power techniques
proved conducive to less controllable changes, affecting the cultural identities and presuppositions of the societies in question. In that sense, the ultimate triumph of Western power was the general de-stabilization of
non-Western cultural worlds.
This power-centred approach tends to portray Western domination as a
vehicle of developments that obey a more general logic and can result in
more evenly balanced global changes. A shift in this direction may be
noted in McNeill’s Pursuit of Power, where the history of warfare in
general and of Western military power in particular is first outlined in
terms of “macroparasitism”, an evolving pattern of specialists in violence
gaining direct or indirect control over their social environment and imposing their priorities, but then reconstructed in a more detailed fashion
without using that language, and allowing for more “symbiotic” relationships between societies and their armed forces (McNeill 1982: VII). The
conceptual ambiguity evident at the beginning resurfaces in a double-edged
diagnosis of contemporary trends. The accelerated progress of military
technology would have been impossible without the more general interand intra-civilizational dynamics that made the West central to world
history, but industrialized warfare – the pursuit of power at its most
extreme – has moved so far out of step with other aspects of social life that
86 Johann P. Arnason
the very possibility of survival is in doubt. McNeill concluded – a quarter
of a century ago, well before the end of the Cold War – that “a global sovereign power”, an “empire of the earth” (McNeil 1982: 383), radically different from all known forms of hegemony, would solve the problem. The
“rise of the West” would thus culminate in a self-abolishing leap to higher
levels of social organization. But the idea of an inherently globalizing
competitive pursuit of power can lead to other conclusions. Those who
now envisage a transition from American hegemony or imperial rule (by
implication the last form of Western ascendancy) to a multi-polar world
are relying on basic assumptions of that kind.
From another point of view, the shift that really matters is not so much
from Western domination to multi-polarity as from an external to an
internalized form of Western hegemony. This perspective prevails in some
versions of postcolonial theorizing: the main target of criticism is a model,
or more precisely a meta-model (not always identified in the same terms),
imposed on non-Western cultures by Western conquerors but adaptable to
a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances. Theodore von Laue’s
analysis of the “world revolution of Westernization” (von Laue 1987) proposes a more nuanced variation on the same theme. As he sees it, a
Western breakthrough to higher levels of power forced states and societies
in other parts of the world to compete within a framework established by
the strongest players; and the most influential strategies developed for that
purpose mix direct imitation with imagined alternatives (for von Laue,
even the Communist challenge to the West fits into this category). After a
long history of – in the last instance – unsuccessful counter-projects, the
only hope for a more constructive global regime lies in self-critical reflection on both sides: the West should accept the blame for its destructive
impact on the rest, while non-Westerners in search of alternatives might
reconsider the one-sided perceptions – of both problems and possibilities –
on which dominant developmental models have hitherto been based.
To round off this first part of our survey, Samuel Huntington’s wellknown work on the “clash of civilizations” may serve to illustrate yet
another view. His most provocative claims have to do with macrohistorical cultural identities and the conflicts between them, but this line of
argument is backed up by a less explicit account of power and its changing
role in intercivilizational relations. Huntington insists that the West was
Western long before it went modern; when it embarked on the path of
modernizing transformations (industrialization, urbanization etc.), the first
effect was to empower it against other civilizations, and this global
supremacy was reinforced by the Westernizing projects that grew out of
the borrowing of modern techniques (in the broadest sense). But for Huntington, this is not the end of the story: the conflation of modernization and
Westernization gives way to what he calls “second-generation indigenization”, and the ultimate effect of modernizing processes is to re-entrench
the traditional plurality of civilizations. In that sense, modernization has
Contested divergence 87
self-cancelling consequences: it returns history to the traditional pattern of
mutually incompatible and uncomprehending (or at best partially comprehending) cultural worlds. From Huntington’s point of view, the “rise of
the West” is thus a confusing notion: it lumps together two very different
things, the original constitution of the West as a distinctive civilization and
the temporary advantages which the West derived from its pioneering role
in a process that ultimately re-empowers its adversaries.
Multi-dimensionality reappears when we go on to trace connections
between the accumulation of power and the diverse sources on which it
draws. In the long run, economic and technological capacities were crucial:
the power–wealth nexus must therefore be central to the story. The growth
of power and wealth was in turn sustained by cognitive progress in general
and institutionalized science in particular. The connection between power
and knowledge thus calls for further reflection. Inasmuch as the worldhistorical dynamic of the West has depended on the initiatives of individual and collective actors, an evolving synergy of power and freedom
was of major importance. Last but not least, we should note a connection
between power and meaning: despite the unending controversies about the
role and relative weight of specific traditions, it is widely agreed that distinctive interpretations of the world and the human condition contributed
to the “rise of the West”. They focused on visions of human autonomy
and self-empowerment, implemented through rational domination of the
world as well as through sovereign reconstruction of social order, and
articulated in rival ideologies of progress.
No extensive coverage of this problematic can be attempted here. The
following remarks will centre on particular themes – more specifically
wealth and meaning – and underline the need to locate them in a broader
context; they will thus single out some focal points of a debate that
remains open to new approaches. Some of the most challenging recent
contributions have come from those who stress the fundamental importance of wealth and the impact of changing ways of wealth creation.
Various writers have put forward ideas in this vein during the last decade,
but the case has been stated most forcefully and comprehensively by Jack
Goldstone (2000, 2002 and forthcoming). On this view, the decisive
“great divergence” (Pomeranz 2000) between the West and the rest was a
later development than historians had tended to assume: it resulted from
the industrial revolution, and closer analysis of this epoch-making event
has shown that the real turning-point – in terms of economic and social
impact – came later than traditional accounts would have it, in the early
nineteenth rather than the late eighteenth century. The foundational
achievement of the industrial revolution was a breakthrough in energy use,
but its long-term significance lay in what Goldstone calls the marriage of
science-based engineering and visionary entrepreneurship. It gave rise to an
economy based on accelerated innovation and risk-taking (one salutary
side-effect of Goldstone’s argument is that it helps to puncture the
88 Johann P. Arnason
much-inflated notion of “risk society”: we have been living in a risk
society for two centuries). Goldstone describes this historical shift as a
transition from traditional to modern wealth creation: the latter centres on
permanent innovation.
The conventional idea of a “rising West” reflects the historical
experience of the industrial revolution but in a misleading way: the breakthrough occurred in Britain, rather than on a broader regional basis. It
presupposed a contingent, localized and exceptional interplay of many
factors: economic, political, religious and cultural. The new mode of production (the Marxian term seems appropriate) expanded beyond its birthplace, at first most effectively in the European and North American
context, but some parts of the rest responded more actively than some
parts of the West. More generally speaking, the diffusion of the industrial
revolution is best understood in terms of networks of developmental
centres, rather than whole countries or regions (let alone civilizations). We
are, in other words, dealing with a radically new form of economic life,
born of a mutation which could only happen in a very particular place,
and whose subsequent global reach could only be sustained by privileged
foci of dynamism. This revised account diverges very sharply from established conceptions of the “rise of the West”.
Goldstone’s arguments add up to a powerful challenge to traditional
views on the “rise of the West”. Here I can only indicate what I think is
the most plausible way of countering it. We can accept the late dating, the
local (rather than regional) character, and the contingency of the industrial
breakthrough, and still insist on preconditions (necessary but not sufficient) and connections that enable us to speak of a “rise of the West” on a
broader basis and in a more long-term perspective. The cultural currents
and social forces (including the transformative potential of Protestantism
as well as what Joel Mokyr [2002] calls the “industrial enlightenment”)
that crystallized in an unprecedented conjuncture in eighteenth-century
Britain can only be understood in the context of a long-term and largescale transformation of European civilization. As for the relationship
between innovation and accumulation (Goldstone’s line of argument
involves a critique of all accumulation-centred theories of development,
including practical recommendations to developing countries), it is no
doubt true that the cultural and institutional opening to innovation needs
to be put more firmly at the centre of the picture; but it was only in conjunction with a socio-economic regime geared to the accumulation of
capital as well as knowledge that the newly institutionalized innovative
capacities changed the world. Finally, the effort to rationalize innovation
into a regular component of wealth creation is also a part of the capitalist
historical universe, and the aspiration to do better in that regard became
the starting-point for the most important counter-project of the twentieth
century: the Communist model of an alternative modernity.
The cultural factors that enter into genealogies of the industrial revolu-
Contested divergence 89
tion can also be credited with a transformative dynamic of their own; when
taken to the most radical conclusions, this line of argument posits a cultural
mutation that set the West – more specifically the modern West – farther
apart from other civilizations than any previous developments had done. In
historical terms, such interpretations have foregrounded the sixteenthcentury fragmentation of Western Christendom, the seventeenth-century
take-off of the scientific revolution, or the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.
Irrespective of chronological variations, the common ground is a conceptual
switch with critical implications for the historical picture summarized above.
The idea of a cultural mutation seems, at first sight, to single out one dimension of the social–historical world, but critics of purely culturalist
approaches can argue that innovations on the level of formative meaning
draw on multiple sources and take practical shape through multiple channels. Similarly, while the emphasis on discontinuity in regard to the most
basic cultural orientations must at the very least modify our understanding
of long-term processes, a case can be made for genealogical perspectives that
link the moments of breakthrough to cumulative background trends on one
hand and gradually unfolding articulations on the other. Finally, the notion
of a radical and unparalleled transformation within a regional and civilizational framework amounts to a major qualification of the interactionist
thesis, even if it does not exclude a global view of preconditions as well as of
the ramifications that lend world-historical meaning to the locally initiated
changes. At the same time, the idea of an epoch-making change to cultural
orientations undermines all constructs of an enduring Western identity: the
episodes often taken to represent the most decisive triumphs of the West
now appear as harbingers of a new historical formation, no more reducible
to older sources than confinable within its original limits.
The argument so far outlined on a very abstract level has found more
concrete expression in contemporary social theory. The most promising
starting-point for further discussion is S. N. Eisenstadt’s interpretation of
modernity as a new civilization that took shape through mutations at the
very core of the European (or more precisely West European) world but
rose to dominance in the global arena and crystallized into diverse forms
in different contexts (for the most condensed programmatic statement, see
Eisenstadt 2003a). Cultural premises are as central to this civilization as to
traditional ones; the most distinctive innovations in that regard have to do
with visions of human autonomy, intertwined but not identical with the
ability to master the natural world and transform the social one. These
new perspectives on the human condition and its inherent possibilities
were articulated – in unequally developed ways – across a broad spectrum
of social practices, but most ambitiously in the philosophical projects that
accompanied the transition to modernity. Conflicting interpretations translate the common theme – the new horizons of human autonomy – into
divergent images of society, ideological models and operative definitions of
social power.
90 Johann P. Arnason
This civilizational view of modernity is related to other theoretical innovations in the same field. To cut a long and unfinished story short, early
modernities are perhaps best understood as partial transformations, occurring separately in various regional and civilizational contexts, but only
coalescing into a civilizational pattern in the specific setting of the expanding and mutating West; “multiple modernities” would then represent variants of that pattern unfolding on a global scale. This is not to imply that
the Western crystallization of modernity as a civilization was a selfcontained process. The regional concentration presupposes a global conjuncture, and vice versa. The most ambitious and erudite global history of
“the birth of the modern world” now available admits European specificity in no uncertain terms: it refers to the “particular buoyancy of the
European idea of knowledge and its material rewards” (Bayly 2004: 80).
As the same author notes, destructive consequences of this distinction were
no less important than the productive ones; but that does not alter the fact
that his analysis converges with the civilizational approach. There is, on
the other hand, no denying that the latter needs further clarification. Eisenstadt’s formulations leave some room for doubt as to whether modernity
should be seen as a new civilization, fundamentally comparable with older
ones, or a civilizational formation of a new type, departing from traditional patterns in unprecedented ways. Other unresolved issues will emerge
when his views are compared with those of classical and contemporary
authors who have developed more implicit but often insightful arguments
in the same vein. Even so, the civilizational frame of reference seems
particularly relevant to the problems that arise when the historical trajectory of the West is subjected to theoretical questioning.
Note
1 Thanks are due to Jack Goldstone, for making unpublished manuscripts available; and to participants in the discussion at Schloss Elmau in April 2004. The
title of the paper is, of course, inspired by Kenneth Pomeranz’s book, The Great
Divergence.
References
Amsden, A. (2001) The Rise of the Rest: Challenges to the West from Late Industrializing Economies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Arnason, J. P. (2003) “East and West: From Invidious Dichotomy to Incomplete
Deconstruction”, in G. Delanty and E. Isin (eds) Handbook of Historical Sociology, London: Sage, pp. 220–34.
Bayart, J. F. (1996) La greffe de l’Etat, Paris: Karthala.
Bayly, C. A. (2004) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914, Oxford: Blackwell.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (2003a) “The Civilizational Dimension of Modernity: Modernity
as a Distinct Civilization”, in id., Comparative Civilizations and Multiple
Modernities, vol. 2, Leiden: Brill, pp. 493–518.
Contested divergence 91
Eisenstadt, S. N. (2003b) “The First Multiple Modernities: The Civilization of the
Americas”, in id., Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, vol. 2,
Leiden: Brill, pp. 701–22.
Frank, A. G. (1998) Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goldstone, J. (2000) “The Rise of the West – or Not? A Revision to Socioeconomic History”, Sociological Theory, 18(2): 175–94.
Goldstone, J. (2002) “Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History:
Rethinking the ‘Rise of the West’ and the Industrial Revolution”, Journal of
World History, 13(1): 323–90.
Goldstone, J. (forthcoming) The Happy Chance: The Rise of the West in Global
Context, 1500–1850, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Huntington, S. P. (1997) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Jones, E. L. (2003) The European Miracle. Environment, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McCormick, M. (2001) Origins of the European Economy: Communications and
Commerce AD 300–900, New York: Cambridge University Press.
McNeill, W. (1963) The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community,
Chicago: Chicago University Press.
McNeill, W. (1982) The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society
since AD 1000, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
McNeill, W. (1986) “The Rise of the West as a Long-term Process”, in id., Mythistory and Other Essays, Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 43–67.
McNeill, W. (1990) “The Rise of the West after Twenty-five Years”, Journal of
World History, 1(1): XV–XXX.
Mokyr, J. (2002) Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pomeranz, K. (2000) The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the
World Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Veliz, C. (1994) The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in
English and Spanish America, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Von Laue, Th. (1987) The World Revolution of Westernization: The Twentieth
Century in Global Perspective, New York: Oxford University Press.
Weber, M. (1963) Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, Bd. 1, Tübingen:
J. C. B. Mohr.
Zolberg, A. (1981) “Origins of the Modern World System: A Missing Link”,
World Politics, 23(1): 253–81.
6
Discovering the world
Cosmopolitanism and globality in
the ‘Eurasian’ renaissance
David Inglis and Roland Robertson
The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which
We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions,
may, by your own free will . . . trace for yourself the lineaments of your
own nature. I have placed you at the very centre of the world, so that from
that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on
all that the world contains . . . in order that you may, as the free and proud
shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer.
(Mirandola 1998: 12)
Such are the words of God in the much-quoted lines of the ‘Oration on the
Dignity of Man’, written by the Italian humanist scholar Pico della Mirandola in the year 1486 (1998). Pico’s Oration has often been understood as
the key philosophical manifesto of that set of phenomena that we in the
present day are accustomed to call the European Renaissance, a philosophical and literary movement that is conventionally located primarily as
beginning in the Italian peninsula and starting in the fifteenth century. In
the extract above, we see both the kernel of Pico’s thought, and also, it is
frequently claimed, the essence of the overall Renaissance mindset. The
revival of the secular and inquiring spirit of ancient Greek and Roman
learning throughout the fifteenth century created a condition in which, it is
said, the shackles of Catholic religion and the dead-weight of suffocating
medieval tradition were increasingly sloughed off, in favour of a dawning
realisation that the human being is the only creature on earth which can
shape its own nature, and thus its own destiny. Just as each individual
human has that capacity to choose the nature and style of his or her own
endeavours, so too does the species as a whole, the essence of the human
character being the capacity to transcend the barriers set in each epoch
upon achievement and aspiration. When we think today of the Renaissance, we tend to think of mankind’s Promothean capacities, its abilities to
shape itself in a never-ending series of self-induced transformations, and,
in so doing, enactments of successively more impressive achievements
(Greenblatt 1980).
Discovering the world 93
In what has come to be the standard view of the European Renaissance, the individual human’s internal discovery of his or her Promethean
potentials is thought to be a purely ‘European’ phenomenon. What
allegedly differentiates ‘Europe’ from other parts of the world is based on
what is seen as the unique mental capacity of the ‘European’, which
encompasses both the ability to fashion one’s own self, free of the
ascribed identities imposed by group membership, and also the aptitude
to utilise the latter skill in the building of future social and cultural conditions that are unfettered by the constraints of tradition and convention.
While ‘Asia’ and ‘Africa’ are seen to remain forever caught within the
confines of ‘traditional’ thought, practice, selfhood and social arrangements, the European has the unique ability to look forward into a limitless horizon of the future, a panorama of unlimited possibilities vis-à-vis
how the person sees him- or herself and how she lives in association with
others (Goody 1996). This powerful and seductive vision of the apparently exceptional potential of the European person lies at the heart of the
idea of ‘Europe’ dominant in modernity, an imagining of the latter as the
only place in the world where the freedom of the self to make itself leads
in turn to virtuous cultural conditions (the rejection of irrational tradition, an empirical and questioning mindset, the championing of liberal
values) and social arrangements (freedom of individual expression, political liberty and the absence of despotism). These values and conditions
have come to be expressive of the dominant mode of self-understanding
of Europeans for the last two centuries and more. While they are often
associated with the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, nonetheless
mainstream commentaries regard the roots of the tendencies of the latter
as being firmly locatable within, and having grown out of, Renaissance
thought and practice (Pater 1980).
Such a view, which since the mid-nineteenth century has become the
dominant interpretation of the influence of Renaissance mores on subsequent European socio-cultural development, leads to a curious paradox
as regards issues to do with ‘cosmopolitan’ outlooks and practices. On the
one hand, Renaissance practices and attitudes of self-fashioning suggest an
openness to endless possibilities, including learning from those living in
other parts of the world, respecting their cultural otherness, and including
certain aspects of their thinking and lifestyles within one’s own sense of
self and social existence. We can see this in the above quotation, where
Pico makes God pronounce to the human that s/he has been made in such
a way that s/he ‘may with greater ease glance round about you on all that
the world contains’. Despite the human’s capacity to gaze upon all the
varieties of life the world has to offer, it remained the case in this conceptualisation that only certain aspects of others’ thinking and lifestyles could
be included in one’s own, namely those aspects that did not threaten one’s
capacity constantly to mould the self anew, by suffocating that capacity
under the weight of traditional and irrational dogmas. Nonetheless,
94 David Inglis and Roland Robertson
Renaissance self-fashioning strongly implies an openness to cultural alterity and a willingness to learn from it.
On the other hand, openness to others and other cultures seems to be a
purely ‘European’ capacity: only the European, with his or her culture of
self-fashioning, is in a position to be a cultural cosmopolitan, because nonEuropeans are seen to remain embedded within ‘traditional’ mindsets and
social structures. Thus while the European may admire (to some degree)
and learn (a little) from, for example, the apparent stoicism in the face of
the vagaries of life and the universe embodied by the Hindu and the Buddhist, the latter are felt by the European unable to engage in the same
practices of admiration and learning, for they remain too stuck within
their respective mindsets ever to engage in the form of reflexive selfquestioning and self-fashioning that is seen to be the sole preserve of the
European. Paradoxically, then, only Europeans apparently can have
cosmopolitan attitudes towards the wider world, because all nonEuropean others are unable to engage in the practices of the self that allow
cosmopolitan attitudes in the first place. A further paradox follows: the
Europeans’ cosmopolitan sensibilities are themselves expressive of, and
rooted in, a strong form of cultural chauvinism: we are cosmopolitans but
you are not (Goody 1996).
This outcome inexorably follows from the starting-point of this sort of
argument, namely that the Renaissance is solely and simply a European
phenomenon, and that the apparently virtuous mental capacities it
unleashed, including cosmopolitan dispositions towards other cultures, are
conveyed only on Europeans or on those who fully embrace a ‘European’
mindset, the very mindset that was allegedly formed in and by the Renaissance. In this chapter, our aim is to take apart the commonplace notion
that the set of phenomena contemporary observers have come to call the
‘Renaissance’ is simply an unabashedly ‘European’ institution. By examining empirically the genesis and operation of those phenomena usually
referred to under the blanket term ‘Renaissance’, we will unpack the
complex of inter- and trans-national processes that lie behind them. In
particular, we will see that far from being simply ‘Europe’s other’, the
Islamic world of the Ottoman empire was a very important player in the
international processes of mutual trade and cultural influence that can be
discerned as the generating mechanisms behind, and the characteristic
expression of, what can be called – in inverted commas – the ‘Renaissance
world’. In this way, we will see that the ‘Renaissance’ is better understood
as a ‘hybrid’ and indeed ‘Eurasian’ set of processes rather than simply as a
solely ‘European’ innovation.
In terms of issues to do with cosmopolitanism, we will show that it was
in fact ‘cosmopolitan’ conditions of inter- and trans-national cultural influence, cultural emulation and trade (in art forms and luxury goods especially) which were both the conditions of possibility, and the characteristic
means of expression, of ‘Renaissance culture’. We will delineate how this
Discovering the world 95
state of affairs meant that a strong and increasingly sophisticated sense of
‘globality’ – the idea that the world is a single place, and that all parts of it
are connected in various ways with all other parts (Robertson 2001) – was
characteristic of the thinking of the Renaissance period. In that sense, we
will see that the ‘cosmopolitan’ aspects of Renaissance thought were
predicated upon ‘cosmopolitan’ conditions of socio-cultural connectivity,
especially as these pertained between the ‘Christian West’ and the ‘Islamic
East’. We will also briefly examine the role of Renaissance cartography,
itself bound up in practices of international trade, in the forging of what
can be called Renaissance globality. By demonstrating the interplay
between ‘Renaissance’, cosmopolitanism and globality, we will suggest
that a much less chauvinistic reading of the former term is possible, a
reading that has implications for what we in the present day think
‘Europe’ and ‘European culture’ are and how they may be thought of in
the future.
Reconfiguring the Renaissance
The conventional view of the European Renaissance – that which sees it as
a purely ‘European’, and more especially Italian, phenomenon, and as a
revolution in mentalities and mores with profound effects on later Western
history – is itself a product of the nineteenth century. The French historian
Jules Michelet, the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, and the English litterateur Walter Pater are perhaps the most influential exponents of what
became the hegemonic view, described above, of what ‘the Renaissance’
was, what it involved, and what ramifications it had. Unsurprisingly, revisionist historians of a variety of hues working in the present day have
sought to overthrow what they see as an idealisation of the cultural tendencies of the period under scrutiny, an idealisation which they see as
expressive more of the nineteenth-century liberal’s eulogisation of the individual and their rational capacities than of the concrete socio-cultural conditions of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Indeed, in many
present-day historiographical circles, the very word ‘Renaissance’ itself has
become tabooed, to be replaced by what is felt to be the more analytically
neutral term ‘early modern’.
Nonetheless, certain contemporary historians have argued for the need
to retain the term ‘Renaissance’, for it captures certain dynamics that are
irreducible to a focus on ‘early modernity’. Foremost among these are the
UK-based scholars Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, whose work, written
both individually (Jardine 1997; Brotton 1997; Brotton 2002) and collaboratively (Jardine and Brotton 2000), we will draw significantly upon in this
chapter. If it is the case that each epoch reinvents the past in light of its
own characteristic interests and obsessions, then this general rule certainly
applies in the work of Jardine and Brotton, in that what they offer is a
deepening and problematisation of the ‘Renaissance’, both as a period and
96 David Inglis and Roland Robertson
as a set of mental and practical endeavours, regarded in light of present
day analytic concerns with globalisation, globality and cosmopolitanism.
As Jardine (1997: 436) argues, ‘the world we inhabit today, with its ruthless competitiveness, fierce consumerism, restless desire for ever wider
horizons, for travel, discovery and innovation, a world hemmed in by the
small-mindedness of petty nationalism and religious bigotry but refusing to
bow to it, is a world which was made in the Renaissance’.
Lest this sound like an uncritically Eurocentric account of world history,
based on the claim that the European Renaissance is the source of all subsequent happenings in the world, it is important to note that both Jardine
and Brotton reject wholeheartedly the nineteenth-century construct of the
Renaissance as solely ‘European’ in origin and nature; they also dismiss and
attempt to transcend the contention that the practices associated with
Renaissance culture appeared unexpectedly and sui generis in the Italian
peninsula, rather than, as they see it, out of the fertile ground of the material–cultural interplay, and corresponding sense of globality, characteristic of
the whole of the ‘European’ and Mediterranean worlds of the time.
This position obviously involves noting that the ‘Renaissance’ should be
seen as a pan-European set of processes, rather than as wholly an Italian
‘invention’, with different national contexts all playing a part, in their own
culturally distinctive manners, in the fostering of new modes of sensibility
and activity. Even nineteenth-century historiography, with its particular
focus on the Italian roots of Renaissance, acknowledged that by the midfifteenth century there was an international ‘republic of letters’ in and
through which scholars such as Erasmus and Thomas More corresponded,
argued and developed their ideas, a situation that can be represented as
something akin to a free-flowing, Latin language-based ideal speech situation, relatively unhindered by the national barriers to dialogue and communication that would characterise European life in a later age of
fully-formed, linguistically autarkic nation-states.
Modern scholarship, however, goes further in stressing the inter- and
trans-national characteristics of Renaissance intellectual and artistic production. For a historian such as Kirkpatrick (2002), ‘Renaissance’ refers to
processes and developments that are as much ‘Northern’ European as
‘Southern’. For example, the remarkable outburst of creativity and innovation in polyphonic music composition taking place in Flanders in the
1490s, and the new sensibilities and stylistics embodied in the paintings of
Pieter Breughel indicate that if the period is to be seen as characterised by
cultural effervescence, then the latter should be seen as happening in some
ways as much in more northerly climes than in sunny groves of the south.
One might also point to the ‘international’ aspects of the careers of ‘star’
artists of the time. The German-born Hans Holbein (1497–1543), for
example, who was heavily influenced by the newer Italian styles of composition, worked first in Switzerland and then settled in London and flourished there. As Brotton (2002: 19) argues, he absorbed cultural, political,
Discovering the world 97
and intellectual influences that were remarkably global. This made his
painting strikingly hybrid, and very different from many of his Italian
contemporaries’. From this perspective, it is precisely Holbein’s hybrid
stylistics and international career that make him a quintessential cultural
producer of the – wider, pan-European – Renaissance.
Enter the Ottomans
Although the redefinition of Renaissance as pan-European rather than
simply Italian in nature is very important, it does not fully problematise
what is meant by ‘European’, nor does it consider how ‘non-European’
factors may have played a role in the genesis and operation both of
‘Renaissance’ and of the very idea of ‘Europe’ that was developing at that
period. One of the most valuable aspects of the researches of Jardine and
Brotton is that they are able to mount convincing arguments to the effect
that it was the highly symbiotic relationship between ‘west’ and ‘east’, that
is to say between the Christian states north and west of Turkey and the
Ottoman empire, which was productive of the conditions that nineteenthcentury historiography conjured away as a purely ‘western’, indeed narrowly ‘Italian’, set of phenomena.1 As Brotton (2002: 53) succinctly puts
the point:
There were no clear geographical or political barriers between east
and west in the 15th century. It is a much later, 19th century belief in
the absolute cultural and political separation of the Islamic east and
Christian west that has obscured the easy exchange of trade, art, and
ideas between these two cultures. Europe was very aware that the
culture, customs and religion of Islam were very different from its
own, and the two sides were often in direct military conflict with each
other. However, the point is that the material and commercial
exchanges between them were largely unaffected by political hostility:
instead, the competitiveness of business transactions and cultural
exchanges produced a fertile environment for development on both
sides.
From this perspective, what happened in the pan-European Renaissance
is empirically, and thus also analytically, inseparable from the wider cultural dynamics characteristic of ‘European’ and Ottoman relations of the
period. Neither political fractiousness nor religious differences between the
two entities – and the ‘European’ bloc was itself highly diverse, both
politically, culturally, and after Luther, religiously – prevented dense
dynamics of cultural interconnection, self-conscious rivalry and mutual
emulation. The importance and influence of the Ottomans in ‘European’
life and letters of the period was indeed unavoidable, ever since they had
captured the capital of the Byzantine empire, Constantinople, in 1453, and
98 David Inglis and Roland Robertson
thus had come to occupy a pivotal position, both geographically, politically, militarily and economically, in the Eastern part of the Mediterranean
world. We can illustrate this situation in various ways.
In the first place, just as it would be wrong to posit a homogeneous
‘Europe’ in a united manner facing the Ottoman foe, so too would it be a
grave mistake to regard the latter as simply an ‘Islamic’ entity, implacably
ranged against the ‘West’. On the ‘European’ side, different ‘European’
political units moved in and out of treaties with the Ottoman Sultan
throughout the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While political entities such as Hungary, which had territories perilously close to the
Ottoman-controlled Balkans, were in an almost constant state of war with
the Sultan, other ‘European’ political actors, whose territories were less in
the path of apparent Ottoman conquest, were more than happy to operate
in terms of peaceful coexistence with the Sultan. This was especially the
case with the great trading entities Venice and Genoa, whose mercantile
interests were well served by their trading links with the Turks; tellingly,
both cities sent envoys to Constantinople to establish friendly trading relations, just months after the fall of the Byzantine capital, the greatest disaster to face Christendom according to clerics but a great opportunity for
furthering trade as far as the Venetians and Genoese were concerned.
After the initial shock experienced by ‘Christendom’ as to the conquest
of Constantinople had been absorbed, a succession of Popes found it
almost impossible to mount any serious concerted action against the
Ottomans to retrieve lost ‘Western’ territories; this was because at any one
time, some European states would be in bellicose relations with the Turks,
while others would be pursuing lucrative trading relations with the latter,
especially in terms of the trade in spices from the east, a very important
part of the whole European economy of the time. While political and religious rhetoric of the period stressed the antagonistic relations between
Islam and Christianity, the actual practices at the ground level between
these two apparently homogeneous entities are such as seriously to call
into question any characterisation of there being a single ‘West’ facing a
monolithic ‘East’.2
Such empirically existing conditions of widespread European trade with
the Ottomans were the ground upon which sprang much of the literary
and artistic processes of the period. This can be seen in the fact that just as
the ‘West’ was not a monadic entity, neither was the Ottoman empire culturally homogeneous and hermetically sealed off from the wider world.
In the years after the conquest of Constantinople, the Sultan Mehmed II
was concerned to erect a capital of his empire worthy of the greatest
rulers the earth had seen. What is particularly interesting about the case
of Mehmed is that a person whom Christian propaganda of the age characterised as the ‘Grand Turk’, the most feared and wicked man of the
time, was himself a lover of the classical literature of ancient Greece and
Rome. While engaged in the siege of Constantinople, he employed various
Discovering the world 99
Italian humanist scholars – the quintessential figures of what we can now
regard as the clichéd view of the Renaissance formulated in the nineteenth
century – to read to him ‘from ancient historians such as Laertius,
Herodotus, Livy and Quintus Curtius and from chronicles of the popes
and the Lombard kings’ (Babinger 1978: 112). Mehmed styled himself not
on Islamic predecessors but on the Roman emperors he had read about
and, above all, on that great stylist of the self and Renaissance idol,
Alexander the Great.
In addition, just like other powerful men of the period, such as the
Medicis in Italy and, at a later date, the Fugger banking family in
Germany, Mehmed coveted copies of classical texts that ‘Renaissance’
humanist scholars both eulogised for their wisdom and made a point of
recovering from dusty monastery libraries. In the great library that
Mehmed built up in his new capital were classical works in Greek, Latin,
Hebrew and Arabic. Quite apart from the personal interest he had in the
contents of such texts, Mehmed like the Medicis, the Fuggers and other
power-brokers of the period, regarded a library stuffed full of rare classical
texts, carrying within their pages gems of ancient learning, as a powerful
symbolic embodiment and notice to the wider world of the refinement and
wisdom both of themselves and of their domains. As Jardine (1997)
stresses, possession of the right sort of cultural capital – in this case, classical texts so highly regarded in this period – was a crucial part of a
prince’s armoury of symbolic power and prestige, allowing him to gain
‘world-wide’ fame as a learned man and patron of scholarship and the
arts. This was as much the case in the latter half of the fifteenth century for
the Ottoman Sultan as it was for the monarchs of the West, indicating that
there was a shared sensibility, ranging from Britain in the north-west to
Syria in the south-east, that the comprehension of classical learning was a
sine qua non of the repertoire of a modern, ‘civilised’ ruler. In this sense,
‘Renaissance’ was not just pan-European but in fact a markedly ‘Eurasian’
phenomenon.3
Mehmed’s capital was deliberately intended by him as both a cultural
powerhouse, whose fame for refinement and learning would be known to
the far reaches of both Islam and Christendom, and as a central node of
international trade networks. Through Istanbul passed a vast array of different wares, moving both from east to west, and vice versa. The more
obvious sorts of goods involved included carpets, pottery and silks, and it
is noteworthy that in the decorative arts, it was Ottoman – and more
broadly, Islamic – styles that were fervently copied by the artisans of the
Renaissance West, such styles feeding in various ways into the artistic productions of the period. One of the most striking examples of the powerful
Islamic influence on Western visual practices of the time is the city of
Venice itself: engaged in dense trading relations with both the Ottomans,
and their Islamic rivals, the Egyptian Mamluks, the architects and builders
of La Serenissima enthusiastically took up both designs and building
100 David Inglis and Roland Robertson
methods first developed in Egypt and Palestine (Howard 2000; Mack
2002).
Beyond this interplay in visual representations between the Ottomans
and their western neighbours, there was also an exchange of armaments
(money-making activities overcoming whatever scruples there may have
been on either ‘side’ as to the arming of the apparent religious enemy),
tulips (the Ottoman supply of which would come at a later period to be
the source of the speculative buying frenzy in Holland) and horses. The
trade in equine thoroughbreds was an important network that connected
the Ottoman and Western ruling classes, both in that they exchanged
horses with each other, and in that the possession of fine specimens by a
prince or aristocrat was a potent marker of power, a semiotic situation
understood equally throughout east and west (Jardine and Brotton 2000).
Just as both horses and books were the common currency of symbolic
display amongst the powerful of both west and east at the time, so too was
the hiring of the services of well-known artists. As is very well attested
(e.g. Wolff 1981), it is in the later fifteenth century in Italy that the notion
of the ‘artist’ as a unique figure of wholly individualised genius begins first
to develop. Conventional historiography stresses the rejection by figures
such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo of the humble role of artisan
in favour of a self-representation of self-willed creator, taking this development as one of the cornerstones of the Renaissance revolution in mentalities. What has been subjected to much less comment is that the Ottoman
rulers just as much as their counterparts to the west understood the cachet
of luring a famous artist to work in their service. In the space encompassing all the lands within the figure formed by drawing lines between
London, Moscow, Jerusalem and Cairo, ‘cultural exchanges between
prominent patrons, facilitated by artistically and intellectually gifted individuals, were the arteries along which Renaissance art and specialist knowledge flowed’ (Jardine 1997: 243).
Leonardo, for example, entered into correspondence with Qaitbay, the
highly cultivated Mamluk Sultan of Cairo. One of the key artistic and
architectural practitioners of what is conventionally taken as the Italian
Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti, was highly popular among Italian
rulers for his brand of grandiose imperial architecture, so much so that it
rapidly became an ‘internationally’ recognised style. Eyeing with some
envy the designs Alberti had constructed for the palaces of his Italian
peers, Mehmed II hired a number of Alberti’s pupils, such as de Pasti,
Michelozzo and Filarete to work on the new Topkapi palace, a situation
that resulted in its mixed Islamic, Italian, Greek and Roman influences.
Filarete’s international career is attested by his next project, the new
Kremlin palace built for the Tsar of Russia. It was not only the Sultan who
copied the Italians; the Italians also copied the Sultan. For example, Federico, ruler of the principality of Urbino, tasked his architects to ape the
style of the Topkapi palace; and Justus of Ghent, another international
Discovering the world 101
artistic ‘name’ of the time, was hired by Federico to paint representations
of such Renaissance heroes as Plato and Aristotle. The style he used to
carry out his commission was remarkably ‘Ottoman’ in nature (Brotton
2002: 148–52). In these various ways, we can see that far from being
uniquely ‘Italian’ or even broadly ‘European’, cultural production and
innovation in the period were marked strongly by east–west, transEuropean and cross-Mediterranean currents and flows.
Global sensibilities
Thus far we have reviewed some very good reasons for seeing what conventional historiography has called the ‘Renaissance’ as in actual fact a set
of ‘cosmopolitan’ practices and outlooks, centred around both panEuropean dynamics and a dense network of east–west and Islamic–
Christian encounters. Equally well it may be argued that we should see the
Renaissance as an epoch in which a strong sense of ‘globality’ comes to the
fore in the affairs of those human beings, both in west and east, who were
engaged in the cross-cultural, inter- and trans-national exchanges that we
have so far described. What we mean here is that what is conventionally
taken as ‘Renaissance culture’ – the revival of classical learning, and the
creation of new modes of subjectivity – should be enlarged to encompass
senses, felt by people of the time, that the whole world in which they lived
was becoming more and more ‘one place’, in the sense that all parts of it
were connected in increasingly complex ways to all other parts, and that
events in one part of the earth could have multiple ramifications in many
other parts.
A common misapprehension of much of the contemporary scholarship
on ‘globalisation’ is that such a sensibility is a purely modern phenomenon. In his review of the history of thoughts as to globality, Scholte (2000:
62, 65) argues that while ‘global consciousness began to tease secular
minds half a millennium ago . . . [it] touched few minds [before the nineteenth century] . . . Even for that small minority, globality was usually a
passing rather than a central thought’. We have shown in various other
contexts (e.g. Inglis and Robertson 2005; Robertson and Inglis 2004) how
this claim is invalid, in that a strong sense of global connectivity was
present first in Hellenistic Greece from the third century BCE onwards, and
then in both Republican and Imperial Rome. For example, the Greek
orator Aelius Aristides (1953: 896) wrote of Rome about the year 200 CE
that it was truly a ‘world city’ in that ‘whatever is grown and made among
each people cannot fail to be here at all times and in abundance . . . the city
appears a kind of giant emporium of the world’.
Our contention is that it was not only ‘classical learning’ that was
‘reawakened’ during the Renaissance. What was also brought back more
strongly into consciousness than had been the case in the high medieval
period was the Hellenistic and Roman sensibility that the world was
102 David Inglis and Roland Robertson
becoming ever ‘smaller’ because all of its various parts were becoming
more and more regularly connected with each other, a situation brought
about not least through trade, often over long distances. Consider, for
example, the words of the Venetian cleric Pietro Casola, writing in the
1490s. Notice how his description of trade in and through Venice clearly
recalls the words of Aristides written some 1200 years earlier:
It seems as if all the world flocks here, and that human beings have
concentrated there all their force for trading . . . who could count the
many shops so well furnished they seem almost like warehouses . . . so
many cloths of every make, carpets of every sort . . . silks of every kind
. . . warehouses full of spices, groceries and drugs . . .!
(cited in Brotton 2002: 38)
A cliché of conventional views of the Renaissance, in addition to those
we have already mentioned, is that it was a period in which the ‘discovery’
(or rediscovery) of mankind’s inner capacities occurs at the same time as
more ‘outer’ discoveries, namely the voyages of Europeans around the
globe for the first time and the apprehension, and subsequent conquest, of
the Americas. Even the Italo-centric account of Renaissance given by Burckhardt (1995: viii) explicitly formulates the twin ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ senses
of new horizons encountered at this period as ‘the discovery of the world
and of man [sic]’, presenting each process not just as happening simultaneously but as in some sense – though not clearly adumbrated by Burckhardt – symbiotically connected.
Clearly Burckhardt and all the many others who have followed him in
this judgement do have a point. For example, it is not difficult to see the
European discovery of hitherto unknown (especially ‘American’) ‘others’
as having a profound impact on what it means to have a self. Thus in
Michel de Montaigne’s famous meditation ‘On the Cannibals’, one of the
major works of Renaissance philosophical anthropology, Montaigne’s
(1991: 231) reading about the habits of the newly ‘discovered’ natives of
Brazil compels him to conclude that there are no such things as ‘barbarians’ because ‘every man [sic] calls barbarous anything he is not accustomed to’. By coming up against the relativity of customs and mores,
through reflection on the forms of life to be encountered in the Americas,
Montaigne comes to a conclusion already familiar from Pico: while the self
can be a prisoner of tradition and prejudice, it is the imperative of the educated person to fashion a self less parochial and more ‘cosmopolitan’, one
able to appreciate the ways of others, to learn from them and, in so doing,
to fashion one’s own self anew.
However, there is more to Renaissance globality than just this dimension, as important as it is. One of the great services both Jardine and
Brotton have provided to contemporary scholarship is their conjoining of
two, hitherto largely separated, modes of historiographical endeavour,
Discovering the world 103
namely Renaissance studies and the history of cartography. By emphasising the mercantile dynamics of the period, and locating Renaissance aesthetics and thought-processes within them, they have opened up the
possibility of examining two closely interrelated phenomena. First, how
maps and globes – which were literally depictions of the ‘world as a whole’
– were caught up in relations of trade and inter-state economic rivalries.
Cartographic implements were seen by Europeans of the time to be the
keys to the control and colonisation of newly accessible areas, both to
the east (especially in terms of controlling the far eastern spice trade) and
the west (especially in terms of controlling the slave trade in the Americas).
New maps and globes were commissioned by rulers, and kept in the most
secret conditions, lest they be stolen by spies from enemy powers seeking
economically vital information. Particularly in the rivalry between Spain
and Portugal to control the spice trade, maps and globes were crucial tools
of power, which could be used to justify which state had control over
which parts of the world.
Second, and following on from this, Jardine and Brotton also allow us to
see how cartographic implements both expressed, and were instrumental in
creating, forms of global consciousness. These sensibilities were truly
‘global’ in nature, in that maps and globes depicted the ‘whole world’. But
they also helped shape the modern sense of ‘Europe’, in that what was identified as a particular tranche of land with the name ‘Europe’ was located in
a particular part of the globe, and given a precise earthly location. This not
only helped solidify European senses of self-consciousness, modes of selfawareness that ran alongside and fed into the ‘discovery’ of self described
by Pico. It also gave Europeans and Ottomans (for the latter were also
engaged in similar map-making enterprises) of all vocations – not just
rulers, but also merchants, sailors, shop-keepers and others especially
involved in trade – a strong feeling of the wholeness and connectedness of
the entire planet, and of the place of the individual self within it. This was
both a rediscovery of antique forms of globality first felt by the Hellenistic
Greeks and Romans, and also a new departure, as for the first time, the
whole globe, rather than just the Eurasian part of it alone, was now truly
graspable in the imaginations of many people, and not just elites.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have pulled apart some of the common historiographical misconceptions that have, from the nineteenth century onwards, been
attendant upon the understanding of the ‘European Renaissance’. We did
this for the purposes of dealing with the problem that, if a cosmopolitan
selfhood directed towards the appreciation of cultural otherness is to a
significant degree a function of Renaissance innovations vis-à-vis selfdevelopment, and if the latter is itself exclusively a ‘European’ phenomenon, then it follows that cosmopolitan dispositions will paradoxically be
104 David Inglis and Roland Robertson
strongly culturally chauvinist, in that it is thought that only European selfhood has the self-fashioning capacities that allow cosmopolitan dispositions.
In order to deal with this problem we turned to empirical historiography, especially that of a revisionist bent, to consider how the senses of self
developed during what is conventionally called the Renaissance are not
simply ‘European’ in nature at all. We saw in the first instance how
‘Renaissance’ is certainly not simply an ‘Italian’ phenomenon but must be
conceived of, at the least, as a pan-European movement. We then turned
to see how, following the important arguments of Brotton and Jardine,
one may discern the markedly ‘Eurasian’ aspects of Renaissance, in that
the latter involved cultural interplay and connection between the Christian
‘west’ and the Ottoman ‘east’. This mode of analysis in itself suggests that
what have been taken to be quintessentially ‘European’ phenomena are
actually the products of ‘east’/‘west’ encounters and interactions. At the
very least, we believe that one is compelled to admit that ‘Renaissance selffashioning’ is not sui generis and indigenous to an entity called ‘Europe’.
Rather, it arose out of the ‘European’ engagement with the Ottoman and
Islamic ‘east’, and to that extent is not a simple indigenous and endogenous outgrowth of an undifferentiated entity called ‘Western culture’.
Indeed, the latter became part of ‘Westerners’ self-consciousness to a large
degree through the ‘western’ encounter with the ‘east’. More radically, one
might go so far as to claim that the Renaissance of the fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, especially the self-fashioning that apparently is a
primary constituent part of it, is a simultaneously ‘western’ and ‘eastern’,
‘Christian’ and ‘Islamic’, ‘European’ and ‘Ottoman’ phenomenon, born of
both ‘sides’ in the encounter, but irreducible to either. If that is the case,
the so-called ‘European Renaissance’ is in fact best described as part of an
entity we may call ‘Eurasian culture’: it is a product of the permeable cultural boundaries that exist in ages and areas of engagement, encroachment
and rapprochement between units that see themselves as different, yet
which, often unintentionally, create commonalities between themselves as
they both emulate and differentiate themselves from each other. We may
also add, given our examination of the nature of senses of globality and
self in the period under consideration, that a sense of one’s place in a much
wider and truly earth-spanning arena was part of the warp and woof of
life for many people in the period we conventionally call the European
Renaissance. It is not, we think, too much to claim that one of the most
profound ‘inventions’ of the period is not just a self that can interrogate its
own evolving tendencies, but also a self whose tendencies were integrally
connected to global consciousness and cosmopolitan forms of thought and
practice. Self-fashioning, in other words, is very closely connected to
awareness of a much wider world around one, and the diversity of different cultural modes that co-exist within it. If we recall both that fact and
the potentially ‘Eurasian’ provenance of Renaissance self-fashioning, we
Discovering the world 105
may see that cosmopolitical dispositions cannot simply be regarded as the
sole birthright of present-day Westerners.
Notes
1 There are strong parallels here with Bernal’s (1987) ‘Black Athena’ thesis, in
which the author alleges that in their eulogisations of the apparently purely
‘Western’ nature of the beginnings of ‘Western civilisation’, classical scholars of
the nineteenth century systematically purged ancient Greece of its empirically
existing ‘Afroasiatic’ cultural characteristics.
2 For an analogous argument, this time in the context of the British Empire in
India, see Jasanoff (2005).
3 We are using the appellation ‘Eurasian’ to describe interactions between the
‘European’/Christian and Ottoman/Islamic worlds as much for rhetorical and
polemical reasons as for analytic ones. The dynamics we are talking about did
not directly involve the ‘eastern’ part of the Eurasian landmass, that is all those
parts to the east and north-east of the Ottoman empire (Robertson 1990).
‘Eurasian’ therefore in the present context does not refer to the entirety of the
geographical expanse of Eurasia, nor does it refer to what Kroeber (1945) calls
‘Eurasian culture’, the set of practices and values that can be argued to be
common to most, or all, of the cultural units existing in the expanse between
Ireland to the west and Japan to the east. Rather, ‘Eurasian’ here refers to a
particular set of cultural interchanges, between ‘Europe’ and Ottoman Islam in
the period under consideration, which occurred in a particular geographical
context (particularly, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant) that can be
seen as, in some senses, at the very centre of the geo-cultural formation that is
Kroeber’s ‘Eurasian culture’. What we call the ‘Eurasian Renaissance’ of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries CE can in fact be seen as but one element within
the chronologically and geographically wider processes of cultural movement
and diffusion that Kroeber sees as characteristic of cultural dynamics within
Eurasia ‘as a whole’ over a very long sweep of human history.
References
Aristides, A. (1953) ‘Roman Oration’, in James H. Oliver ‘The Ruling Power: A
Study of the Roman Empire in the Second Century after Christ through the
Roman Oration of Aelius Aristides’, Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, New Series, Vol. 43, Part I: 873–999.
Babinger, F. (1978) Mehmed the Conqueror and His Times, Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Bernal, M. (1987) Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization,
London: Free Association Books.
Brotton, J. (1997) Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World, London:
Reaktion Books.
Brotton, J. (2002) The Renaissance Bazaar, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burckhardt, J. (1995) The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, London:
Phaidon.
de Montaigne, M. (1991) ‘On the Cannibals’, in The Complete Essays, M. A.
Screech (ed. and trans.), Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 228–41.
Goody, J. (1996) The East in the West, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
106 David Inglis and Roland Robertson
Greenblatt, S. (1980) Renaissance Self-Fashioning, Chicago: Chicago University
Press.
Howard, D. (2000) Venice and the East, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Inglis, D. and R. Robertson (2005) ‘The Ecumenical Analytic: “Globalization”,
Reflexivity and the Revolution in Greek Historiography’, European Journal of
Social Theory, 8(2): 99–122.
Jardine, L. (1997) Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, Basingstoke: Macmillan/Papermac.
Jardine, L. and J. Brotton (2000) Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East
and West, London: Reaktion Books.
Jasanoff, M. (2005) Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting on the Eastern
Frontiers of the British Empire, London: Fourth Estate.
Kirkpatrick, R. (2002) The European Renaissance, 1400–1600, Harlow:
Longman.
Kroeber, A. (1945) ‘The Ancient Oikoumene as an Historic Culture Aggregate’,
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,
75(1/2): 9–20.
Mack, R. E. (2002) Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
della Mirandola, P. (1998) On the Dignity of Man, New York: Hackett.
Pater, W. (1980 [1893]) The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Robertson, R. (1990) ‘Japan and the USA: The Interpretation of National Identities
and the Debate about Orientalism’, in N. Abercrombie, S. Hill and B. S. Turner
(eds) Dominant Ideologies, London: Unwin Hyman, pp. 182–98.
Robertson, R. (2001) ‘Globality’, in N. J. Smelser and P. B. Baltes (eds) International Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, 9, Oxford: Elsevier/Pergamon Press, pp. 6254–8.
Robertson, R. and D. Inglis (2004) ‘The Global Animus: In the Tracks of Worldconsciousness’, Globalizations, 1(1): 38–49.
Scholte, J. A. (2000) Globalization: A Critical Introduction, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Wolff, J. (1981) The Social Production of Art, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
7
Revealing the cosmopolitan side
of Oriental Europe
The eastern origins of European
civilisation
John M. Hobson
Rather than the manufactured clash of civilisations we need to concentrate
on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each
other, and live together. . . . But for [this] kind of wider perception we need
time and patient and sceptical enquiry supported by faith in communities
of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant
action and reaction.
(Said 2003 [1978]: xxii)
It was with these cosmopolitan words that Edward Said closed the 2003
preface to the reprint of Orientalism. And it is these poignant words that
provide my point of departure. Nevertheless an obvious paradox or
seeming contradiction immediately confronts us here. For as Said’s argument has been received, the possibility of cosmopolitan interaction
between the West and East becomes seemingly impossible given that the
former’s identity has been defined negatively against the latter through the
construction of orientalism. Moreover, it is clear that most of us naturally
think that European history has long been defined by recurring confrontations or clashes with the East. In our popular imagination these began with
the Crusades between 1095 and 1291, progressed forwards through the
Voyages of Discovery after 1492/1498 before culminating in the age of
European colonialism down to the 1970s. But focusing mainly, let alone
solely, on this side of Europe’s identity or history obscures the cosmopolitan side that has played an extremely important role in the development
of Europe after the eighth century.
To pursue this further it helps to disaggregate two core aspects of
Europe’s cosmopolitanism. First, while medieval European perceptions of
the Eastern peoples were often characterised by bizarre images (e.g. the
Sciopods, Blemmyae and Anthropophagi), nevertheless the Europeans
were cognisant of, and sometimes awestruck by, the richness if not the
economic and cultural superiority of many Eastern societies between about
800 and 1780. This was certainly true of Egypt and China, both of which
Europeans long held as ‘positive examples of higher and finer civilisations.
108 John M. Hobson
Both were seen to have had massive material achievements, profound
philosophies and superior writing systems’ (Bernal 1991: 172). And paradoxically, even during the Age of Crusades the Europeans found much to
admire and envy in the civilisation of Islamic West Asia.
The second aspect of cosmopolitanism flows on from the first: that
respect for other civilisations was crucial in leading the Europeans to
emulate and borrow the superior aspects of their economies and cultures
in order to promote Europe’s own development. And here we return to
one of the paradoxes that emerges from viewing European identity only
within racially or religiously antagonistic terms. For as we shall see below,
at the very time when the Europeans were engaged in military confrontation with Islam, they not only continued trading with the Muslims but
were avidly borrowing a wealth of Islamic ideas, technologies and institutions that propelled Europe forward. Notable too is that at the very time
when Dante was consigning Muhammad to the eighth circle of Hell in his
book Inferno, he was simultaneously borrowing many of his ideas from
Islamic philosophers (which was why he consigned them to Purgatory
rather than Hell in his book). In other words, focusing only on the European clash with Islam serves to obscure the many peaceful and beneficial
interactions that have occurred between the two.
Thus while I do not seek to dismiss the existence of Europe’s clashes
with various civilisations, nevertheless to a certain extent I call for a
deconstruction of the manufactured idea of the ‘clash of civilisations’. For
this enables us to reveal the many forms of beneficial, if not harmonious,
cosmopolitan inter-civilisational interactions that Europe has for so long
participated in but which have been obscured by the headline idea of the
‘clash of civilisations’. And paradoxically it is this alternative emphasis on
cosmopolitanism that, I think, Said has in mind when he penned those
words in his 2003 preface.
The chapter’s argument is also situated within an anti-Eurocentric problematique. The major theories of the rise of Europe suffer from a Eurocentric bias (Blaut 1993; Frank 1998: ch. 1; Hobson 2004: ch. 1), which has
served to obscure Europe’s cosmopolitan inter-civilisational relations.
Eurocentrism or Orientalism emerged fully in the nineteenth century. As
Said originally pointed out, it was this discourse that suddenly pronounced
the superiority of Europe over the inferior East (Said 2003 [1978]). This
entailed two critical assumptions: first, that what had previously been
thought of as interlinked, if not symbiotic, regions were suddenly relocated
along either side of a constructed ‘civilisational line of apartheid’. And
second, Europe was pronounced as qualitatively superior to the East
because it allegedly had uniquely progressive and exceptional characteristics, while the East supposedly had only regressive properties.
The key point is that this Orientalist discourse was at its height precisely at the time when the major theories of the rise of Europe were constructed – most notably those of Marx and Weber. Thus having
Europe civilisation: the cosmopolitan side 109
endogenised Eurocentrism, these theorists – as do their successors –
explain Europe’s rise by looking only to causal variables that exist
squarely within Europe. This was thought to be appropriate given that
they accepted uncritically the twin Eurocentric notions of Europe’s separation from the East on the one hand and Europe’s uniqueness/exceptionalism on the other. And for these theorists, it was this that ensured the
inevitability of Europe’s breakthrough to modern capitalism and its impossibility in the East. In sum, Eurocentric scholars assume that the rise of
capitalist modernity was pioneered solely by the Europeans without any
help from the Easterners.
But the problem with the prevailing Eurocentric meta-narrative is that it
obscures the considerable role that Eastern influences have played in the
rise of Europe. Deconstructing the ‘civilisational line of apartheid’ that was
constructed by Eurocentric thinkers so as to separate out the superior West
from the inferior East, necessarily reveals the many ways in which the two
have been promiscuously entwined. In short, deconstructing Eurocentrism
as well as the idea of the clash of civilisations enables us to reveal the
European West as a hybrid entity that has been shaped by the East; hence
my preference for the label of the ‘Oriental West’ or ‘Oriental Europe’. For
it is this notion of hybridity that connotes Europe’s cosmopolitan origins.
The chapter proceeds in four stages. The first part provides the groundwork by reconsidering the definition of Europe in order to reveal its fluid
and malleable nature, while the second part provides the link to the third
and final parts. It provides a sketch of oriental globalisation and the
Eastern-led global economy that emerged after the sixth century. I then
reveal the Eastern ideational influences (part three) and Eastern technologies (part four) that diffused across the Eastern-led global economy to
enable the subsequent rise of Europe.
Redefining Europe as an inclusive and malleable moral idea
It is necessary to begin by noting that Europe has never been defined by
rigid geographical boundaries that definitively demarcate it from the ‘nonEuropean’ world. Rather it has always been a moral idea and its geographical boundaries have waxed and waned in response to the shifting idea of
what constitutes Europe at a particular point in time (Hay 1957; Delanty
1995). Yet more importantly, the dominant idea of what constitutes a
‘pure Europe’ obscures the many ‘non-European’ influences that have
resided within it and which have, no less, given much impetus to defining
Europe. In the interests of space I shall deal briefly with two major issues
to illustrate the point at stake.
The first issue concerns the Greek heritage of Europe. Today we take it
as axiomatic that Greece was the birthplace of Europe. For it was there
where science and rational thinking were allegedly first established, only to
be reclaimed after the Dark Age interlude during the so-called Italian
110 John M. Hobson
Renaissance. But this notion of Greece is a fabrication – an idea that was
constructed by European thinkers only as late as the end of the eighteenth
century (Bernal 1991). Prior to then, the dominant view of a pure European Greece did not exist – and it was certainly one that the Ancient
Greeks did not share. They viewed Greece as fixed firmly within the ‘Hellenic Occident’. Indeed ‘Greece was linked spiritually and culturally to the
East; and . . . the attempt to turn away from, or to deny, this eastern heritage has always implied for Greece a cheapening and coarsening of spiritual and cultural values’ (Campbell and Sherrard 1965: 71). That Europe
has always been an idea as opposed to a geographical reality is reflected by
the fact that ‘Europa’ herself was in Greek mythology the daughter of
Agenor, King of Tyre, situated on the coast of Lebanon. And note too that
Troy was in fact east of the Dardanelles. Moreover, that Ancient Greece
owes so much to Ancient Egypt (as the Greeks readily acknowledged),
wreaks havoc with the notion of a pure Aryan lineage of Europe that is
cherished by Eurocentric thinkers (Bernal 1991). In short, tracing the
European heritage back to Ancient Greek should be to acknowledge the
significant Eastern roots of Europe.
Second, if a ‘pure European Greece’ was not the birthplace of a ‘pure
Europe’, so the notion of Europe-as-Christendom was equally a fabrication that obscures its West Asian foundations. Of course, Christianity was
an oriental religion, and one that shared many things in common with
Islam. But more importantly, the definition of Europe-as-Christendom
obscures the many Islamic impulses that came to provide such a profound
and positive influence on the subsequent shape and course of European
development and thinking. By 711 CE Islam had entered Spain and was
consolidated in 756 when Abd al-Rahman set up the Ummayad polity.
Islam also took root in Portugal and later in Sicily in 902 and, yet later on,
in Eastern Europe via the Ottoman Empire. These formed the final ramparts of the Islamic Bridge of the World, across which flowed not just
Eastern trade but, above all, many Eastern ‘resource portfolios’ (ideas,
institutions and technologies) that were assimilated by the Europeans. And
to return to the paradox mentioned above, it was precisely during the time
of the Crusades that Europe’s assimilation of Islamic ideas escalated.
Moreover, behind the headlines of the ‘Crusading clash with Islam’ lay a
less dramatic picture wherein Christians and Muslims as well as Jews
peacefully co-existed for many centuries in cosmopolitan Islamic Spain
(Menocal 2002) and elsewhere in Europe. And it was principally from
these sites whence many Jewish and especially Islamic ideas seeped out to
redefine the very idea of Europe (see also Goody 2004).
To sum up then, it is apparent from these two examples alone that the
Eurocentric idea of an exclusive or pristine Europe is a fabrication that
obscures the many Eastern impulses and influences that in large part
helped shape and redefine the very identity of Europe over time. And even
if Europe was not linked into a wider Afro-Asian world lying outside of
Europe civilisation: the cosmopolitan side 111
Europe, the claim that it has been a hybrid entity would still hold. But the
fact that Europe was fundamentally embedded within a wider Afro-Asianled global economy, through which many Eastern resource portfolios diffused across, consolidates or clinches the notion of a hybrid ‘Oriental
Europe’.
Oriental globalisation: Europe’s dependence upon the
Eastern-led global economy, c.500–1800
My aim here is to provide a very quick sketch of the Afro-Asian-led global
economy between 500 and 1800 for three principal reasons. First it reveals
the considerable inter-connectedness of Europe with Afro-Asia; second it
reveals some of the channels or diffusion paths along which the more
advanced Eastern resource portfolios traversed to fuel the rise of Europe;
and third it reveals Europe’s dependence upon the more advanced Eastern
global agents, which reinforces the claim of the next two sections – that
the rise of Europe owes a massive debt to the Easterners.
But to contextualise the immediate discussion it bears noting at the
outset that Eurocentric analyses of globalisation deny its existence prior to
1500 (if not before 1850), thereby undermining the basis for my own
alternative analysis. This date is highly significant because it connotes in
traditional historiography the point at which Europe emerged in capitalist
form at the top of the world’s economic hierarchy. This in turn justifies the
claim that the period between 1492 and 1800 constituted one of Westernled proto-globalisation, as the superior Europeans expanded outwards into
the world. For in the process they supposedly ‘battered down the walls’
that had hitherto isolated the regressive East from the progressive West,
thereby creating for the first time the outlines of an emergent worldeconomy. This was supposedly initiated through the so-called Voyages of
Discovery. But as will become apparent shortly, these might better be
labelled the Voyages of Rediscovery, given that the Europeans were
directly entering an established inter-linked Afro-Eurasian economy that
had been forged by Eastern capitalists since the sixth century.
Particularly important to the emergence of the global economy after the
sixth century was the formation of a series of inter-linked regions or
empires. These comprised T’ang China (618–907), the Islamic
Ummayad/Abbasid empire in West Asia (661–1258), the Ummayad polity
in Spain (756–1031) and the Fatimids in North Africa (909–1171). Moreover the kingdom of Śrı̄vijaya in Sumatra was important in that it constituted the vital entrepôt that connected China to the Indian Ocean between
the seventh and thirteenth centuries. These inter-linked regions were vital
in promoting an extensively pacified space that fostered considerable trade
and enabled the transmission of Eastern resource portfolios.
While a number of capitalist agents were important here – including
Africans, Jews, Indians, Chinese and Javanese – the prime role in setting
112 John M. Hobson
up the global economy was performed by the West Asian Muslims. The
global economy comprised three prime routes, though the two most
important ones were the Middle and Southern routes (Abu-Lughod 1989).
The Middle route had a land component which linked the Eastern Mediterranean with China and India, and a sea route that passed through the
Persian Gulf. The Southern route linked the Alexandria–Cairo–Red Sea
complex with the Arabian Sea and then, as with the Middle sea route, the
Indian Ocean and beyond to Southeast Asia, China and Japan. These
routes ensured that Europe was fundamentally connected to the AfroAsian-led global economy after about the eighth century. And contra Eurocentrism, this situation continued throughout the period between 1000 and
1800 when the various leading European powers were at their height.
With the ‘Fall of Acre’ in 1291, the Venetians came to rely on the
dominant Southern route which was presided over by the Egyptians. As
Abu-Lughod claims, ‘Whoever controlled the sea-route to Asia could set
the terms of trade for a Europe now in retreat. From the thirteenth century
and up to the sixteenth that power was Egypt’ (Abu-Lughod 1989: 149).
Moreover, Venetian trade did not dry up after 1291 but continued on,
especially given that the Venetians managed to circumvent the Papal ban
and secured new treaties with the Sultan in 1355 and 1361. And right
down to 1517, Venice survived because Egypt played such an important
role within the global economy. Moreover, after 1517 Venice continued its
trading connection through the Ottomans.
Nevertheless, Eurocentrism claims that after 1492/1498 the Portuguese
and Spanish initiated the process of proto-globalisation, before the global
batten of power was passed on to the Dutch and then the English. But in
fact European trading connections intensified thanks largely to the role
played by the Muslims and Indians but, above all, the Chinese who sat at
or near the centre of the global economy between c.1450 and 1800. And
for a whole variety of reasons, the paradox here was that the official 1434
Chinese ban on foreign trade came just before Chinese trade escalated (see
Hobson 2004: ch. 3). The conversion of the Chinese economy onto a silver
standard in the mid-fifteenth century was the seminal moment. For as a
result of the huge demand that the Chinese economy had for foreign silver
owing to its large trade surplus, global trade rapidly intensified (Flynn and
Giraldez 1994; Frank 1998).
Simultaneously it led to the opening up of a new trade route that went
from South America across to The Philippines and thence into China via
the Spanish Manila galleon. Above all, it was this Chinese input that ultimately sucked Europe directly into the trading and financial global system
(rather than vice versa as Eurocentrism preaches), given that the Europeans had been only indirectly linked in previously. For it was the plundered Spanish bullion that not only enabled the Europeans to finance their
trade deficit with Asia in general and China in particular, but also to
finance their activities within the Indian Ocean in the first place.
Europe civilisation: the cosmopolitan side 113
To sum up, then, the arrival of the Europeans in the Indian Ocean in
1498 did not mark a key turning point in world history. For all they were
really doing was directly joining the global economy that had been created
during the previous 1,000 years and which remained dominated by the
Afro-Asians right down into the nineteenth century (Hobson 2004: chs.
2–4, 7; Frank 1998). It is clear, then, that from the eighth century onward
Europe was embedded within a gradually intensifying Eastern-led global
economy. Moreover, while oriental globalisation began during Europe’s
‘Dark Age’, its ultimate significance lay in the fact that it was the midwife,
if not the mother, of modern Europe. For it was along the sinews of the
Eastern-led global economy that Eastern resource portfolios diffused
across to enable European development, as we shall now see.
Oriental globalisation and the transmission and assimilation
of the Eastern idea in the rise of Europe
The Oriental Renaissance and Scientific Revolution
Italy is famous for the Renaissance, which in turn set Europe off into the
post-feudal era. This intellectual revolution is traditionally thought to have
been in effect a recalling of the scientific and rational ideas that had been
pioneered by the Ancient Greeks (hence the importance of fabricating
Greece as purely European). The immediate problem here – as was noted
earlier – is that many of the ideas that were ‘invented’ in Greece were actually derived from Ancient Egypt (Bernal 1991). But perhaps more important is the point that the Renaissance owes a huge debt to the
contemporary Muslims, as did the Scientific Revolution (Hobson 2004: ch.
8; Goody 2004).
This claim, of course, immediately stands at odds with the traditional
interpretation, not least because the Renaissance thinkers themselves were
in part anxious to forge a new European identity that was independent of
the Islamic world. Indeed ‘the return to the classical [Greek] world was
seen as the answer to the [perceived] threat from Islam to European
culture’ (Goody 2004: 48). And so we come to the paradox of the Renaissance: that it was in part created to differentiate Europe from Islam and
yet it was from Islam that the Renaissance scholars drew so many of their
new ideas. How then did Islamic thinkers help shape the Renaissance and
the subsequent Scientific Revolution?
Islamic breakthroughs in mathematics including algebra and trigonometry were vital. The former term was taken from the title of one of alKhwārizmı̄’s mathematical texts (as a result of the translation made by the
Englishman, Robert of Ketton, in 1145). And by the beginning of the tenth
century all six of the classical trigonometric functions had been defined
and tabulated by Muslim mathematicians. Developments in public health,
hygiene and medicine were also notable. Al-Rāzı̄’s medical works were
114 John M. Hobson
translated and reprinted in Europe some forty times between 1498 and
1866. And Ibn Sı̄nā’s Canon of Medicine became the founding text for
European medical schools between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries
(having been translated in the twelfth century). The Muslims developed
numerous medicines and anaesthetics and pioneered the study of anatomy.
Notable here is that the Egyptian physician, Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288), whose
work on the human body which contradicted the traditional position of
the Greek physician, Galen, fully pre-empted the much heralded work of
William Harvey by 350 years. The Muslims were also keen astrologers and
astronomers and their ideas were avidly borrowed by the Europeans. Ibn
al-Shātir’s mathematical models bore an uncanny resemblance to those
used by Copernicus 150 years later. And as early as the ninth century, alKhwārizmı̄ calculated the circumference of the Earth to within 41 metres.
Last but by no means least, the Baconian idea that science should be based
on the experimental method had already been pioneered by the Muslims
(not the Greeks).
Nevertheless, the standard Eurocentric reply here asserts that all these
ideas were in fact derived from Ancient Greece (given that the Muslims
had held and translated much of their work). It is certainly true that the
Muslims had learnt much from the Ancient Greeks. But they were not
mere ‘librarians’ who held the original Greek texts in custody before
passing them back once the Europeans were ready to receive them. For the
fact is that they not only built on the original ‘Greek ideas’ and took them
much further, but at times they were highly critical of them and provided
novel departures (the insistence on the experimental method being a case
in point). Moreover, to answer the possible Eurocentric retort that this
could all have been mere coincidence, it is necessary to reveal the transmission paths of these ideas.
Increasingly, after about 900, Europeans began translating Islamic texts
into Latin (as mentioned above). Islamic scholarship developed not only in
West Asia but also in Spain, where it was proactively encouraged by the
second Ummayad Caliph (al-Hakkam II, 961–976). The fall of Spanish
Toledo was especially important for it was from its vast library where the
Europeans managed to get hold of many of the relevant books to translate.
Learning from Islam was actively continued by the Spanish King, Alfonso
X (1252–1284), though largely through Jewish intermediaries. Much the
same was true of the situation in Portugal. Moreover, Ancient Egyptian
Hermetic texts also featured in the Italian Renaissance, given that they
were translated after 1460 by Marsilio Ficino at the Court of Cosimo de
Medici. Islamic ideas also entered Europe via the Ottoman Empire which
was heavily embroiled in Eastern Europe, especially in the Balkans.
Finally, Islamic ideas entered Venice through the trade route from West
Asia and North Africa as well as from Islamic Sicily after 902. Notable
here was the profound Arabic influence on the School of Salerno after
1050.
Europe civilisation: the cosmopolitan side 115
The Oriental Enlightenment
As most agree, the Enlightenment was a crucial defining moment in the
remaking of Europe after about 1700. But to see this once more as a
purely European creation is to obscure the considerable debt that was
owed to the Chinese. Indeed it was more than mere coincidence that the
year 1700 also constituted the ‘year of transition in which the affections
of the learned [European] world were turned towards China’ (Reichwein 1967: 78). Indeed between 1700 and c.1780, much of Europe
formed a virtual love affair with the world of rococo and sought to
emulate many aspects of Chinese civilisation. This was considerably
helped by the wealth of translated Chinese pamphlets and books that
flooded Europe after about 1650, some of which were transmitted by
the Jesuits.
The link between the European Enlightenment and Chinese thought
was ultimately bridged by the shared faith in reason as the centre of all
things. Reason enabled the discovery of the autonomous ‘laws of motion’
that were allegedly inscribed within all areas of social, political and
‘natural’ life. In 1687, a book on Confucius was translated (Confucius
Sinarum Philosophus) and in the Preface the author asserts that:
One might say that the moral system of this philosopher is infinitely
sublime, but that it is at the same time simple, sensible and drawn
from the purest sources of natural reason. . . . Never has Reason,
deprived of divine Revelation, appeared so well developed nor with so
much power.
(cited in Rowbotham 1945: 227)
Indeed this book in particular had a major impact in Europe and was
received by Europeans with astonishment. While many Enlightenment
thinkers positively associated with China and its ideas, Voltaire was
undoubtedly the major Sinophile. He drew on Chinese conceptions of politics, religion and philosophy – all of which were based on rational principles – in order to attack the European preference for hereditary
aristocracy. Indeed, many of the major Enlightenment thinkers derived
their preference for the ‘rational method’ from China. Chinese ideas also
played a very important part in influencing British culture. Indeed Britons
developed a strong taste for Chinoiserie, ranging from tea drinking to
wallpaper to Anglo-Chinese gardens, as well as to ideas about political
economy.
In the Anglo-Saxon canon the central European political economist was
the Scotsman, Adam Smith. But while Anglo-Saxons parochially think of
Smith as the first political economist, the fact is that behind Smith lay
François Quesnay, the French ‘Physiocrat’. And crucially, behind Quesnay
lay China (Maverick 1946). Indeed:
116 John M. Hobson
Quesnay’s revolutionary ideas amounted to a liberation from the economic orthodoxy of . . . mercantilism . . . and his influence on the freemarket theories of Adam Smith was profound. What is often omitted
in accounts of Quesnay’s place in modern thought is his debt to China
– unlike in his own day when he was widely known as ‘the European
Confucius.
(Clarke 1997: 49)
Quesnay, not Smith, was the first European to critique the ideas of mercantilism. The term ‘physiocracy’ means the ‘rule of nature’. The significance of his ideas, derived from China, was at least twofold: first, he saw in
agriculture a crucial source of wealth (which became an important idea
that lay behind the British Agricultural Revolution). Second, and more
importantly, he believed that agriculture could only be fully exploited
when producers were freed from the arbitrary interventions of the state.
Only then could the ‘natural laws’ of the market prevail (as the Chinese
had long realised). Quesnay’s debt to Chinese conceptions of political
economy was found in many ideas, the most important being that of wuwei – which is translated into French as laissez-faire. Indeed around 300 CE
Kuo Hsiang described wu-wei as that which lets ‘everything be allowed to
do what it naturally does, so that its nature will be satisfied’. And once this
had entered the mind of Adam Smith, as they say, ‘the rest was history’.
None of this is to say that the European Enlightenment was the pure
product of Chinese ideas, for clearly there were some Enlightenment
thinkers who rejected China as a model for Europe – most notably Montesquieu and Fénelon; but it would be entirely remiss to ignore the Chinese
input.
Oriental globalisation and the transmission and assimilation
of Eastern technologies in the rise of Europe
In the interests of space I shall omit discussion of the many Eastern technologies that diffused into Europe after about 800, all of which were
crucial in enabling an energy revolution as well as the rise of agricultural
production, commerce, proto-manufacturing and finance (Hobson 2004:
chs 5–6). Instead I shall concentrate on those technologies that diffused
across to enable some of the most vital turning points: the Voyages of
Rediscovery, the military revolution and the British industrial revolution. I
shall take each in turn.
Before the Voyages of Rediscovery could begin, numerous challenges to
extant European shipping design and navigational techniques that oceanic
sailing entailed had to be solved. But it was to the Easterners – especially
the Muslims (often via the Jews) as well as the Chinese – that the Iberians
turned (Seed 1995: 107–28; Hobson 2004: chs 6–7). The first challenge
was the need to tack into the strong head-winds that blew up south of
Europe civilisation: the cosmopolitan side 117
Cape Bojador. This was solved in the 1440s by the construction of caravels that had a stern-post rudder attached to a square hull, and were
rigged with three masts, one of which bore a lateen sail. But the origins of
the caravel date back to the Islamic qārib. The square hull and stern-post
rudder were invented by the Chinese around 400 CE with the design subsequently diffusing westward to enter Europe around 1180. The new triple
mast system was almost certainly borrowed from the Chinese who had
long had multiple-mast systems. And the lateen sail was almost certainly
an Islamic invention that was also passed on to the Europeans.
The critical navigational techniques were borrowed mainly from the
Muslims. Because the lateen sail led to a zigzagging (or triangular) sailing
path, this necessarily made it much harder to calculate the linear distance
travelled. This was solved by the use of geometry and trigonometry, which
had been developed by, and was borrowed from, the Muslim mathematicians (as noted above). Moreover the strong tides south of Cape Bojador
that could beach a ship or simply destroy it required knowledge of the
lunar cycles (since the moon governs the tides). This had been supplied at
the end of the fourteenth century by the Jewish cartographer resident in
Portugal – Jacob ben Abraham Cresques. Oceanic sailing also required a
wealth of more accurate navigational charts and techniques. Here Islamic
astronomy enabled the Europeans to calculate the size of the earth and
thereby calculate the distance travelled by using degrees. Moreover, longitude and latitude tables as well as solar calendars were also supplied by the
Muslims (as well as the Jews). Finally the importation of the astrolabe was
especially important. And though sporadic mentions are made of this
technology in a few Ancient Greek texts, it was certainly the Muslim
astronomers who perfected it before it was transmitted into Europe via
Islamic Spain in the mid-tenth century.
The only problem with the concept of the European military revolution
(1550–1660) is its adjective. For all the major technologies that formed the
core of this revolution were in fact invented during the world’s first
modern military revolution (850–1290) that occurred in China. These
comprised the Chinese invention of gunpowder (850), the metal barrelled
gun firing a metal bullet (1275) and the cannon (1288).
Conventionally it is thought that the first cannon was invented in
England (1327), as revealed in picture form in the famous manuscript by
Walter de Millemete. But this picture is an exact replica of the earlier
Chinese cannon (Pacey 1991: 47). It might be replied that this could have
been an entirely coincidental event. But the giveaway here is that claims
for an independent European invention are rendered problematic by the
fact that no military expert has ever been able to produce any evidence for
the necessary military developments that must have preceded the 1327
English cannon. For such an invention presupposes a long line of prior
developments. But such a lineage is readily available in the Chinese context
stemming back to c.850. Moreover, strong circumstantial evidence exists
118 John M. Hobson
to suggest that the cannon, as well as the gun and the recipe for gunpowder, diffused across to Europe where they were subsequently assimilated
(Needham et al. 1986).
Finally, the familiar claim that the first industrial revolution occurred in
eighteenth-century Britain obscures the much earlier industrial miracle of
eleventh-century Sung China. Moreover, the claim that the British industrial revolution was allegedly the pinnacle of British ingenuity obscures the
fact that it was the earlier pioneering Chinese inventions that were avidly
borrowed by the British to promote their ‘own’ revolution (see Hobson
2004: ch. 9). Thus while Eurocentrism celebrates James Watt for his pioneering skills in inventing the steam engine, the fact is that he owed much
to the Chinese. The essentials of the steam engine go back to Wang Chên’s
Treatise on Agriculture (1313), which in turn go back to the Chinese
invention of the water-powered bellows (31 CE). Moreover, Chinese breakthroughs in cannon/gun manufacturing were also important in enabling
the later invention of the steam engine (given that the cannon or gun is in
effect a one-cylinder combustion engine and all of our modern motors are
descended from it). And although it was the British who finally developed
the steam engine, this should not obscure the many ideas and prior inventions made by the Chinese in the absence of which the world might never
have heard of James Watt.
While the British are conventionally thought to have been the first to
use coal in producing iron ore, this in fact began in eleventh-century Sung
China. The Chinese also led the way in steel production, beginning in the
fifth century CE. Not surprisingly, therefore, British iron and steel producers (e.g. Benjamin Huntsman of Sheffield) undertook detailed studies of
Chinese production methods in the eighteenth century in order to develop
their manufacturing techniques. The other great pillar of the British industrial revolution was cotton-manufacturing. John Lombe’s machines, that
he used in the silk industry were subsequently used in the Derbyshire
cotton mills. But while it has been acknowledged that he copied the Italian
silk machines, it is not generally recognised that the Italian machines replicated the earlier Chinese invention right down to the last detail (having
diffused to Italy in the thirteenth century).
Conclusion
None of this is to say that the Europeans did not succeed in eventually
taking the transmitted Eastern resource portfolios further. But it is to say
that without them, there would have been little or nothing to have taken
further. And without them we might be debating today why Europe
remains on the periphery of the Afro-Asian-led global economy. Nevertheless, it is clear that deconstructing the civilisational-apartheid perspective
of Eurocentrism as well as the manufactured idea of the clash of civilisations reveals the Europeans as having consistently engaged in cosmopol-
Europe civilisation: the cosmopolitan side 119
itan inter-civilisational relations since the eighth century. By no means is
this to deny the point that Europe has clashed with ‘non-European’ civilisations, most notably through imperialism (Hobson 2004: 162–73,
219–42, 257–77). But it is to say that this idea has obscured Europe’s
cosmopolitan inter-civilisational relations with the East that have not only
significantly shaped and fuelled the course and direction that European
history has taken, but have even entered into defining and redefining the
very idea of Europe. And most importantly of all, in rediscovering our
global collective past we make possible a better future for all.
References
Abu-Lughod, J. (1989) Before European Hegemony, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Bernal, M. (1991) Black Athena, I, New York: Vintage.
Blaut, J. M. (1993) The Colonizer’s Model of the World, London: Guilford.
Campbell, J. and P. Sherrard (1965) ‘The Greeks and the West’, in R. Iyer (ed.)
The Glass Curtain between Asia and Europe, London: Oxford University Press,
pp. 69–86.
Clarke, J. J. (1997) Oriental Enlightenment, London: Routledge.
Delanty, G. (1995) Inventing Europe, London: Macmillan.
Flynn, D. O. and A. Giraldez (1994) ‘China and the Manila Galleons’, in A. J. H.
Latham and H. Kawakatsu (eds) Japanese Industrialization and the Asian
Economy, London: Routledge, pp. 71–90.
Frank, A. G. (1998) ReOrient, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goody, J. (2004) Islam in Europe, Cambridge: Polity.
Hay, D. (1957) Europe: The Emergence of an Idea, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Hobson, J. M. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Maverick, L. A. (1946) China A Model for Europe, I, San Antonio, Texas: Paul
Anderson.
Menocal, M. R. (2002) The Ornament of the World, Boston: Little, Brown.
Needham, J., Ho-Ping-Yü, Lu Gwei Djen and Wang Ling (1986) Science and Civilisation in China, V (7), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pacey, A. (1991) Technology in World Civilization, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Reichwein, A. (1967) China and Europe, Taipei: Ch’eng-Wen Publishing Co.
Rowbotham, A. H. (1945) ‘The Impact of Confucianism on Seventeenth Century
Europe’, The Far Eastern Quarterly, 4(3): 224–42.
Said, E. W. (2003 [1978]) Orientalism, London: Penguin.
Seed, P. (1995) Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World,
1492–1640, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8
Europe and the Mediterranean
A reassessment
Thomas W. Gallant
The sea changes related to the end of the Cold War, the advance of globalization and all that it entails, and the expansion of supra-national regional
political and economic entities, such as the European Union, have inaugurated discussion and debate about reconceptualizing the world by deploying frames of analysis other than the nation-state. In the context of this
intellectual ferment, scholars, such as those represented in this volume,
are interrogating some of the central ideological props of the modern era,
like the division of the world into regions on the basis of abstractions like
East and West and Oriental and Occidental. A crucial element of this reimagining of the world is a reassessment of the relationship between
Europe and the Mediterranean and how the Euro-Mediterranean fits into
the wider world of the twenty-first century.
What is it to be ‘European’? What is it to be ‘Mediterranean’? What is
Europe? What is the Mediterranean? Indeed, what do these terms
express? Are they merely expressions of geography? Or do they connote
something else – identity, for example? What has been the relationship
between the two over the longue durée? None of these questions are susceptible to easy or straightforward answers, though they have been frequently posed and debated, especially in the case of the Mediterranean.
They are becoming even more important as the European Union expands
to include more countries from the Mediterranean and as policies such as
the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership define and structure the nature of
the relationship between Europe and the Mediterranean. These developments are perforce having an impact on how this ‘Greater Europe’ will
be situated into the emerging reconfiguration of regionalizations on a
global scale.
In this chapter, I argue that an examination of the relationship between
Europe and the Mediterranean over the long sweep of history from antiquity to present suggests that the emergence of a Euro-Mediterranean
region in the late twentieth century is in fact nothing but a new phase in
what has been a long and enduring relationship. Of course, the precise
nature of that relationship changed frequently in the past and was often in
a state of flux; also, throughout history, the directionality of dominance
Europe and the Mediterranean 121
and power within and between the two regions was invariably unequal
and subject to change.
This thesis challenges the dominant view that emphasizes heterogeneity
and division as the defining characteristics of the historical relationship
within and between the two regions, and that the recent movement toward
greater articulation between them must overcome this legacy. Geography
and identity are often adduced to support this view. After all it would
seem self-evident that Europe and the Mediterranean occupy two separate
geographical spaces and have never in the past occupied the same symbolic
space. To the extent that there developed in the recent past a European
self-identity it did not include the peoples of the Mediterranean and there
has never existed in the latter’s social imaginary a self-evident Mediterranean identity. I find neither of these persuasive.
I focus first on the geo-physical issue. As much recent work has shown,
in the case of the Mediterranean in spite of great environmental diversity
the degree of interconnectedness, the fluidity of communications, and the
dense web of interdependencies creates a form of unity.1 Much the same
could be said for Europe. Ideas grounded in notions of fluidity, movement
and networking have replaced older models that emphasized fixity, immobility and separation. Nor can the view that the boundaries between North
and South are rooted or fixed by physical geography be substantiated. The
areas that were imagined to be Europe, the Mediterranean, and the border
between them have been shown to vary over time and have traditionally
been very malleable conceptualizations (Ben-Artzi 2004; Leontidou 2004;
Liotta 2005; Purcell 2003). All spatial configurations are expressions of
mental maps, a form of symbolic geography. What area constituted
Europe? The Mediterranean? To what degree were the two ever imagined
to be one and the same? The answers to any of these questions are different depending on which historical era one is talking about. Borders
and boundaries, then, were the product of politics and power plays, not
geography.
This was true in the past and it is even now. Take, for example, the case
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has for close to half a
century included Greece and Turkey, even though they are obviously not
located along the North Atlantic. They had a place in the symbolic, not
physical, space of NATO. The European Union is likewise an expression
of symbolic rather than physical geography, and this will increasingly be
the case as new countries are added to it. Regarding its boundaries in the
twenty-first century, then, I agree with Liotta that ‘in the broadest sense,
the “new” map of Greater Europe includes Turkey, Ukraine, the Russian
Federation, and perhaps even Christian Armenia and Georgia and Muslim
Azerbaijan’ (Liotta 2005: 69). It being taken for granted that the Mediterranean region is obviously part of the new Greater Europe. In the reconfiguration of globalized regions, the Mediterranean will function, as it
has for centuries, as the hinge connecting Greater Europe with Asia and
122 Thomas W. Gallant
Africa. In sum, my argument is that while the idea of a symbolic EuroMediterranean space may only be emerging now, the reality of a EuroMediterranean regionalization based on social, demographic, political and
economic ties has existed for millennia.
Much of the literature on the relationship between Europe and the
Mediterranean emphasizes the historical separation of the two, especially
in the Modern era. Indeed, some have gone so far as to propose that the
idea of ‘Europe’ was formed in opposition to the Mediterranean, a zone
which, they argue, represented Europe’s ‘Other’. Consequently, historians
have proposed numerous moments in the past when they believe that the
Mediterranean became the East and Europe the West. For some, the
fateful moment was when the military forces of the Hellenic League turned
back the invading forces of Persian King Xerxes in 479 BCE. The defeat of
the Persian Empire’s mighty military supposedly brought down a barrier
that separated Asia from Europe and created a civilization fault-line that
would separate East from West forever. Others situate the locus of separation later in time. For Henri Prienne and his followers it was the Arab
invasions of the seventh century CE that were most critical by imposing
religion as the barrier between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. Still others look to the
capture of Constantinople and the demise of the Eastern Roman Empire as
the key event. Some opt for 1571 or 1683 when the course of Ottoman
expansion north and westward was halted at the battles of Lepanto or
Vienna, respectively. Some look to longer term developments rather than
solitary events as being most important. In the view of these scholars, it
was the Enlightenment and the shift of economic and political power
northward and westward that set the Mediterranean on a developmental
trajectory different from Europe. Reinforcing the impact of these structural
revolutions was the rise of the nation-state. Either carved out of the remnants of the old empires or formed through the coalescence of previously
independent polities, the newly formed states accentuated differences
between peoples and cultures. Each new state would develop along its
own, perhaps even unique, path. Also as national identities formed they
did so by creating dichotomies between nations; the alterity of the ‘Other’
enabled groups to delineate an image of themselves. In short, the forces
that divided the peoples of the Mediterranean from one another and that
separated them off from the cultures of Europe were even more powerful
and efficacious in the Modern era than in previous epochs.
While not denying the importance of these events and developments, I
argue that their significance has been greatly overrated. I demonstrate,
first, that dichotomous categories like East and West and Oriental and
Occidental have never accurately described the social, political and economic realities that structured lives of peoples in the Mediterranean
region. Put more bluntly, the economic, demographic, cultural and political interactions between the cultures of the Mediterranean have over time
been so intense, so long-standing and so multifaceted as to create a degree
Europe and the Mediterranean 123
of interconnectedness that makes it impossible to understand its history
except on a regional basis. This process of Mediterraneanization continues
to the present and is a vital element in the reconceptualization of the
Mediterranean in a global context (Morris 2003). Second and related to
this first point, the level and magnitude of interaction and interconnectedness between the cultures and states of the Mediterranean and Europe over
the millennia have been such that the history of one region cannot be
understood without reference to the other.
The idea of ‘Europe’ was born in the Eastern Mediterranean. There is
the Greek myth of how Zeus metamorphosed into a bull and seduced the
Phoenician princess, Europa, into riding on him so that he could abscond
with her to the island of Crete where he raped her. She then became one of
his lovers and bore him three sons, one of whom, Minos, became the
mythical founder of the ‘Minoan’ civilization (Delanty, this volume; Leontidou 2004). The myth stands as a metaphor for the close, indeed, intimate
relationship between Europe and the Mediterranean, which in antiquity
were one and the same. While not gainsaying the importance of this and
other imaginative constructs of Europe and Asia in antiquity, I want to
focus on another ancient phenomenon that created an actual, physical
relationship among cultures in the Mediterranean and between them and
the cultures that occupied what would later become the geographical
expression of Europe, namely colonization. Beginning in eleventh or tenth
century BCE, Greeks and Phoenicians began to found settlements all
around the Mediterranean basin and along the shores of the Black Sea.
Some of the most famous cities of the ancient world (many of which are
still prominent cities today) began life as Greek or Phoenician colonies.
This dense network of colonies enabled a process of ‘Mediterraneanization’ to develop and this facilitated trade, cultural interaction and political
relations across the region (Morris 2003; Horden and Purcell 2000). In
addition, these colonies became nodes from which tendrils of trade and
exchange extended northward, connecting the various cultures of Western
and Central Europe to the more advanced civilizations of the Mediterranean. It would be upon this fragile and tenuous network of links that
subsequent interaction between Europe and the Mediterranean would be
built (Winks and Mattern 2004). Colonization, then, recommenced a new
manifestation of the process of Mediterraneanization, but for many historians its life-span was quite short-lived as the unity it created was destroyed
by the clash between Greek (Western) and Persian (Eastern) civilizations.2
At first glance, the argument that the great conflict between the Persian
Empire and the alliance of Greek states was the historic moment when
East and West became made manifest entities would seem to have much
going for it. After all, the defeat of the Persian military in 479 BCE ensured
that ‘Oriental despotism’ would remain an Eastern phenomenon and that
Greek society could continue to develop the ideals and institutions that
would provide the foundation on which Western civilization would be
124 Thomas W. Gallant
based. A closer examination, however, demonstrates how simplistic and
misleading this view is. The Persian Wars were neither a clash between
East and West nor were they a conflict just between Greeks and Persians.
Arrayed in the forces of the empire were peoples drawn from all across the
Middle East, the Levant, Asia Minor and the Balkans. Indeed, more
Greeks fought with the Persian army than fought against it. Nor did
Persian defeat create a barrier between East and West. Commerce and
trade that spanned the Mediterranean and the Black Sea continued to
connect the domains of the empire with Greeks states, and indeed may
even have become more intensive after than they had been before the wars.
Moreover these economic ties connected not just those numerous Greek
states that remained in the empire with the independent Greek states but
also other non-Greek cultures within the imperial domains, like Egypt and
the cities of Phoenicia. Along with the flow of the goods the movement of
people continued long after the war had ended. Even politically, the
Persian Wars did not separate East from West. It was, after all, Persian
gold and resources that tipped the balance in favour of Sparta over Athens
in the Mediterranean-wide Peloponnesian War of the late fifth century BCE,
and right down until Alexander the Great seized the Persian throne Greek
warriors took their place in the ranks of the Persian army.
The connections between Mesopotamia, North Africa, the Near East,
Asia Minor and the Mediterranean that survived the wars of the fifth
century underwent a phase of renewal and expansion with the conquests
of Alexander the Great. One need not subscribe to the old view that
Alexander sought to create a unity of mankind to accept that his conquests
brought together into a single polity the major civilizations of the eastern
Mediterranean and the Middle East. Though his own reign was short-lived
and the empire he forged soon split, the kingdoms ruled over by his successors perpetuated the social, political and economic connections established
earlier. These ties were extended further when all of the Hellenistic kingdoms fell to the great power from the Western Mediterranean: Rome.
The Roman Empire spanned Europe and the Mediterranean. It was
created out of conquests by a people originally from central Italy and their
domain eventually extended over all three of the coastlands of the
Mediterranean – Asian, African and European – and deep into the hinterlands behind them: in the east they incorporated the kingdoms of Alexander’s successors which extended eastward as far as Armenia and
Mesopotamia; Roman imperium extended southward as far as the
cataracts of the Nile and the Sahara; and northwards it projected outward
into Gaul and Britain and the delta of the Rhine, and north-eastward
along the Danube. Though marked by great diversity, nonetheless the
incorporation of these regions into a single polity strengthened even more
the web of interconnections that had been developing for the previous 800
to 1,000 years.
A line of thought stretching from Edward Gibbon to Henri Prienne and
Europe and the Mediterranean 125
beyond proposes that the division between Europe and the Mediterranean
and the fragmentation of the Mediterranean were brought about by the
two major invasions of the first millennium of the current era. Arab and
Slavic invasions, according to this argument, ushered on to the scene
peoples who possessed cultures and, in the case of the Arabs, a religion
that were so radically different from the old Mediterranean civilizations as
to create a civilizational fault-line so wide and deep that it split the world
that the Romans had made.
The Eastern Roman Empire, of course, survived both of these invasions
and indeed, managed by 1000 BCE to regain some of the territory it had
lost to one of the invaders and largely incorporated the other into its cultural orbit. Moreover in spite of the schism between the Catholic and
Eastern orthodox churches and even the sacking of Constantinople by
Latin knights in 1204, the Mediterranean was still interconnected in fundamental and important ways (Abulafia 2000). For these and other
reasons, some prefer to see the split between East and West as commencing in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople and the incorporation of what
remained of the Byzantine Empire into the domain of the new suzerain of
the region: the Ottomans. As this Islamic empire spread northward toward
Vienna and south and West along the coast of Africa, it divided the
Mediterranean more sharply than ever before and exacerbated the rift
between East and West. Moreover, it was not a coincidence that ‘the
Western twentieth-century concept of Europe was based on the ideas of
sixteenth century historians and it should be noted that it excludes the original idea that was Europe: the modern Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia and
Greece’ – all by then part of the Islamic empire of the Ottomans (Pocock
1997: 12). The sixteenth was the century when the Ottoman Empire
attained its zenith and threatened the continental kingdoms of Europe the
most. The rise of an Oriental, Islamic empire brought into sharper relief
the common cultural heritage that Europeans shared and it foregrounded
the differences that distinguished them from the East. This, then, would
seem to be the moment when East and West sprang from the European
imagination. Once again, however, material realities tell a different story
and it is one that emphasizes interconnectedness, both within the Mediterranean and between the Mediterranean and Europe (Greene 2000).
In some ways, the rise of the Ottoman Empire brought into sharper
relief perceived differences between East and West in some ways, while in
others, it showed how interrelated Europe and the Mediterranean were. By
the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire had become the centre of a
vast and strongly interconnected commercial and economic system that
spanned much of the globe and that articulated European economies to
those of East Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Christian
and Muslim
.
merchants from Ottoman cities such as Istanbul, Izmir, Alexandria,
Aleppo and Baghdad were deeply integrated into a commercial network
that spanned from Calcutta, Bandar Abbas, Surat and Cambay to the
126 Thomas W. Gallant
south and east and to Vienna, Kiev, Moscow, Danzig, Amsterdam, Venice
and London to the north and West. Economically, then, for much of the
Early Modern period, the Ottoman Empire was the hinge that connected
the rapidly growing economies of Europe with those of the East. Not only
goods but people moved along the lines of communication that closely
connected the various regions (Bayly and Fawaz 2002; Goffman 2002). By
1700, according to one estimate, close to one million Christian merchants
from the Ottoman Empire resided in northern and central Europe. Perhaps
as many as another quarter of a million lived in port cities and towns in
the Western Mediterranean. At the same time substantial numbers of merchants from Europe and the Western Mediterranean relocated to the major
port cities of the Ottoman Empire (Braudel 1972: 415–18; Aymard 1974).
It was not just goods but people, ideas and culture that flowed along this
vast and intricate web of connections. These people breathed life into the
network that connected the various regions of the Mediterranean and that
articulated it to Europe during the Early Modern period.
It is no coincidence that the two works most closely associated with the
argument in favour of seeing the Mediterranean as a viable, perhaps even
necessary, frame of analysis, those of Braudel, and Horden and Purcell,
empirically concentrate mainly on the pre-modern eras. During the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries, as the mania of nationalism
spread to the region and nation-states emerged from the dismantling of the
old multi-national empires or from the coalescence of the tiny polities that
dotted some regions in the Early Modern period, the new states superseded
all other entities as the central reality in peoples’ lives. As has been often
noted, one of the most powerful aspects of nationalism was its ability to
elevate a national identity above all others; even though, as was almost
always the case, that identity was largely the product of imagination and
acculturation. In any case, as the old polities of the Early Modern period
fell on to history’s trash heap and new political configurations arose, no
indigenous imaginary identity of being ‘Mediterranean’ developed in the
cultures around the great sea.
Concomitant and related to this development, European historians
increasingly promoted the nation-state as the paramount geographical
frame for scholarly research. Telling of the story of each nation’s rise and
accounting for its particular volksgeist came to be seen as the historian’s
primary task. Nineteenth-century historiography, then, dovetailed nicely
with the broader public discourse and, particularly through the dissemination of school textbooks, helped to elevate a unitary national identity that
superseded all others, including both sub-national and super-national ones.
At the same time, other academic discourses either formed or persisted in
European universities and learned societies that focused on the Mediterranean. These are well known and therefore do not require much elaboration here. Two of them, Romanticism and classicism, elevated
Greco-Roman antiquity to the status of Europe’s progenitor. These intel-
Europe and the Mediterranean 127
lectual movements reified the ‘West’ as a European phenomenon, while, of
course, simultaneously denying contemporary Mediterranean cultures a
place in this imaginary space. To the extent that Greeks, Italians and
others shared in this glorious heritage it was at best tangential and
debased. Greatly contributing to this process of distancing the Mediterranean from Europe was the discourse of ‘Orientalism’. As Edward Said
showed, during the Nineteenth century, French philologists led the way in
constructing an exoticized identity for the peoples of the Mediterranean as
Europe’s ‘Other’. Arguably, then, it was during the nineteenth century that
the divide between East and West, Occident and Orient, became truly and
fully substantiated.
Two additional elements would seem to bolster this conclusion and to
support the complementary argument that even within the Mediterranean
barriers, division and cultural distinctiveness held sway. The first of these
is that the nationalistic orientation of academic history and public discourse, noted above, predominated in the major universities in the region.
Greek, Serbian and Italian historiographies, for example, developed very
much as extensions of the national discourse and as foundational props for
nation-building. This discourse tended to exaggerate national differences
and deny the importance of transnational phenomena. The greater
Mediterranean region, to the extent that it was discussed at all, was seen
as merely a geographical expression and nothing more; and even this view
was borrowed from outside (Ben-Artzi 2004). Second, indigenous academics and local societies by and large accepted and internalized the dichotomous categories of East and West. What caused disagreements among
them was not whether or not they were Occidental or Oriental, but rather
over whether or not they should strive to be Westernized (Tsoukalas
2002). It would seem, then, that the argument made earlier that the level
and degree of interconnectedness among the cultures of the Mediterranean
and between them and Central and Western Europe do not apply in the
Modern era. In other words, that the consensus view that the emergence of
the nation-state changed everything is correct.
An examination, however, of the history of the nineteenth century and
the first half of the twentieth century that focuses less on what scholars
and nation-builders said and more on the developments and events that
structured the realities of everyday life shows once again that there was a
high and marked degree of interrelatedness and networks of economic,
social and political connections both within the Mediterranean and
between it and Europe – just as in earlier periods (Rein 1999). But, the
precise nature of those connections was yet again different from those of
earlier epochs.
Before examining them, however, it needs to be pointed out that even at
the level of ideology and social imagination, the Occidental versus Oriental
dichotomy fails to capture fully the complex interplay within and without
the region over identity. To take one specific example, that of the
128 Thomas W. Gallant
encounter between Britons and Greeks on the Ionian Islands, the British
did not construct an oriental identity for their Greek subjects but instead
saw them as the Irish of the Mediterranean (Gallant 2002). While still creating social space and alterity between Britons and Greeks, it also underscored a view of the Greeks as fellow Europeans: but, like the Irish (in
British eyes), it constructed them as Europe’s less fortunate and only marginally civilized distant relative. The same conclusion is evident if we
expand the discussion to include how the British and Germans, for
example, saw Italians, Spaniards, Serbs or Maltese. In sum, the canonical
Orientalist paradigm so powerfully expressed by Said and others fails to
capture accurately the complexity and malleability embedded in the discourse over Mediterranean identities in the Modern era.3
The orthodox view becomes even less tenable when we analyse economic and commercial developments, demography and population movements, and politics and international relations. From the time that
Napoleon dreamed his dream of a French empire that spanned continents
until the end of the Second World War, the Mediterranean was the space
where the European powers came to fight. In addition to actual military
conflicts, the Mediterranean was also the space where the Great Powers
played out their ambitions for imperial expansion. Because the region did
not fall neatly into the sphere of influence of any one of the Great Powers,
it became the field more than any other where the ‘Great Game’ of empire
was played. The list of episodes where one or more of the major powers
interfered in the states along the shores of the Mediterranean is long and
well-known to the extent that one can almost speak of the provincialization of the Mediterranean.
The long-standing commercial and economic relations between the
Mediterranean and Europe continued and indeed became even closer in
the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. The mercantilism
that characterized economic relations between the two regions during the
eighteenth century persisted, but was now augmented by two new developments, both of which were related to industrialization and the global
advance of capitalism. The first of these was related to the uneven pace of
industrialization. As mass manufacturing took off in Northern and
Western Europe, older forms of production persisted in the Mediterranean
creating a situation whereby indigenous products became increasingly
expensive compared with imports. At the same time, the Mediterranean
increasingly became a net exporter of raw materials and foodstuffs. In the
parlance of world-systems theory, the Mediterranean became semiperipheralized and a dependent appendage to the industrializing north.
The flow of goods from the Mediterranean did not even come close to offsetting the value of goods imported into the region, creating chronic trade
deficits that would impair the economic development of all of the Mediterranean countries (Aerts and Valério 1990).
The other novel development in the nineteenth century was the advent
Europe and the Mediterranean 129
of a massive flow of capital from the north to the south. The governments
of the newly formed nation-states and the older polities needed huge
amounts of capital funding to underwrite the costs of projects like building
a military and creating an infrastructure that would encourage economic
growth in manufacturing to occur, and for social spending to deal with the
host of problems associated with modernization. By the end of the century,
every country around the Mediterranean was deeply indebted to European
creditors. The nineteenth-century economic encounter between Europe’s
industrializing states and their neighbours to the south led to the further
provincialization of the Mediterranean, which, if anything, strengthened
the bonds of dependency between Europe and the region.
The nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries witnessed yet
again a massive movement of people both within the Mediterranean and
from the region outwards. Population shifts during this period took on
three general forms. The first of these was associated with nation-building
and entailed the exchange or unidirectional movement of people from one
country to another, usually one with whom the migrants shared some
ethnic or religious bond. The most prominent of this type of population
movement was the exchange of peoples between Greece and Turkey in
1923 after the Greco-Turkish War of 1920–1922 (Hirschon 2003). But
this was just one, albeit a very prominent one, of a number of such transnational population shifts between countries. All told, millions of people
relocated within the Mediterranean and this helped to reinforce social and
cultural connections across the region (Aymard 1974).
The second form of population movement that helped to break down
ties of localism and to facilitate the formation of even more extensive
transnational connections was internal migration. All across the Mediterranean a combination of population growth and economic depression
compelled millions of people to leave their rural villages and relocate to
the burgeoning urban centres (see for example Douglass 1983; Leontidou
1990; Reher 1990). Residence in the city exposed people more directly to
the cultural and educational institutions responsible for national-building.
At the same time that people internalized a canonical national identity at
the expense of a localized one, they were also exposed to the more
cosmopolitan ways of life and multiculturalist ethos found in the city. This
was especially the case in port cities, which, as Henk Driessen has shown,
acted as nodes to connect people from the city and its hinterland to the
wider world (Driessen 2005).
The third major migration stream during this period was the flow of
people from the Mediterranean outwards, primarily to North and South
America but also to Central and Western Europe. The experience of living
abroad in a foreign culture helped to consolidate the predominance of a
national identity over localized ones and, because so many of the migrants
were lumped together in the social imaginary of the host country, it helped
to foster a sense of solidarity that planted the seeds of an identity of
130 Thomas W. Gallant
importance other than a national one; in this case as being ‘Mediterranean’
or ‘Southern European’. In the modern era, as before, migration created
dense and extensive strands of connections that created networks connecting the peoples of the Mediterranean in Europe and beyond.
It can be argued, then, that even in the heyday of nationalism and the
formation of ethno-nationalistic states, the many-stranded linkages that
connected cultures and countries persisted and may have even strengthened, when we should have expected to see an ever more marked degree of
fragmentation and separation, as so many contemporary writers believed.
The trends and patterns of interconnectedness and interpenetration
among the cultures of the Mediterranean and between them and Europe
that I have argued had been developing for centuries became even denser
and more developed during the second half of the twentieth century: precisely when Cold War rhetorical and political realties were reifying the
dichotomy between East and West. Once again, however, the nature and
form of the linkages within and between the region and Europe experienced profound change and though connected, of course, to what came
before were quite different.
As we have seen, in academic discourse the idea of the Mediterranean
as a coherent frame of analysis originated among nineteenth-century
German geographers. Historians, however, largely remained rooted to the
national paradigm as is shown by their response to the publication of the
first edition in French of Braudel’s magnum opus in 1949. As Marino has
pointed out, the response to the book during the 1950s and 1960s was
tepid at best and mostly antagonistic – even in the fields of economic,
diplomatic and Renaissance history that were closest to Braudel’s work
(Marino 2002, 2004). The book only began to have a major impact after
the publication of the second English edition in 1972, due to the confluence of numerous factors, an important one of these being the emergence
of the Mediterranean as a field site for anthropological research, primarily
among English and American anthropologists.
Beginning in the 1950s anthropologists began to seek out sites in the
Mediterranean to conduct ethnographic field research. A number of practical and intellectual factors contributed to this development. Among the
latter was the growing sense that because of common ecological circumstances, which Braudel so minutely and authoritatively described in his
work, and a shared history, the Mediterranean was an ideal location ‘for
fruitful comparative research’ (Albera and Blok 2001: 20). The 1960s saw
a continuation of this trend and by the mid-1970s a sufficient number of
case studies had been published to allow for an attempt at a synthesis –
John Davis’s People of the Mediterranean (1977). Subsequently, the strong
case for viewing the Mediterranean as a cultural area in the anthropological sense was put forward by David Gilmore (1982; see also Boissevain
1979). There ensued a heated debate about this proposition with Michael
Herzfeld emerging as the leader of those who contested it (Herzfeld 1984,
Europe and the Mediterranean 131
1987). By the end of the decade, the debate has lost much of its currency
and fire (Pina-Cabral 1989; Driessen 2001).
In the early 1990s, the discipline of history, and especially European
history, underwent a crisis. A number of widely divergent developments,
the end of the Cold War, the emergence of a more united Europe, the promulgation of new philosophical and epistemological schools of thought
(such as postcolonialism and postmodernism), and the so-called ‘culture
wars’, created an intellectual climate conducive to challenging many of the
old verities of the historical profession. And none of these tried and trusted
bastions of the old order was more directly challenged than that of the
centrality of Europe in the meta-narrative of the Modern era. As John
Gillis put it, ‘Europe has lost its spatial and temporal centrality’ in the
story of the modern world (1996: 5).
Gillis’s was only one voice among many proclaiming that the end of
modern European history as we knew it was at hand. By far the largest
chorus focused on the question of Eurocentrism, i.e. the propensity of
historians to view global developments primarily from a European
perspective, and the need to toss this Eurocentric view of the world on to
the scrap heap of history. These developments called into question some of
the historiographical elements that constituted the very foundation of
modern European history. The decentring or provincialization of Europe
within the master narrative of the modern age had wide ranging repercussions (Chakrabarty 2000). As Peter Gran noted, ‘the dominant paradigm
[of European history] seems likely to be eclipsed sooner or later for intellectual reasons or for purely practical ones’ (1996: 7). The increasingly
hostile reaction to ‘Eurocentrism’ has not been the only threat to European
history. Other developments also pulled at the fabric of the core-constituting
element of traditional modern European history: the nation-state.
Another aspect of the ‘crisis of European history’ centred on the
primacy of the nation-state as modern history’s primary analytical unit. If
the nation-state was one of the central elements of modernity, and if we
have moved beyond the modern age to something else, then this raises the
question of the role of the nation-state. The development of transnational
political organizations, the move toward greater integration of nations into
them, the collapse of the central props of Cold War identities and their
replacement with different, often smaller, and contested ones have all contributed to a push to conceptualize the political, social and cultural geography of Europe in novel ways. As Gillis observed, ‘the very concept of
the nation is much more problematic than it once was and no longer provides a self-evident frame for historical investigation’ (1996: web page 5).
Another historian put it much more succinctly: historiographically, ‘the
nation is dead’ (Hans Mommsen quoted in Applegate 1999: 1157 and
note 5). In the wake of its demise, there was a move to shift the emphasis
of interest to super-national or sub-national regionalizations.
There are a number of reasons why the Mediterranean emerged in the
132 Thomas W. Gallant
1990s as an important frame of historical research. First, there was
Braudel’s work, which had long before achieved the status as a modern
classic of historical research. Though empirically based in the Early
Modern period it nonetheless stood as a model for those interested in pursuing regional-based research in the Modern era (Horden 2005). Next, the
early 1990s witnessed the so-called ‘historic turn in the human sciences’
which strengthened the ties between historians and anthropologists
(McDonald 1996). The Mediterranean region, of course, came to figure
prominently. Even though the ‘Mediterranean debate’ was running out of
steam among anthropologists at this time, there was still the substantial
body of work they had produced, and the debate itself resonated with
historians who tended to side more with those who favoured the idea of
unity. This corpus of anthropological scholarship of exceptional depth,
breadth and quality provided a foundation on which historians could
build. Also, in the 1980s and early 1990s, for reasons to be discussed
below, the Mediterranean emerged as a recognized category of analysis in
a number of cognate disciplines, such as political science, international
relations, economics, geography, environmental studies and sociology.
One need only cite the very large number of journals and serials produced
in those fields that include Mediterranean in their titles to make this point
(Gallant and Esenwein 1996; Alcock 2005). The last development that
solidified the status of the Mediterranean as an important focus of historical research was the publication of Horden and Purcell’s The Corrupting
Sea (2000) and the rich body of works that engaged it.4
Other, more practical, developments that have their roots earlier in the
twentieth century complemented the purely academic ones discussed so far
and together they have contributed to the emergence of a Mediterranean
identity and the strengthening and deepening of the bonds between Europe
and the Mediterranean that had been developing for centuries. I focus first
on population movements. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed once again a massive movement of people between the two areas,
and as was the case in the past the flow of migrants took on different
forms. The first major migration was from the Mediterranean northward.
Seeking better paying jobs in the more industrialized north, millions of
workers relocated to countries like France, Germany, The Netherlands,
Belgium and elsewhere. These guest-workers at first migrated with the idea
of returning to the homeland after a short stay abroad, and many of them
did eventually return. Very substantial numbers chose to stay, adding yet
another layer of peoples from the Mediterranean to the communities that
had formed in earlier times.
Mass tourism created another large and important migratory flow.
Starting from a trickle during the 1950s the seasonal movement of people
from the north to the south became a flood by the 1980s and 1990s. This
had a number of important consequences. First, it facilitated a cultural dialogue between visitors and hosts, an important dimension of which related
Europe and the Mediterranean 133
to identity. This dialogue augmented and complemented a process that had,
as we have seen, been ongoing for centuries. Second, it helped to consolidate
a specific image of the Mediterranean and its cultures. It was during this
period that the archetypal image of the Mediterranean as a land of sea and
sand, bronzed babes in bikinis and la dolce vita, ‘anything goes’ lifestyles
came into being (Liakos 2003). In an ironic twist, this Mediterranean beach
culture, which is now so closely associated with the region in popular imagination, was a foreign construction that has been internalized over the last
twenty years by indigenous cultures. In any event, tourism contributed to
the ongoing intercultural dialogue (Apostolopoulos et al. 2001).
Finally, the third, and most recent, migration stream connecting the
Mediterranean and Europe was created by the movement of peoples from
outside either region, primarily, Africa, the Middle East and East Asia,
especially The Philippines, which has some well-known problems but
which has also helped to solidify a common Euro-Mediterranean identity
in the face of new ‘Others’ (King 2001; Riba Mateos 2005 – to cite only
two major works among the large and ever-growing body of literature).
Transnational migration in the age of globalization, then, as it had done in
the past, has helped to break down barriers, facilitate intercultural dialogue and further enhance cosmopolitanism. Yet again what we see in the
region is a form of unity at one level in spite of great diversity at another.
Obviously the most important factor shaping the economic and political
life of the Mediterranean since the middle of the twentieth century has
been the establishment of the European Union. The establishment of the
Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) at the Barcelona conference in
November 1995 elevated to new heights the economic bonds that linked
the two regions which had been developing over thirty years. It also
strengthened political and cultural ties within the EU Mediterranean countries and between them and the other EU countries. EU expansion to
include more countries from the Mediterranean will advance this process
further. While, of course, not without its problems the EMP has had an
impact on nearly every facet of society, economy and politics in the
Mediterranean, including identity.5
The Euro-Mediterranean moment has arrived. I have argued that the
current state of play is the end result of a process that has been ongoing
for centuries and has experienced many different developmental phases. I
end by focusing on one aspect of the current that is unique – the development of a Euro-Mediterranean identity. Like all identities, it is an imaginary construct and just as has happened in the nineteenth century with
national identities, it will take root only through a process of acculturation
underpinned by strategic initiatives by various political and cultural entities. Contributing to this process will be the practical and cultural consequences of EU policies for the establishment of the Mediterranean as an
academic discourse. A Mediterranean self-identity that is simultaneously a
European identity is becoming manifest. While it has not replaced a
134 Thomas W. Gallant
national identity as the dominant one in the popular social imaginary yet
and may never do so completely (Tsoukalas 2002; Herzfeld 2005;
Moulakis 2005; Pace 2005), nonetheless it is certainly becoming more
prominent in shaping how people see themselves and their place in the
world. Moreover, at least part of the reason that an identity as being
Mediterranean is gaining currency is precisely because of the belief that to
be Mediterranean is to be European (Malkin 2005; Nocke 2005). The
emergence of a Euro-Mediterranean identity represents, as I have
demonstrated above, the final chapter in a historical relationship that has
spanned millennia. As Greater Europe reassesses its place in the changing
global schema of regionalizations, the Mediterranean will serve, as it has
so often in the past, as its hinge or gateway to the wider world.
Notes
1 My views on this subject have been shaped especially by the work of Horden
and Purcell (2000). All future research on this subject will begin with their
superb study. In the debate over the idea of Mediterranean unity, lip service has
all too often been paid to ‘history’. Besides Horden and Purcell and the excellent
collection of essays edited by Abulafia (2003), few have actually engaged the
historical record.
2 I use the verb ‘recommence’ here because much recent archaeological research
indicates that there were networks of trade and settlements developed during the
prehistoric Bronze Age that spanned the Mediterranean.
3 Indeed, it has been argued that by focusing primarily on philologists, Said underestimates the far more varied and nuanced ways that French scholars and scientists exploring the Mediterranean understood it; see Bourguet (1998).
4 An excellent review of the Mediterranean debate after the historic turn in the
human sciences can be found in Sant Cassia and Schäfer (2005).
5 The literature on the European Union and the Mediterranean and the EMP is
vast. My thinking about it has been most influenced by Luciani (1984), Gillespie
(1997), Pierros et al. (1999), Featherstone and Kazimias (2001), Xenakis and
Chryssochoou (2001) and Pace (2005).
References
Abulafia, D. (2000) Mediterranean Encounters, Economic, Religious, Political,
1100–1550, Aldershot: Ashgate.
Abulafia, D. (ed.) (2003) The Mediterranean in History, London: Thames & Hudson.
Aerts, E. and N. Valério (eds) (1990) Growth and Stagnation in the Mediterranean
World in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press.
Albera, D. and A. Blok (2001) ‘The Mediterranean as a Field of Ethnological
Study: A Retrospective’, in D. Albera, A. Blok and C. Bromberger (eds) Anthropology of the Mediterranean, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose: Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’homme, pp. 15–42.
Alcock, S. E. (2005) ‘Alphabet Soup in the Mediterranean Basin: The Emergence of
the Mediterranean Serial’, in W. V. Harris (ed.) Rethinking the Mediterranean,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 314–36.
Apostolopoulos, Y., P. J. Loukissas and L. Leontidou (eds) (2001) Mediterranean
Europe and the Mediterranean 135
Tourism: Facets of Socioeconomic Development and Cultural Change, London:
Routledge.
Applegate, C. (1999) ‘A Europe of Regions: Reflections on the History of Subnational Places in Modern Times’, American Historical Review, 104: 1157–82.
Aymard, M. (ed.) (1974) Les Migrations dans les pays méditerranéens au
XVIIIéme et au début du XIXéme, Nice: Université de Nice, Centre de la
Méditerranée moderne et contemporaine.
Bayly, C. A. and L. Fawaz (2002) ‘The Connected World of Empires’, in C. A.
Bayly and L. Fawaz (eds) Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the
Indian Ocean, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 1–27.
Ben-Artzi, Y. (2004) ‘The Idea of a Mediterranean Region in Nineteenth- to MidTwentieth-Century German Geography’, Mediterranean Historical Review,
19(2): 2–15.
Boissevain, J. (1979) ‘Toward an Anthropology of the Mediterranean’, Current
Anthropology, 20: 81–93.
Bourguet, M.-N. (1998) L’invention scientifique de la Méditerranée: Egypte,
Morée, Algérie, Paris: Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales.
Braudel, F. (1972) The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of
Philip II, London: Collins.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Davis, J. (1977) People of the Mediterranean. An Essay in Comparative Social
Anthropology, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Douglass, W. A. (1983) ‘Migration in Italy’, in M. K. Kenny and D. I. Kertzer (eds)
Urban Life in Mediterranean Europe: Anthropological Perspectives, Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, pp. 162–202.
Driessen, H. (2001) ‘Divisions in Mediterranean Ethnography: A View from Both
Shores’, in D. Albera, A. Blok and C. Bromberger (eds) Anthropology of the
Mediterranean, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose: Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’homme, pp. 625–44.
Driessen, H. (2005) ‘Mediterranean Port Cities: Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered’,
History and Anthropology, 16(1): 129–41.
Featherstone, K. and G. A. Kazimias (eds) (2001) Europeanization and the Southern Periphery, London: F. Cass.
Gallant, T. W. (2002) Experiencing Dominion: Culture, Identity and Power in the
British Mediterranean, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Gallant, T. W. and G. Esenwein (1996) ‘The Future of European History: One
Alternative’, Perspectives, December: 25–6.
Gillespie, R. (ed.) (1997) The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: Political and Economic Perspectives, London: F. Cass.
Gillis, J. R. (1996) ‘The Future of European History’, Perspectives, April: 1–5.
Gilmore, D. D. (1982) ‘Anthropology of the Mediterranean Area’, Annual Review
of Anthropology, 11: 175–205.
Goffman, D. (2002) The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Gran, P. (1996) Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History,
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Greene, M. (2000) A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern
Mediterranean, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
136 Thomas W. Gallant
Herzfeld, M. (1984) ‘The Horns of a Mediterraneanist Dilemma’, American Ethnologist, 115: 439–54.
Herzfeld, M. (1987) Anthropology Through the Looking Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Herzfeld, M. (2005) ‘Practical Mediterraneanism: Excuse for Everything, Epistemology to Eating’, in W. V. Harris (ed.) Rethinking the Mediterranean,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 45–63.
Hirschon, R. (ed.) (2003) Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory
Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, New York: Berghahn Books.
Horden, P. (2005) ‘Mediterranean Excuses: Historical Writing on the Mediterranean since Braudel’, History and Anthropology, 16(1): 25–30.
Horden, P. and N. Purcell (2000) The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean
History, Oxford: Blackwell.
King, R. (ed.) (2001) The Mediterranean Passage Migration and New Cultural
Encounters in Southern Europe, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Leontidou, L. (1990) The Mediterranean City in Transition: Social Change and
Urban Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leontidou, L. (2004) ‘The Boundaries of Europe: Deconstructing Three Regional
Narratives’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 11(4): 593–617.
Liakos, A. (2003) ‘I Mesoyeios kai To Soma’, To Vima, 13929 (3 August), section
B: 29.
Liotta, P. H. (2005) ‘Imagining Europe: Symbolic Geography and the Future’,
Mediterranean Quarterly, 16: 67–85.
Luciani, G. (ed.) (1984) The Mediterranean Region: Economic Interdependence
and the Future of Society, London: Croom Helm.
Malkin, I. (2005) ‘The Mediterranean Option’, paper presented at the conference
on Constructions of Mediterranean Nostalgia, T. Gallant and A. Liakos (organizers), Athens.
Marino, J. A. (ed.) (2002) Early Modern History and the Social Sciences: Testing
the Limits of Braudel’s Mediterranean, Kirksville, MO: Truman State University
Press.
Marino, J. A. (2004) ‘The Exile and His Kingdom: The Reception of Braudel’s
Mediterranean’, Journal of Modern History, 76: 622–52.
McDonald, T. J. (1996) ‘Introduction’, in T. J. McDonald (ed.) The Historic Turn
in the Human Sciences, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, pp. 1–16.
Morris, I. (2003) ‘Mediterraneanization’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 18(2):
30–55.
Moulakis, A. (2005) ‘The Mediterranean Region: Reality, Delusion, or EuroMediterranean project?’, Mediterranean Quarterly, 16: 11–38.
Nocke, A. (2005) ‘Mediterraneanism in Israel: Narratives of the Past and the Construction of Modern Israeli Identity’, paper presented at the conference on Constructions of Mediterranean Nostalgia, T. Gallant and A. Liakos (organizers),
Athens.
Pace, M. (2005) The Politics of Regional Identity: Meddling with the Mediterranean, Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Pierros, F., J. Meunier and S. Abrams (eds) (1999) Bridges and Barriers: The European Union’s Mediterranean Policy, 1961–1998, Aldershot: Ashgate.
Pina-Cabral, J. d. (1989) ‘The Mediterranean as a Category of Regional Comparison: A Critical View’, Current Anthropology, 30: 399–407.
Europe and the Mediterranean 137
Pocock, J. G. A. (1997) ‘What Do We Mean by Europe? (Europa: The Past and
Future of an Idea)’, The Wilson Quarterly, 21: 12–40.
Purcell, N. (2003) ‘The Boundless Sea of Unlikeness?: On Defining the Mediterranean’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 18(2): 9–29.
Reher, D. S. (1990) ‘Urbanization and Demographic Behaviour in Spain’, in A. van
der Woude, A. Hayami and J. de Vries (eds) Urbanization in History, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, pp. 282–99.
Rein, R. (1999) Spain and the Mediterranean since 1898, London: F. Cass.
Ribas Mateos, N. (ed.) (2005) The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization:
Migration, Welfare, and Borders, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Sant Cassia, P. and I. Schäfer (2005) ‘ “Mediterranean Conundrums”: Pluridisciplinary Perspectives for Research in the Social Sciences’, History and
Anthropology, 16: 1–23.
Tsoukalas, C. (2002) ‘Between “East” and “West”, the Meaning of the Mediterranean in Modern Greece and Possibly Elsewhere as Well’, Mediterranean
Historical Review, 17(2): 32–46.
Winks, R. W. and S. P. Mattern (2004) The Ancient Mediterranean World: From
the Stone Age to A.D. 600, New York: Oxford University Press.
Xenakis, D. and D. N. Chryssochoou (eds) (2001) The Emerging EuroMediterranean System, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
9
Europe and Islam
Jack Goody
The current tendency in much European thought is to consider Europe in
opposition to Islam, the former being characterized by many politicians as
Judaeo-Christian civilization in contrast to the Muslims. It has a long
history. But there is another view altogether. We need to start by going
back to the societies that emerged after what the prehistorian Gordon
Childe (1964 [1942]) referred to as the Urban Revolution of the Bronze
Age. That radical change involved the development of a more advanced
agriculture including the plough and irrigation, together with animal traction and the wheel, as well as the associated division of labour, artisanal
specialisms and the invention of writing itself that made life in the towns
both so much richer and so much more complex.
Civilization in the sense of urban culture evolved in parts of Asia, and to
a minor extent Europe, from the third millennium BCE Subsequently European writers, beginning with the Greeks, have opposed European and Asian
societies, especially with regard to their political traditions, democracy as
opposed to despotism. The states of Antiquity, a notion that applied only to
Europe, that is, to Greece and Rome, were seen in opposition to the oriental
empires. Antiquity led on to feudalism, feudalism to capitalism, while the
East was left to pursue its own different line (‘Asiatic exceptionalism’) originating in their earlier irrigation societies, seen as highly centralized. Considerable intellectual damage has been caused by trying to separate that
classical, European world, not only in terms of historical knowledge but by
politicians down the ages, by over-emphasizing and indeed creating supposed differences. The distinction then becomes polarized, Europe (us) being
positively valued, Asia (them) negatively. Europe is the land of democracy,
Asia of despots. Europe made it, Asia did not.
Just as Asia had its own political system, epitomized in recent times by
‘despotic’ Turkey, so too the Near East had its own religion, Islam, which
was inextricably associated with its more ‘backward’ economy. But the
notion of opposing civilizations or continents seems less than appropriate.
All these three major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, arose in
the Near East, technically in Asia rather than Europe, and they spread
widely throughout the world. In any case the Eastern Mediterranean, on
Europe and Islam 139
whose borders these religions arose, is badly served by a geographical distinction between Europe and Asia since it was an area of constant interaction, economic, political, cultural, and over a long period, with
influences coming from Africa (Egyptian), some from Asia (Semitic) and
some from Europe itself, especially from the classical world.
That perception has dominated much European thinking about the
present and the past, together with the idea that Europe achieved modernization on its own, that it ‘invented invention’, democracy, individualism,
freedom, even love. In fact these features, in so far as they can be satisfactorily defined, were found in Western Asia as well as in Western Europe,
especially following the expansion of Islam in the seventh century. In this
chapter I want to touch upon three aspects of this relationship: first, the
similarities in character, values and intellectual orientation between Islam
and its sister religions; second, the importance of contacts with the Near
East for ‘modernization’ in Europe; and third, the actual physical penetration of Islam into Europe.
The development of writing gave birth to written religions, religions of
the Book, including the Near Eastern trilogy. These written religions take a
different shape from earlier ‘oral’ ones, partly because the use of writing
produces a text that acquires a permanent, timeless status as the ‘holy
scriptures’ (as distinct from the relatively flexible and changing religions of
earlier society).1 That relative permanency of the sacred text, which contrasts not only with the changing nature of most oral communication but
with the cumulative nature of other kinds of written production, such as
science, has certain consequences that are highly significant in the
contemporary world. While processes of adjustment and adaptation do
take place within such religions, and even tendencies towards secularization and agnosticism occasionally appear, there is always the potential
possibility of what have been called fundamentalists returning to the original religious text. Equally there are those who go back to earlier pronouncements in order to ‘reform’ the religion. Thus Reformation (and in
the arts Renaissance) was on a par with fundamentalism. That was the
case with the Taliban of Central Asia who rejected the construction of figurative icons as blasphemous and therefore destroyed the Buddhist masterpieces of Bamiyan. Similar destruction was found in many Protestant
movements that tended to reject Catholic iconicity in favour of unadorned
churches where sculpture and painting were thrown out or damaged
because they were considered to be forbidden to early Christians. In a different form fundamentalism appears in Orthodox as distinct from
Reformed Jewish groups, notably in the long-haired, bearded, traditionallydressed inhabitant of Me’ah She’arim in Jerusalem, as well as among many
of the members of settlements of the West Bank in Palestine, committed as
they are to following the pronouncements of a text that was composed
2,000 years ago. In all these contexts the social and political consequences
are enormous.
140 Jack Goody
In the Far East followers go back to the words of Confucius or to the
early texts of Buddhism, inscribed in stone. But it is particularly true of the
three Near Eastern religions that refer to versions of the same Holy Scriptures, as well as having additions of their own. They share most of the
same myths and importantly many of the same values, despite widespread
views to the contrary. It is true that the three religions have often been
opposed to one another on the ground and have persecuted their neighbours in intolerable ways. Nevertheless (although this is perhaps less true
of Judaism) similar universalistic ideas are found within each community
which enjoin its members to love not only brothers and clansfolk but all
those who convert to the same faith. That conversion is often more
significant than affiliation to race or class. One could ‘legitimately’ enslave
only the non-believer, not a fellow member; the same was in principle true
of marriage, since endogamy was greatly preferred, and even enforced.
Marriage entailed conversion to the faith, in Catholic Christianity, in
Islam, in Judaism. In Islam in particular, once converted an adherent could
rise through the ranks to become Vizier or admiral; the other two religions
also provided ladders to power, reputation or wealth, but more restrictedly. That opportunity permitted a measure of mobility, and freedom, for
some individuals.
One of the values that Islam shared with Judaism and with early Christianity (as well as with some later branches of Protestantism) was the aversion to figurative representation, originally embodied in the
Commandment, Thou shalt make no graven images. The destruction of
the statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan, the defacing of statues of the Virgin
in Ely Cathedral, the absence of figurative ornament in Jewish synagogues,
these all reflect the same religious traditions and indicate the strong and
enduring links between the religions of the Book. In this respect the
destructive actions of one group are no more barbarian than those of
another. Certain features associated with an ancient text are found in all
written religions. The tendency to apply norms universally is one of these.
Written religions are boundary-maintaining and hence involve conversion
rather than just compromise or incorporation. Sometimes this is achieved
by voluntary means, sometimes by conquest, which leads to the inclusion
of members of different socio-cultural groups.
It is clear that toleration was not confined to Christians, nor was
charity, despite popular views that caritas was primarily a Christian virtue.
All post-Bronze Age societies display a substantial measure of economic
stratification, of class differentiation. All these religions make provision for
helping those members of the community (and sometimes others too) who
are worse off, by gift, by bequests, by investments, sometimes direct but
usually through the church, mosque or synagogue, as well as to others
requiring the blessing of God. It was under Christianity that most charitable gifts were probably needed because, of the three religions, this was the
only one that had an establishment consisting of monasteries as well as of
Europe and Islam 141
bishops and clergy. However Islam came a close second with its use of
endowments (waqf) to support the mosques and their attached markets,
caravanserai, hospitals and schools as well as those made to help poor
members of the family. Jews too have institutions for helping members of
the faith of this kind, but given their dispersal did not have the same need
to support major institutions.
So too other values and emotions often regarded as uniquely Christian
or as acquired from the Greeks are found in slightly different forms in the
other religions. Freedom, claimed by Finley (1985) as an invention of the
Greeks, is as much regarded in the other creeds. In the eighteenth century
the British admiral Slade praises this quality in Turkish life, even though in
popular mythology all citizens were seen as ‘slaves’ of the Sultan. He
admires the way that ordinary soldiers could rise to the highest rank, of
people’s freedom from tolls and taxes. Restraint is a virtue sometimes
thought to be completely lacking in Islam because of the practice of polygyny and the promise of sexual pleasure in the next world. But polygyny
on any scale is only for the few, who have their fill of pleasures in most
stratified regimes. In fact Islam restrains the behaviour of its members in
many ways, insisting on generosity (the weekly saddaq or gift), the five
daily prayers, the requirement of the pilgrimage and above all the annual
month-long day-time fast.
Individualism is another of those virtues that Westerners attribute to
themselves. It is part of the Robinson Crusoe and parallel myths that seem
to contribute to entrepreneurship and capitalism. In fact humanity in
general has seen something we can call ‘individualism’ increase in certain
spheres over time. But to regard the modern economy with its tight organizations in factory, in office, in theatre or in school as more individualistic
than earlier forms of work organization is another myth of the West,
which always sees itself as more ‘individualistic’ than the ‘collective’,
‘primitive’, of the East. There is no evidence to support the contention that
individualism is absent from Islamic societies, whose members over a long
period were the major traders in the Indian Ocean as well as along the silk
route and who participated actively in early capitalist activities. It was
Muslims who led the famous fifteenth-century Chinese expedition to
Africa and it was a Muslim who piloted Vasco da Gama to India. There
was no shortage of individual entrepreneurs.
One of the aspects of the inner life that Christians have tried to appropriate at the expense not only of Islam is love itself, at least romantic love,
which has been seen as the ‘innovation’ of the troubadours of twelfthcentury France. That notion has been firmly promoted by historians, such
as Duby (1996), by sociologists such as Giddens (1991), by psychologists
such as Person (1991) and by cultural theorists such as de Rougemont
(1956). In Europe it is seen by demographers and family historians as
linked to the constellation of the European nuclear family, which again is
thought to have a unique connection with the development of capitalism.
142 Jack Goody
However, love poetry of a romantic kind is found in early China, in Sanskritic India and very widely in Arab and Persian societies. Indeed it seems
highly likely that the courts of Southern France where the troubadours
performed were strongly influenced by Muslim Spain where love poetry
was a popular genre. Once again there is little to distinguish the emotional
disposition of the Christian and Muslim worlds, and if anything it was the
latter that influenced the former.
This and other similarities in ‘value orientation’ have been obscured by
the conflict situation often, but not always, existing between them. Not
always, because Islam gave a limited recognition to other religions of the
Book. They had to pay a special tax but then had many of the privileges of
citizenship. Communities of Jews and Christians lived reasonably successful lives in Cairo in the early Middle Ages, as we see from Goitein’s (1967)
vivid picture drawn from the Geniza manuscripts. That was particularly
the case with Jews in North Africa; unlike Christians, they represented no
political threat, spoke Arabic and continued to make important contributions to medicine, science and philosophy in these regions. Many returned
to North Africa with the Muslims when these were finally expelled from
Spain, preferring exile to coming under Christian rule.
Part of the supposed contrast with Europe has taken the form of seeing
Islam as having not only values that were very different but also institutional systems that prevented it from ‘modernizing’ and therefore from
becoming ‘capitalist’. Politically Turkey for example was considered
‘despotic’ in an Asiatic fashion as distinct from European democracy. But
that democracy of the contemporary kind only effectively manifested itself
after the French and American revolutions. While Turkey may not have
had exactly the same form of feudalism, which many Western writers have
seen as an essential stage in the run-up to capitalism, they certainly had a
system of land tenure that was of the same genre, involving what Maine
called a ‘hierarchy of rights’ and a degree of long-term security. And they
developed capitalist institutions well before the West, at least at the level
of mercantile capitalism. For they were not only warriors, but heavily
involved in the long-distance trade with the East as well as with the West,
largely through Venice and the Italian city states. They were also engaged
in the manufacture of commodities that were exchanged in that trade.
Islam stood at the centre of the known world, known that is to Europeans and Asians, each of which was known to the other at least from the
classical period, if not from the Bronze Age. Before 1592 the Muslim religion stretched continuously from the south of Spain to the borders of
China, acting as a conduit for information, inventions and commodities. It
was along this route that the manufacture of paper developed, invented in
China around the beginning of the Christian era, and which had such a
dramatic effect on Europe and the Near East. Paper was manufactured on
a mass scale using the water mill, as happened in early textile factories.
The making of silk thread, another import from China, used mechanized
Europe and Islam 143
and indeed industrial techniques which were probably transmitted to Italy.
Certainly the Islamic world saw a huge growth in the production of silk
thread and silk cloth, some of which was exported to Europe and became
critical to the trade of Venice and other Italian cities when commerce
revived. Indeed it has been said of the old Ottoman capital of Bursa that
the economy was built on the trade in silk (and its production and manufacture), both locally but especially to Europe, with which the materials,
thread and cloth were exchanged for woollen cloth as well as for bullion.
The export of woollen cloth was particularly associated with the town of
Florence, whereas other North Italian towns, especially Lucca, but also
Genoa, Bologna and Venice, took up the manufacture of silk, first using
imported thread but eventually planting mulberry trees, cultivating silk
worms and producing their own materials which they made with the aid of
water-driven threading machines that seem to have been based on a
Chinese model (Elvin 1973).
It was these machines that helped turn Bologna into what Poni
describes as ‘an industrial city’. The secrets of these processes were eventually pirated by one Lombe, a member of an English weaving family, and
taken back to help construct the Great Mill at Derby in 1718, before the
industrialization of cotton production that is usually seen as marking the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In other words these early
processes of industrialization and mechanization were transmitted to
Europe by way of Islam, to be developed later on in the eighteenth century
for the factory production of cotton and other items. There was therefore
a measure of continuity between the economies of Europe and Asia not
only in the long-distance trade on which part of the prosperity of both
continents depended, but in the transmission of techniques, processes and
inventions between them. The crude dichotomy between a potentially or
actually capitalist Europe and a backward, ‘traditional’ Asia quite misrepresents the past relationships between them and is a poor guide to the
future, even if it had some limited justification in the nineteenth century.
So it was not only that ‘values’ and intellectual orientations in the
Eastern Mediterranean were more similar to those in the West than was
then imagined, but so were the economic activities. It is true that Islam has
apparently been more faithful to Biblical injunctions against usury than
either Christianity or Judaism, nevertheless that has not been a serious
handicap to trade. Mahomet himself was a trader and Mecca a centre of
market activity. Muslims travelled widely in their trading ventures, to the
eastern coast of India, to Singapore and Malaysia, to Indonesia and to
China.
Reciprocal trade and the associated manufactures lay at the heart of the
revival of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Mercantile capitalism led
to increased production and to industrial capitalism. That input from the
East went back much further in time. The collapse that followed the fall of
the Roman Empire did not affect eastern towns and eastern culture in the
144 Jack Goody
same drastic way. In the West there was an extreme reaction; in Britain
towns collapsed, literacy disappeared and even Christianity may have vanished. Trade, manufacture and commerce received a severe setback. In the
East, which was to become Islamic from the seventeenth century, the
urban cultures of port cities like Alexandria and inland towns like Cairo
continued to prosper partly because they were still trading with countries
yet further East, in Persia, Arabia, India and China. Those towns became
of great importance to Europe when trade began to pick up. As early as
the ninth century, Venice entered into relations with Christian Constantinople as well as with Muslim Alexandria, from which port it acquired
not only commercial goods but the very relics of its patron saint, Mark.
It was this revival of trade in the Mediterranean that developed
Europe’s trade with the East, with India and China. That revival had two
results. It led to the rising mercantile capitalism of Italian towns and to the
development of their manufactures, especially substitutes for eastern
imports, silk from Muslim lands, porcelain originally from China and later
cotton cloth from India, the basis of the Industrial Revolution in England.
All these activities came through Muslim lands, as did paper-making and
many intellectual advances. They came not only through exchange but also
because of Islam’s penetration into Europe by way of conquest and conversion, Arabs (and Berbers) to southern Spain between 711 and 1492 as
well as to Sicily, Southern Italy and Cyprus. In Greece and the Balkans it
was the Turks who extended their empire, creating permanent Muslim
enclaves in Albania and Bosnia. Further north it was the Mongols who
arrived, later converting to Islam, and leaving behind them Muslim
communities in the Crimea and the Caucasus. Many of these invaders
were forced to withdraw, but not before they had contributed significantly
to the revival of Europe through the exchange of goods and knowledge.
Indeed it has recently been argued that capitalism and the modern world
generally had an Eastern origin (Hobson 2004). While that argument may
put the case too strongly, the influence of the ‘advanced’ East was certainly
significant in helping a ‘backward’ Europe to catch up and overtake its
Eastern counterparts.
Such influences were particularly important from Andalusia and Sicily
as these Muslim regions were obviously close and could be visited by
Europeans. In the twelfth century, Andalusia had great libraries such as
the royal collection in Cordoba (open to others), as well as great scholars,
Jews such as Maimonides, Muslim students of Greek philosophy and medicine, such as Ibn Rashd (Averroes), an expert on Aristotle who proposed a
doctrine of Universal Reason. But quite apart from local scholars and local
resources, both Andalusia and Palermo were in touch with the rest of the
Islamic world that stretched through Persia, north India, Central Asia to
the borders of China; all these lands contributed to its store of knowledge,
widely transmitted both by travelling scholars and by books. Islamic cultures had not only taken over part of the classical learning that Europe had
Europe and Islam 145
lost or set aside during the upheavals following the fall of the Roman
Empire and the rise of Christianity, but acquired other discoveries from
India, such as the so-called Arabic numerals that transformed mathematical calculation, as well as the many inventions brought in from
China, including the Baconian trilogy that he saw as creating the modern
world, the compass, gunpowder and printing. Very important for Europe
was the medical knowledge that had been developed in Hellenistic times in
the works of Hippocrates and others, and in the Roman period in the
writing of Galen and his colleagues. It had been in Alexandria during Hellenistic times that Herophilus had developed the practice of surgery, based
upon the dissection of the human body. That is not an activity encouraged
by many cultures, even in early literate societies. It was equally taboo to
Christians and other followers of the Abrahamic religions for which the
body was God’s creation. Consequently anatomy fell into desuetude
during the Middle Ages, and many other aspects of medicine too since they
were enshrined in pagan texts. In any case disease was often seen as the
result of sin, which could only be cured by confession, prayer and repentance. The Muslims and Jews had fewer qualms about such literature and
continued to translate the texts and to practise medicine. Much medieval
knowledge and practice came to Europe through these scholars and practitioners.
If the Islamic world contributed so much in the past, what gave rise to
the present situation in which the Western world clearly has a competitive
advantage in the economy as well as in other spheres such as education
and possibly in political representation? The knowledge revolution beginning in the West in the sixteenth century was partly related to the commercial and economic successes in Europe, whose economy had broken
through to new levels. But of great importance were changes in the means
of communication. The early adoption of paper had given Islam a great
competitive advantage, enabling it to build up much larger libraries than
was possible in Europe where writers had to use parchment made from
animal skins or papyrus imported from Egypt. But for religious reasons to
do with the reproduction of the name and word of God and his prophet,
or even of their language, the printing press, which like paper was invented
in China, was not adopted in the Muslim world until very late. That rejection left them out of the great advances in printing with an alphabetic
script that Eisenstein (1979) among others regarded as so significant for
scientific, informational and literary developments in the Renaissance and
that Ong (1974) sees as so important for the growth of education. In all
these spheres changes in the speed and extent of communication corresponded to an increase in diversity; the range of written material available
for an individual to consult increased enormously. That proliferation was
associated with a period of ‘disenchantment of the world’, at least for
some, of freeing certain areas of thought from their religious constraints.
We find similar periods in Islam that have been described as ‘humanism’
146 Jack Goody
but there was nothing so radical as occurred in Europe where even though
some religious beliefs became more ‘fundamentalist’ in the Protestant
return to the text, other areas of enquiry definitely became more free, especially under the Reform. Islam got left behind, not only in the economy
but in secular learning and education. In many areas, Muslim schools
remained committed to learning the Qu’ran before all else, at a time when
religion played a lesser part in Western education either at schools or universities. Islam has remained more firmly committed to its faith and its text
for longer than either Christianity or, later, Judaism.
So Christianity and Islam, Europe and the Muslim world, were linked
in many ways right from the beginning of the latter religion which centred
itself upon the Mediterranean and its cultures. In religious terms there was
of course an earlier opposition not so much in terms of intellectual
achievement and economic action but in matters of festivals, of holy days,
of ritual, of prophets, of recruitment rather than of a monotheistic faith
and values. The boundaries between Europe and Asia are largely inconsequential; the opposition between Christianity and Islam largely a question
of politics, war and regimes. In other ways there was a great deal of movement between the two spheres, mainly from East to West since the East
was more advanced economically and in knowledge systems, at least until
the Renaissance.
Note
1 This and related differences are elaborated in Goody 1986.
References
Childe, V. G. (1964 [1942]) What Happened in History, Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Duby, G. (1996) Féodalité, Paris: Gallimard.
Eisenstein, E. L. (1979) The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Elvin, M. (1973) The Pattern of the Chinese Past, London: Eyre Methuen.
Finley, M. I. (1985) Democracy Ancient and Modern, London: Hogarth.
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late
Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity.
Goitein, S. D. (1967) A Mediterranean Society, the Jewish Communities of the
Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 1, Berkeley: California University Press.
Goody, J. (1986) The Logic of Writing and the Organisation of Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hobson, J. M. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Ong, W. (1974) Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue, New York: Octagon
Books.
Europe and Islam 147
Person, E. S. (1991) ‘Romantic Love: At the Intersection of the Psychic and the
Cultural Unconscious’, Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association, 39:
383–411.
Rougemont, D. de (1956) Love in the Western World, New York: Princeton University Press.
10 Citizenship East and West
Reflections on revolutions and civil
society
Bryan S. Turner
The liberal Western model of citizenship imagines society as a market
place in which strangers meet to exchange goods and services. This is what
we might call a ‘citizenship of strangers’ in which people, who have no
necessary social connections with each other, interact in public. These
strangers do not have or are not expected to have cultural identities that
play an important role in the public domain. However, this political
framework by itself was not sufficient to support civil society, which
required some degree of additional social bonding through religion or
nationalism. In civil society, religion was particularly important for creating social capital. We might say, for example, that in nineteenth-century
England citizenship was not defined by deep cultural criteria; citizens were
political actors who expressed their will through parliamentary institutions. However, these political citizens did in fact have considerable and
important cultural identities, for example they were English speaking and
predominantly Anglican. The key issue here is that the spread of secular
citizenship constrained the relevance of cultural and kinship ties in the
public domain, and replaced kinship as a principle of social organisation.
In Asia, especially in China, citizenship was slow to develop and connected with the idea of patrimony, benevolence and kinship. It was initially a citizenship of blood or what we might call a ‘citizenship of
kinsmen’. The state was often conceptualised in patriarchal terms as a
family or clan system, in which the citizens are part of the family of the
state. The obligation of the state or emperor towards citizens was understood in terms of a benefice rather than contract (Woodiwiss 1998). Like
other Empires, China did not give rise to a notion of citizenship based on a
market place of strangers, but there was a distinctive development of ideas
of citizenship in the period 1890–1920 in which Chinese intellectuals
struggled to find a language appropriate to the public domain that could
express the first stirrings of political modernisation. In Japan, citizenship
developed with the economic modernisation of Japan, but remained tied to
the idea of a loyal subject of the emperor. With American occupation,
Japan came to acquire certain institutional aspects of democracy, but
Japanese society has not openly embraced cultural heterogeneity, and
Citizenship East and West 149
hence its civil society is not fundamentally a society of strangers. Indonesia
– as a consequence of the national struggle against the Japanese and Dutch
– has developed a notion of national citizenship in the context of an
emerging nationalism. Whereas Chinese and Japanese citizenship has often
been authoritarian and state dominated, Indonesia has evolved with a clear
notion of national citizenship and a viable civil society.
Citizenship is typically the product of major social disruptions – invasions, revolutions, mass warfare or traumatic migrations (Turner 1986).
Citizenship is often top-down (as in Germany, Russia and the Habsburg
Empire) and it functions to incorporate the working class into capitalism.
It can also be bottom-up (as in France, the United States and to some
extent Britain). As a result, despite the historical argument that Greece and
Rome were the cradles of Western democracy, Western citizenship is a
relatively modern development, and specifically the product of three revolutions – the English civil war, the American War of Independence and the
French Revolution. In Asia, the only comparable revolution took place in
Indonesia as a war of independence, anti-colonialism and resistance.
Defining citizenship
The citizen was closely connected historically with the rise of European
cities and the virtues of civility. A citizen was simply a member or denizen
of a city, and as a result enjoyed certain privileges and was burdened with
civil responsibilities and duties. Service in the city militia and payment of
taxes were the typical duties of an urban citizen. A citizen was a burgess or
freeman of a city, and citizenship has been as a result associated with
burger or bourgeois culture. In the Christian West, the countryside was
pagan and uncivilised. Citizens were literally urban and urbane, and were
contrasted with the illiterate pagan communities of the countryside.
Pagans were lacking in urbanity, whereas citizens were part of the civitas –
the urban culture of the autonomous city and the Latin Church.
Historians have examined these cultural components of citizenship in
the Greek polis and the early Church. However, this form of citizenship
was very limited, and developed in an agrarian society in which the majority of people were domestic slaves. The public domain was reserved for
men who were capable of rational conduct. Citizenship is therefore most
appropriately regarded as a modern concept, emerging with the evolution
of autonomous cities in medieval Europe, and coming to fruition with the
revolutions that produced the modern world. Modern citizenship was produced by the destruction of the Estates and the pulverisation of feudalism
by bourgeois political struggles.
In European societies, the ‘citizen’ was made possible by the emergence of
‘civil society’ (die bürgerliche Gesellschaft). On the one hand, the citizen
emerged out of the independent associations of urban societies especially
guilds, clubs and associations. On the other hand, the citizen was somebody
150 Bryan S. Turner
who owed loyalty and obligation to a state that exercised sovereignty and
gave the citizen security. The Western notion of citizenship (Staatsbürgerschaf) has this ambiguity: it is a conduit of individual rights and a reflection of the growth of state power over civil society.
The sociology of citizenship is still somewhat dominated by the analysis
of Max Weber. In The City (1958) he emphasised the importance of Christian universalism in which faith rather than blood was recognised as the
basis of social community. He contrasted the autonomous city in Europe
with the city in the East as a military camp. The sharp separation of religion and politics in St Augustine’s City of God is also thought to be
important. Although we can detect the ancestry of citizenship in the urban
institutions of classical Greece and Rome, there is little evidence of social
citizenship until the modern period. Because women were excluded from
participation in public life, we should hesitate in assuming that citizenship
was fully developed in ancient Athens and Rome. It is more accurate to
argue that classical citizenship was limited in its scope. We might suitably
call the classical form political citizenship, and argue that the revolutionary struggles that produced modernity also produced modern or social citizenship. Modern citizenship has three important characteristics: it is
universalistic, it does not recognise kinship ties in the public arena, and it
is closely connected with the rise of effective taxation.
Causes of citizenship
Weber’s account of the historical roots of democracy and citizenship has
created the dominant paradigm within which citizenship has been analysed
by sociologists. There are two aspects of Weber’s argument that have
remained influential. First, Weber in The City (Weber 1958) identified the
medieval and renaissance city as an important location for Western democracy, because the independent guilds, the decline of slavery, the growth of
independent legal institutions and the creation of an urban militia all
favoured the growth of social rights. Second, military discipline meant ‘the
triumph of democracy, because the community wished and was compelled
to secure the cooperation of the non-aristocratic masses and hence put
arms, and along with the arms political power, into their hands’ (Weber
1981: 324–5). Changes in the technology of warfare that encouraged the
routinisation of military activity, namely taking military prowess out of
‘the battle between heroes’ (Weber 1981: 325), also favoured the growth
of democratic institutions. The notion that the unintended consequence of
the democratisation of military organisation has been to favour the general
democratisation of society has been common to many accounts of citizenship, but another aspect of this argument is that the violent trauma of
war on a population can destroy traditional consciousness, old forms of
hierarchy and exploitation, and create new circumstances for democracy.
Modern citizenship is a product of three political revolutions – the
Citizenship East and West 151
English Civil War, the American War of Independence and the French
Revolution. These revolutions were the cradle of modern nationalism, and
national citizenship means the rights and duties of a person who is a
member of a national community. The creation of European nation-states
from the seventeenth century necessarily involved the creation of nationalistic ‘imagined communities’ which assumed the existence of, and which
went a long way to create, ethnically homogeneous populations. These
national communities were held together, against the divisions of social
class, culture and ethnicity, by nationalistic ideologies and historical narratives demonstrating the antiquity of the national community. The Treaty
of Westphalia (1648) was the origin of the modern world system of
nation-states, and state formation involved the creation of nationalist identities on the basis of a double colonisation, both internal and external.
This political process was the cultural basis for the creation of national
forms of citizenship.
National citizenship was politically important because it incorporated
the working class into nascent capitalism through the creation of civil
rights and in some cases welfare institutions. In practice, welfare capitalism achieved the pacification of the working class with relatively little concession to the fundamental social issue of inequalities in wealth, income
and political power. Citizenship left the property structure of capitalism
intact, and welfare capitalism avoided the revolutionary conflicts of the
class system that were fundamental to Karl Marx’s predictions of the business cycle and economic crises. However, there was considerable variation
between the different capitalist regimes. While in Germany Bismarck
developed social rights through welfare legislation, political rights were
underdeveloped. Neither fascism nor authoritarian socialism supported
civil and political rights, although they did develop welfare institutions and
social rights. American liberalism combined market freedom and liberal
support for individual rights, but did not favour social welfare rights.
In conclusion, in the absolutist monarchies, monarch, nobility and
Church resisted universal citizenship, but they also recognised that their
long-term political survival depended on some compromise with the bourgeoisie and working class, and some degree of modernisation of both
society and politics. In Germany, Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm were
founders of the modern welfare state, but social citizenship was developed
with few concessions to civil and political rights. This system came into
place before the First World War and according to some historians survived until the mid-1990s. Whereas in Japan, the Meiji Revolution used
the monarchy as a legitimating principle in its strategy of conservative
modernisation, Russia was the least successful state in developing a strategy to retain power and yet modernise the regime. It favoured repression
and exclusion, followed by bouts of ineffective reform. Austria was also
politically unsuccessful, and was compromised by class conflicts, nationalist struggles and a failure to develop a corporate strategy. Political success
152 Bryan S. Turner
required maintaining the corporate coherence of the ancien regime and a
partial incorporation of the bourgeoisie. These regimes, with the possible
exception of Germany, did not develop social citizenship in the form of a
welfare state, and civil citizenship in the shape of civil liberties was often
undercut by arbitrary political interventions. Despite these limitations,
Germany and Japan were relatively successful in their economic industrialisation in a period when working class opposition was weak, given the
relatively small size of the urban working class. The solidarity of the
working class was also undermined by internal differentiation resulting
from the growth of service sectors and the rise of the new middle class.
Revolutions and citizenship in Asia
Japan: the occupation and the imposition of citizenship
One of the most influential accounts in the historical sociology of democracy was Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1972). Broadly speaking, he argued that the paths towards either
democratic or authoritarian rule were determined historically by the relationship between landlord, peasant and bourgeoisie. The English case is
paradigmatic. The early destruction of the peasantry through enclosures
and sheep farming created a capitalist agrarian class and the early demilitarisation of the nobility. When the bourgeoisie came to confront the remnants of an aristocracy, the peasant class could not act as a break on
modernisation. In Germany by contrast, the continuity of the estate system
in east Germany allowed a conservative Junker class of landlords to exercise considerable power over parliamentary institutions.
Perhaps the most important elaboration of Moore’s argument has been
developed by Theda Skocpol in States and Social Revolutions (1979). She
has produced a distinctive theory of revolution through an examination of
social revolutions in three ancien regimes. Revolutions occur because states
are vulnerable to endogenous socio-economic processes, particularly the
management of internal class conflict. Her theory rejects any role to
human agency in revolutions. For example, revolutions are not produced
by the revolutionary will of revolutionaries themselves; revolution is the
unintended consequence of the decomposition of the state and its agrarian
bureaucracy. Instead she examines the causal constraints imposed by
objective historical circumstances. The three principal forms of constraint
are class relations, the repressive character of the state, and the external
military and other constraints on the state. Perhaps the key aspect of her
argument is to reject any attempt to absorb the state into society. The
repressive actions of the state have independent causal consequences for
revolutions and citizenship.
What is the implication of these arguments for an analysis of the rise of
citizenship and democracies in Asian societies? We need to attend to the
Citizenship East and West 153
nature of the breakdown of ancien regimes, their inclusion into an emerging
world capitalist system, and the revolutionary opportunities for creating civil
societies, civil liberties and an independent citizenry. One can argue that citizenship is the product of an emerging bourgeois class that is sufficiently
powerful to protect its civil liberties, and whose social dominance over civil
society eventually permits the social inclusion of subordinate classes and
ethnic minorities into the social order. Alternatively, the conservative institutions of the ancient regime are destroyed by internal civil war and external
invasion, permitting the emergence of a national consciousness and a
national civil society that draws various classes into civil society.
Japanese modernisation has received considerable attention from both
Western and Asian scholars. The creation of the nation-state is essential
for the development of modern citizenship based on contributory rights,
that is rights and duties involving taxation and social benefits, but in Japan
the concept of nation did not exist historically, and was to some extent
imported with Western culture after the Meiji Restoration in 1868–1873.
By contrast the state as a political system had existed on the Japanese archipelago from early times. The formation of the state of Japan began to
make progress from the latter half of the fourth century to the Taika
Reform of 645 through integrating many independent clans by the Yamato
Imperial Court. In East Asia, China and Korea had developed the highly
centralised system of the ancient state much earlier than in Japan, but
Japan had embraced this highly centralised system of empire from the
mainland. This Chinese state was essentially the patrimonial state (Weber
1978). The old Tokugawa shogunate was transformed during the Meiji
Restoration into a bureaucratic, centralised, nation-state, and this restoration was possible because of the absence of a politically efficacious upper
class in Tokugawa Japan.
The modern political history of Japan starts in fact somewhat earlier.
The country had been unified by three feudal barons (daimyo) who were
able to form a coalition of powerful lords. These daimyo were Oda
Nobunaga (1534–1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616). Their main achievements were twofold – to
gain greater administrative control of the land and thereby raise taxes, and
to prohibit the possession of swords. The result was the emergence of a
professional class of warriors, namely the samurai. Although Japanese and
European feudalism had much in common, in Japan the Emperor system
was much more highly developed, and there was no institutional religion
comparable with the Catholic Church. There were no castle cities in Tokugawa Japan. These economic and social circumstances suggest that no
concept of the nation-state existed under the imperial system, and consequently it also means that there was no concept of national society in the
Tokugawa period (Hayes 2005).
During the Tokugawa period, political control was enhanced by Japan’s
seclusion and opposition to Western cultural and economic contacts. This
154 Bryan S. Turner
insularity produced an almost mystical form of nationalism, in which
Japan was seen as the land of the rising sun. The Chinese doctrine of the
Middle Kingdom was taken over by the Japanese elite to emphasise the
power and uniqueness of the Japanese state. A shared sentiment of nationalism was constituted in addressing the crisis of national defence once
European and American ships began to penetrate Japanese waters. The
consciousness of nation and nationalism in Japan was created with the
recognition of the need for modernisation and the industrialisation of
Japan. The formation of the nation-state in Japan was directly connected
with an awareness of the need to create a modern industrial system. The
industrial revolution in the 1890s came only three decades after national
integration during the Meiji Restoration.
After Commodore Perry’s visit in 1853, the eventual termination of the
shogunate meant the restoration of imperial powers. The elements of participatory institutions were introduced during this period. The Charter
Oath of 1868 created deliberative assemblies, the control of the state was
to be influenced by both upper and lower orders, traditional customs were
to be abandoned, and there were to be universal laws applying to all. The
samurai were disbanded, and encouraged to take on new roles in society.
In 1873 universal male conscription was introduced, creating not only a
mass basis for the military, but also for the state. A law of 1889 recognised
the emperor as sovereign, both symbolically and legally. The state’s
bureaucracy adopted a Prussian model. Universal suffrage for men was
introduced in 1925.
Modernisation in Japan did not however involve any significant democratic institutionalisation and its rapid industrialisation resulted in an
authoritarian and imperialist system. Japan’s military successes in the SinoJapanese War (1894–1895), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) and the
annexation of Korea in 1910 strengthened the hand of the military elite
and reinforced the significance of the emperor. Modernisation was also
seen to require social harmony through the leadership of the state and the
emperor, and opposition was seen to be subversive. As a result, citizenship
in Japan was largely passive and top-down, in the sense that it involved
loyalty to the emperor and to the society; civil liberties remained underdeveloped. For example, in 1890 the Emperor had issued the Imperial
Rescript on Education and employing the word shinmin to denote loyal
officials or citizens who followed their orders obediently. Japanese nationalism and the powerful identification with the Emperor as a symbol of
unity were effective in creating the illusion of ethnic and cultural homogeneity (Weiner 1997).
Perhaps the most significant event in modern Japanese political history
was the American occupation which aimed to dismantle Japanese military
imperialism, demobilise the six and a half million Japanese soldiers and
institutionalise democracy and civil liberties. Occupation produced the
paradox of an enforced system of democracy as a consequence of military
Citizenship East and West 155
defeat in line with the Potsdam Declaration of 1945. Democracy was thus
imposed by decree, by a military power with overwhelming superiority of
force, and by a new ruler (General McArthur) who was in some respects a
shogun (Dower 2003). If the model of Western development in the nineteenth century had been European, after 1945 it was overwhelmingly
American. Democracy in Japan as a result is seen to be an external, foreign
import, not a political system that has deep roots in Japanese culture. The
weakness of the political system is illustrated by the absence of vigorous
opposition, a history of the corruption of politicians, the late and shallow
development of women’s rights, lack of tolerance of outsiders and cultural
diversity, and the passivity of the judiciary. There is also a relatively weak
civil society as measured by voluntary associations and NGOs.
China: from Confucianism to modern citizenship
Citizenship involves a set of duties and rights. We can explore how the
rights of individuals evolve in society, or we can examine how governments come to be held accountable, and how their duty to provide citizenship with the conditions that provide both security and prosperity
comes to be recognised and enforced. Confucianism in China established a
tradition in which the just ruler exercised care towards his subjects. In this
respect Confucian thought recognised a mutual obligation between ruler
and people. Nevertheless, a distinctive notion of citizenship did not arise in
China until the nineteenth century through Western influence. Intellectuals
abandoned the moral discourse of Confucianism in favour of a secular,
national and utilitarian notion of the participatory community in which
governments were to be committed to ‘wealth and power’ (fuqiang).
Although the notion of citizenship was imported, Chinese intellectuals
argued that there were important national traditions that supported the
emergence of citizenship. These included: a sense of national identity based
on language and ethnicity; a state with a bureaucracy that was independent of the ruler; and there was a recognition of the separation between
state, emperor and administration. Intellectuals also came to reject the
legacy of the literati – the trained, exemplary gentleman scholar – in
favour of the idea of civic virtue and public morality that applies to everybody, governor and the people.
Chinese philosophy had a notion of contract (minyue), but unlike the
Hobbesian contract, this grew out of harmony not conflict. The notion of
rights did not emerge from struggles in which individuals make claims
against the state, but from the notion of shared interests. The Western idea
of utilitarian individualism was generally condemned as simply selfishness.
The idea of the ‘sovereign individual’ did not exist in China; instead individuals are always defined within relationships of mutuality. Even after the
Communist Revolution the idea of paternal authority remained strong.
National unity and the nation were typically conceived in kinship terms.
156 Bryan S. Turner
Citizens are like kinsmen who are bound together not by economic interest
but by mutuality. Chinese intellectuals were influenced by J-J. Rousseau,
especially the emphasis on popular participation. Chinese intellectuals ‘did
not find the cure for oppression to lie in rights but rather sought a cure for
disunity and familism in peoplehood’ (Zarrow 1997: 14).
Intellectuals such as Liang Qichao (1873–1929) thought of citizenship
in terms of the development of the Chinese state, whereas Zhang Binglin
(1869–1936) emphasised the nation, which was conceived in racial terms.
Both thinkers saw the need to strengthen and rationalise the state in the
context of international competition and conflict. Qichao taught that
nation and citizenship were necessarily connected, and in the time of the
late Qing government the extension of suffrage was connected with the
idea of nation-building through popular citizenship and modernisation.
With the crisis of the early 1900s when the Qing state began to collapse
under domestic and foreign pressure, Qichao sought to create an active citizenry. In Liang Qichao’s writing there is an important emphasis on the
idea of the citizen as a new creation with a moral purpose. He used the
term xinmin to refer to ‘citizen’ and ‘new person’. He also referred to
guomin to make the connection between people, the nation and citizen. At
the time the discourse of citizen also included the notion of shimin (‘urban’
or ‘city person’). The creation of educated, autonomous and moral citizens
was an essential foundation for a free and independent nation surrounded
by threats from outside. Liang Qichao saw citizens as members of a constitutional order whose development was possible only outside a despotic
system. Wang Jingwei writing in 1905 referred to ‘people’ (minzu), which
joins both race and nation, and guomin, which conflates nation and citizen
to describe a constitutional framework within which ‘racial citizens’ could
enjoy rights that were not available to subjects in a despotic system.
The development of civil society, at least in the political tradition of de
Tocqueville (see for example 2003), is important in creating the conditions
– such as a public space – within which citizens can participate in social
life, and at the same time acquire the skills and dispositions that are necessary for active citizenship. In China, the development of scholarly study
associations (xuehui) appears to have played an important role in creating
an autonomous space between state and society within which the individual could acquire civic virtues. In organising cultural activities such as
editing newspapers, publishing books and organising lectures, Chinese
intellectuals in the period 1890–1910 created a platform for inculcating
ordinary citizens in a civic culture. It was these study societies led by
Chinese gentry in late Imperial China rather than the voluntary association
of liberal philosophy that stimulated the emergence of a creative, dynamic
public space (Rowe 1993).
The need to understand and implement citizenship in China arose to
meet certain specific needs: to define national membership, to establish
rights and duties for its members, and to encourage participation in state
Citizenship East and West 157
and society. In China there had been no real sense of the polis that had
been important in the political philosophy of classical Greece and Rome,
and the great issue in public debate had been around the respective duties
of the emperor and literati. The Communist state had created popular participation at certain levels of politics and the economy. It established
popular nationalism, an effective bureaucracy, and government control
over local society. Although there have been important developments in
civil society in China since Mao, there are chronic problems confronting
citizenship: a large, subservient and poorly educated working class and
rural population, absence of independent trade unions, the inability of the
system to secure smooth, predictable and legitimate transitions of power,
and an absence of basic civil liberties.
The limitations on citizenship in China in the twentieth century were
related to the nature of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, the importance of
the peasantry as a class, and the devastating impact of war and anticolonial struggle. There were important similarities between the French,
Russian and Chinese revolutions, but the Chinese communist regime was a
‘politicised bureaucracy’ that was not a conducive environment for civil
rights. Unlike Russia, the Chinese Communist Party had direct and effective linkages to the peasantry and villages, and the revolution organised the
peasantry to overthrow the traditional hierarchical control of the gentry.
Indonesia: resistance, revolution and rights
In Imagined Communities Anderson (1983) argued, on the basis of a
historical study of the struggle for Javanese independence from Japan, that
nations are created or imagined rather than naturally occurring entities
waiting to be discovered. Although nationalists typically like to think of
their nation as existing from the dawn of time, nations are the products of
modern revolutions. He defined a nation as an ‘imagined political
community’ that is both limited and sovereign.
It is imagined because, even in the case of small nations, the fellowmembers cannot know each other, but they consider themselves or imagine
themselves to be members of the nation. This community is limited in
having boundaries, and it is sovereign, because the state attempts to assert
its legitimate power over a territory. Finally, it is a community, because
irrespective of social class divisions, members of a nation imagine themselves to be what Anderson calls a ‘horizontal community’. For example,
Indonesians, who occupy a complex and sprawling archipelago of islands
with diverse cultures and religions, acquired a national consciousness as a
result of their struggle against Japanese and Dutch occupation from
1944–1946. The Indonesian nation is an imagined community in this
sense.
An argument derived from Skocpol and Anderson would suggest that
Indonesia is the only Asian society that through a revolutionary conflict
158 Bryan S. Turner
with Japan and The Netherlands emerged as a society with a definite sense
of nationhood and nationality, that is a society in which kinship and other
primordial bonds had been replaced by civil bonds. Indonesian civil society
had become a society of citizens not simply a society of kinsmen. The case
would prove that (bottom-up or activist) citizenship is a political effect of
radical change, that is change brought about by revolutionary struggle. Of
course, the actual history of the Indonesian national revolution
(1945–1950) is a good deal more complicated. The collapse of the Japanese military order led to the expression of revolutionary demands, often
inspired by Marxist theories of revolution, for popular sovereignty
(kedaulatan rakyat), involvement and radical change. By contrast, conservatives feared that the termination of Japanese rule would produce social
chaos. There was an unspoken assumption among the Indonesian political
elite that the ethnic and religious complexity of Indonesia could only be
managed by the Dutch-educated urban elite, and that a revolutionary
movement of the masses would result in violence that would compromise
the longer-term struggle for national independence through diplomatic
means. This was a struggle between revolution and diplomacy, and
between different generations. Nevertheless, what Anthony Reid (1986)
has called a ‘social revolution’ appears to have taken place at the village
level where village headmen, who had implemented Japanese rule during
the occupation, were removed. The result was a social revolution ‘in the
manner in which authority was wielded. It had overturned the relationship
between youth and maturity; between heroic spirit and legal expertise;
between charisma and authority’ (Reid 1986: 75). The longer-term result
was that the traditional, hierarchical structures of society had been shown
to be precarious, and through revolutionary action Indonesian citizenship
had become a real possibility and not simply a radical theory.
Conclusion: cosmopolitanism and citizenship
In crude terms, we could conclude that Japanese democratic citizenship
was imposed from outside as a result of military defeat. Chinese citizenship, although it began to emerge in intellectual debate in the 1890s,
was a top-down creation of a politicised bureaucracy. In Indonesia, citizenship was produced by a social revolution against the conservative
intentions of established elites that was made possible as the consequence
of resistance to foreigners.
It would be all too easy to conclude from this historical sketch that citizenship is a Western invention that was imported into Asia towards the
end of the nineteenth century. Against this interpretation, we need to
develop a more global and critical understanding of the problem. First,
European political philosophers are fond of identifying the origins of
Western citizenship with classical Greece and Rome, but this connection is
false. The classical world was a slave society in which the majority of the
Citizenship East and West 159
population were subjected to the polis and not part of it. Second, while I
have argued that revolutions create citizenship, we must remember that
most revolutions fail. The English revolution resulted in a restoration of
monarchy after Cromwell became an autocratic political leader, and the
French Revolution ended in terror. The American Revolution did not
provide a solution to the underlying problem of slavery, which required a
tragic civil war to transform the slave economy of the South. Third, the
system of Western citizenship is under considerable strain from multiculturalism, a greying population and economic recession (Turner 2001). It is
thus more accurate and more promising to argue that in the West and the
East the notion of social citizenship as a form of nation-building was
embraced in the late nineteenth century by intellectuals who were committed to social change and political reform, and as a result it has become a
global political concept. Revolutionary struggles in both West and East
have propelled the idea of participatory citizenship into a global political
discourse.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank various members of the Asia Research Institute, especially Professor Anthony Reid, for their assistance in preparing this paper.
Prof. David Anthony Kelly, visiting fellow at the East Asia Institute,
National University Singapore, generously helped me with the literature
search on China. I am also grateful to Chen Hon Fai, Chinese University
of Hong Kong, for abstracts from a doctoral thesis on Cultivating the
People. Study Association and Gentry Culture in Late Imperial China.
References
Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism, London: Verso.
Dower, J. W. (2003) Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New
York: Diane.
Hayes, L. D. (2005) Introduction to Japanese Politics, Armonk, New York: M. E.
Sharpe.
Moore, B. (1972) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, London: Allen
Lane.
Reid, A. (1986) Indonesian National Revolution 1945–50, Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press.
Rowe, W. (1993) ‘The Problem of “Civil Society” in Late Imperial China’, Modern
China, 19(2): 139–57.
Skocpol, T. (1979) States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of
France, Russia and China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tocqueville, A. de (2003) Democracy in America, London: Penguin Books.
Turner, B. S. (1986) Citizenship and Capitalism: The Debate over Reformism,
London: Allen & Unwin.
160 Bryan S. Turner
Turner, B. S. (2001) ‘The Erosion of Citizenship’, British Journal of Sociology,
52(2): 189–209.
Weber, M. (1958) The City, Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.
Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Weber, M. (1981) General Economic History, New Brunswick: Transaction
Books.
Weiner, M. (ed.) (1997) Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity, London:
Routledge.
Woodiwiss, A. (1998) Globalisation, Human Rights and Labour Law in Pacific
Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zarrow, P. (1997) ‘Citizenship in China and the West’, in J. A. Fogel and P. G.
Zarrow (eds) Imagining the People: Chinese Intellectuals and the Concept of
Citizenship, 1890–1920, Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, pp. 3–38.
11 Middle Eastern modernities,
Islam and cosmopolitanism
Masoud Kamali
Since the appearance of Islam in the Middle East and the Islamic revolutionary movements that swept through three continents and created new
sociopolitical formations in many Muslim countries, the relation between
Islam and political systems has been widely discussed and debated. Prior
to the modernization movements and the entrance of European powers
on the political scene of Islamic countries, Islamic formations, such as
the Arabic Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire, created
relatively long-standing socio-economic and political stability in the
Middle East. This stability was to a great deal based on the existence of a
relatively well-organized civil society with powerful groups, namely
ulama and bazaris, and the established relationships between civil society
and the state that were legally, religiously and normatively legitimized.
The huge internal market, mainly controlled by the bazaris, and the web
of relationships between bazaars made a suitable ground for increasing
contacts, exchange of commodities and services, as well as internal
migration in the Islamic empires, including Egypt. Bazaars were not only
engaged in internal exchange, but also in contacts with foreign merchants, including Chinese, Indians and Italians, to mention a few. Many
people were on the move and in contact with others in other parts of the
Ottoman and the Persian empires and developed a cosmopolitan worldview necessary for the economic activities of the bazaars. In addition, the
political doctrines and systems had to have cosmopolitan characteristics
in order to manage the substantial ethnic and religious diversities of
those empires.
The spreading of capitalism as a world system intensified international
trade and increased the bazaars’ exchange with European economic
centers. However, the colonial and imperialist interests of the nonOttoman European powers, in particular England and France, favored
their own merchants and harmed the bazaris. Bazaris needed modern
changes and political support in order to compete with expanding European trade and to increase their political engagements. They first used the
established communication channels with the state, such as direct or indirect negotiations through the ulama. The political weakness of the state
162 Masoud Kamali
and its selective military modernization led to the growing unease with the
state and gradually to nationwide social movements which demanded
the establishment of a constitutional regime. These movements resulted in the
establishment of constitutional governments in both the Ottoman Empire
and Persia in 1908 and 1905 (Kamali 1998, 2006; Abrahamian 1983).
One of the major properties of both the Ottoman and the Persian constitutional movements was the establishment and legitimization of the
compatibility of Islam and modernity. Modernization ideas and views
transformed the traditional religious doctrines and created modern interpretations of Islam that appealed for modern sociopolitical changes. The
necessity of approaching Christian Europe and the universalism of modernity and Islam provided new ways to interpret the place of the individual
in society. New cosmopolitan ideologies and political views such as unionism, liberalism and socialism were debated and developed in the Ottoman
Empire and Persia. The post-constitutional era in both empires witnessed
the spread of cosmopolitan ideas in accordance with a definition that
indicates a claim to universality by virtue of independence, and a detachment from the bonds, commitments and affiliations that constrain ordinary nation-bound lives (Cheah and Robbins 1998). The constitutional
movements in Islamic countries generated a new Islamic/modern identity
politics with strong universal views. However, there was no consensus
over the political doctrines of those engaged in the movements. There were
mainly two political groups with different sociopolitical interpretations
and modernization programs for the countries. One group was constituted
of those who advocated a completely secular modernization with the
French political system as a model. The other group believed in a combination of modern ideas and transformations with Islam. This political and
ideological differentiation is perhaps the most lasting controversy in
Islamic countries today. Although there have been devastating conflicts
between the two groups, both have strong universal ideas and creeds.
Therefore it can be said that modernity and universalism were an inseparable part of new social movements in Islamic countries. These ideas were
often transformed to religiously legitimized political doctrines that were
relatively free from their Eurocentric constituencies.
Particularism of Islam and universalism of modernity
According to many established and seemingly ‘scientific’ explanations of
the modernization of Islamic countries, such as those presented by Lewis
(1953) and Huntington (1993), social movements against governmental
modernization initiatives and programs have been considered anti-modern.
This is mainly a result of the lack of accurate historical and sociological
knowledge about the social movements in many Muslim countries and an
indication of the belief in the established dichotomy of modern/traditional
in the social sciences.
Middle Eastern modernities 163
The reactions to governmental modernization projects in Muslim countries have not been anti-modern, but anti-authoritarian against governments and leaders who tried to restructure their societies in accordance
with specific understandings of modernization. Social movements, including movements led by the clergy, have been mainly reactions against
authoritarian modernization and dictatorship, and have demanded participation in collective decision-making in Muslim countries. Although a few
anti-modern reactions can be singled out from the mainstream body of
social movements for democracy and modernization, they were marginalized and disappeared at a very early stage. The Islamic movements have
had a history of modern ideas and programs for modernization that often
is ignored by social scientists. However, there are some studies exploring
the modern features of the new Islamic movements (for instance, Kamali
1998, 2001; Eisenstadt 1999, 2002; Abrahamian 1993).
Notwithstanding, as a result of a tradition of Orientalism and other
dualistic ‘scientific’ constructions of ‘the Muslim world’ as the other side
of rationality and reason, dubious pundits that provide and reinforce a
simple ‘us-and-them’ model have been established. Even some of the
contemporary scholars who believe in the particularity of ‘the Muslim
world’, such as Gellner, Lewis, Huntington and Dahrendorf, present
astonishingly simple models, typically based on a simple dichotomous
world – Orientalism reinvented. The simple models and more generally,
incorrect theories of Lewis, Dahrendorf and Huntington have real consequences when adopted or bought by powerful international agents. The
results are: miscalculations and tragic unintended consequences, such as
economic failure, political chaos, war and coup d’état. They pay selective
attention to history forgetting the negative, destructive role of European
powers and the USA in many instances.
As Geertz (2003: 30) stresses,
any attempt to conceive of ‘Islam’ in sweeping, ‘civilization’ terms –
Lewis’s, Simon’s, Akbar’s, Armstrong’s, or anyone else’s – is in some
danger of conjuring up cloudscapes mighty like a whale and concocting Joycean big words that make us all afraid. A descent into the swirl
of particular incident, particular politics, particular voices, particular
traditions, and particular arguments, a movement across the grain of
difference and along the lines of dispute, is indeed disorienting and
spoils the prospect of abiding order. But it may prove the surer path
toward understanding ‘Islam’ – that resonant name of some things at
once.
Islam is not a simple religious phenomenon, but different social and cultural constructions in different countries that cannot be forced into the
simple category of the ‘Muslim world’. Muslim societies and their modern
histories are as diverse and multiple as anywhere else in the world. The
164 Masoud Kamali
importance of looking comparatively at modernization processes is thus to
see the discontents, diversities and competitive forces and models.
Tragic developments among European and North American societies in
their modernization initiatives, and also uneven and croaked developments
in ‘the West’ and other countries in the ‘non-Western’ parts of the world,
among Islamic countries in particular, must be studied comparatively to
generate a comprehensive theory of multiple modernities as a global transformation and an inclusive cosmopolitanism behind the established
dualism of modern/traditional and/or occident/orient. The traditional and
established understandings and theoretical constructions of single and
West-centric modernity must be challenged – as they are in the face of new
sociopolitical and cultural developments of the world. Common institutional properties of modernities, such as democracy and market economy,
are incorporated in a variety of ways and forms of institutional contexts in
various societies. This generates different degrees of tension and conflict in
different societies. Even relatively homogeneous societies with a high
degree of cohesion, such as the Scandinavian countries, have had intense
conflicts around questions of industrialization, commodification, capitalist
development, democracy and other disruptions connected to modernization. We should not forget that Finland had a civil war during the previous
century. The dichotomous sociological tradition of Western societies
contra non-Western, Muslim, non-modern, non-developed, etc., have
resulted in ideal-typical theories about ‘the West’ that deny or minimize
the wayward and tragic developments in Europe: Spain, Portugal, Greece,
Hungary, Romania, Russia, not to speak of Germany and Italy after the
First World War.
The modern developments in Islamic countries cannot be reduced to an
isolated and particular phenomenon. They shared many common features,
ideological frameworks and universal claims with many other countries in
the world, including many Western countries.
The Euroversalism of modernity
The modern is usually considered a historical process starting in the northwestern part of Europe and spreading, with different degrees of divergence, all over the world (Wittrock 2000; Eisenstadt 2002; Therborn
1992; Giddens 1990). Although the diversities of modern development are
relatively well recognized among contemporary scholars of modernity, its
history and scientific research are highly Eurocentric and based on a view
of an institutionally unified world. Those social scientists who try to clarify
and theorize ‘alternative’ modernities, such as the Sonderweg thesis of
German modernity and ‘American exceptionalism’ (Lipset and Marks
2000), seem to assume that there is a universal norm and everything that
does not accord with it must be understood as aberrant (Delanty 2003: 4).
As Arnason (2002: 64) argues, the trends of modernity that have been
Middle Eastern modernities 165
most extensively analyzed, such as industrialization, urbanization and the
spread of education, as well as the increasing scale and scope of organization and communication, were based on views conducive to visions of a
unified world. Such views were also unreceptive to the very idea of significant divergence from the common patterns. Paradoxically, this tradition of
the ‘uniqueness of the West’ has created a theoretical challenge to the real
complexity and diversity of modernity. In other words, the tradition of a
single modernity has created theoretical exclusionary dichotomies, such as
those between modern and traditional and between ‘West and the rest’.
Such dichotomies were part and parcel of the classical sociology that
influenced the theories of modernity. For example, classical theorists, such
as Spencer, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Toennies, in their
attempts to theorize the new revolutionary system, the modernity, all used
dichotomous categories. The features by which the modern world was separated from the pre-modern ones were of great interest to classical theorists and therefore one of their major endeavors was to point out the
differences between modern and pre-modern societies, categorized as
‘traditional societies’. Theoretical constructions and dichotomies such as
traditional/modern, mechanical/organic and Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft
came to dominate the sociological field for a very long time. This was
despite the fact that the founding fathers of social theory recognized the
controversies of modernity itself in terms of ‘alienation’, ‘anomie’, ‘iron
cage’ and ‘anonymity’ (Lyon 1994: 28). Accordingly, an established linear
evolutionist understanding of human history underpinned sociological
arguments concerning the reasons for the emergence of the modern society
in Europe. The interest for dichotomous differences between ‘we’ modern
Europeans and the traditional ‘rest’ encouraged many social scientists to
use even older concepts and paradigms. The established dichotomy of
Occident/Orient was widely used, although in new terms and contexts, by
many classics to explain the differences between modern European and
traditional oriental societies, in particular Islamic societies. Such ideas provided a ‘scientific’ and ideological frame for European colonialism.
The relatively long period of internal peace between European powers,
created by the Treatise of Wesphalia (1648) and victorious European colonial campaigns against weaker states, reinforced the European self-image
of having a universal creed. Europeans were about to ‘civilize’ and ‘Christianize’ the world in accordance with their Eurocentric blueprints.
However, to be modern came to be something impossible for ‘the rest’ of
the world because the only way for ‘the rest’ to be civilized and modern
was based on the authoritative formula of ‘first become like us, then civilized’. The universalism was therefore nothing else than a ‘Euroversalism’,
by which a Eurocentric understanding of an evolutionary development was
extended to be a universal truth. Contrary to common understanding, the
universalism of the Enlightenment was particular and nothing clear in
itself. As Deleuze (1992: 162) puts it, universal claims, such as the One,
166 Masoud Kamali
the All, the True, the object and the subject, are not universals, but singular
processes of unification, totalization, verification, objectification and subjectification (Deleuze 1992). The European universal creed was thus noting
more than ‘the imperialism of universalism’, to use Bourdieu (1998: 19),
that was experienced by ‘the rest’ of the world as colonial wars and occupation. However, the European war machinery and the industrialization of
mass killing did not remain in the colonies and turned home to Europe.
The devastating First World War in Europe put an end to the optimistic
belief in a peaceful and rapid development towards a better future that
dominated the discourses of modernity in Europe. The appearance of new
competing ideologies and blueprints for development such as Marxism,
Nazism and Fascism, and the execution of such systems of governance,
were partly a direct result of the failure and discretion of ‘liberal universal’
modernity. However, the tradition of a singular modernity was restored
after the Second World War. Many scholars tried to create a coherent
theoretical system that could serve to explain – in line with Weberian tradition – the uniqueness of Western civilization compared with other civilizations. Such researchers were not much concerned about the internal
differences between Western countries. Rather, they tried to construct an
ideal type of ‘the West’ that was theoretically and discursively separated
from non-Western countries. The new wave of social theorists did not even
follow the classical sort of Jekyll and Hyde theory of being modern.
Instead, recognizing the advantages of ‘progress’, in the Cold War era they
created a ‘Dr Jekyll only’ social theory (Taylor 1999: 14). The rather
heterogeneous development of Western countries, such as developmental
patterns called the French model, English model, German model, Swedish
model and so forth, were not the main subject of research and/or the interest of the economic and political elites in a world where Western capitalism was challenged by its counterpart, and equally modern, ‘socialist
world’. The fact that there hardly existed ‘a West’ but several Western patterns of socio-economic and cultural developments was overlooked in
comparative research and debates in both the classics of modernization
theory and their post-Second World War followers.
The paradigm of universalism considered Western experiments to be a
blueprint for non-Western countries to follow. Many evolutionist social
theorists and in particular sociologists tried to present it as the only way
towards a lasting system in all human societies and the ultimate goal of
history, in Hegelean terminology. Even research methodology has been
affected by ‘the universal’ in modernists’ comparative studies. Researchers
tried to identify objects and units, such as the state and national societies,
and accordingly point out universal attributes, such as political system,
bureaucracy and social classes, that were assumed to have similar structures and functions in every socio-economic and cultural context, in a
comparative manner. The comparison, however, was based on a linear
evolutionist understanding of history. As Bach (1980: 297) puts it:
Middle Eastern modernities 167
The research consisted of a search for dichotomous classifications of
types of societies. Given the preoccupation of many classical theorists
with the emergence of industrial society, these typologies were formed
as polar ends in an evolutionary path from an immature to mature
form: preindustrial to industrial, traditional to modern, folk to urban,
etc. These types of societies formed the ground for comparative analysis. Whatever was common to developed societies but absent in the
developed areas became a functional prerequisite for development.
Accordingly, ‘empirical universals’ had no capacity to explain variations
between societies within ‘a category’. Every society existed somewhere on
the given horizontal line of development (Westernization). Both liberals
and Marxists believed that modernization has a historical mission for creating a better and more developed world. Herbert Spencer (1878) already
in the nineteenth century criticized patriotism as egoistic nationalism and
considered it incompatible with the spirit of modern society and modern
science. Although the comparative universal methodology was advocated
by scholars such as Spencer, the universe for him and others was not wider
than Europe. This Euroversalism, which constituted the core of classical
social theory, came to dominate social sciences and create a tradition of
scientific otherism.
This tradition of scientific otherism took different shapes and was
organized around different constructed contents. The others, as the other
side of science, reason and rationality, were defined, although in different
ways, by many social scientists and philosophers of Enlightenment and
modernity, from Lineaus, Kant, Montsqiue, Hegel, Marx and Weber to
Giddens, Dahrandorf and Huntington. From Lineaus’ categorization of
‘human races’ with different hierarchical biological differences, through
Marx’s theory of ‘Asiatic mode of production’, which was characterized
by stagnation, the absence of dynamic class struggle and the domination of
a swollen state acting as a sort of universal landlord (Hall 1996: 222), to
Giddens’ and Dahrandorf’s claim for the defense of ‘the Western values’
indicate the otherism of the modern scientific history of Europe.
The dichotomous civilizational thinking, and the ‘uniqueness’ of a
single European modernity went so far that Marx and Engels defended
colonialism as a ‘progressive power of change and the progress of civilization’ (Feuer 1971: 489). The legitimization of colonialism was, according to Marx and Engels, based on the assumption that the social
formations of the ‘Oriental world’ are stagnant and that capitalism has a
historical role to play in smashing the pre-capitalist modes of production
(Turner 1978: 5).
Not only the critical theory of Marxism, but also other less revolutionary theories, such as those of Durkheim and Weber, have influenced our
judgment about other ‘less developed’ or ‘traditional societies’, among
those Muslim countries. The European social science tradition has not
168 Masoud Kamali
only influenced Western European understanding of the evolution of societies, it has also greatly influenced the ruling strata’s and Westernizing
intellectual elites in many Muslim countries. Both the Persian and the
Ottoman intellectual elites were highly influenced by, among others, Emile
Durkheim’s evolutionist theory. They believed in Durkheim’s formulation
of ‘the law of history’ in his major work, The Division of Labor in Society:
‘Thus it is a law of history that mechanical solidarity, which at first is isolated, or almost so, should progressively lose ground, and organic solidarity gradually become preponderant’ (1984: 126).
Drawing on such an understanding of the evolutionary changes from
‘lower’ to ‘higher’ societies and from traditional to modern ones made the
authoritative modernizers, such as Reza Shah in Iran and Ataturk in
Turkey, believe that they had to lead the ‘people by the hand until their
feet are sure and they know the way. Then they can choose for themselves’
(cited in Tomlin 1946). The influence of the Durkheimian dichotomy of
modern/traditional in many Muslim countries was not only limited to the
political leaders, but also affected many indigenous intellectuals and social
scientists of those countries. As a result of colonial intervention, the
dominant mode of sociological analysis amongst indigenous, professional
sociologists has been Durkheimian. This influence of Durkheimian sociology is considerable amongst French-trained sociologists in Algeria and
Tunisia, but it has also had a profound impact on sociology and historical
scholarship in Turkey through the pioneering work of Ziya Göklap and
Fuat Köprulu (Turner 1978: 2).
The uncritical adaptation of European social science theories by Muslim
intellectuals from Morocco to Egypt, Turkey and Iran has created many
problems for the sociologists of these countries. ‘In the absence of an
autonomous local tradition of social analysis, it is hardly surprising that
many Arab intellectuals have turned toward Marxism to provide a critique
of the dominant Durkheimian and functionalist sociological tradition’
(Turner 1978: 2). Although, the Marxist critique of the established functionalist messianic understanding of modernity reinforced alternative interpretations of modernity – including the Islamic ones – European blueprints
remained the most powerful modernization models. However, the European models were mixed with local socio-economic and cultural conditions and created new paths of modernity which deviated in many ways
from their European counterpart. For instance, Kemalism combined the
French model (secularism), the Italian Fascist model (dictatorial, military
and highly centralized state) and the Soviet model (economic planning).
Accordingly, there is neither a European model of modernity valid for
every country and all social conditions nor an Islamic model in the imagined ‘Islamic world’. Although, the European social sciences have had substantial impact on the socio-economic and political developments of many
Muslim countries, these abstract theories were reformulated and used in
certain social and cultural contexts. Influential agents in those countries’
Middle Eastern modernities 169
civil and political spheres reshaped the imported modernity models and
blueprints and adjusted them to established socio-economic and cultural
conditions. There is no unilinear, evolutionary path from ‘traditional
society’ to ‘modern society’ and the modern history demonstrates that ‘all
the assumptions about the relevance and significance of European models
of development (‘the bourgeois revolution’, ‘secularization’, ‘modernization’) fall to the ground’ (Turner 1978: 81–2). Instead new models and
political doctrines have been constructed for the modernization of many
Muslim countries.
Selective and authoritative modernities
Almost all Muslim countries were built on the ruins of the Ottoman and,
to a lesser extent, the Persian empires. They went through many modernization periods and models both as parts of those empires and as
independent states. Accordingly, the term multiple modernities is appropriate to frame the modernity programs in those countries. It frames not only
the variations of modernities in different countries, but also indicates
various modernization programs conducted by modernization agents, in
particular the state, in the same country. Modernity was not a homogeneous phenomenon or process that every agent and sociopolitical group
agreed upon. It was understood and defined selectively, based on different
ideological understandings of modernity. Countries, such as Egypt, Iran
and Turkey, did not experience one modernization but several. Muhammad Ali’s modernization in Egypt was very different from Nasser’s modernization. Moreover, in Iran Qajars’ (1792–1924), Pahlavis’
(1924–1979), and the Islamic Republic’s modernization paths showed
tremendous variation. In Turkey too, the Ottoman modernization had
very little in common with Kemalist modernization. The military-nationalist
Ba’athi modernization of Syria (1963–) and Iraq (1952–2004) were also
other models of modernization and were generated as a result of colonial
occupation. The modernization of Muslim countries did not follow a predestined model and process, but can be divided into different periods with
specific and various properties. For instance, the modernization of Iran can
be characterized in the four following periods: (1) The Persian preconstitutional modernization, (2) the constitutional modernization, (3) the
authoritative Pahlavi modernization, and (4) the Islamic modernization.
The same can be said about Turkey. The Turkish modernization can be
categorized in the following periods with various and specific properties:
(1) The Ottoman Imperial modernization, (2) the constitutional modernization, (3) the Kemalist modernization, and (4) the post-Kemalist modernization.
The pre-constitutional modernizations in both the Ottoman Empire and
Persia were a selective modernization of the army and the administration
system. The modernization of the army and the administrative system were
170 Masoud Kamali
called in both empires, Nizam-i jadid (New order) and Tanzimat (bureaucratic order). The reform policy was mainly a consequence of the inefficiency of the armies in confrontations with the new European powers and
ineffective bureaucracy. The crisis of governance in both empires, and the
risk of disintegration, led to social movements for constitutionalism that
resulted in the change of the traditional political system and the establishment of constitutional regimes in Persia in 1905 and in the Ottoman
Empire in 1908. The constitutional regimes’ main attempts in both countries were to modernize the organization of government and the political
system. The First World War and its devastating consequences for the
Ottoman Empire and Persia, and the disintegration of the post-war period,
resulted in the establishment of new visionary and authoritative regimes in
both countries and in the creation of modern nation-states.
The War of Independence in Turkey, led by Kemal Ataturk
(1922–1936) and Ismet Inonu, brought a revolutionary military group to
power that in the early 1920s changed the traditional political system of
Kalifat and established the Turkish Republic within the remains of the
Ottoman Empire. In Persia, a military leader, Reza Khan (1924–1941), led
a coup d’état in 1922 and succeeded in abolishing the reign of the corrupted Qajar dynasty (1792–1924) in 1924. He then established a new
monarchy and changed the name of the country from Persia to Iran. The
Pahlavi and Kemalist modernizations in Iran and Turkey had several similarities and differences. Both regimes attempted at first to create political
stability, which they considered a precondition for modernizing their countries. The establishment of different political systems in Iran (monarchy)
and Turkey (republic) gradually destroyed almost all organized political
opposition and created dictatorial regimes which could do whatever they
saw necessary for the socio-economic and cultural modernization of their
countries.
The negative experiences of post-revolutionary democratic constitutionalism in Iran and Turkey that resulted in the disappearance of the two
countries as nation-states created the grounds for the establishment of new
authoritarian states and powerful leaders in the two countries in the early
1920s. Even the intelligentsias of the two countries were convinced of the
need for centralized and powerful states to fight disintegration. Accordingly, the takeover of political power in both Iran by Reza Shah and in
Turkey by Ataturk occurred without any major objections. Even the religious groups accepted the secular states of Reza Shah and Ataturk. Democracy was considered unfavorable for the modernization of the country
and the creation of a powerful state.
Meanwhile, in Iran the democratic change came as a result of the occupation of the country by Allies and the abdication of Reza Shah in 1941.
In Turkey, as a result of foreign pressures, the government introduced free
elections and allowed opposition parties to be established after the Second
World War. This resulted in the seizure of power by a moderate Islamic
Middle Eastern modernities 171
party, the Democratic Party, led by Adnan Menderes, in the election of
1950. For the first time in the Republic’s history, the Kemalists were
defeated by a moderate Islamist. Menderes also won the 1957 elections,
but was overthrown by a military coup d’état in 1960 and executed. This
created a democratic challenge to the Kemalist ideology and many antidemocratic military coups in order to defend ‘the constitution’ and the tradition of Kemalist fundamentalist secularism that formed the Turkish
political sphere during the whole second half of the twentieth century.
However, the premiership of Menderes in 1950 was the turning point in
the political history of the Turkish Republic and a change in the Kemalist
fundamental programs. Post-Kemalist modernization was more democratic
and moderate Islamic parties, such as Rifah Partisi (welfare party) and
Fezilet Partisi (virtue party), aimed at the democratization of the polity,
reducing military power, and decreasing the gap between the haves and the
have-nots.
Pahlavisian authoritarianism and rapid modernization in Iran
(1924–1979) and Kemalism in Turkey succeeded in creating the most
modern and powerful countries in the Middle East. Yet selective modernization also generated opposition and led to the disintegration of society.
Politically, the ‘fundamentalist secularism’ of Pahlavis and Kemalism
created religious opposition and their dictatorial regimes provoked leftist
and liberal oppositions. Economically, the ‘fundamentalist marketism’
increased the gap between social classes and created lasting segregation.
Rapid urbanization and land reform led to the mass movement of people
from rural areas to the cities and coupled with ultra-liberal market economic reforms created many shanty towns in the major cities. In Iran both
indigenous civil society groups, namely the ulama, the bazaris, intellectual
religious groups and the secular civil society groups (such as intellectuals
and political parties), were marginalized and excluded from the polity of
the country (Abrahamian 1983; Kamali 1998; Arjomand 1988; Algar
1969). This resulted in the uprisings of the 1970s which led to the Islamic
Revolution (1977–1979) that put an end to the thousands of year old
monarchy in Iran and established a republican regime.
The establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran created a new era of
political dictatorship and simultaneously a new form of authoritarian
modernization. Although the economic policy of the Shah continued more
or less under the new regime, the main efforts of the new regime were
directed at reinforcing its political power, which resulted in one of the
most substantial attacks on both the opposition from the indigenous civil
society groups, and even more on the Westernized civil society groups. The
new regime considered itself to be the ‘true representative’ of the Iranian
people with a historical zeal that gave the legitimacy to destroy all opposition and abolish any dualism between civil society and state. However, the
republican nature of the regime forced it to legitimize its reign by popular
elections and a modern constitution (Abrahamian 1993). In its desire to
172 Masoud Kamali
install a more authoritarian system, the Islamic regime used the war with
Iraq (1981–1989) as a good pretext for realizing its blueprint by mass arrest
and the execution of thousands of members of the political opposition.
However, the regime did not succeed in destroying all opposition. Using
the end of the war with Iraq and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989,
both civil societies of Iran, namely the indigenous and the ‘Western’ ones,
started to organize and protest against the dictatorship. In 1997 a religious
liberal group led by Muhammad Khatami succeeded in winning the election and seizing state power. This set the stage for a period of power
struggle between liberal groups and religious monopolists (enhesartalaban)
that continues today. The Khatami presidency probably put an end to a
revolutionary political dictatorship which had many similarities with
Fascist and communist political systems.
Modernities, histories and democracies
There is a general consensus that democracy has ‘European roots’. Europe,
West and democracy are often considered as synonymous concepts and
developments. This is based on an assumption that ‘Europe’s link to
unique (though restricted) democracies of classical Athens and republican
Rome were never really cut off’ (Therborn 1992: 65–6). This is, however,
a biased conceptualization of European democratic developments. Behind
these ideas, and behind modernization itself, there is a taken-for-granted
geohistorical perspective which combines a Whig history with a diffusionist geography. The former is defined as a history whose story celebrates the
present (Carr 1961; Taylor 1999). This takes the form of defining important features of contemporary society and tracing their lineage back in time
so that the story told is one that culminates in the success of today’s
society (Taylor 1999: 11). Even the uneven political and non-democratic
developments in the same European society, such as the differences
between south and north in Italy explored by Putnam (1993), are removed
from this selective diffutionist history. Accordingly, the European ‘democratic nature’ becomes the norm and the lack of democracy, both in the
pre-modern and modern period, such as the uprising and establishment of
totalitarian Fascist, Nazist and communists regimes, turns to the
‘deviances of the rules’.
Such an understanding of history overlooks the fact that, for instance,
in the period between the two World Wars in Europe, democratic institutions were relatively new and there existed little support for democracy at
the level of the international communities. Nazism, Fascism and communism were powerful currents, and the socio-economic conditions were not
sufficiently positive so as to guarantee democratic durability. Ertman’s
(1997) judgment is that Western Europe’s first-wave democracies were
highly susceptible to breakdown. Much the same can be said for the
Middle East’s fledgling parliamentary systems earlier this century. In one
Middle Eastern modernities 173
of the major European democracies, England, many citizens, such as
women, were excluded from franchisement as late as the early 1920s (De
Deken and Rueschmeyer 1992). However, political modernization is not
to be understood as a process of democratization. ‘The modern state is not
necessarily democratic. A history of democratization, therefore, is not synonymous with one of state modernization’ (Therborn 1992: 63). Notwithstanding, as a result of purifying ‘the West’ from the downside of its
modernity, namely its bloody history, slavery, mass killing and genocide,
modernization has been used as a parallel concept to development,
progress, humanism and democracy. Even democracy itself has been purified and its very selective and ‘racial’ basis has been until recently ignored
(see Arneil 1996 and Goldberg 1993).
This diffusionist and selective ‘self-presentation’, coupled with the
highly theorized and widely used tradition of Orientalism in Europe, has
created a dichotomous model in which ‘the West’ is confronted with ‘the
Orient’. Nowadays, the Orient is reduced to Islam across a theoretically
constructed paradoxical axis. Accordingly, the established belief in the
incompatibility of modernity and Islam, Islam and democracy, and civil
society and Islam is a consequence of a dichotomous theoretical and discursive construction and development in the social sciences (Said 1978;
Hussain et al. 1984; Turner 1984, 1994, 1999; Kamali 2001). Therefore,
the idea of different and paradoxical civilizations clashing with each other,
reformulated by Huntington (1993) among others, is nothing innovative,
but a reformulation of what already existed in the social sciences in the
Western part of the world. The ‘clash of civilizations’ is nothing more than
a result of seeing and judging the world through a narrow ‘Westerncentric’ window.
The fact is that Islamic believers and groups have been highly engaged
in the democratic movements of all Muslim countries. Already in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century in Persia and the Ottoman Empire,
moderate Muslim leaders and influential religious intellectuals such as
Tabatabai, Bihbahani and Hairi in Persia and Namik Kemal, Zia Pasa and
Nuri in the Ottoman Empire advocated constitutionalism and democratic
change. Constitutionalism was religiously legitimized as a necessary transformation (see Hairi 1977 in the case of Iran, and Kuntay 1944 and
Mardin 1989 in the case of Turkey). Muslim intellectuals advocated the
compatibility of Islam and constitutionalism and rejected simple implementations of Western blueprints. They were influenced by European
movements that they saw as more compatible with their countries’ conditions. For instance, Namik Kemal, who was one of the most influential
reformists among those claiming compatibility between Islam and modern
reforms in the Ottoman Empire, was influenced by Garibaldi and Silvio
Pellico, as well as Voltaire and Condorcet (Kuntay 1944).
A tradition of strong civil societies in both Persia and the Ottoman Empire
coupled with liberal changes introduced by governmental intellectuals and
174 Masoud Kamali
reformulated and legitimized by religious agents during the course of the
nineteenth century were among the conditions on which an organic democratic development could arise. The tradition of collective decision-making
in both empires was improved very early (Burns and Kamali 2003).
However, foreign interventions, wars and internal controversies made the
governmental reforms limited and unable to change the basis of the political structures of the two empires. This led to the uprising of popular
movements for constitutionalism that, as mentioned earlier, succeeded in
establishing the constitutional and democratic governments in 1905 in
Persia and 1908 in the Ottoman Empire. However, these changes were disrupted by wars and foreign interventions. Meanwhile, Great Britain and
Russia did their best to undermine constitutionalism in Persia, and the
First World War put an end to Ottoman constitutionalism. Other smaller
Muslim countries were not in a better situation. The colonial powers,
England and France, despite their democratic claims, hindered any attempt
at democratization and development in countries such as Egypt, Syria,
Algeria and Iraq. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were put under English
control, and Syria and Algeria were controlled by France.
Recent developments and a need for cosmopolitanism
The war on terror has reinforced the already existing divisions in civil societies of many Muslim countries. Meanwhile the Westernized civil societies
are moving towards a more fundamentalist secularism with the French
political system as a model, while the religio-modern civil societies are
taking a more religious and anti-West position. This is a very dangerous
development, which can jeopardize the establishment of a lasting political
democracy and stability in many of those countries.
The modern history of the Middle East is a history of broken promises.
The idea of a democratic and human West was paradoxically crushed by
its crusaders, namely English and French colonial powers, as well as their
main successor, the USA. The interventions in the Middle Eastern countries and the destruction of their democratic developments have created
bitter collective memories in many countries. Simultaneously, the Western
ideas of liberty and equality have been influencing many intellectuals in
Muslim countries. These parallel developments have created a dilemma in
those countries: an ideal-typical ‘West’ with a humanist and cosmopolitan
creed, on the one side, and a real ‘West’ with colonial and imperialist
intentions to subjugate non-Western, including Muslim countries, on the
other.
It is important now to find a way out of the dilemma. The starting point
will be to accept and respect different constellations of civil society in
Muslim societies. The division and conflicts between a secular modern civil
society and the religio-modern one must be accepted as one crucial condition in dealing with the socio-political developments in those countries.
Middle Eastern modernities 175
Further, the existence of a ‘fundamentalist secularism’ of Kemalist and
Pahlavi models, which paradoxically includes even leftists, must be challenged. The Iranian Islamic revolution and its aftermath, the democratic
victories of Islamists in Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, and so on, demonstrates
the political power of Islam as a religio-political doctrine that will come to
play, more or less, the same role as Christian Democratic parties in
Europe.
Accordingly, to the extent that we accept participation of Christian
Democratic parties in the polity of Western countries, we must also accept
participation of Islamic parties and groups in the modern political developments of the Middle East. A successful cosmopolitanism therefore has to
be free from its old Western dilemma. Western countries should reconsider
their roles in the Middle East and support a democratic development that
includes even Islamic parties and groups.
Turkey is making a good example so far and the military and fundamentalist secularists appear to understand the reality of the existence of
Islamic political ideologies and parties that have highly influenced modern
Turkish politics. The recent developments in Lebanon in the aftermath of
the murder of Rafik Hariri, an oppositional leader, and the withdrawal of
the Syrian troops from the country, is another field of experiment for
democratic development. The role of the Western countries in supporting a
democratic development that includes even the Islamic party Hezb Allah is
important here. Recent Iranian elections and the victory of the religious
hardliner, Ahmadi Nejad and the country’s nuclear program is another
field of experiment. The solution of the dilemma is at hand by respecting
the democratic and socio-economic developments based on a cosmopolitan
understanding of the common human destiny.
Conclusion
Social movements and political transformations in Muslim countries
during the course of the twentieth century were a part of a global movement for democracy and modernization. Nationalist movements in all
Muslim countries were reactions to external imperialist and colonial pressures. The devastating colonial interventions of European colonial powers
and USA coups in many Muslim countries have created ‘anti-West’ sentiments that can easily be mobilized in political movements. Many Islamic
movements are not anti-modern and anti-cosmopolitan. On the contrary,
they are ‘a global way of being local’, and a reaction to several hundred
years of socio-economic and political pressures that those countries have
been subjected to.
A cosmopolitan politics should move beyond the limitations of ‘us-andthem’ thinking and dichotomous categories in order to generate new
visions for a future in which there are no ‘others’. Yet this would also
require that Europe and the USA acknowledge their historical role in
176 Masoud Kamali
destroying organic forms of modernization and democratic developments
in those countries.
References
Abrahamian, E. (1983) Iran Between Two Revolutions, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Abrahamian, E. (1993) Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic, Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Algar, H. (1969) Religion and State in Iran 1785–1906, Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Arjomand, A. S. (1988) The Turban for the Crown, New York: Oxford University
Press.
Arnason, J. P. (2002) ‘Communism and Modernity’, in S. Eisenstadt (ed.) op. cit.
Arneil, B. (1996) John Lock and America: The Defense of English Colonialism,
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bach, R. L. (1980) ‘On the Holism of a Word-system Perspective’, in T. K.
Hopkins and I. Wallerstein (eds) Processes of the World System, London: Sage.
Bourdieu, P. (1998) Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press.
Burns, T. and M. Kamali (2003) ‘The Evolution of Parliaments: A Comparativehistorical Perspective on Assemblies and Political Decision-making’, in G.
Delanty and E. Isin (eds) Handbook of Historical Sociology, London: Sage.
Carr, E. H. (1961) What is History? London: Penguin.
Cheah, P. and B. Robbins (1998) Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the
Nation, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
De Deken, J. J. and D. Rueschmeyer (1992) ‘Social Policy, Democratization and
State Structure: Reflections on Late Nineteenth-century Britain and Germany’, in
R. Torstendahl (ed.) State Theory and State History, London: Sage Publications.
Delanty, G. (2003) ‘Rethinking Europe and Modernity in Light of Global Transformations: The Making of a Post-Western Europe’, paper presented at Koc University, Istanbul, 2 May.
Deleuze, G. (1992) ‘What is a Dispostif’, in T. J. Armstrong (ed.) Michel Foucault.
Philosopher: International Conference, Paris, January 1998, New York: Routledge.
Durkheim, E. (1984) The Division of Labor in Society, New York: The Free Press.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (1999) Fundamentalism, Secularism, and Revolution: The Jacobin
Dimension of Modernity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (ed.) (2002) Multiple Modernities, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Ertman, T. (1997) Birth of Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval
and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Feuer, L. S. (ed.) (1971) Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, London: Fontana Books.
Geertz, C. (2003) ‘Which Way to Mecca?’, New York Review of Books, June 12.
Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, London: Polity Press.
Goldberg, D. T. (1993) Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning,
Oxford: Blackwell.
Middle Eastern modernities 177
Hairi, A-H. (1977) Shi’ism and Constitutionalism in Iran, Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Hall, S. (1996) ‘The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power’, in S. Hall, D. Held
and T. McGrew (eds) Modernity and its Futures, Oxford: Polity in association
with Open University Press.
Huntington, S. (1993) ‘The Clash of Civilizations’, Foreign Affairs, 72(3): 22–49.
Hussain, A., R. Olson and J. Qureshi (eds) (1984) Orientalism, Islam, and
Islamists, Vermont: Amana Books.
Kamali M. (1998) Revolutionary Iran: Civil Society and State in the Modernization
Process, Aldershot: Ashgate.
Kamali, M. (2001) ‘Civil Society and Islam: A Sociological Perspective’, European
Journal of Sociology, 42(3): 457–82.
Kamali, M. (2006) Multiple Modernities, Civil Society and Islam, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Kuntay, M. C. (1944) Namik Kemal: Devrinin Insanlari ve Olaylari Arasinda, Vol.
1, Istanbul: Maarif Matbassi.
Lewis, B. (1953) ‘The Impact of the French Revolution on Turkey’, Journal of
World History, 1: 114–18.
Lipset Matin, S. and G. Marks (2000) It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism
Failed in the United States, New York: Norton & Co.
Lyon, D. (1994) Postmodernity, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Mardin, S. (1989) Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, New York: State University of New York Press.
Putnam, R. D. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civil Traditions in Modern Italy,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Said, E. (1978) Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books.
Spencer, H. (1878) The Study of Sociology, London: Kegan Paul & Co.
Spencer, H. (1898) The Principles of Sociology, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers.
Taylor, P. J. (1999) Modernities: A Geohistorical Interpretation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Therborn, G. (1992) ‘The Right to Vote and the Four World Routes to/through
Modernity’, in R. Torstendahl (ed.) State Theory and State History, London:
Sage Publication.
Tomlin, E. W. F. (1946) Life in Modern Turkey, London: Thomas Nelson & Sons.
Turner, B. S. (1978) Marx and the End of Orientalism, London: George Allen &
Unwin.
Turner, B. S. (1984) ‘Orientalism and the Problem of Civil Society in Islam’, in A.
Hussain, R. Olson and J. Qureshi (eds) op. cit.
Turner, B. S. (1994) Orientalism, Postmodernism, and Globalism, London: Routledge.
Turner, B. S. (ed.) (1999) Orientalism: Early Sources, London: Routledge.
Wittrock, B. (2000) ‘Modernity: One, None, or Many? European Origins and
Modernity as a Global Condition’, Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, 129(1): 31–59.
Part III
Between Europe and
Asia
12 Borders and rebordering
Chris Rumford
Conceptually, Europe is linked to Asia through the notion of Eurasia, an
unbroken (but not undivided) continental expanse, which in recent
decades has been the origin or site of a number of major global struggles
and conflicts. Modernity has seen Eurasia divided according to two principles which have produced a familiar pattern of bordering: an East–West
divide, and a core–periphery relation. Neither of these divisions dominates
Europe–Asia relations at the present time, although they both still exert an
influence over political orientations and continue to inform identity politics. Contemporary bordering and rebordering processes are occurring in a
post-Western Europe increasingly preoccupied with developing the means
with which to govern its own social and political transformations and
those taking place within the wider world. Bordering is an essential
component of European Union (EU) governance, and the rebordering of
Eurasia is an important dimension of EU attempts at ‘global governance’.
It is no longer meaningful to divide Europe along an East–West axis.
Similarly, an East–West division between Europe and Asia is no longer
assumed to be enduring, fundamental or ‘natural’, as it was often portrayed during the Cold War era. Under conditions of postcommunism,
Europeanization and globalization borders between Europe and Asia no
longer take the form of an East–West division. The ‘old’ borders of divided
Europe have been largely erased and most of the countries previously on
opposite sides of the Iron Curtain now find themselves members of an
enlarged European Union, whose borders now reach to Central Asia and
whose political influence, economic imperatives and communication networks reach yet further afield. Likewise, in recent times the meaning of
core and periphery has changed, as it has done throughout the development of the European Union. Until the 1970s and 1980s the Mediterranean would have constituted one periphery, the Celtic fringes another.
More recently, Eastern Europe constituted a periphery, with important
consequences for thinking about European identity, which has traditionally been dependent upon a relatively closed Eastern frontier (Delanty
2003). In its relations with the new member states of the former communist bloc the European Union conceived of itself as the core, although the
182 Chris Rumford
composition of the core has changed as the EU has enlarged. Traditionally,
Europe’s core–periphery relations have been seen as an internal affair and,
importantly, as an important driver of economic development, the ‘blue
banana’ signifying the economic heartland which disseminates growth and
development to the peripheries (Rumford 2002). The most recent (2004)
round of EU enlargement has resulted in a major recasting of the
core–periphery dimension to Europe, the existence of which has in any
case come into question, from within the EU as the result of the development of the notion of the importance of polycentric development and the
idea of network Europe, and from without as a result of the impact of
globalization and the proliferation of borders and rebordering that this is
thought to entail. Put simply, globalization has the ability to liberate localities from central authority and encourage new dynamics of growth and
connectivity in such a way as to confound core–periphery expectations.
This chapter focuses on the cosmopolitan dimensions of the bordering
and rebordering of Eurasia, and in particular it examines the mechanisms
through which the EU constructs and reconstructs its borders with its near
neighbours and how these processes are dynamic, contingent and sometimes contradictory. One problem associated with investigating bordering
processes is that the very nature of borders is increasingly uncertain in a
world traversed by flows, mobilities and the interconnectedness characteristic of globalization. Indeed, there exists a major tension between the
notion of rebordering, which highlights the increasing securitization and
impermeability of borders, and the idea of differentiated, diffuse and
mobile borders consistent with a world of flows. These contradictions are
embodied in the EU’s attempts to develop both a ‘Schengenland’ model of
enhanced mobility within a common space protected by ‘hard’ external
borders, and an extended communicative and economic space – an ‘undivided Europe’ – embracing a Eurasian ‘ring of friends’ and represented by
the popular notion of ‘network Europe’.
The chapter also addresses the question of how cosmopolitanism can
inform our perceptions of borders in the contemporary world. In this
regard, there are two related arguments which are important. First, borders
have not become obsolete in a world ordered by global processes (Paasi
2005). Thus, the ‘borderless world’ thesis, sometimes seen as a paradigmatic
of globalization, does not stand up to scrutiny in a world where borders
proliferate and bordering, debordering and rebordering are core components
of the social transformation that is shaping Europe–Asia relations. This does
not mean, however, that borders remain geopolitical and territorial. Rather,
borders are also multiple, diffused and relativized. Etienne Balibar makes the
point that as well as defining the political territory of the nation-state
through the construction of managed perimeters, borders are increasingly
dispersed throughout society (Balibar 2004: 1). It is clear that we no longer
live only in a world of bounded territorial nation-states, where inside and
outside, foreign and domestic are easy to distinguish.
Borders and rebordering 183
Second, borders and mobilities are not antithetical. A globalizing world
is a world of networks, flows and mobility; it is also a world of borders. It
can be argued that cosmopolitanism is best understood as an orientation
to the world which entails the constant negotiation and crossing of
borders. A cosmopolitan is not only a citizen of the world, someone who
embraces multiculturalism, or even a ‘frequent flyer’. A cosmopolitan lives
in and across borders. Borders connect the ‘inner mobility’ of our lives
with both the multiplicity of communities we may elect to become
members of and the cross-cutting tendencies of polities to impose their
border regimes on us in ways which compromise our mobilities, freedoms,
rights and even identities. The incessant mobility which is often seen as
characteristic of contemporary life is only one part of the story. On the
other side of the coin are the bordering, debordering and rebordering
processes which point to the cosmopolitanization of society.
The chapter will explore these themes and examine the dynamics of the
bordering and rebordering of Europe with respect to three tensions or conflicts: (i) the tension between the needs of territorial governance and its
associated border regimes and the potential for de- and rebordering associated with flows and networks; (ii) the tension between the idea of the
border as a solution and the border as problem; and (iii) the tension
between the inertia of old borders and the construction of new ones.
Network Europe and ‘networked borders’
The idea of network Europe and the associated notion of polycentric
development have, in recent years, started to replace the more conventional idea of Europe as a ‘space of places’ (Castells 2000). On this view,
Europe should not be thought of as an aggregation of pre-existing territorial spaces (nation-states) with fixed centres and spatial hierarchies (core
and periphery, developed and underdeveloped regions, for example) but
rather as a network polity linked by new forms of connectivity prompted
by global flows of capital, goods and services and the concomitant mobility enjoyed by persons, enterprises and forms of governance.
While the idea of ‘network Europe’ has struck a chord with commentators attempting to come to terms with the rapid and fundamental transformation of Europe in the post-Cold War period, there exist other,
conflicting accounts of the reconfiguration of Europe which emphasize the
development of ‘hard’ external borders as a corollary of the increased
internal mobility associated with the EU’s single market and single currency (Zielonka 2002). In short, there exists a tension between the idea of
‘network Europe’ and the Schengen model of securitized external borders.
Schengenland represents a model of unrestricted internal mobility coupled
with ‘hard’ external borders designed to control flows of terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants (Andreas 2003). It is common to encounter the
idea that borders are becoming less significant between EU member states
184 Chris Rumford
at the same time as the EU’s external border is heavily policed, leading to a
defensive shell designed to prevent seepage of the economic gains made by
the EU in the face of economic globalization and the unwanted influx of
migrants from the near abroad.
The unresolved tension between ideas of ‘networked Europe’ and
Schengenland have opened up the possibility of a more nuanced account of
Europe’s borders, in particular an awareness that the EU’s borders are
becoming differentiated and can vary in scope and tightness (Hassner
2002). For example, the EU’s security borders are far more rigid than the
equivalent economic, telecommunication and educational borders. One
problem with the ‘rebordering’ thesis advanced by Andreas and others,
which emphasizes the need to reinforce and securitize borders, is that it
relies on a rather undifferentiated notion of borders, which are intelligible
only in terms of policing and security and a defence against external
threats (the mobility of illegal immigrants, terrorists and traffickers in
people and drugs). In fact, Schengen borders and Europe’s borders more
generally are not singular and unitary, and are designed to encourage
various kinds of mobility, particularly for certain categories of immigrants,
migrant workers and students. For example, in the UK the government
scheme for recruiting agricultural students as seasonal agricultural workers
(SAWS) has resulted in an estimated 20,000 (low paid) Ukrainian workers
in the UK agricultural sector. This scheme previously recruited heavily
from Poland and other Eastern European countries, now members of the
EU. As students and workers from these countries now have new mobility
rights consequent upon EU citizenship, the SAWS scheme has migrated
eastward in the search for recruits.1
The rebordering thesis cannot easily accommodate the differentially
permeable borders of ‘network Europe’. At the same time, the idea of a
Europe defined by flows and networks downplays the importance of territorial bordering and the ways in which political priorities can result in
some borders being more important than others: what was previously the
EU border with Eastern Europe (along the line of the Iron Curtain) has
become relatively unimportant when compared with the enlarged border
with Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, etc. The idea of ‘network Europe’ and
the monotopic internal space of the single market has changed the way we
think about territorial spaces, but ironically has tended to work with conventional notions of borders. It is argued that ‘network Europe’ can only
be properly understood in conjunction with a notion of ‘networked
borders’.
The idea of ‘networked borders’ draws attention to the ways in which
Europe’s borders are increasingly mobile and diffused throughout society.
Such borders are not fixed in the way territorial borders are, rather they
can be modulated within and between existing administrative entities.
European borders are periodically dissolved, constructed afresh, shifted,
reconstituted, etc. Examples include: common European borders replacing
Borders and rebordering 185
a collection of national borders; previously important borders – such as
the Europe-defining ones between East and West Germany, and disputed
ones between Germany and Poland – ceasing to be contested or troubled
demarcations; the eastward movement of the ‘important’ borders of
Europe – to the border between Slovakia and the Ukraine, or the Baltic
States and Russia, for example; the ‘Mediterranean’ enlargement of the EU
in the 1980s creating a new north–south frontier within Spain (SuarezNavaz 2004). However, this is not the only sense in which Europe can be
said to possess ‘networked borders’. Europe’s borders are increasingly networked in the sense that they attempt to manage mobility and as such are
constructed in locations where mobility is most intense: at airline check-in
desks and Eurostar terminals, along Europe’s motorways routes and transEuropean road networks (Walters 2006). Borders are no longer only to be
found at the perimeter of national territory (McNeill 2004).
Borders as a problem (and an opportunity for governance)
The second tension is between the idea of the border as solution and the
border as a problem to be managed. For nation-states borders are solutions, creating a bounded territorial entity that can be fortified, defended,
administered and homogenized: recognized borders are a key element of
sovereignty. What happens beyond the borders of the sovereign nationstate is not necessarily important, unless construed as a threat. The EU is
not a nation-state ‘writ large’ nor a bounded territorial polity modelled on
the nation-state, and, increasingly, the sort of borders associated with the
nation-state are seen as a problem for Europe. This is particularly the case
with the latest round of enlargement of the EU which is seen to contain the
potential for creating economic, social and political instabilities in those
countries on the other side of the new borders. Thus recent EU rhetoric
has centred on ‘undivided Europe’ and the need to ensure that enlargement
does not create new divisions in and beyond Europe. EU borders are perceived to be problematic in a variety of ways: in terms of potential negative consequences for countries excluded by the border; in terms of the
difficulty of policing them; in terms of barriers to trade; and in terms of
the creation of disadvantaged regions on both sides of the border. In short,
the EU is concerned that the recent round of enlargement could be
responsible for creating new instabilities on the Eurasian frontier (and
potential security problems) by exacerbating the difference between rich
and poor regions, between neo-liberal and unreconstructed economies, and
between those countries embracing EU-style democracy and human rights
and those attempting to resist the external imposition of ‘global’ norms.
In March 2003 the European Commission published a Communication
entitled ‘Wider Europe – neighbourhood: a new framework for relations
with eastern and southern neighbours’ (European Commission 2003). The
document outlined the need for the development of ‘a zone of prosperity
186 Chris Rumford
and a friendly neighbourhood – a “ring of friends” – with whom the EU
enjoys close, peaceful and co-operative relations’ (European Commission
2003: 4). The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) represents an extension of EU governance beyond EU borders (Lavenex 2004). It signals that
the EU is increasingly concerned to manage non-EU space, particularly
that of its neighbourhood or Eastern near abroad. Success in constructing
European spaces as realms of governance which the Commission can then
promote itself as being best suited to managing has led to the idea that
non-Europe can also be constructed as a space of governance: countries
which are not likely to become official candidates for full membership can
be brought within the orbit of the Single Market and other pan-European
projects.2 The distinction between members and non-members has been
replaced by a notion that integration can proceed in new ways. As such, in
the wider Europe envisioned by the ENP a large number of countries of
the former Soviet bloc and North Africa would be integrated (to differing
degrees) within the Single Market but would not necessarily move closer to
full membership of the EU. According to former Commission President
Romano Prodi, the EU and its neighbours can share ‘everything but institutions’; in other words, integration without enlargement.
What is notable about ENP is that it seeks to blur the distinction
between candidate, member and non-member by opening up access to EU
programmes to a greater extent than ever before, while at the same time
ensuring that agenda-setting and policy-making remains the preserve of the
EU. A suitably motivated neighbouring country could participate in EU
networks, markets and common policies without the prospect of a formal
accession framework. In brief, ‘all the neighbouring countries should be
offered the prospect of a stake in the EU’s Internal Market and further
integration and liberalization to promote the free movement of persons,
goods, services and capital (four freedoms)’ (European Commission 2003:
10). The ENP is more than another initiative to engender greater cooperation on the EU’s outer limits. ‘The European Neighbourhood Policy’s
vision embraces a ring of countries sharing the EU’s fundamental values
and objectives, drawn into an increasingly close relationship, going beyond
cooperation to involve a significant measure of economic and political
integration’ (European Commission 2004).
The EU’s recently evolved interest in global governance in conjunction
with the 2004 round of enlargement has led to a new appreciation of the
importance of the EU’s lengthening borders. This interest does not simply
revolve around the need to construct barriers to the outside world: on the
contrary we have seen how the EU displays an awareness that rigid
borders are extremely problematic and that the key to security and
stability is not to create impenetrable frontiers but to increase the permeability of borders and to encourage a range of institutional and other
actors to take responsibility for them. It is the EU’s wish that its ‘ring of
friends’ reinforce their border controls with other non-EU countries
Borders and rebordering 187
beyond the ENP, such as Russia. This suggests a shift away from Fortress
Europe in which border lines must be policed vigilantly towards the idea
of borders as buffer zones, comprising a ring of well governed and compliant states.
The recent enlargement of the EU and the accompanying discourses of
‘new neighbourhood’ and proximity politics have reinforced the idea that
the EU is a network polity, increasingly interconnected with its near
abroad. The network model is very good at accounting for the integrative
capacity of the EU in its dealings with its near neighbours and broadening
European space, but remains blind to ways in which the EU is increasingly
blurring the inside/outside distinction in order to manage its near abroad,
and misses important dimensions to the question of Europe’s borders. In
this context, the idea of borderlands is an important one. The EU’s
concern not to create rigid boundaries where the newly enlarged EU meets
the former Soviet Union has prompted EU scholars to suggest that the
identification of common policy spaces, coupled with the promotion of
the idea of integration without enlargement, has led to the construction of
the EU’s eastern edges as ‘new borderlands’ (Batt 2003).
In the work of Saskia Sassen borderlands signify that borders should
not be thought of only as dividing lines, but as circuits which cut across
two or more discontinuous systems. In other words, borderlands draw out
the commonalities shared by neighbouring regions. In a world of continuous border crossings represented by globalization, borderlands modify and
transform spatial identity and undermine the territorial integrity of all
parties. Borderlands represent a new spatiality: ‘discontinuities are given a
terrain rather than reduced to a dividing line’ (Sassen 2001). The notion of
borderlands captures an essential dimension of European space and is
more useful in the study of contemporary Europe than the rather overworked ideas associated with networks. Importantly, borderlands extend
to both sides of the EU border. This differentiates the notion of borderlands being developed here from the more conventional application of the
term in EU studies: Batt’s (2003) notion of the new borderlands of the EU,
for example. The blurring of inside and outside associated with the interpenetrating flows comprising globalization means that the EU’s borderlands are not simply on the ‘other side’ of the EU border. If borderlands
are seen as spaces within which the EU attempts to accommodate global
processes then Europe can be conceived of as a continuous borderland perpetually engaged in an attempt to fix its territorial and spatial arrangements into coherent patterns while global processes continually disrupt
older geographical certainties.
Beyond East and West: constructing new borders
The recognition of differentiated, permeable, networked borders coupled
with attempts to soften the external borders of the European Union
188 Chris Rumford
through the development of borderlands which work to blur or shade the
hard borders (or sharp edges) of the EU is, by itself, only a partial account
of Europe’s rebordering with Asia. In the process of shifting the EU’s
Eurasian border eastwards and developing modes of governance around
the model of the EU as a networked polity, the EU has also been responsible for creating new borders (sometimes inadvertently) in different parts
of Europe, in ways which are not easily associated with marking the new
external limits of the EU; Cyprus and Russia providing very good
examples. In other cases, Turkey and the Ukraine for example, rebordering
has taken the form of a confounding and/or recasting of previously fixed
East–West reference points. We can now give brief consideration to each
of these examples.
Cyprus became a member of the EU in 2004, accession not marking an
end to the island’s division, however. Europe’s last remaining Cold War
division became, as a result of accession, a border internal to the EU, and
one which separated a member state from itself. The ‘Green Line’ was no
longer an international border between putative states, but an EU border
which has created new divisions (in addition to perpetuating existing ones)
between polarized communities. The rebordering of Cyprus, and the
inability of the EU to overcome the Cold War division of the island, has
created new internal/external, member/non-member, inclusion/exclusion
instabilities within a member state.
The 2004 enlargement also led to the rebordering of Russia, but not
only in the sense that the EU now possesses enlarged borders with that
country. The Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between the
Baltic Sea, Poland and Lithuania, emerged as a big issue in Russia–EU relations just prior to the 2004 enlargement due to the proposed requirement
for Russians travelling to and from Kaliningrad to obtain a visa in order to
travel through EU territory. The enlargement of the EU worked to reborder Russia, part of whose territory was now surrounded by the EU. In the
event, the EU offered a compromise solution which required Russians travelling to and from Kaliningrad to obtain a transit document rather than a
full visa. The relative isolation of Kaliningrad from Russia, coupled with
the fact that it was part of Germany until the Second World War, has
fuelled speculation that its future orientation is likely to be towards the EU
rather than Russia.
The East–West division of Europe – represented in different ways by
both of the above examples – is a powerful image, and one that has survived long beyond the period when it represented a fundamental division
of the continent. Although it might be tempting to see the EU’s latest
round of enlargement and the subsequent development of ‘neighbourhood
politics’ as an attempt to move Europe’s borders eastward, this is at best a
partial explanation. Indeed, as outlined already in this chapter the EU has
acted to prevent the establishment of an ‘excluded east’ beyond the new
member states. The EU’s eastward expansion and the eclipse of Cold War
Borders and rebordering 189
demarcations means that we can start to think in terms of ‘post-Western
Europe’ in which East and West are no longer solid reference points and
markers of identity, and in which a previously marginalized East has
become central to political developments (Delanty 2003).
The breakdown of the previously foundational East–West cleavage is of
considerable importance in relation to the European Union’s relations with
Turkey, whose national identity in the Republican period has been
founded on the desire to be wholly Western, an identity reinforced by
Turkey’s Cold War role in the architecture of Western defences against the
Communist East. In the wake of the Cold War, Turkey had to reorient
itself around new principles as its staunch Western vocation was no longer
the same geo-strategic asset. Moreover, countries that previously identified
themselves as ‘Eastern’ jumped the EU queue and obtained full membership while Turkey, an aspirant member since 1963, was still struggling to
be recognized as an accession country.
The old notion of Turkey as a bridge between East and West lost resonance because these realms were revealed as no longer deeply divided. The
West itself began to fragment without the cohesion generated by a
common external enemy and it is no longer possible to identify a common
‘Western’ position on a range of international issues: Iraq, global warming,
debt relief for Africa, agricultural subsidies. As an index of these postWestern shifts the Turkish government’s refusal (despite massive financial
inducements) to allow the US to launch military operations into Iraq from
Turkish bases is especially significant. The post-Westernization of Turkey
has been aided by domestic political changes within Turkey where the
Islamicist AK Party forms the current government and has done much in a
short period of time to bring Turkey closer to the EU. Importantly, the rise
of liberal-conservative Islamic politics in Turkey has given voice to a contending view of modernity and progress. Whereas the traditional Kemalist
political elites equate modernization with Westernization, the Islamists
equate modernization with Europe and human rights. The AK Party sees
Turkey as both Western and Eastern, European and Middle Eastern.
Legacies of Cold War thinking do persist, however, and it is still possible to encounter attempts to re-divide Europe along an East–West axis.
In November 2004, during the Ukrainian Presidential elections, claims of
ballot-rigging and election fraud precipitated a major constitutional crisis
which was eventually resolved in favour of the current President Viktor
Yushchenko. Mass protests against the original election results and the
‘victory’ of the pro-establishment Viktor Yanukovych organized by
Yushchenko’s oppositional Orange Bloc movement was represented in the
Anglophone media as evidence of an East–West split threatening to break
up the Ukraine (for example, ‘East–West showdown looms as poll turmoil
divides Ukraine’ The Times 25 November 2004). Yanukovych was portrayed as the pro-Russian candidate, with a power base in the east of the
country, and whose candidature was supported by Russia’s President
190 Chris Rumford
Putin. The neo-Cold War scenario was strengthened by the portrayal of
Yushchenko as a pro-Western, pro-NATO, pro-EU, democrat whose
support base was in the West of the country. The future of the Ukraine
was seen in either/or terms: Western or Eastern, democratic or authoritarian, progressive or backward looking. It seems that it is difficult to dispense with the analytical tools of twentieth-century modernity. What
could easily have been interpreted as instability beyond the EU’s borders,
or even as a struggle between civil society and the state, given the recent
history of popular protests against state corruption in Central and Eastern
Europe, was, in the case of the Ukraine, interpreted in geopolitical terms as
a tug-of-war between the EU and Russia and a struggle to establish new
geopolitical spheres of influence.
Conclusion: Eurasia’s cosmopolitan borders
Europe’s borders with Asia are changing, both in terms of their location
and their function. However, this does not mean that borders are any less
significant or any less numerous. Processes of bordering, debordering and
rebordering are important dimensions of the contemporary social and
political transformation of Europe, and its relations with the wider world.
This chapter has highlighted the rebordering of Europe that has
accompanied the territorial debordering associated with the development
of supranational capabilities. The shift from territorial nation-state borders
to common EU borders has been marked by a tendency to view borders
less as a prerequisite for sovereign governance and more in terms of problems which require novel forms of spatial management: EU governance is
not primarily concerned with state or polity-building but is about the construction of European spaces within which European solutions to European problems can be deployed (Delanty and Rumford 2005). Common
borders are one example of such spaces. In this context, a key argument in
this chapter has been the need to go beyond the dominant models for
explaining the rebordering of Europe; neither Schengenland nor ‘network
Europe’ can adequately explain Eurasian borders. The need to go beyond
territorial or networked models of spatial governance lends substance to
the notion that Europe is witnessing a cosmopolitanization of its borders.
By way of a conclusion we can point to two dimensions of cosmopolitan borders which are relevant to a discussion of the rebordering of
Eurasia. First, Europe and Asia can no longer be mapped according to an
East–West divide. Such a simple polarity has been overtaken by
contemporary realities (the recent EU enlargement to the east), overwritten
by new divisions (new North–South), and erased by a post-Westernization
of Europe. The interpenetration of what were previously East and West,
the erosion of previous friend/enemy, inside/outside distinctions, and the
concomitant development of a new sense of place in the world, have all
contributed to a greater sense of continuity between Europe and Asia.
Borders and rebordering 191
Europe and Asia no longer form the First and Second Worlds; they both
inhabit one world.
Second, the tendency to see borders as problems to be governed has contributed to the proliferation of borders within (as well as between) societies.
Borders are more common, more frequently shifted and more mobile. The
multiplicity of communities which can emerge within and between existing
polities makes for a greater number of border crossings: the negotiation of
borders becomes an integral aspect of both mobilities and identities. The
cosmopolitanization of Europe’s borders with Asia cannot be dissociated
from their multiplication: national borders have been supplemented by shifting EU borders and borders are diffused throughout society. In this sense,
cosmopolitanism signals that borders are more numerous and pervasive and
that borderlands are becoming the norm. The EU’s New Neighbourhood
Policy confuses static notions of member/non-member, candidate/noncandidate, insider/outsider by enlarging Europe’s borders with Asia and
projects the logic of the border into the heartland of the EU.
Notes
1 It should be noted that the SAWS scheme has been heavily criticized on the
grounds that the workers are exploited (charged excessively for visas by recruitment agencies, work for low wages), bullied by ‘gangmasters’, and their human
rights routinely infringed. One consequence of the economic hardships faced by
these workers is that they tend to accumulate debts and end up overstaying their
visas thereby becoming illegal immigrants. See for example, TUC 2004.
2 The European Neighbourhood Policy covers: Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova,
Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt,
Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, as well as the Palestinian Authority.
References
Andreas, P. (2003) ‘Redrawing the Line: Borders and Security in the Twenty-first
Century’, International Security, 28(2): 78–111.
Balibar, E. (2004) We the People of Europe: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Batt, J. (2003) ‘The EU’s New Borderlands’, London: CER Working Paper.
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age:
Economy, Society and Culture, Volume 1, 2nd edn, Oxford: Blackwell.
Delanty, G. (2003) ‘The Making of a Postwestern Europe: A Civilizational Analysis’, Thesis Eleven, 72(1): 8–25.
Delanty, G. and C. Rumford (2005) Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the
Implications of Europeanization, London: Routledge.
European Commission (2003) Communication from the Commission to the
Council and the European Parliament: ‘Wider Europe – Neighbourhood: a New
Framework for Relations with our Eastern and Southern Neighbours’,
COM(2003) 104 final, Brussels: Commission of the European Communities.
European Commission (2004) ‘Beyond Enlargement: Commission Shifts European
Neighbourhood Policy into Higher Gear’, Press Release IP/04/308 Brussels, 12 May.
192 Chris Rumford
Hassner, P. (2002) ‘Fixed Borders or Moving Borderlands?: A New Type of Border
for a New Type of Entity’, in J. Zielonka (ed.) Europe Unbound: Enlarging and
Reshaping the Boundaries of the European Union, London: Routledge.
Lavenex, S. (2004) ‘EU External Governance in “Wider Europe” ’, Journal of
European Public Policy, 11(4): 680–700.
McNeill, D. (2004) New Europe: Imagined Spaces, London: Arnold.
Paasi, A. (2005) ‘The Changing Discourse on Political Boundaries’, in H. van
Houtum, O. Kramsch and W. Zierhofer (eds) B/Ordering Space, Aldershot:
Ashgate.
Rumford, C. (2002) The European Union: A Political Sociology, Oxford: Blackwell.
Sassen, S. (2001) ‘Spatialities and Temporalities of the Global: Elements for a Theorization’, in A. Appadurai (ed.) Globalization, Durham: Duke University Press.
Suarez-Navaz, L. (2004) Rebordering the Mediterranean: Boundaries and Citizenship in Southern Europe, New York: Berghahn Books.
Trades Union Congress (2004) ‘Gone West – The Harsh Reality of Ukrainians at
Work in the UK’ at www.tuc.org.uk/em_research/tuc-7739-f0.cfm.
Walters, W. (2006) ‘Border/Control’, European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2):
187–204.
Zielonka, J. (2002) ‘Introduction: Boundary Making by the European Union’, in J.
Zielonka (ed.) Europe Unbound: Enlarging and Reshaping the Boundaries of the
European Union, London: Routledge.
13 Europe after the EU enlargement
‘Cosmopolitanism by small steps’
William Outhwaite
Deutschland ist demokratisch
Wasser, das ist nass
Quadrate sind quadratisch
Wenn nicht das, zumindest das1
For some, the cosmopolitan character of Europe in general, and the EU in
particular, is not in question. Is Europe not par excellence the region
where humans emancipated themselves from unreflected traditions and
primordial loyalties and preached, sometimes even practised, ideas of the
brotherhood of man or, as we would now say, the siblinghood of humanity? And is European integration not by definition a cosmopolitan project,
marked in its current version by the powerful image of the West German
and French coal and steel industries fused together in the ECSC a mere
half decade after the end of the War?
There is much to be said for these views, which have been powerfully
argued in the recent past by Gerard Delanty, Ulrich Beck and others.
Jürgen Habermas (2004), for example, has stressed the way in which
Europeans have ‘painfully’ learned how to handle their differences and to
recognise one another in their difference. Delanty (2005) has put forward
the idea of Europe as a privileged site of cultural translation, while in Beck
and Grande’s Cosmopolitan Europe (2004) the adjective is built into the
title. The EU’s most recent enlargement in 2004 brought in an eminently
cosmopolitan, or at least eclectic, mix of three former Soviet republics, one
former Yugoslav republic, four members of the Visegrád group of relatively privileged postcommunist countries and one and a half Mediterranean islands.
Unfortunately, there is also a good deal to be said for the contrary, or
perhaps complementary, view which sees Europe as the chief defendant in
the court of world history, responsible for imperialism, ‘scientific’ racism,
‘scientific’ communism, for two world wars and for planning (and almost
initiating) the third and final one.2 Similarly, the EU can be seen as selfobsessed, protectionist and unconcerned or unable to take on a serious
194 William Outhwaite
role in the governance of the world, thus leaving a dangerous vacuum for
US hegemony. The old slogan ‘Oui à l’Europe: non à Maastricht’, has been
echoed in some at least of the left opposition to the ill-fated 2005 constitutional treaty.
This chapter is concerned with Europe in the narrower sense, that of the
EU as it has evolved over the past half-century and particularly since the
end of the ‘short’ twentieth century in 1989. My concern is with the ways
in which Europe as a whole has been reshaped by what has taken place on
its own territories, as distinct from, though of course also taking account
of, external or global processes, in the past 10–15 years. To put it pretentiously, and with a bow to the phenomenological tradition, I am interested
not only in what is happening and is likely to happen, but in its meaning
for Europe. And I am interested as much in what did not happen as in
what did.3
Postcommunist transition and 2004
I am struck, in particular, in the EU Enlargement of 2004, by the mismatch between the enormous importance of what happened in May 2004
and the restricted form in which it was reflected both before and after the
event. On the one hand there was the sense of a momentous transition, in
which the European integration process finally embraced almost the whole
of the subcontinent, including a majority of the European states excluded
for forty years not just from the European Community/Union but also
from the post-war democratisation process itself.4 On the other hand,
there was an essentially technical and administrative process of harmonisation and coordination. Hannah Arendt spoke (of course in an entirely different context) of the banality of evil, and we might speak here of the
banality or the banalisation of accession.
The bureaucratisation of the enlargement process, though hardly unexpected, was one of its most striking features. The imposition of the Union’s
acquis was of course to be expected, though the over-neat specification of
chapters and check-lists looks like an exercise in Analerotik. As my colleague Alan Mayhew (2000) pointed out, this enlargement has been more
protracted (p. 7), partly because it was left in the hands of a somewhat
lame-duck Commission at the end of the 1990s (p. 8), and with a much
more substantial acquis whose adoption was made a precondition subject
to verification and not just, as in the past enlargements, a condition for
accession. On the other side there was some quite good public relations: a
well-sustained Commission website, providing regular email reminders to
check out recent developments, some imaginative activities involving
schools, a fair amount of speech-making and some high-profile meetings.5
Alongside all this, there was a third element, the constitutional convention, contingently related to the impending enlargement in that it could
(and perhaps should) have taken place well before 1989, but intrinsically
Europe after the EU enlargement 195
linked in its mission to make a larger Union viable that the new members
were fully represented in its deliberations. Although the Convention failed
to produce an acceptable constitution, in other respects it was quite an
impressive deliberative assembly which may be remembered when more
immediately successful ventures are forgotten (Norman 2003). It was also
one in which Old and New Europe met on relatively egalitarian and open
terms; as Fraser Cameron (2004: 152) notes, ‘it was difficult to distinguish
speakers coming from existing or future member states’.6 For all this,
however, the dominant impression of the current enlargement remains that
of a bureaucratic process managed in a bureaucratic manner, and tinged
with arrogance on the part of the existing members. Like, some would say,
the European Union itself . . .
We have of course been here before. I am thinking not so much of the
previous accessions as of the special case of German Reunification, which
produced ‘Enlargement without Accession’ (Spence 1991). Here, of course,
even the accession was occluded by the incorporation of the territory of
the GDR, without the sort of constitutional debate which Habermas and
others called for. In the German case, incorporation into the Federal
Republic and hence into the EU coincided with all except the first months
of postcommunist transition. In the 2004 accession, by contrast, we had
effectively a second transition, again widely desired in general though not
necessarily welcomed in all of its details. We can only guess how this will
pan out in the longer term. On the one hand, the EU’s new citizens may
feel that any trauma is as nothing compared with that of the 1990s. Alternatively, they may feel that, having been through all that, they are less
willing to put up with such social dislocation a second time. We therefore
need to reflect in rather broader terms on the transition process as a whole
and what it means for Europe.
It is tempting to define postcommunist transition out of existence, suggesting that it is either essentially over, as many in East Central Europe
would argue is the case in the parts of their states which interest them, or
not yet seriously begun, as jaundiced observers of points further East often
say. Either way, for this reductive view, the implications for the rest of
Europe are seen as relatively limited and can be handled under the category of transitional arrangements, where ‘transition’, like ‘convergence’,
now refers to EU accession rather than the shift from totalitarian socialism
to liberal capitalism. It is certainly true that the world-historical significance of the transition, rightly stressed by analysts like Andrew Arato,
hardly seems to be reflected in the observable phenomena. Everything, so
to speak, was tossed up into the air, but it fell down again into relatively
familiar structures and patterns. As against this view, I intend to start from
the premise that ‘we are all postcommunist now’, not in the sense of ideological demobilisation or what Habermas, as early as 1985, called ‘the
exhaustion of utopian energies’, but in the sense that Europe, as well as the
EU, are radically transformed by what has happened. It now makes sense
196 William Outhwaite
once again, as in the period immediately after the Second World War, to
think of a political Europe which in principle includes the whole subcontinent, but where East and West have experienced radically different trajectories over half a century. Habermas’s concept of the nachholende
Revolution was prophetic of the phenomenology of the transition, especially as it appeared from a West German or West European perspective,
but ultimately, I think, misleading. The apparent banality or normality of
the transition, in Germany and in much of the former bloc, and reinforced
in the Enlargement process, conceals, I believe, more fundamental changes.
Does more mean more cosmopolitan?
Will the new EU be more or less cosmopolitan in the sense in which theorists of cosmopolitan democracy, and most recently Ulrich Beck, have been
using the term? At first sight, an enlarged EU, a real Grosseuropa compared with the old Western Kleineuropa,7 is by definition more inclusive,
embracing new languages, religions and cultures. Already the budget airlines are criss-crossing the old EU external border with more and more
routes; EasyJet, Ryanair and their Eastern counterparts have taken up
where Gorbachev left off and made Lviv or Vilnius realistic destinations
for a cheap weekend break. On the other hand there are countervailing
pressures, for objective as well as subjective reasons.
The EU will now abut some of the more problematic European states
such as Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, whose citizens may have for the foreseeable future more compelling reasons to attempt to emigrate than do
Poles, Czechs or Hungarians. This has the potential to ignite renewed anxieties around the EU’s ‘near abroad’, which form part of the explanation
for why 2004 came so late. It is instructive to look back at some of the
surveys conducted around the turn of the century, in which existing EU
citizens warmly welcomed the idea of Swiss or Norwegian (and Maltese)
accession but were more lukewarm or even negative about the Eastern and
Central European (ECE) countries (CEC 2000) and emphatically negative
in the case of Turkey. This partly explains, in a process of reciprocal influence, the EU’s remarkably slow response to 1989, which provoked considerable resentment in Poland (Blazyca 2002: 206–7, 212) and elsewhere in
the region.8 A more cosmopolitan Union, one must conclude, would have
been more responsive and understanding – not least since it had just
emerged from a potentially lethal cold war.9 A more wholehearted
response by the West as a whole and the EU in particular might have
spared Eastern Europe a ghastly decade of negative growth and impoverishment, giving it some at least of the benefits of the capital flows accompanying German reunification, without the latter’s catastrophic downside.
The failure of the EU’s cosmopolitan imagination when it was most
urgently needed contrasts very unfavourably with earlier European initiatives such as European Nuclear Disarmament and the Helsinki process –
Europe after the EU enlargement 197
the latter combining official and social movement activity in an exceptionally fruitful blend.
For their part, the ECE countries tend to have a more ‘traditional’ and
positive (‘pre-postcolonial’) conception of Europe than Westerners. Very
many Western Europeans, for example, belong to states which have had
substantial colonial empires, and although they react to this past in very
different ways (compare the positive and nostalgic image of empire in the
UK with the tendency to embarrassed denial in The Netherlands), it has
perhaps given a more cosmopolitan and multicultural angle to their thinking about Europe. Habermas (2004: 51) emphasises the effect of the
experience of colonial rule and decolonisation: ‘with the growing distantiation from imperial rule and colonial history the European powers have had
the chance to take up a reflexive distance to themselves’.10 In the East, by
contrast, ‘Europe’ in general and ‘Central Europe’ in particular have operated in part as tokens in a political strategy of distantiation from the
‘asiatic’ USSR.11 To put it bluntly, Easterners, even more than Westerners,
often talk about the European heritage in up-beat language which provokes hostility or embarrassment in parts of the West and the rest of the
world.
The boot is perhaps on the other foot if one turns to a related issue, that
of ethnocentric prejudice. The somewhat higher levels recorded in the East
of Europe than in the West have generated something of a moral panic,
starting with skinhead riots in the East German port of Rostock in 1991. I
do not wish to belittle the unpleasant character of these manifestations,
and the extremely serious levels of anti-Roma prejudice, but the pattern
overall seems to be that such attitudes are driven by specific current crises
rather than linked into nationalism and extreme-right ideology, as they
have tended to be in the West (Hjerm 2003). Very crudely, one might say
that there is an intra-European cosmopolitan multicultural tradition in
Eastern and Central Europe, historically tied to local empires,12 where the
West has a more extra-European one more oriented to the Atlantic and the
rest of the world via the Western European world empires. Both traditions
of course are counterposed by explicit racism in the West and ethnic prejudice in the East, but the possibility of their fusion is one of the more optimistic scenarios in play here.
The ultimate destination or finalité of what has become the European
Union remains more or less as unclear as when Andrew Shonfield examined it in 1973. Briefly, however, the EU is incipiently postnational, despite
or because of its continuing symbiotic relationship with its member states.
It is post-imperial, in that however much it might superficially come to
resemble the Austro-Hungarian Empire it will surely retain principles of
democracy more characteristic of the national state (Beck and Grande
2004). And it is perhaps (and this is part at least of its appeal), the beginning of a form of post-European cosmopolitan democracy attractive not
just to Europe but to many other parts of the world.13 Jürgen Habermas
198 William Outhwaite
(1991) has aptly described this as ‘Europe’s second chance’. A federal or
semi-federal Europe which was not just a ‘fortress Europe’ but a Europe
for others as well as for itself might be a happier transformation with
which to round off the European half-millennium. As Habermas (2004:
47) puts it, why should a Europe which has at least partially solved two
major problems by developing forms of postnational governance and
welfare and social justice ‘not also set itself the further task of defending
and furthering a cosmopolitan order . . .?’.
Cosmopolitanism is, then, perhaps the most tempting label to attach to
this vision. Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande lay down the challenge on the
back cover of their recent book (2004: 11):
Cosmopolitan Europe is in Europe the last really effective utopia. It is
about something completely new in the history of humanity, namely
the projected image of a state structure which makes its foundation
the recognition of cultural otherness.
This analysis of cosmopolitanism (Beck 2004) and cosmopolitan
Europe builds on Beck’s earlier concepts of risk society and of a second,
reflexive modernity. European integration is driven, among other things,
by an awareness of global risks of, in particular, environmental damage
and terrorism. Neither can be meaningfully confronted just at the level of
the national state. Conceptions of security must be rethought in political
and social, rather than merely technical and military, terms. ‘The 11th of
September 2001 is the Chernobyl of the military conception of power’
(Beck and Grande 2004: 376). Concretely, this means that Turkey must, if
it wants, be in the EU and not just NATO; ‘a continent of Europe affirming itself against Turkey would endanger itself’ (p. 373). A cosmopolitan
Europe is also reflexive not just in the sense of responding to humanly
generated risks (the sense of reflexivity which Beck had stressed in his
earlier work,14 but also in that it relativises conceptions of inside/outside,
self/other, Europe or the nation-state: ‘Europe is another word for variable
geometry, variable national interests, variable concern (Betroffenheit),
variable internal and external relations, variable statehood, variable identity’ (p. 16). As Beck and Grande argue at length, a reflective and
cosmopolitan conception of Europe can to some extent escape the dilemmas of in/out, us/them, nation-state/federation.15
If this bold attempt to transcend the dilemmas which have constantly
accompanied the process of European integration over the past halfcentury seems a little too easy, Beck and Grande stress that the cosmopolitanism of the EU is still a ‘deformed cosmopolitanism’, deformed
economically by neoliberalism, politically by nationalism and internally by
technocratic bureaucracy (chapter 5, section 3). The last of these applies
also, of course, to the EU’s own cosmopolitan elites: the EU embodies the
paradox of a civil society from above aiming to establish one from below
Europe after the EU enlargement 199
(p. 196). The remedy however lies in more Europeanisation: the concept of
European civil society offers the EU the opportunity of ‘opening up the
transnational space in such a way that this organises itself’ (p. 197).
This is indeed a powerful image, engagingly presented. It is paralleled in
the cultural sphere, as I noted at the beginning of this chapter, by Gerard
Delanty’s image of Europe as a site of intercultural translation (Delanty
2005; see also Delanty 2003). Against these, of course, one must set the
counter-image of a Europe with a dubious past, egocentric and selfobsessed, traditionally ignorant of cultural otherness outside its borders
except as something exotic.16 An approach which takes seriously the political economy of the EU as a region of globalised capitalism is a welcome
counterweight to more culturalist and voluntaristic analyses.17 But it is at
least true, I think, that to conceptualise Europe, or to pursue the project of
European integration, requires a degree of cosmopolitan imagination and
will which might at least anticipate a more cosmopolitan future.
The question, in a nutshell, is whether a Europe which is becoming
post-Western in the trivial sense that it is no longer composed of Western
and Central Europe (plus Greece) will also become post-Western in a more
interesting sense of multicultural cosmopolitanism. (The Turkish case, discussed elsewhere in this volume, is of course exceptionally important in
this regard.) The EU, which is on the way to becoming coextensive with
almost all of the subcontinent, is of course a permanent building site. It
remains to be seen whether, as a result of the 2004 Enlargement and the
one which is planned to succeed it in 2007, it will be less of a fortress and
more of a community, for itself and for the rest of the world.
Notes
1 ‘Die Rede (Deutschland ist demokratisch)’, in Gebrüder Engel, Watt ’Ne Welt.
Label: Thmv (New Music) ASIN: B00002DG7Z (1999).
2 As Étienne Balibar (2004: 24–5) has suggested, ‘we should resist the illusion of
believing . . . that some national traditions are open, tolerant, and ‘universalist’
by ‘nature’ or on account of their ‘exceptionality’, whereas others, still by
virtue of their nature or historical specificity, are intolerant and ‘particularist’.
Balibar was referring to national traditions and to their attitudes to foreigners,
but the point has a more general application. See also Nederveen Pieterse
(2002: 141): ‘A cultural analysis of Europe points toward traveling light, in the
sense of leaving behind the heavy luggage of imperialism and colonialism,
racism and chauvinism, nationalism and parochialism’.
3 Of the things which did not happen, two stand out in particular. First, a rapid
and much more substantial Marshall Plan-type response by the West as a
whole and the EU in particular to the challenge of 1989. Second, a very different scenario in which either the EU was even less welcoming to the East, or in
which part or all of the East deliberately rejected full membership of the EU in
favour of a looser attachment in the European Economic Area. On the latter
question, however unlikely it may look at present, the prospect of an Eastern
European Norway or Switzerland should not be ruled out. More to the point,
as Böröcz and Sarkar (2005: 158–9) emphasise, full membership has been and
200 William Outhwaite
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
is to be preceded by a long transitional period of dependency on EU regulations:
‘For the entrants during the 2004 round of accessions (who will enjoy equal rights
within the EU by 2011), this quasi-dependency status will have lasted for 18
years. For next-round members Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey – optimistically
assuming only a five-year delay – it can be expected to be circa 23 years’. On
further impending accessions, see also, for example, Bechev and Andreev (2005).
As Étienne Balibar described the situation in 1991 (Balibar 2004: 90), ‘Following the disappearance of one of the two blocs, the struggle itself is vanishing,
which in fact constitutes a great trial of truth: now or never is the moment for
the dream to materialize, for Europe to rise up, renewed or revitalized. This is
also the moment when the dream risks being smashed into pieces’.
Sobrina Edwards (2005) has shown the two ways in which the 2004 Enlargement was presented: first, as simply the next in a series of enlargements and,
second, as a historic moment of the reunification of a Europe divided since the
Second World War. See also Spohn (2000).
The research of Ruth Wodak and her colleagues suggests however a rather
more pessimistic assessment of the Convention (Krzyzanowski 2005; Oberhuber 2005).
These terms are of course drawn from the nineteenth-century discussion
around German unification, which in many ways can be seen as a microcosm
of European integration a century later (see, for example, Garton-Ash 1993,
2004: 223; Balibar, 2004: 253 n. 23).
Melinda Kovács (2001) neatly describes this as ‘putting down and putting off’.
See Baldwin et al. (1997: 168, quoted in Ingham and Ingham 2002: 15):
‘Imagine how eager western Europe would have been in 1980 to pay ECU 18
billion a year in order to free central Europe from communism and remove
Soviet troops from the region’. This figure was a current estimate of the likely
cost of enlargement; the European Currency Unit (ECU) is of course the forerunner of the euro.
For a very different and more critical approach to this issue, see Böröcz and
Sarkar (2005), who see the EU as in some ways a continuation of West European colonialism in another context.
Rudolf Bahro’s now forgotten Alternative (Bahro 1977) is an interesting
example among others.
Including the trans-European Russian empire; see Richard Sakwa’s contribution to this volume.
On Habermas’ account of cosmopolitanism, see Fine and Smith (2003). On the
cosmopolitanism of European functionaries, see Shore (2000) and various
studies on the Europeanisation of national administrations. On the need for,
(Habermas 2004: 69–70) and the existence of elements of deliberative democracy in the EU, see Eriksen and Fossum (2000).
See the collective volume by Beck, Giddens and Lash (1994).
See, in particular, chapter 2, section 3, pp. 57–60. Among the divisions transcended or at least relativised is that between domestic social policy and European regional policy: ‘regional policy becomes European social policy’ (p. 271).
More speculatively, Balibar identified in 1991 something similar in our understanding of Europe as a whole: ‘. . . in “exporting” communism to the world,
after the Bible and cannons, Europe has been placed outside of itself in such a
way that it is no longer able to exist as a closed entity. It is as much our
representation of European civilization as of European political unification that
is affected by the “end of communism” ’ (Balibar 2004: 87).
Beck and Grande (2004: 259) rightly point to a certain ‘Western European
racism’.
See, for example, Nederveen Pieterse (2002); Böröcz and Sarkar (2005, esp. pp.
Europe after the EU enlargement 201
167–8) and Srubar (2003). Nederveen Pieterse (2002: 128) puts the voluntarism issue very neatly: ‘If Europeanization is part of the momentum of accelerated globalization, to what extent is the EU in the driver’s seat, and to what
extent is it driven?’
References
Bahro, R. (1977) Die Alternative: zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus
Köln: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Trans. as: Bahro, R. (1978) The Alternative in
Eastern Europe, London: New Left Books.
Balibar, É. (2004) We, The People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bechev, D. and S. Andreev (2005) ‘Top-Down vs Bottom-Up Aspects of the EU
Institution-Building Strategies in the Western Balkans’, Occasional Paper 3/05,
South East European Studies Programme, European Studies Centre, St Anthony’s
College, Oxford.
Beck, U. (2004) Der kosmopolitische Blick, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Beck, U., A. Giddens and S. Lash (1994) Reflexive Modernization, Cambridge: Polity.
Beck, U. and E. Grande (2004) Das kosmopolitische Europa, Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Blazyca, G. (2002) ‘EU Accession: The Polish Case’, in Ingham and Ingham (eds):
205–21.
Böröcz, J. and M. Sarkar (2005) ‘What is the EU?’, International Sociology, 20(2):
153–73.
Cameron, F. (ed.) (2004) The Future of Europe: Integration and Enlargement,
London: Routledge.
CEC (2000) Eurobarometer, 53: 54.
Delanty, G. (2003) ‘The Making of a Post-Western Europe: A Civilizational Analysis’, Thesis Eleven, 72: 8–24.
Delanty, G. (2005) ‘Cultural Translations and European Modernity’, in E. BenRafael (ed.) Comparing Modern Civilizations: Pluralism versus Homogeneity,
Leiden: Brill.
Edwards, S. (2005) ‘Explaining Enlargement: Space, Identity and Governance’,
unpublished paper for UACES Conference, September, University of Zagreb.
Eriksen, E. O. and J. E. Fossum (eds) (2000) Democracy in the European Union:
Integration Through Deliberation? London: Routledge.
Fine, R. and W. Smith (2003) ‘Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Cosmopolitanism’,
Constellations, 10(4): 469–87.
Garton-Ash, T. (1993) In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent,
London: Cape.
Garton-Ash, T. (2004) Free World, London: Penguin.
Habermas, J. (1991) ‘Europe’s Second Chance’, tr. in J. Habermas (1994) The Past
as Future, Cambridge: Polity.
Habermas, J. (2004) Der Gespaltener Westen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Hjerm, M. (2003) ‘National Sentiments in Eastern and Western Europe’, Nationalities Papers, 31(4): 413–30.
Ingham, H. and M. Ingham (eds) (2002) EU Expansion to the East: Prospects and
Problems, Cheltenham: Edward Edgar.
Kovács, M. (2001) ‘Putting Down and Putting Off: The EU’s Discursive Strategies
202 William Outhwaite
in the 1998 and 1999 Follow-up Reports’, in J. Böröcz and M. Kovács (eds)
Europe’s New Clothes. Unveiling EU Enlargement, Telford: Central European
Review (www.ce-review.org/), pp. 196–234.
Krzyzanowski, M. (2005) ‘ “European Identity Wanted”: On Discursive and Communicative Dimensions of the European Convention’, in R. Wodak and P.
Chilton (eds) A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, Methodology, and Interdisciplinarity, Amsterdam, Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, pp. 137–63.
Mayhew, A. (2000) ‘Enlargement of the European Union: an Analysis of the Negotiations with the Central and Eastern European Countries’, SEI Working Paper
39.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2002) ‘Europe, Traveling Light: Europeanization and Globalization’, in M. Kempny and A. Jawlowska (eds) Identity in Transformation:
Postmodernity, Post-Communism and Modernization, Westport, CT: Praeger,
pp. 127–44.
Norman, P. (2003) The Accidental Constitution: The Story of the European
Convention, Brussels; Eurocomment.
Oberhuber, F. (2005) ‘Deliberation or “Mainstreaming”?. Empirically Researching
the European Convention’, in R. Wodak and P. Chilton (eds) A New Agenda in
(Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, Methodology, and Interdisciplinarity,
Amsterdam, Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, pp. 165–87.
Shore, C. (2000) Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration,
London: Routledge.
Spence, D. (1991) Enlargement Without Accession, London: Royal Institute of
International Affairs.
Spohn, W. (2000) ‘Die Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union und die Bedeutung
kollektiver Identitäten. Ein Vergleich west- und osteuropäischer Staaten’,
Berliner Journal fur Soziologie, 10(2): 219–40.
Srubar, I. (2003) ‘ “Kampf der Kulturen” und die EU-Osterweiterung’, in S. Beetz,
U. Jacob and A. Sterbling (eds) Soziologie über die Grenzen – Europäische Perspektiven. Festschrift für Herrn Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Bálint Balla zum 75.
Geburtstag, Hamburg: Krämer Verlag, pp. 327–39.
14 Turkey between Europe and Asia
E. Fuat Keyman
In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in Turkey in terms of
its modern history that has demonstrated that a secular, democratic constitutional democracy is possible in a social setting whose population is dominantly Muslim. The historical context in which this interest has occurred
is what has come to be known as “the post-September/11 world” in which
the rapid dissemination of inhuman and deadly terrorist attacks throughout the world and their link to Islam have become the central concern of
international relations. Since September/11, 2001, world affairs have been
increasingly framed by the discourse of “the clash of civilizations”, and
fundamental to this discourse has been the codification of Islam as the
negation of secular modernity and liberal democracy. In this context, it has
been suggested by many that the possibility of success in the ongoing
global fight against terrorism depends to a large extent on the possibility of
the articulation of Islam with modernity and democracy. In political and
academic discourse, this suggestion has been formulated differently and in
various forms, ranging in a large spectrum from the idea of “the export of
democracy through war and occupation, leading to the necessary regime
change in failed states” to the calls for “global democratic governance”
capable of establishing an effective foundation for the co-existence of different cultures and civilizations in a manner that involves tolerance,
respect and responsibility as the guiding principles of social interactions in
international, regional and intra-national relations.
In the post-September/11 world, Turkey and its historical experience of
modernity has constituted a significant case for the possibility of the coexistence of Islam and democracy. As a social formation with a large
Muslim population, Turkey in its modern history has established itself as a
modern nation with a strong secular state structure, transformed its political system into a multi-party parliamentary democracy and created a freemarket economy. Moreover, as a social formation located at the
intersection of the East and the West, the identity of Turkey has always
been marked by its will to “reach the contemporary level of civilization”,
understood as Westernization and Europeanization. In other words, even
though Islam has always remained a significant symbolic reference in the
204 E. Fuat Keyman
formation of cultural identity in Turkey, the history of modern Turkey has
been characterized by Westernization as a site of secular modernity, economic progress and democracy. Moreover, despite the existence of a
number of regime breakdowns and democratic-deficit problems in its
multi-party system, Turkey has nevertheless persistently continued its
commitment to parliamentary democracy and its norms. It is this commitment that accounts for the ability of political Islam not only to find for
itself a place in the multi-party parliamentary democracy in Turkey, but
also to enlarge that place to the extent of becoming the governing party of
a strongly secular state, as in the case of the recent majority government of
the Justice and Development Party (the AKP hereafter).
Of course, the Turkish experience of modernity and democracy has not
been without serious problems and recursively occurring political, economic and cultural crises. In fact, the history of modern Turkey can be
described by the simultaneous existence of “success and failure”, that is,
the success in establishing a necessary institutional structure of modernity,
such as a nation-state, modern positive law, parliamentary democracy,
market economy and citizenship, but at the same time the failure in
making modernity multi-cultural, democracy consolidated, economy stable
and sustainable, and citizenship operating on the basis of the language of
rights and freedoms. Yet, it is due precisely to the constant and persistent
commitment in this experience to secular modernity and democracy, as
well as to Westernization and Europeanization, that Turkey has become
one of the crucial actors of the post-September/11 world. The recent deepening in Turkey–European Union (hereafter, EU) relations, which has
resulted in the European Council’s historic decision in its December 2004
summit to begin full accession negotiations with Turkey on 3 October
2005 cannot be explained without taking into account the increasing
importance of Turkey in today’s highly insecure world. In the same vein,
Turkey’s ability to experience the co-existence of Islam with modernity
and democracy in a generally peaceful manner has also been central to the
Turkish–American relations in recent years. In its unilateral act to restructure the Middle East region through war and occupation, initiated in the
name of democracy and regime change in failed states, the Bush Administration has approached Turkey and its experience of modernity as a
“model” for the region. The recent interest in Turkey, especially in terms
of the possibility of Turkey’s full accession to the EU can also be observed
in most Islamic countries, in that it was commonly suggested that the
incorporation in Europe of a social formation with an Islamic religious
identity has the potential and capacity to bring about the possibility of coexistence, tolerance and unity in diversity, which is needed in the postSeptember/11 world to resist against the increasing dominance of the
essentialist discourse of the clash of civilizations.
Turkey between Europe and Asia 205
Turkey as alternative modernity
In this chapter, I will attempt to analyze the history of modern Turkey
from the perspective of “modernity”. In doing so, as I have suggested elsewhere (Keyman and İçduygu 2005; Keyman 2005; Aydın and Keyman
2004), I will argue that Turkey’s “alternative” route to and travel in
secular modernity and democracy makes the Turkish experience interesting and important, especially in the recent restructuring of world affairs in
which the question of Islam has been brought to the fore. Turkey as an
alternative modernity constitutes one but effective answer to this question,
and it is in this context that an account of Turkey’s experience of modernity becomes necessary and timely. The perspective of modernity, in this
sense, provides a useful analytical device to demonstrate in a sociological
and historical way not only the peculiar nature of Turkish modernity but
also its recent democratic transformation. In employing the perspective of
modernity, I rely on three important theoretical interventions on the
debates about modernity. First, by relying on Charles Taylor’s “Two Theories of Modernity” (2001), in which he differentiates what he calls “cultural” and “acultural” theories of modernity, the chapter makes use of a
cultural theory of modernity. Whereas cultural theory recognizes cultural
differences and the peculiar nature of each culture, and therefore maintains
that the association of modernity with the West does not result in the idea
that other cultures can only modernize by following and imitating the
Western modernity, acultural theory, on the other hand, sees modernity as
the “development and growth” of Western reason, secularism and instrumental rationality. It is by employing a cultural theory of modernity that I
will demonstrate the peculiarity of Turkish modernity as a project of political modernity (as well as its recent crisis that has given rise to the emergence of alternative claims to modernity). Second, by relying on Gerard
Delanty’s analysis of modernity in his important book, Social Theory in a
Changing World (1999), the chapter locates its understanding of the emergence of alternative modernities in the conflictual nature of modernity that
occurs as a result of the tension between societal modernization and cultural modernization, or between autonomy and fragmentation. Following
Delanty, I approach alternative modernities as historically and discursively
constructed societal claims, embedded in cultural modernization and its
recent fragmentation and aiming at altering the state-centric and secular
model of Turkish modernity. Third, by relying on the theory of alternative
or multiple modernities (Eisenstadt 2000; Ong 1999; Berger and Huntington 2002), in which it is recognized that modernity is not one but many,
and that there are different and varying articulations of economy and
culture in different national sites, the chapter reads the recent criticisms of
the state-centric model of Turkish modernity as having the potential to
produce alternative claims to modernity with differing societal visions, cultural identity formations and citizenship demands.
206 E. Fuat Keyman
On the basis of these three methodological openings, it can be suggested
that Turkey with its ability to achieve the co-existence of Islam, secular
modernity and democracy constitutes an alternative modernity, and it is
this characteristic of Turkey that creates its recent perception in academic
and political discourse as an important actor whose experience of modernity should be taken seriously by any attempt aiming at going beyond the
clash of civilizations, beyond the orientalist divide between the West and
the East, and more importantly beyond the culturally essentialist and fundamentalist desires to codify difference as the dangerous Other. In what
follows, I will analyze Turkey’s travel in modernity in three stages by
focusing: first, on the arrival of Turkey at modernity in the early republican years; second, on the crisis and transformation of modernity as a result
of the emergence of identity-based conflicts; and third, on the democratization of modernity and its operation as an alternative modernity in
recent years.
Arrival at modernity
In his influential book, The Making of Modern Turkey, Feroz Ahmad correctly observes that “Turkey did not rise phoenix-like out of the ashes of
the Ottoman Empire. It was ‘made’ in the image of the Kemalist elite
which won the national struggle against foreign invaders and the old
regime” (1993: 2). Moreover, in the process of “making”, the primary aim
was to “reach the contemporary level of civilization” by establishing its
political, economic and ideological prerequisites, such as the creation of an
independent nation-state, the fostering of industrialization, and the construction of a secular and modern national identity. Thus, while Turkey as
an independent nation-state emerged out of an independence war against
Western imperialist powers, it nevertheless accepted the universal validity
of Western modernity as the way of building modern Turkey. For Atatürk
and his followers, it was only through rapid modernization that entailed
the introduction and the dissemination of Western reason and rationality
into what was regarded as traditional and backward social relations that
Turkey would be stronger and secure vis-à-vis its enemies.
In can be argued, in this sense, that since its inception in 1923, the
process of making has involved both security and modernity, meaning that
the Kemalist elite has always been concerned about the security of the new
nation in a time when they accepted the universal validity of Western
modernity for the possibility of Turkey to reach the contemporary level of
civilization. Here the question is, how was the link between security,
modernity and Westernization established in the process of making? For
the Kemalist elite, the key to linking security and modernity in Westernization was the idea of “rapid modernization” through the foundation of a
modern nation-state that would possess secularity and rationality, employ
reason to initiate progress, and establish a modern industrial economy,
Turkey between Europe and Asia 207
thereby fostering the processes of industrialization. And, this modernization had to be “rapid”, due precisely to the “time lag” between Turkey
and the West in terms of their different historical arrivals at modernity
(Ahıska 2003: 354). It is for this reason that for the Kemalist elite, in order
for Turkey as a new independent nation to be secure and stronger, not
only should it be successful in establishing the necessary political, economic and cultural institutions of what Delanty calls societal modernization, the pace of modernization should also be rapid making it possible
quickly to catch up with the level of civilization in the West.
Of course, fundamental to the success in societal modernization was the
idea of the state that was derived in a strategic manner from the reaction
of the Kemalist elite to two fundamental problems, which they saw were
the key to the decline of the Ottoman Empire. First, they saw the personal
rule of the sultan in the Ottoman state as the main reason for the inability
of the Empire to compete with the European nation-state system. Second,
they saw the Islamic basis of the Ottoman state as the primary obstacle to
progress in Ottoman society. For the Kemalist elite therefore, it was imperative to create a nation-state distinct from the person of the sultan and
secular enough to reduce Islam to the realm of individual faith. Herein can
be seen the association of the Kemalist elite with the Durkheimian conception of the state as the agent of rationality. The state is thus viewed as an
active agent that, while taking its inspiration from the genuine feelings and
desires of the nation, shapes and reshapes it to “elevate the people to the
level of contemporary (Western) civilization” (Heper 1985: 50). Therefore,
the Kemalist idea of the state was embedded in the question of how to
activate the people towards the goal of civilization, that is, how to construct a national identity compatible with the will to civilization. Moreover, the Kemalist elite also
took seriously the Weberian answer to the riddle of the “European
miracle”; that is, that the reasons behind Western advancement could
be located precisely in Western cultural practices. Kemalism understood modernization not just as a question of acquiring technology,
but as something that could not be absorbed without a dense network
of cultural practices which made instrumental thought possible.
(Sayyid 1994: 269)
This means that the commitment to societal modernization had to be supplemented with a set of cultural practices that were to constitute the discursive and institutional foundation for a modern and secular national
identity.
The state-based attempt to achieve a top-down and rapid modernization of the new republic and the construction of a modern and secular
national identity was initiated through a set of reforms, namely those of
republicanism, nationalism, etatism, secularism, populism and reformism
208 E. Fuat Keyman
(from above). These reforms defined the nation-state as the sovereign
subject of modernity, operating as the dominant actor of political, economic and cultural life spheres, and aimed to construct national identity as
an organic unity of the secular non-class based identity which necessarily
involved the subjugation of its Other, i.e. the Kurdish identity, Islamic
identity and minorities. This identity was the citizen as the symbol of secularism and civilization, virtuous enough to privilege state interest over
her/his own interest, and the other was expected to accord primacy to citizenship over difference.
It should be noted at this point that in the way in which Turkish modernity reproduced itself mainly as societal modernization, that is, as a
modern nation-state building process, in which the state plays a significant
role as a dominant and sovereign actor/subject, its expectation to achieve a
top-down construction of a modern and secular national identity through
the state-based designed reforms was not very successful (Keyman 1995;
Mardin 1994; Sunar 2004). As Mardin (1994) correctly suggests, even
though the arrival at modernity involved success in the process of modern
nation-state building, it nevertheless failed to construct a “social ethos” in
societal relations. In other words, the success in societal modernization
went hand in hand with the failure in cultural modernization. The remaining strong symbolic role of Islam in the identity formation of the majority
of people, especially those living in rural areas, as well as in the formation
of everyday life in the republican era, and also the resistance, coming especially from the Southern Anatolia and voicing the demands of the Kurdish
ethnic identity, against the conceptualization of national identity as a
modern and secular organic unity clearly illustrates and indicates the
problem of social ethos embedded in the Kemalist elite’s will to civilization
through societal modernization. It is the problem of social ethos, that is,
the emergence of the disjuncture between societal and cultural modernization processes in the republican era that, as will be seen in the following
section, has paved the way to the identity-based conflict, mainly in the
form of Islamic resurgence and the Kurdish question.
Moreover, in addition to the problem of social ethos that characterizes
the nature of “arrival at modernity”, the lack of reference to democracy
should also be pointed out as one of the defining features of the early
republican era. More than the existing one-party system, it is the need, in
the minds of the Kemalist elite, to catch up with the level of civilization in
the West as fast as possible, in order to make Turkey more secure and
stronger, that explains the democracy deficit in this era. The main aim in
the constant efforts to initiate the state-centric reforms for the top-down
modernization of society as a whole, as noted, was to overcome the
problem of the “time lag” between Turkey and the West, and the key to
do so was “modernization without democratization”. In this context, the
articulation of modernity and security, framed by the discourse of Westernization, and operated mainly as a mode of the state-centric societal
Turkey between Europe and Asia 209
modernization marks the nature of the early republican era of modern
Turkey.
The crisis of modernity
Even though Turkey transformed its single-party political system into a
multi-party parliamentary democracy in a peaceful transition after the
Second World War, it was not until the 1980s, and especially the 1990s,
that the hegemony of the state-centric mode of societal modernization
remained unchallenged. This statement does not underestimate the importance of the transition to democracy in modern Turkey. In fact, unlike the
Latin American and South European countries, where the transition from
authoritarianism to democracy was realized through a “rupture” with the
old regime, Turkey’s experience involved a peaceful transition with a
movement of “reform” in the single-party political system (Özbudun
2000: 13–44). It is for this reason that, as has been argued by many, since
its inception in 1950 parliamentary democracy has persisted and remained
an accepted and dominant “political norm of governance”, even if it has
faced three regime breakdowns in 1960, 1971 and 1980 (Özbudun 2000;
Sunar 2004). It is true that “democracy deficit” constitutes one of the main
characteristics of contemporary Turkish politics, and democracy in Turkey
needs to be consolidated. Yet, it is equally true that the norm of
parliamentary democracy also constitutes a strong foundation for the possibility of democratic consolidation to be achieved, as well as of making
Turkish modernity multi-cultural and democratic.
One of the main reasons for the simultaneous existence of “success” in
transition to democracy and “failure” in consolidating democracy as a
result of regime breakdown in the period between 1950 and 1980 was that
this transition did not challenge the hegemony of the state-centric mode of
societal modernization, its reliance on security and its approach to
national identity as a modern, secular and organic unity. In other words,
however important it was, the transition to democracy did not rely on
societal forces and democratic struggle, nor did it activate cultural modernization. It remained ephemeral, accepted the hegemony of state-centric
modernity, and has become vulnerable to regime breakdowns (Sunar
2004: 65–93). It was only after the 1980s that there occurred a set of
serious challenges to state-centric modernity, which was activated within
the realm of cultural modernization and initiated by the newly emerging
actors of Turkish politics, namely those of economic actors acting as the
strong voices of globalization, market economy and liberal state, political
actors attempting to put identity politics into practice as a struggle for
recognition and difference, and civil society actors and social movements
trying to bring into existence a new language of politics based upon the
idea of rights, freedoms and active citizenship (Keyman and İçduygu 2005;
Özbudun and Keyman 2002; Kramer 2000).
210 E. Fuat Keyman
During the 1990s, however, there emerged a simultaneous existence of
transformation and crisis, mainly felt in the realms of politics, economics
and culture. In this period, while there were societal calls for the necessary
democratization of state–society relations, the development of civil society
and sustainable economic development, the state and political parties have
faced a serious legitimacy and representation crisis, the economic realm
has experienced a serious financial and governing crisis, and the cultural
realm has been confronted by religious and ethnic-based conflict. In fact, it
was the identity-based conflicts, which have given rise to the process of the
resurgence of Islam and the Kurdish question, that marked the crisisridden nature of Turkish modernity and Turkish politics during the 1990s
(Keyman and İçduygu 2005). The Kurdish question, in which the ethnic
identity-based demands for recognition and cultural rights and the ethnicbased violence and terror activities went hand in hand, even becoming
fused, has been most politically troublesome and challenging. Not only has
the Kurdish question placed ethnicity at the center of Turkish politics very
effectively, it has also caused a “low-intensity war” between the state and
the PKK (The Kurdish Workers Party) which has left more than 30,000
people dead. It also placed national security concerns at the center of
state–society relations, and as a result, democracy was deferred in the
name of security and territorial unity.
On the other hand, the process of the resurgence of Islam has created a
much more complex development during the 1990s in Turkey. Similar to
the Kurdish question, in which the construction of national identity in
Turkish modernity as an organic, secular unity was put into interrogation,
the Islamic challenge to the national identity had to do with its strictly secularist and state-controlled nature (Cornell 2001). The Islamic challenge to
Turkish modernity, in this sense, has been initiated on the basis of religious rights and freedoms, and directed at state-centric secularism.
However, this challenge, unlike the Kurdish question, has paved the way
to a multiple and multi-dimensional development of the process of resurgence. During the 1990s, the Islamic challenge has produced (i) a successful politicization process both at national and local levels, which has
brought success to the Islamic-oriented parties in national and municipal
elections; and (ii) successful Islamic-oriented economic actors, whose
increasing presence in economic life has proved that Islam can co-exist
with free market capitalism, globalization and modernity (Özbudun and
Keyman 2002; Buǧra 1999). The process of resurgence, then, has created
Islamic-based identity claims in the political, economic and cultural realms
of social life; claims whose discursive mode has varied in a large spectrum
from fundamentalism to moderate conservatism, and whose success in
proving that Islam can co-exist with modernity and democracy has made
Turkey an example of alternative modernity. The Islamic challenge to the
state-centric Turkish modernity, in fact, can be read off, in Delanty’s terminology, as a challenge, emerging from within cultural modernization,
Turkey between Europe and Asia 211
and aiming at making societal modernization more open to the presence of
religious identity in modernity.
Articulating modernity and democracy
During the 1990s, the state and political parties turned out to be too weak
to cope effectively with these identity-based challenges, and to govern their
society democratically and efficiently (Kramer 2000). The unstable coalition governments and the increasing problems of corruption, populism and
clientalism, together describe the weak structure of the state and political
parties in this period. However, since 2000, it has become possible to
observe five crucial developments (international and national) that have
generated extremely important, if not system-transforming changes in
state–societal relations in Turkey. These developments have forced political and state elites to come to terms with the fact that democracy is not
only a normatively good system of governance, but also constitutes a valuable strategic and political device to enable any country to be strong and
stable in its homeland and in international relations. They have also
created an adequate ground for the possibility of making Turkey a strong,
stable and democratic country. These developments include: the February
2001 financial crisis and Turkey–IMF relations, the November 2002
national election and the AKP government, the increasing importance and
role of civil society, the changing nature of Turkey–EU relations, and the
war in Iraq and Turkish–American relations.
All of these developments and relations have had significant impacts in
state–society relations in terms of democratization, restructuring
state–economy relations, macroeconomic stability, the emergence of active
and right-holder understanding of citizenship, and making Turkish modernity democratic and multicultural. The February 2001 financial crisis and
Turkey–IMF relations have brought about a significant institutional
restructuring of state–economy relations that aimed to fight against corruption, populism and clientalism, and also to provide a macroeconomic
foundation for economic stability (Aydın 2005). The November 2002
national election demonstrated the popular feeling in Turkey that the ineffective and unstable political structure based on economic populism and
democratic deficiencies had run its course and that a strong single-party
government with institutional and societal support could make Turkey a
democratic and economically stable country. In fact, the election result
was the single majority government of the AKP. Since then, the AKP
government has created political stability in Turkey and made a number of
important legal and constitutional changes necessary for both further
democratization of Turkey and meeting the requirements of the Copenhagen political criteria to be able to start the full accession negations with
the EU. Since the AKP has emerged from the previous Islamic-oriented
political parties and defined itself as a “conservative democrat” party with
212 E. Fuat Keyman
moderate Islamic discourse, it has played an important role in demonstrating that in Turkey Islam can co-exist with modernity and democracy. In
addition to these developments, there have been strong societal calls in
recent years for the further democratization of state, societal and individual relations in Turkey. Today, civil society has become an important
element of Turkish politics, not only through its discourse of democratization but also its associational activities. The qualitative and quantitative
importance of civil society has forced political and state actors to come to
terms with democracy as well as its normative and strategic significance
for making Turkey a strong and stable country in international relations
(Keyman 2005).
Among these developments, it is the recent deepening of Turkey–EU
relations in the post-September/11 world context that has created an
upsurge of interest in Turkey both regionally (that is, mainly Europe and
the Middle East) and globally. The ability and capacity of Turkey to have
a secular and democratic political structure (societal modernization), and
at the same time to make the possibility of co-existence of Islam with
modernity and democracy an achievable reality constitutes the main
reason for this interest. Since the Helsinki Summit of 1999, at which
Turkey was granted the status of a candidate country for full membership,
Turkish–EU relations have gained “certainty”. This certainty has forced
the political and state actors in Turkey to focus on democracy, since the
candidate-country status requires Turkey to fulfill the Copenhagen political criteria, which means having modernity and democracy linked and
upgraded in a given candidate country for full EU membership. Turkey’s
efforts to make a number of important legal and constitutional changes
before the Copenhagen summit of 2002 was only enough to obtain a conditional date (2004 if there was no delay) for the beginning of full accession negotiations with the EU on condition that it meets the Copenhagen
political criteria in terms of implementation in its state–societal relations.
Turkey’s efforts to consolidate its democracy in order to obtain a starting
date for negotiations have been successful, as the European Council
decided in its December 2004 summit that Turkey would begin the full
accession negotiations on 3 October 2005. Even if there are still reactions,
ambiguities and uncertainties in Europe with respect to the question of
Turkey’s full membership, two points are worth making. First, it is true
that as Turkey–EU relations have gained certainty over time, Turkish politics have come to terms with the fact that democracy should be “the only
game in town”, so that these relations have the potential to generate, in
fact they have begun to generate, a significant structural and institutional
impact on Turkish modernity and its articulation with modernity. Second,
the identity of Turkey as a secular democratic country with a large Islamic
population has become an asset in Turkey–EU relations, for the incorporation of Turkey into Europe has been viewed both in Europe and globally
as a way of resisting the clash of civilizations from which terrorism gains
Turkey between Europe and Asia 213
strength. This view of Turkey can be seen also in Turkish–American relations, in which Turkey has been constantly presented as a model for the
failed states, as an important actor with an important role to play in the
process of the creation of a stable Middle East.
These changes in Turkish–EU relations, Turkish–IMF relations, the
AKP single-majority government, Turkish–American relations and the
increasing importance of civil society have together brought about the possibility of making Turkish modernity more societal, liberal, plural and
multicultural, as well as transforming Turkish democracy into a more consolidated and substantial democracy. Since Turkey’s arrival at modernity,
the history of modernity has involved ups and downs, and regime breakdowns and crises in terms of democracy and its consolidation. However, it
should also be pointed out that in this history there has been a positive
move towards arriving at democratic society. Today, Turkey has the
chance and ability not only to continue its travel in modernity as a democratic society, but also to demonstrate that as an alternative modernity, as
an example of the co-existence between Islam and democratic modernity
in a secular political structure, it could make an important contribution to
most needed democratic global governance for the creation of a secure,
just and peaceful world.
References
Ahıska, M. (2003) “Occidentalism: The Historical Fantasy of the Modern”, South
Atlantic Quarterly, 102(2/3): 351–81.
Ahmad, F. (1993) Making of Modern Turkey, Routledge: London.
Aydın, Z. (2005) The Political Economy of Turkey, London: Pluto.
Aydın, S. and E. F. Keyman (2004) Democratization and European Integration in
Turkey, CEPS Working Papers.
Berger, P. L. and S. P. Huntington (eds) Many Globalizations, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 296–321.
Buǧra, A. (1999) Islam in Economic Organizations, İstanbul: TESEV.
Cornell, E. (2001) Turkey in the 21st Century, Richmond: Curzon.
Delanty, G. (1999) Social Theory in a Changing World, Cambridge: Polity.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (2000) “Multiple Modernities”, Daedalus, 129(1): 1–31.
Heper, M. (1985) The State Tradition in Turkey, North Humberside: The Eothen
Press.
Keyman, E. F. (1995) “On Relation Between Global Modernity and Nationalism:
The Crisis of Hegemony and the Rise of Islamic Identity in Turkey”, New Perspectives in Turkey, 13, pp. 93–121.
Keyman, E. F. and A. İçduygu (eds) (2005) Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions, Turkish Experiences, London: Routledge.
Keyman, E. F. (2005) “Modernity, Democracy and Civil Society”, in F. Adaman
and M. Arsel (eds) Environmentalism in Turkey, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 35–53.
Kramer, H. (2000) A Changing Turkey, Washington: Brookings Institution Press.
Mardin, S. (1994) Religion and Politics (Devlet ve Din), İstanbul: İletisim.
Ong, A. (1999) Flexible Citizenship, Durham: Duke University Press.
214 E. Fuat Keyman
Özbudun, E. (2000) Contemporary Turkish Politics, Boulder: Lynne Riener.
Özbudun, E. and E. F. Keyman (2002) “Cultural Globalization in Turkey”, in
P. L. Berger and S. P. Huntington (eds) Many Globalizations, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 296–321.
Sayyid, B. (1994) The Fundamentalist Fear, London: Zed.
Sunar, I. (2004) State, Society and Democracy in Turkey, Istanbul: Bahcesehir University Publications.
Taylor, C. (2001) “Two Theories of Modernity”, in D. P. Gaonkar (ed.) Alternative Modernities, London: Duke University Press, pp. 172–97.
15 Russia as Eurasia
An innate cosmopolitanism
Richard Sakwa
Russia is not a country; it is a world.
(Russian saying)
In the great struggle of Europe against the rest, Russia stands to one side.
Its identity as a European nation is questioned internally and externally,
while its status as a European power is perceived as one of the fundamental challenges facing the continent. In tsarist guise the Russian empire
expanded to fill the Eurasian landmass and ultimately challenged the
Nordic powers to carve out space for its new ‘window on the West’, the
city of St. Petersburg, and in the south Russia imposed relentless pressure
on the decaying Ottoman empire to seize the southern steppes and Crimea,
and entertained dreams of occupying Constantinople. In Soviet guise
Russia became the kernel of an alternative modernity in which capitalism
would be superseded and collectivist forms of life practised. Today a
democratising post-imperial Russia looms over to the East, too big to join
the European Union but too important to be left out. Multiple layers of
identity clash and complement each other: imperial, Byzantine, European
and Eurasian, while the very concept to describe the country remains contested – a nation-state or a civilisational alternative to the modernity characteristic of the West. In geographical and cultural terms Russia appears to
have an innate cosmopolitanism in that its very existence refutes narrow
definitions of East and West, Europe and Asia, nation-state and empire,
modernity and backwardness. Russia’s multiple identities transcend
dominant narratives of what it means to be ‘Western’, while not always
sure of the nature of the alternative that it seeks to embody. In this chapter
we will survey some of the positions and examine whether indeed this very
diversity endows Russia with elements of an innate cosmopolitanism.
Never having been a nation-state in the accepted definition of the term,
perhaps Russia really has been able to skip stages of development and
move on to become a cosmopolitan social order internally and a postnational entity in external relations.
216 Richard Sakwa
Facets of identity
While contemporaries in late nineteenth-century Western Europe
expounded on the theme of the distinctiveness of national destinies or
imperial missions, the Russian intelligentsia endlessly agonised over the
deeper spiritual mission of the country and its own role in bringing
enlightenment to the nation and the world. Among the best examples of
this trend of intellectual evolution are the works of Nikolai Berdyaev and
Vladimir Soloviev, joined by a host of other writers. The emergence of revolutionary socialism as an ersatz national utopianism was contested by this
religious-cultural trend, most notably in the Landmarks collection of 1909
(Vekhi 1994 [1909]). Authors such as Semyon Frank in his article ‘The
Ethics of Nihilism’ in that volume stressed moral development and personal responsibility against the revolutionary romanticism that afflicted the
Russian liberals of that time as much as it did the socialists and radical
agrarians. The challenge of reconstituting this philosophical-spiritual
strand remains to this day as Russia attempts to democratise and find a
new place in the world. As James Billington puts it (2004: xv), ‘an enduring positive identity will be possible only if Russians are able harmoniously
to synthesise Western political and economic institutions with an indigenous recovery of the religious and moral dimensions of Russian culture’.
The debate continues over whether Russia is no more than the Eastern
flank of a common European civilisation, or whether it constitutes a separate and distinct civilisation of its own (Bova 2003). The distinctive pattern
of Russian national development, where a land-based empire expanded by
absorbing its neighbours, together with the delayed development of a
modern civic political community, means that sub-national identities remain
strong on the Eurasian landmass. The Chechen wars are in part a reflection
of this phenomenon. It also means that the very notion of a ‘nation-state’ is
alien to the Russian tradition. The homogenising ‘nation-building’ processes
that were characteristic of the major West European states in the late nineteenth century largely passed Russia by, although the policy of Russification
from the 1880s was a response to the perceived problem of disloyalty
among some of the incorporated peoples. The Russian people as an ethnic
group was seen as just one, even if the leading one, in a broader panEurasian national culture that encompassed not only Belarus and Ukraine,
but also a host of other peoples, religions and cultures. For every strain of
dominating discourse, there were a myriad sub-cultures and alternative identities. This cultural heterogeneity and civilisational irresolution was one
reason for the delayed development of a hegemonic nation-building project,
and instead the emphasis was on a state power that became increasingly
brittle. The Russian empire had a supranational character that allowed
significant diversity of social forms and political identity for its constituent
parts. Indeed, the failure to achieve modern forms of political integration
was in part the reason for the collapse in 1917.
Russia as Eurasia
217
The Soviet system, while destroying formal expressions of traditional
identities, failed to create a fully inclusive national model of the Soviet
citizen. While the territory under its control became more socially homogeneous, it was not fully ‘nationalised’ in the sense of Brubaker’s (1996)
notion of ‘nationalising states’. While the regime, in particular under
Leonid Brezhnev, declared the creation of a ‘new historical community, the
Soviet people’, its own policies impeded the creation of such a ‘Soviet
people’. The notorious point 5 in Soviet passports required an individual
to choose whether they were Russian, Jewish or whatever at the age of 16,
based on either the maternal or paternal lines, but once entered it was very
difficult to change. This perpetuated, and in some cases effectively created,
sub-national ethnically-based identities. Indeed, one author (Martin 2001)
characterised the Soviet system as an ‘affirmative action empire’. Although
in the post-Stalin period leaders spoke of the creation of a ‘new Soviet
people’, Soviet policy in regards to what it called ‘the nationalities question’ remained within the confines of the policy of sblizhenie (the coming
together as in convergence of peoples) rather than their sliyanie (merging).
For post-communist Russia the problem of forging a new national identity remains as sharp as ever. Several competing designs are in tension with
each other. Vera Tolz (2001) describes them as imperial, based on a supranational state; the Eastern Slav idea based on a common origin and
culture; the nation based on the Russian language, irrespective of ethnic
origin or domicile; an ethnic identity based on narrow racial blood ties;
and the idea of a civic Russian nation that would transcend religious,
ethnic and other traditions. All these ideas exist at the same time and for
what is probably the majority of the people, a number of them are not
mutually exclusive: each in turn represents a layer of identity. This is one
reason why post-communist Russian leaderships have focused so much on
finding a new ‘national idea’, something that could provide some sort of
common purpose and orientation. President Boris Yeltsin’s competition to
find a new national idea in 1996 collapsed in a welter of ridicule, while
president Vladimir Putin, in office from 2000, in part derived his popular
support from the ability to encompass several facets, even contradictory
ones, simultaneously. For example, in his state of the nation speech of 25
April 2005 he argued that ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. And for the Russian people, it
was a real drama. Tens of millions of our citizens and fellow-countrymen
found themselves outside the Russian Federation’. Nevertheless, he did not
advocate the recreation of some sort of neo-imperial bloc, and indeed he
spoke dismissively of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the
rather weak body that was intended to act as some sort of surrogate for
the disintegrating USSR when established in December 1991. Even unification between Russia and Belarus was put on the back burner. For Putin the
priority was the development of the sinews of the Russian state, confined
within its 1991 borders, and integrated into the world economy and
218 Richard Sakwa
society. However, the very multiplicity of identities challenged his government to find a convincing hegemonic project under which the endlessly
divided people could rally.
Eurasianism
Concepts of Russia’s place in its region and the world are equally multifaceted. Various alternative discourses were vigorously debated in the postcommunist period. Most are effectively oriented towards the idea of
‘civilisation’ as the most convincing operative unit of analysis. The nationstate is too small, and in the Russian case anachronistic even before it has
developed, while the CIS or its equivalents were clearly not viable. Instead
certain metaphorical concepts were advanced, rooted in beliefs and aspirations but at the same time reflecting genuine elements of Russian history
and its anomalous place in the community of nations. Notable among
these is the idea of Eurasianism. This is based on the nineteenth-century
idea that Russia is a separate and distinct civilisation and not part of a
broader European or even Western civilisation. In the émigré movement of
the 1920s this took on a stronger form by disassociating Russia entirely
from the West and insisting that its destiny lay in Asia. The organising category is ‘civilisation’, rather than nation-state or even empire, and thus the
supra-nationalism that is characteristic of much of Russian thinking on
issues of identity takes a particularly strong form in the Eurasianist model.
The 1920s-style Eurasianism reinforced Lenin’s view of the Soviet system
as anti-Western. In effect Leninism can be considered a civilisational
alternative to the West, and thus the civilisational aspect of Eurasianist
thinking was a natural complement to Leninism.
In its contemporary manifestations the leader of the Communist Party
of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov, continued this twopronged rejection of the West as barbaric and decadent. He seized on
Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ as confirmation of traditional
Russian ideas that civilisation rather than nation-state is the measure of all
things, and that Russia constituted a separate and distinct civilisation of its
own. Authors such as A. S. Panarin (1999) called for a ‘United States of
Eurasia’, established in the framework of dialogue between Orthodox
Christianity and Islam and based on their common hostility to Western
secularism and individualism. There is a powerful tradition in Russia, only
some of it in the Eurasian tradition, that condemns the West, and in
particular the United States, for its artificial, mechanical, individualised
and materialistic nature. The philosopher Igor Shafarevich, for example, is
consistent in his condemnation of Western values and the exposition of
Russian exceptionalism.
Anti-Westernism remains an important component in Russian national
identity, with its roots in nineteenth-century debates between developmental paths, notably between so-called Slavophiles and Westerners, but
Russia as Eurasia
219
with a powerful resonance to this day. We can characterise much of this as
a form of Russian occidentalism, in which the West is homogenised, its
divisions and inner tensions blurred, and then portrayed as the antithesis
of Russian values and the obstacle to the achievement of Russian aspirations and the fulfilment of its national destiny (see Buruma and Margalit
2004: 79–99). The Eurasianist strand of Russian occidentalism has a
philosophical-cultural ‘civilisational’ face, but it also has a geopolitical
dimension. The various facets are well-described by Andrei Tsygankov
(1999), identifying expansionists, civilisationists, stabilisers and geoeconomists. He notes that while some versions take a relatively benign view of
the West, others are ‘openly isolationist and expansionist’. Despite its heterogeneity, reflecting the broader fragmented character of Russian occidentalism, Eurasianism focuses attention on the almost universal belief in
Russia, and in particular among its elites, that the source of many of
Russia’s woes are geopolitical in character (Tsygankov 1999: 102).
In part this is a reflection of notions that Russia is the heartland of
Eurasia, and on the basis of this geographical centrality visions of its civilisational destiny are projected. The influential thinker Alexander Dugin is
on the civilisational part of the Eurasianist spectrum. He views globalism
as a major threat to Russia, and insists that the multinational (imperial)
nature of the Russian state incorporates the four traditional religions
(Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism) as well as the Mongol legacy:
‘The mission of Holy Russ is expressed in defending a distinctive Eurasian
culture, an original social order, which in its key features differs from the
Catholic and Protestant West’. Eurasianists for him are the vanguard of
the East, wider than the Third World, against the West, ‘as the forward
line of traditional society against the society that is secular, atheistic and
subservient to mammon’(Dugin 2002: 8). For Eurasianists such as Dugin,
in keeping with their view of Russia as a land-based geopolitical empire,
Siberia is the heart of Russian identity. As Egor Ligachev (2004) put it,
‘Without Siberia there is no Russia. Russia can only develop with Siberia’.
By comparison with neighbouring Chinese provinces, Siberia is relatively
depopulated, although in terms of absolute economic rationality, Siberia
still has an excessive population. Siberia for Eurasianists, of course, is not
so much an actual territory but a country of the mind on to which they
can project their dreams. Alexander Solzhenitsyn in an earlier generation
had done much the same as he urged Russia to cast off the burden of
empire and focus on spiritual renewal and development of the Siberian
heartland.
Employing a constructivist approach, Tsygankov argues that the
response of the Russian intelligentsia to the West following the communist
collapse has been overwhelmingly negative. Russians in his view have an
alternative vision of world order to that generated in the West, above all
through the works of two authors that he takes as archetypal in the postCold War world, Francis Fukuyama (the triumph of liberalism) and
220 Richard Sakwa
Samuel Huntington (the clash of civilisations). In Tsygankov’s (2004)
view, these two authors are, respectively, excessively cosmopolitan and
ethnocentrically realist. Cosmopolitanism from this perspective lacks cultural sensitivity in projecting the circumstances of a particular time and
place as a universal norm; the West really is the best from this perceived
Huntingtonian perspective. Cosmopolitanism is a highly contested concept
in Russia, and is heavily overlain with connotations of the past and antinational sentiments in the present. In his attack in 1948 on Sergei
Prokofiev and others, Andrei Zhdanov sought to reconcile Soviet nationalism with a broader vision, contrasting ‘healthy’ and ‘formalist’ approaches
to music. ‘[I]nternationalism in art’, Zhdanov (1950: 62–3) argued, ‘does
not spring from the depletion and impoverishment of national art; on the
contrary, internationalism grows where national culture flourishes. To
forget this is to lose one’s individuality and become a cosmopolitan
without a country’. By this time ‘cosmopolitan’ had become a barely disguised euphemism for anti-semitism, and reminds us that the concept of
cosmopolitanism in the Russian context has a highly ambivalent history.
Today Russian thinking stretches from national democrats to the outer
reaches of Eurasianism and imperialism. For example, Igor Chubais seeks
to reconcile the Russian and Western traditions to establish a viable synthesis between the West’s market and democratic values and Russia’s
moral culture. A visible example of the achievement of this lofty ambition
is Dmitry Likhachev, who was able to combine the three positive forces in
Russian culture identified by Billington (2004: 106): traditional religious
beliefs, receptivity to borrowings from the West, and a distinctive affinity
for the land and nature. There is, however, by and large a consensus that
Russia is a separate and distinct civilisation, while at the same time an
integral and important part of the international community. Russia has a
project for world order that in some ways complements that of the United
States but in other respects comes into contradiction with it, above all in
Russia’s insistence of retaining its independence from the West (Tsygankov
2004: Chapter 6). As always, Russia was unable to find an adequate political form for its cosmopolitan realities and great power ambitions.
Time and place: Russia and Europe
Russia has had a distinctive path of development that distinguishes it from
other European countries, however diverse and conflictual their own relations may have been. From early on Russia defined itself as both Europe
and not-Europe, seeking a non-European path to modernity while incorporating some aspects of European development. Russia was able to develop
its sui generis model because, as Marshall Poe (2003) has argued, it was
hard to reach by sea and because of the coherence of the centralised political system. The European challenge was beaten back, and in the Soviet
form Russia’s independent path became attractive to non-European soci-
Russia as Eurasia
221
eties, and indeed to segments in European states themselves who looked
for an alternative pattern of development. It was this ‘Russian Moment in
World History’ that ended in 1991 when Russia’s leaders abandoned
attempts at sustaining an alternative. The best that they could hope for
thereafter was a degree of autonomy.
After the Cold War the West was not so much an alternative as a triumphant model. It became for Russia the spatial substitute for the temporal utopia of communism that it had lost, and became the model to which
the country aspired. At the same time, there were numerous points of resistance to ‘Westification’, rooted above all in a strong sense of the value of
its own autochthonous path of development. The patriotic philosopher
Sergei Kara-Murza (2001: 494–500; 2002), for example argues that Eurocentrism reflects the Russian intelligentsia’s oedipal complex towards an
over-bearing other. For him Eurocentrism is a set of ideological myths
predicated on the assumption that European civilisation is the one and
only correct path that all other cultures and civilisations should follow.
The internalisation of this myth during perestroika in his view led to the
collapse of the USSR.
In broad terms Russia remains Europe’s ‘other’. Many studies have
demonstrated how the emergence of the idea of Europe was accompanied
by an uneasy relationship with internal difference and external threats.
R. W. Southern (1961) describes the nightmares haunting medieval Christendom, beset by the Mongol threat abroad, Islam and domestic heretics.
As Le Goff (2005) notes, the history of Europe is torn between the concepts of ‘territory’ and ‘time’: the tension between consolidation and
fragmentation remains a permanent feature, accompanied by the struggle
between the affirmation of what would become national units and more
supranational cosmopolitan definitions of identity; while the obsession
with notions of progress associated with the ability to measure time accurately dates back 700 years. A ‘Russian question’ has been evident for
nearly as long. Ivan III may have brought together the territory of a consolidated Muscovite state, but although he ruled over a Christian country,
Russia has always remained outside of the idea of Europe while being part
of Europe in all significant ways. The destruction of the power of Byzantium in 1453 deprived Russia of a cultural ally, but allowed the exaltation
of its own distinctive civilisational mission as the ‘third Rome’.
The Eastern borders of Europe have always been blurred. While in conceptual terms some layers of European identity reach out across the Siberian tundra to the Pacific, others firmly stop at the borders of what is
currently the European Union. The ‘European question’ for Russia is decisive. As Sergei Karaganov, the chair of the Council for Foreign and
Defence Policy, put it, ‘Relations with Europe have and will determine
Russia’s self-identification and development’. For him this is not just a
matter of geography, with the formal border of Europe running along
Russia’s Urals mountains, or of growing trade flows between Russia and
222 Richard Sakwa
Europe, since equally high levels of economic interaction are enjoyed by
several North African countries. Russia and Europe share many aspects of
history and culture, but the Europe of the EU now expresses some
fundamentally new normative features. In terms of politics and security
Europe seeks to overcome the legacy of endless wars, desists from the use
of force in conflict resolution, repudiates the old balance of power politics,
and places human rights, religious tolerance and ethnic and social inclusiveness above the interests of nations. In his view, ‘A new post-European
civilisation, and the first relatively successful prototype of world government, are taking shape today’. Over the last three centuries Russia borrowed eclectically from the European developmental model, including ‘the
utopian communist path (also borrowed from Europe), which distanced
the country further from Europe’. With the fall of communism Russia was
able to catch up with the rest of Europe incredibly fast, ‘covering three
years in one’. However, as Europe and Russia drew closer, they realised
just how different they were. ‘Russia was moving towards the Europe of
De Gaulle, Churchill and Adenauer, and when it got closer, it saw the
Europe of the Brussels bureaucracy and new political correctness’ (RIA
Novosti, 26 May 2005).
The tension between necessary adaptation to the West and loyalty to a
nativist path of development was at the heart of debates in the postcommunist era. By contrast with the communist era, the contradictory
nature of the Western experience was well understood. Some in Putin’s
government were sensitive to the multiple meanings of the West (for
example, German Gref, Itogi, 8 February 2000: 24). The West is susceptible to a number of geographical and ideological interpretations. Geographically, there is a tension between the American and the European versions,
while Japan represents a world of its own. The ideological ambiguity of
the West is reflected above all in the tension between perceptions of the
West as a security community (primarily NATO), as a zone of capitalist
prosperity (in particular the EU), or as the core of a set of universal values
based on human rights and a set of international ethical norms (represented, for example, by the Council of Europe). Thus some Russian thinking
has deconstructed the West, no longer a monolithic unitary actor, into a
more dynamic conception as the site of conflicts, divergent interests and
economic dynamism. It was this more subtle understanding of the West
that allowed the transcendence of traditional ‘Russia versus the West’ discourses.
The transcendence of the Cold War meant more than simply putting an
end to the dynamic of conflict but also dealing with its material and institutional legacies. The new era had a dual meaning: liberation from
communism but also loss of status and territory. Russia lost its superpower status and an empire that had taken four hundred years to assemble. A vast military-security establishment remained barely changed,
despite endless reforms. The predictability and certainties of the Cold War
Russia as Eurasia
223
had gone, but the rules and modalities of the new world order were far
from clear. Cosmopolitanism in the guise of Western universalism, and its
accompanying ideology of ‘humanitarian intervention’, particularly in the
Balkans, was perceived as a threat by Russia, but its alternative model of
internationalism, based on multipolarity and the coexistence of civilisations, lacked a sufficiently convincing platform as the Russian economy
and society languished in crisis. Russia was both a defeated power (losing
the superpower status that had been achieved by the USSR) and an undefeated power (since Russia could justifiably disassociate itself from the fate
of the Soviet system).
This ambiguity pervaded not only Russia’s relations with the world, but
perhaps even more importantly, the world’s relations with Russia, in
particular when it came to dealing with the other post-Soviet republics.
Russia’s erstwhile Cold War adversaries, and its neighbours in the socalled ‘near abroad’, could not bring themselves to believe that the new
Russia had really changed its spots, and all in one form or another feared
the revival of ‘Russian imperialism’. Russia’s pursuit of constrained
regional hegemony reflected trans-national ambitions that could variously
be interpreted as cosmopolitanism or neo-imperialism. Russian supranationalism in whatever guise was perceived as a threat, and reinforced the
nation-state building efforts of its neighbours. The former Soviet republics
are seen as an area of threat rather than fulfilment, and for many the
Western path is the only one that would allow Russia to overcome its ‘Asiatism’, where power and property fuse and an authoritarian regime claims
to fulfil some transcendent mission and thus justifies its domination over
society (Shelov-Kovedyaev 2004).
At an Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) meeting in May
2001 Putin acknowledged the Eurasian factor by calling Russia ‘EuroAsia’ (‘Soblazn evraziistva’, Moskovskie novosti, 8 May 2001) although in
general he has consistently repudiated the ideological elements of
Eurasianism. While Putin insists that it would be foolhardy for Russia to
claim to be an alternative to the West, he vigorously defends Russia’s autonomy. This sometimes leads to the adoption of contradictory positions.
Following the political debacle during the Ukrainian presidential elections
of late 2004, Gleb Pavlovsky, the Russian strategist most responsible for
Russia’s failures in Ukraine, argued ‘If we believe that the institutions of
Western democracy cannot be accepted in the Euro-East, why can’t we
discuss this openly?’ (Moskovskii komsomolets, 21 December 2004). This
was not a position that Putin would share, since he is well aware that if
any specific content were to be put on ‘Euro-Eastern values’, they would
most likely be reactionary, isolationist and regressive, all things against
which he has fought. This does not mean that Putin has renounced a
special role for Russia in Eurasia, but for him historical traditions and
human ties are pre-eminent. Vitaly Tretyakov, the former editor of Nezavisimaya gazeta, argued that in addition to these two, CIS states are united
224 Richard Sakwa
by ‘anti-Americanism’ (Ekspert, 6 December 2004), precisely the sort of
sentiment that Putin seeks to avoid. Putin is well aware, as Tretyakov put
it, ‘We have nothing that would be equal in ideological might to Soviet
communism or Western liberalism’. Russia was not able to generate an
alternative social model that could in any way be attractive to its neighbours. The post-Soviet states are engaged in the modernist nation-building
project, whereas post-modern cosmopolitanism in Eurasia encounters a
powerful dynamic of resistance.
Polity and cosmopolitanism
For Ulrich Beck (2005), globalisation transforms traditional notions of a
world of nation-states with fixed borders, measured sovereignty and
exclusive identities into new forms of cosmopolitan political community
that transcend traditional categories and are open to difference and otherness. In his view, there is a traditional European version of cosmopolitanism whose recovery is made possible by the second modernity ushered
in by the age of globalisation. The development of a cosmopolitan social
order internally also comes up against resistance. A poll by Gallup International in early 2005 found that 61 per cent of Russians were hostile in
one way or another to globalisation, slightly higher than the world average
of 56 per cent (‘Global’nyi antiglobalizm’ 2005: 11). In part this could be
because of a lack of understanding of what globalisation entailed, but at
the same time it reflected fears that globalisation was a covert way of universalising American global hegemony. For many Russians a cosmopolitan
world would be a Westernised one, and these fears are not baseless. President George W. Bush used the word ‘freedom’ 25 times in his second-term
inauguration speech in January 2005. As Martin Jacques (2005: 17) comments, ‘The neoconservative strategy is quite explicit: to bend the world to
America’s will; to reshape it according to the interests of a born-again
superpower’, and despite the problems in Iraq, ‘the United States does not
recognise the constraints on its own power and ambition’. He argues that
for historical reasons American modernity differs from that of Europe, and
even more so both differ from that in China and India, stressing that
‘modernity is not simply a snapshot of the present, but a product of
history, not only a function of markets and technology, but the creation of
a culture’.
The question asked by Ernest Renan takes on redoubled force when
applied to Russia. The problem for us is not so much ‘What is a nation?’,
but ‘What is the Russian nation?’. The failure of the USSR to define the
features of a Soviet nation was one of the major contributory factors to the
Soviet collapse. There were attempts to create a single ‘Soviet people’, but
this remained an abstraction and was undermined, as we have seen, by the
perpetuation of distinct ethnic identities. The introduction of the Russian
passport in the mid-1990s raised the question once again in the sharpest
Russia as Eurasia
225
form. While the independent Russian state was constitutionally committed
to its development as a civic multi-ethnic community, the dropping of
ethnic affiliation in the passport led to vigorous protests by some of the
more self-confident ethnic groups, notable the Tatars and Bashkirs. They
argued that without an ethnic signifier, they would be liable to be
absorbed into an amorphous ‘Russian’ nation and lose their cultural specificity and would be unable to assert autonomous political aspects of their
identity. The introduction of new passports in some Volga regions was
delayed for a number of years until a compromise was found under Putin’s
leadership whereby an insert in the language of the titular population was
allowed in passports, and with an entry on ethnicity in birth certificates.
These were to be voluntary (Simonsen 2005). There is thus a strong
domestic resistance to the development of an internal Russian cosmopolitanism, however civic in form. As far as Russia’s ethno-federal republics
were concerned, a multiplicity of polities was preferable to the development of a single Russian cosmopolity. They feared that the establishment
of a single bounded polity would be accompanied by the homogenisation
of political and cultural space. In theory, however, cosmopolitanism could
transcend this zero-sum logic and provide a way of reconciling diversity
with coherent governance.
Debates over nationality policy continue. Much of the focus was on the
distinction between the supranational concept of ‘Rossiiskii’ citizenship,
favoured by Yeltsin and which gave rise to the notion of a ‘Rossiyanin’, a
citizen of Russia with no indication of ethnic identity, and the more traditional notion of ‘Russkii’, an ethnic Russian person. The 2002 census had
identified 160 distinct peoples in Russia, 80 of whom had a population of
over 10,000. In an attempt to move away from the traditional ethnoterritorial way of giving expression to ethnic aspirations, Russia in the
mid-1990s had gone a long way towards providing a framework to allow
the development of national-cultural autonomy (Bowring 2002). Discussions over the adoption of a new nationalities policy from late 2004
focused on defining various permissible forms of national self-determination
and included ideas for the establishment of a social council to manage
nationality affairs. However, minority groups feared that these proposals
suggested a return to Brezhnev-era ideas of the creation of a ‘new historical community’. Old debates re-emerged between two visions of the
nation: the civic approach in which ethnicity remained a personal matter
and had no role in state organisation; and others for whom the multinational character of the federation was decisive. One thing is clear: the
history of Russian state development demonstrates that the classic distinction between a Western nationalism that is civic and inclusive and an oriental nationalism based on ethnicity and intolerance is false, a finding
confirmed by much recent scholarship (Marx 2005).
226 Richard Sakwa
Conclusion
Russia’s developmental tragedy has been described in terms of Achilles and
the tortoise: no matter how fast he hurries, he cannot catch up with the
tortoise. As one commentator puts it, ‘Our revolutions and military victories have only led to us falling further behind Europe, which has always
moved forward, if only at the pace of a tortoise. We really don’t want to
be seen as Asians. Yet history has turned out in such a way that Europe is
constantly ahead of Russia’ (Leskov 2005). While Europe may be undergoing a process of cultural self-transformation in which universal normative
aspirations combine with national traditions to forge a new cosmopolitan
identity, in Russia the narrative of development remains linear, and thus
the current model of modernisation repudiates elements in its own history.
Russia is already a microcosm of a cosmopolitan state, and the nationstate may not be the natural political community in Eurasia, although
today all the post-Soviet states are struggling to develop within its constraints. Finding an adequate political form for this innate cosmopolitanism, both in Russia and Eurasia, however, remains elusive. The innate
features of cosmopolitanism mediate between traditional state building
and the transformation of international relations in Eurasia and beyond.
Countries are torn between their desire to complete nation-state development, of which they have been deprived for so long, and engagement with
processes of international integration. In Russia the completion of the
national project competes with post-national exigencies. Russian citizens
are equally torn between national and cosmopolitan identities, although
these are not necessarily opposed but provide the basis for a ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ (Beck and Grande 2004). Rather than embracing the
cosmopolitan elements of their past, most states today are seeking to suppress them just at the time when cosmopolitanism is emerging on the
global stage as a new stage of post-Western development. As always,
Russia is seeking to achieve a model of development that is already becoming anachronistic.
References
Beck, U. (2005) The Cosmopolitan Vision, Cambridge: Polity.
Beck, U and E. Grande (2004) Das kosmopolitische Europe, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Billington, J. H. (2004) Russia in Search of Itself, Washington and Baltimore:
Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bova, R. (ed.) (2003) Russia and Western Civilization: Cultural and Historical
Encounters, Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe.
Bowring, B. (2002) ‘Austro-Marxism’s Last Laugh?: the Struggle for Recognition
of National-Cultural Autonomy for Rossians and Russians’, Europe-Asia
Studies, 54(2): 229–50.
Brubaker, R. (1996) Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Russia as Eurasia
227
Buruma, I. and A. Margalit (2004) Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its
Enemies, London: Penguin.
Dugin, A. G. (2002) ‘Evraziya prevyshe vsego: Manifest sovremennogo evraziiskogo dvizheniya’, in Osnovy Evraziistva, Moscow: Arktogeya tsentr.
German Gref (2000) ‘Sostavitel’s kontrakta’ (Interview with Sergei Parkhomenko),
Itogi, 8 February.
‘Global’nyi antiglobalizm’, Newsweek (Russian version), 31.01–06.02.2005.
Goff, J. Le (2005) The Birth of Europe, Oxford: Blackwell.
Jacques, M. (2005) ‘No Monopoly on Modernity’, Guardian, 5 February.
Kara-Murza, S. (2001) Sovetskaya tsivilizatsiya ot velikikh pobedy do nashikh
dnei, Moscow: Algoritm.
Kara-Murza, S. (2002) Evrotsentrizm – edipov kompleks intelliigentsii, Moscow:
Algoritm.
Leskov, S. (2005) ‘An Adult Russia, With No Utopias’, Izvestiya, 20 May.
Ligachev, E. K. (2004) ‘Oblik Rodinu: Russ s Sibiriyu’, Sovetskaya Rossiya, 29
May.
Martin, T. (2001) The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the
Soviet Union, 1923–1939, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Marx, A. W. (2005) Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Panarin, A. S. (1999) Rossiya v tsiklakh mirovoi istorii, Moscow: Moscow University.
Poe, M. T. (2003) The Russian Moment in World History, Princeton NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Shelov-Kovedyaev, F. V. (2004), ‘Fantomy Evraziistva’, Politiya, 2(33): 234–43.
Simonsen, S. G. (2005) ‘Between Minority Rights and Civil Liberties: Russia’s Discourse Over “Nationality” Registration and the Internal Passports’, Nationalities
Papers, 33(2): 211–29.
Southern, R. W. (1961) The Making of the Middle Ages, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Tolz, V. (2001) Russia: Inventing the Nation, London: Arnold.
Tsygankov, A. P. (1999) ‘Mastering Space in Eurasia: Russia’s Geopolitical Thinking After the Soviet Break-up’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 36:
481–500.
Tsygankov, A. P. (2004) Whose World Order? Russia’s Perception of American
Ideas after the Cold War, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Vekhi: Landmarks (1994) translated and edited by M. S. Shatz and J. E. Zimmerman. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe.
Zhdanov, A. A. (1950) ‘Concluding Speech at a Conference of Soviet Music
Workers, 1948’, in E. Fox, S. Jackson and H. C. Feldt (trans and eds), On Literature, Music and Philosophy, London: Lawrence & Wishart.
16 Out of Europe but not in Europe
Israel between ethnic nation-state
and Jewish cosmopolitanism
Natan Sznaider
Imagine for a moment what would happen if Israel applied for membership in the European Union. What would be the response? Its application
would either be deferred like Turkey’s, or flatly rejected. Why? Is Israel not
European enough? Does it even belong to Europe even though geographically it is located in Asia? Even though founded in Europe, Israel is out of
Europe but not in Europe. It lies in Asia and like Turkey connects Asia to
Europe. Turkey is of course the looming question that has brought this
long-buried discourse of origins out of hiding. People who want to keep
Turkey out have suddenly discovered that the roots of Europe lie in its
Christian heritage. Those who share the European continent, but do not
share this Christian heritage, are seen as Europe’s Other. Thus the same
should apply for Israel and for Europe’s Jews. Israel is certainly not a
Christian country. One can almost claim that it is the opposite with its
particularistic and ethnic self-definition as a Jewish state. And Israel – like
Turkey – is not a Western Liberal state. Israel (like Turkey) rose out of the
Ottoman Empire and constantly has to balance processes of Europeanization, Americanization, the expectations of international institutions and the
pressure of local groups and tradition. On the one side the European Union,
the European Council and the United Nations, on the other side Kurds and
Palestinians, who are in ethnic and national conflicts with both states. Both
states struggle to find their own special path to modernity, which looks different from most Western states with their post-Enlightenment separation
between state and religion – a Christian-based notion of just that Western
Enlightenment. Turkey attempts its own way as a Muslim democratic
modernity, while Israel goes its own way as a Jewish democratic modernity. Both countries show Europeans a not-yet-existing diversity beyond
their participation in European song and sporting events.
The Jewish nation and Israeli polity
Israel defines itself ethnically and its criteria of citizenship are exclusive.
Wouldn’t the term “European” imply, at least politically, the demands to
change the basis of the Israeli national definition and found it on the con-
Out of Europe but not in Europe 229
ventional territorial principle – equality before the law of all citizens living
within Israeli territory, irrespective of ethnic origins, race, community, religion or sex? Shouldn’t Israel first of all “Europeanize” and stop opposing
those who think that nations are either “imagined” or “invented” and, as
a consequence, live with the illusion that nationalism will disappear when
shown and “proven” that the nation is a creation of the mind? However,
the continuation of the Israeli–Arab conflict and the resistance of antiSemitism will resist these kinds of tendencies. Israel attempts to be universal democratic and particular Jewish at the same time and with that
reaches its limits of universality. However, in a global network society universalism and particularism do not have to exclude each other. Thus,
Turkey and Israel address through their existence the praxis of a new
European–Asian cosmopolitanism that cannot be limited by Christian
European notions. It is cosmopolitanism beyond universalism. Israel suggests a different reading of European history undermining the project of
reconciliation between former enemies enabled by the breakdown of the
socialist regimes. Israel’s alternative reading of European history keeps the
memory of destruction alive for which Nazi Germany and its allies were
responsible. Its existence presents a challenge to European reconciliation.
Israel is rooted in the particular historical experience of Eastern and
Central Europe. Herein lies the source of the well known tension between
two fundamental definitions of nationhood: the first, territorial and political
with its political and historical roots in Western Europe, and the second
ethnic, and which is typical of the historical experience of Eastern and
Central Europe. In order to become “European”, Israel is supposed to shift
its national identity to Western European categories without dismissing
nationalism altogether. The terms of these debates are “civic nationalism”
versus “ethnic nationalism”, both at the same time empirical as well as
normative criteria of belonging. Both are conceptualized through the boundaries of the state. The Western type also forcefully reinvigorated by many socalled “post-Zionists”, is associated with the “rational” principles of
citizenship and democratic virtues. The second type is organic and associated with “irrational” beliefs that supersede the voluntaristic character of
the Western type. On this view, a developmental approach is involved as
well. “Enlightened” political nationalism was gradually replaced by organic
forms of nationalism that were embraced in Central and Eastern Europe and
went on to become the origins of the Jewish Nation in Israel. But are these
the only alternatives? Can there be a “rooted cosmopolitanism” which goes
beyond classical notions of the nation-state while not forgetting why the
Jews wanted a state of their own altogether?
Zionism and Diaspora
Usually, debates regarding citizenship are framed around the state. It is
very difficult to think about citizens without a state. Just the opposite, a
230 Natan Sznaider
state of statelessness is a state of limbo, a state of misfortune, a state
without rights. Not only a Jewish problem, but very much informed by
Jewish fate, statelessness became the central problem for Jews in the twentieth century (see Arendt 1951). The strongest manifestation of this statelessness was, of course, caused by the destruction of European Jewry in the
Holocaust. Only Zionism could allegedly make whole what the German
Nazis broke: to give the Jews a state and to make a stateless people a
people with a state and a home. It is bringing to end the experience of
Diaspora, which often enough has been identified with a form of Jewish
cosmopolitanism. Is Israel therefore the antithesis to Jewish cosmopolitanism? I would suggest that Israel is an ethnic state based on social pluralism preserving the roots of Jewish cosmopolitanism of the Diaspora. I
suggest not to confuse Diaspora with cosmopolitanism per se.
The experience of the Diaspora is the counterpoint to living in a group
defined by territory and nationality. Thus Zionist ideology was first of all
based on the “negation of Diaspora”. Diaspora produces a sense of
belonging and connectedness to groups and places that are outside the
national borders of where one has settled. The de-territorialization of
social identities poses a challenge to the nation-state, with its demand for
absolute loyalty. Multiple identities and sometimes even multiple citizenships are becoming increasingly widespread in the context of globalization.
In these cases, opponents of diasporic formations talk of conflicting loyalties; supporters regard these types of affiliations as prototypes for defining
the global citizens of the future. Whichever way one looks at it, clearly
defined diasporic communities strengthen the tendency whereby identities
are not necessarily formed through exclusive allegiance to a single political
or geographic entity. Instead, there emerge multiple loyalties to various
entities (e.g. other countries, religious communities, etc.). In light of multiculturalism, the pressure to assimilate has subsided and the preservation of
cultural identity has become more legitimate in many cases. Consequently,
minority identity is no longer necessarily defined by one’s connection to a
homeland.
One should note that the concept of the Diaspora that has taken hold in
the social sciences refers back directly to the concrete Jewish experience. In
Jewish history, the notion of a life outside of the nation-state is nothing
new (Boyarin and Boyarin 1993). Prior to the Holocaust and to the founding of the state of Israel, there was a mixture of longing for territorial
independence (Zionism) with a fascination and direct contact with and in
other cultures (assimilation, new religious trends). This state of affairs
came about not only because of Judaism, but was a result of the tension
between civil rights issues, citizenship and cultural identities. These struggles are also present within the Israeli homeland and are particularly relevant for the European context of Jewish society in Israel. A large part of
the Jewish population does not originate in Europe but comes from Arab
countries. Have they come home? Zionism started in Europe. Before 1939,
Out of Europe but not in Europe 231
90 per cent of the world’s Jews either lived in Europe or were descendants
of European Jews and only 10 per cent were “Jews from Arab lands”. It
was in Europe that the emergence of modern nationalism made the position of Jews precarious (when nationalism reached the Arab world in the
mid-twentieth century, the same processes developed in countries like Iraq,
Egypt or Morocco). Clearly, after 1948 the Israeli establishment, mirrored
in European conceptions of assimilation attempted to assimilate Jews from
Arab lands into a so-called melting-pot based on Western customs and
norms. Only later did a multicultural and more tolerant approach develop,
which then in turn allows the intellectual elite of the Jews from Arab lands
to romanticize the old Arab world as cosmopolitan and the state of Israel
as a narrow ethno-centric state based on European Orientalism (e.g.
Nimni 2003 for a good collection of essays presenting that view).
From early on, Jews in the Diaspora saw themselves as both citizens of
a country and as cosmopolitans – they experienced directly the abovementioned tension between universalism and particularism. At the time,
this state of affairs was not common but, as we have noted, it has increasingly become the norm in Western democracies. The Diaspora was never,
nor is it now, a closed culture; hence, Jewish culture has always mixed with
others. If one understands culture as something open to the outside (and
not homogeneous), one can see how the newly emerging cosmopolitan
culture is becoming “Jewish”. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
the Jewish Diaspora experience and its cosmopolitan exponents stood in
crude opposition to the national-territorial forms of memory constitutive of
the European nations. Today, identification with a group (be it ethnic,
national or religious) whose historical roots are outside of the spatial and
temporal coordinates of the adopted homeland is often a matter of preference and, not infrequently, of pride. In addition to its social impact, this
stance also has political repercussions. In the face of oppression or real disadvantage, maintaining a status that is not based upon fixed geographic
boundaries fuels political strivings and protests (Clifford 1994).
The Jewish Diaspora can serve as the paradigm for de-territorialization
as such. A particular awareness of place and the relationship to being
Other are played out on an immediate experiential level here. However,
the Diaspora was never a closed-off sphere. Lived Jewish culture was not
only mixed with other cultures, it was itself a mixture of cultures. In a
certain sense, its cosmopolitanism lay in judaizing the mixture of cultures
it absorbed – it gave them a unifying cast without negating them. The
experience of Diaspora, of life in exile, is the clearest example modernity
offers of a sustained community life that did not need a territorial container to preserve its history. In Jewish experience, life outside the nationstate is nothing new. Prior to the Holocaust and to the founding of the
state of Israel, the Jewish experience was determined by a mixture of
yearning to be territorially independent as well as to be universal ambassadors of Diaspora. Nowadays, however, these can no longer be
232 Natan Sznaider
considered specifically Jewish concerns, but instead constitute the broader
arena in which issues of citizenship, civil society and cultural identity are
played out. Jews were simultaneously cosmopolitan and citizens of a
particular country. Although the Jews were more aware of needing to
straddle the poles of universalism and particularism, this state of tension
has increasingly become the norm in today’s world. Jewish existence
before the Holocaust and before the founding of the state of Israel mixed
longing for territorial independence with attraction and enmeshment in
other cultures. This condition of Diaspora did not grow out of Judaism per
se, but out of tensions among citizenship, civil society and cultural identity. But one should not over-extend the concept. Not all ex-territorial
experiences are diasporic (for criticism of the over-extension of the concept
in the cultural sciences, see Brubaker 2005). Does Diaspora indeed offer an
alternative to life in territoriality and nationally marked groups? For Jews,
these alternatives were never mutually exclusive.
Jewish cosmopolitanism and nationalism
Jews were both a nation and cosmopolitan. Jews lived therefore in a
tension between universalism and particularism that is increasingly becoming the norm for all nations. Franz Rosenzweig once said that Jews lived in
two dimensions, the Now and the Eternal. But this tension between territorial identity (the Now) and de-territorialized existence (the Eternal) is
increasingly the destiny – or in modern terms, the danger and opportunity
– of all people (Hertzberg 1998). Historically, this was played out by Jews
at exactly the same European sites where Zionism was born: Central
Europe. Central Europe was already the venue for a struggle between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, in which Jews played a big role (Hacohen
1999). This was the site of ethno-national tensions, the Holocaust and the
expulsions after the Second World War. But cosmopolitanism was only the
refuge of a small circle of intellectuals, of people who thought they had
nothing to gain from an emerging ethno-politics. Cosmopolitanism is often
confused with “universal enlightenment”, which undermines individual
national culture. One need only think of Karl Popper’s The Open Society
and Its Enemies, a seminal Cold War text that defended the openly
cosmopolitan imperialism of the West. As Hacohen’s analysis of Popper
shows, because of anti-Semitism, this type of universalism was not able to
mediate between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Their antidote to
nationalism was an “Enlightened Imperialism”, be it the Habsburg Empire
or later for Popper and others the British one. It was also that milieu
which created one of Zionism’s seminal texts: The Jewish State by
Theodor Herzl. Popper’s hostility to Zionism (as to any other form of
ethno-nationalism) was typical for a dichotomous world view which confused cosmopolitanism with universalism and could not see how cosmopolitanism could be squared with nationalism. Popper’s imagined
Out of Europe but not in Europe 233
“Open Society” became the “assimilated Jewish philosopher’s cosmopolitan homeland” (Hacohen 1999: 136). It was an imperial homeland, a
kind of Westernized modernity in its global (and today American) form, it
is the late Hellenic culture of bygone ages, dominant, progressive, wave of
the future, assimilationist, admirable, seductive and beautiful as it always
was and is for Jewish particularism. It was a vision of a democratic
cosmopolitan empire which attracted many Jews like Popper to Great
Britain and attracts them today to the USA, whereas Zionists recognized
the need of Jews to secure a common history that is strongly connected
with cultural properties and national history. If we take the long historical
view, the fundamental meaning of Jewish cosmopolitanism for both its
proponents and its antagonists was a sign of Jewish civilization (Eisenstadt
1992). Diaspora for the Jews meant that they were an ethnic–religious–
national community, at the same time trying to mediate all of those
components.
In my opinion, this view has never been expressed more clearly than in
Leon Feuchtwanger’s novel The Jewess of Toledo (1956). The story is set
in Spain in the twelfth century. It is a country on the frontiers between
Christianity and Islam, and thus on the frontlines of the original Crusades
and Jihads, when those words were more than metaphors. There, in the
interpenetration of those frontiers lives Feuchtwanger’s main protagonist,
Jehuda Ibn Esra. He accepts the post of finance minister under King
Alfonso – essentially the post of an economic czar, who takes a cut of the
overall profit in return for personally putting up capital and bearing huge
risks – because he sees this Christian country as full of productive potential
that he can bring to fruition, if, and only if, he can keep the country out of
war. The King, a knight of the old stamp, wants to go to war as soon as
possible, of course, for that is the only sure road to glory. He only grudgingly accepts that he must build up the economic strength of his exhausted
country first, and with the same grudgingness, he accepts that Ibn Esra has
a genius for peacetime management that he himself lacks. And so the two
struggle with and against each other for many years, in a partnership and a
rivalry with very high stakes. It is not an accident that Feuchtwanger wrote
this book just after the Nazis and the Second World War destroyed his
German-Jewish world of educated and wealthy “burghers”. For Feuchtwanger, the knightly ideals that would destroy everything that other
people have built up for the sake of glory were all too close to home. He
opposes to them the strivings for wealth and commerce that are carried on
by the citizens of towns, by Jews and by women, who counteract the
destructive force of knights and barons with the quiet pleasures of enjoying material things. In his “Josephus” trilogy, Feuchtwanger, through the
role of Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, outlines the dilemmas of a man
torn between Jewish patriotism and Hellenist/Roman imperial cosmopolitanism. Feuchtwanger’s was a desperate attempt to defend a cosmopolitan
European identity composed of Jewish, Greek, Christian and Muslim
234 Natan Sznaider
identities against the rise of National-Socialism. Therefore, his Ibn Esra
and Josephus were not only fictional and were not only restricted to
Europe.
The anthropologist and writer Amitav Gosh (1992) tells the story of the
Jewish Arab Ben-Yiju of the twelfth century, when being an Arab Jew was
no contradiction in terms as it is in today’s Israel. Ben-Yiju was a merchant travelling the Orient, being in communication with peoples of all
cultures and worlds. And if we look at Weimar Germany for instance, we
can find several Ibn Esras and Ben-Yijus each trying to work out economic
and political arrangements which would connect Germany to England and
avoid war. Like Ibn Esra and Ben-Yiju, they were between cultures and
regarded with suspicion. And they saw themselves playing the same dangerous game for the same high stakes: for the preservation of civilization
and all that they had built. But it was the virtue of these men that they
were between cultures and cosmopolitan. It is what gave them their
sophistication, their breadth of vision and their tolerance. Their culture
came from many places and existed mixed with them. All of it felt familiar, as if it belonged together. They embodied the ideal of integration. It
was inextricably part of their ideal of individual cultivation. Among men
like this, rootedness – being fixed in one place and submerging one culture
– was regarded as a limitation. And limited people could extend their
boundaries only by war. That is why their cosmopolitanism was always
threatened by the warriors they tried to civilize. It expresses also a vision
of multi-ethnic European civilizations. It connects to Delanty’s (2003)
vision of a Europe based on multiple modernities and composed of three
civilizational constellations: (i) the Occidental Christian; (ii) the ByzantineSlavic Eurasian; and (iii) the Ottoman, Islamic one. But it was exactly that
kind of Jewish cosmopolitanism which was destroyed during the Second
World War.
Memories of the Holocaust: cosmopolitan and national
This chapter is also one of reconstruction. It aims to add an additional
civilization to the three existing ones, namely Jewish Civilization.
However, this civilization does not exist any more and will only exist as a
vision. Jewish civilization was destroyed by the Nazis and Europe has
turned into a big graveyard for most Jews. Jewish life does still exist in
Europe, but Jewish civilization has moved outside of Europe: it exists in
the USA and it exists in Israel and both constellations are from Europe but
not in Europe. To add the dimension of Jewish civilization to Europe
today is, therefore, an exercise in memory. On the other hand, Israel’s
legitimacy to exist as an ethnic nation-state for the Jews rests partly on the
Holocaust and, therefore, on the cosmopolitan memory of that tragedy.
Understood in this sense, the memory of the Holocaust is not just a monument to Europe’s sense of the tragic. It is a memorial specifically to the
Out of Europe but not in Europe 235
European barbarism that was made possible by the marriage of modernity
and the nation-state. It is a mass grave upon which the new Europe made
an oath and chose a different path. Europe’s collective memory of the
Holocaust recalls the basis of the EU. It is a warning sign that when
modernity develops exclusively in the grooves of the nation-state, it builds
the potential for a moral, political, economic and technological catastrophe without limit, without mercy, and without even any consideration
for its own survival. That is how the memory of the Holocaust was understood in Europe’s own self-image. But it also laid the foundations for
Israel’s existence as a particular ethnic nation-state where the Jews can feel
protected after the Holocaust. A European project all together. I also argue
that a self-critical European remembering of the Holocaust, rather than
destroying the European tradition, has been and will continue to be a vital
resource for reconstituting the identity of Europe. It is what enables
Europe to find its continuity at the very point at which it breaks from the
past. It allows it to establish future-oriented forms of memory, against
national founding myths and myths of warfare and for a cosmopolitan
self-critique of Europe. However, this is not how the memory of the Holocaust is perceived in Israel. Just the opposite. For the Jews, the memory of
the Holocaust meant first of all that it should never happen again to Jews.
Therefore, to protect the Jews at all cost became one of the pillars of
Israel’s identity. Thus, Israel was founded at the very same moment that
the new Europe rose out of the ruins of the Second World War. Both entities were formed on the same background, but former perpetrators and
former victims drew very different conclusions from the memory of the
Holocaust, but drawn together. To legitimize the Jewish existence in the
Middle East through the negation of former Jewish life in Europe has to
turn Israel into a European project. It recognizes the Holocaust as a universal event which happened to the Jews. Thus, for many critics of Israel,
modern Zionism turned against this cosmopolitan ideal (see e.g. Judt
2003), even though it reacted to modern European nationalism and its
unwillingness to incorporate the Jews, unlike in the USA where Jews
became part of the religious pluralist framework. But critics of Israel reject
the very idea of a “Jewish state” – the idea of an ethnic state in which Jews
enjoy privileges as rooted in a Europe prior to the Second World War and
leading to Europe’s catastrophe. Israel, in their eyes, is an anachronism. It
was in some ways an ironic turn back to the ideals of warrior virtue. The
Jewish cosmopolitan ideal was destroyed in the Holocaust and Jewish
Israelis turned into warriors as an attempt to avoid the next one; they
rejected the cosmopolitan and partly diasporic notions of multinationality
in their own lands, as if these were exclusive notions. Opponents criticize
Israel’s willingness and constant preparedness for war.
However, if one thinks dichotomously, the only alternative to the softening, peace-seeking and compromising cosmopolitanism is nationalism
constantly stoked to be ready to fight, or even to ethnically cleanse. This
236 Natan Sznaider
kind of nationalism is about war, and war is about wearing one’s poverty
and hardship as a sign of virtue – rather than as a sign of shame, as it
appears in peace. And the reverse is also true: market cosmopolitanism is
about wearing one’s luxury as a sign of virtue, rather than being ashamed
of it as a sign of sinful indulgence. They look like opposed moral schemes.
Within such an alleged opposition, in the last decade or so, the cultural
and business elite in Israel have tried to cultivate an image of Western secularism and cosmopolitanism. Their objective has been to create a permissive, consumerist, high-tech, non-traditional Israel in a “new Middle
East”. For these new “Yuppies” the prospect of increased consumption
was a major incentive to support the Israeli–Arab peace process (see also
Peled and Shafir 1996). Many Israelis of the middle classes favoured a new
civil discourse. However, this civil discourse is not only about a discourse
of “rights”, but also about a discourse of “fun”. Liberalism, in Israel as
well, was increasingly viewed as the pursuit of individual pleasure and the
privatization of social life. In short, the peace process increased consumption for people with money, and their desire for more consumption reinforced their support for the peace process. Thus, the cosmopolitanization
and consumption patterns that came along with it also meant that ethnic
identities became plural and commercialized. In today’s Israel, being an
Israeli can mean that one reads Russian papers, goes to a Russian theatre
and listens to Russian rock music, maintaining a different identity through
the medium of a separate language. But being an Israeli can mean equally
that one takes one’s Jewish Oriental identity seriously and, paradoxically
thanks to the influence of Western multiculturalism, rejects everything
Western and with it the memories of the Holocaust. Thus, Israel’s selfdefinition of being out of Europe but not (yet) in Europe is being challenged and, even though the origins of Israel lie in Europe, the presence of
Jews from Arab countries pushed Israel further away from Europe.
Being an Israeli also means that non-Jewish Israelis, Palestinians with an
Israeli passport, can claim cultural autonomy for themselves. Thus, Israel
is a pluralist and multicultural society while at the same time an ethnic
state. Ethnic and national discourses are clearly separated here. And the
increased pluralism within Israeli society allows Jewish communities
outside of Israel to free themselves from the burden of being exclusively
potential citizens of Israel, even though the globalizing Middle East conflict and signs of increasing anti-Semitism are drawing Jews within and
outside Israel closer together. A parallel process is also developing in the
Islamic countries of the Middle East. Not universal, but rooted, where
people from the safety of the particular identity can negotiate these identities with others (for rooted cosmopolitanism see Appiah 1998; Cohen
1992; Beck 2002).
Out of Europe but not in Europe 237
Conclusion
Walking the streets of Tel-Aviv, and especially the more affluent neighbourhoods, might create the illusion that one was in a “normal” Western
country displaying the hedonism and optimism of its corresponding cosmopolitanism. There is a sense of “normalcy” in the air, a joyful, even
eroticized secularism. The Tel-Aviv flâneur passes by McDonald’s, Burger
King, Tower Records, Blockbuster Videos, The Gap, Banana Republic,
Haagen Dasz, Ben & Jerry’s and many other symbols of the global homogenizing consumer culture. However, the post-modern winds of Tel-Aviv
are located in a specific cultural, religious and historical context. People in
Israel may have the same cell phones as anywhere else, but the gulf
between classes and cultural groups is growing increasingly more visible.
When a country enters world markets, and increases its consumption, it
increases the gulf at the same time as it begins to share tastes with other
countries. Furthermore, these class and cultural divisions reinforce existing
divisions present in every such society between Westernizers and traditionalists. Huntington (1996) states that the essence of Western culture is the
“Magna Carta” not the “Magna Mac”. He argues that Westernization is
basically a cultural process that is completely distinct from economic modernization. In his view, Westernization is the spread of the world view of
Christianity and the liberalism that grew out of it (see also Siedentop
1989). He believes the fundamental dichotomies that mark the “Western”
worldview – the distinctions between state and civil society and between
public and private spheres – derive ultimately from Christian assumptions.
He even sees the birth of the “individual” as a Christian achievement.
We are back where we started: Israel of course is not a Christian
country. Unlike Christianity, Judaism is an ethnicity as much as a belief
system and this understanding is written into the very foundation of the
state, and its citizenship laws. Israel can thus never be a neutral state on
the French or American model. Every attempt to make it one threatens the
essential Jewishness of the country. This in turn leads to strong and violent
conflicts – not commodifiable conflicts, but fundamental conflicts that do
not accept compromise. How can modernity be defined such that it is compatible with Jewishness? Taking the pure Western model as the only definitive standard in the Middle East may also be a mistaken calculation. It is
difficult to imagine that an American model incorporating pluralism or tolerance or a French model of an aggressively secular state with highest
honours going to anti-religious intellect could be relevant to Israel. These
are only partial models for the struggle in an essentially and essentialist
Jewish state. What is clear is that it may even be disastrous to take these
models formulated somewhere else as comprehensive and complete. Israel
since its inception has always been conceived of as a Jewish state, even by
people who consider themselves secular. But it could also be conceived of
as a modern democratic state, even by people who consider themselves
238 Natan Sznaider
religious. Clearly, Zionism is not the same as Judaism. Zionism is Judaism
plus liberalism, Liberalism with a capital L, Liberalism as the founding creed
of a modern nation-state. Thus Europe would have to accept reluctantly that
the Jewishness that lurked in the subconscious of the “secular” founding
fathers was Judaism as a modern nationality, Judaism that was no longer a
“spaceless” religion, but as a people with a land and with a history. Perhaps
in the final analysis, there is no reason, according to such a view, to take the
details of the land’s history more seriously than the details of the land’s
present. What is important here is that there is a land, and the paramount
goal is to make it a normal land, a land at peace, a land that is no longer disputed, and a land that is accepted by the world – the only recognition that
will finally make religion into peoplehood. Not only Israeli liberals believe
that modernity is unalterably secular. America, however, is the most religious country in the industrialized world. What actually happens during the
process of modernization is that religion is individualized and commodified.
America and Europe may look secular when compared with their medieval
and puritan pasts. When compared with Israel, theirs is a Christian secularism, and not only because their weekend runs through Sunday. The fundamental divisions that Huntington quite rightly points out as the salient and
constant features of Euro-American culture – the division between public
and private, between civil society and the state – are the deep cultural
markers of its secularized Christianity. It is possible to have modernity
without them. And when European and Israeli liberals accept that Jewishness is part of the identity of the Israeli state – and that such Jewishness is
not opposed to the essence of modernity, but simply to its secularized Christian form – then compromise between Europeans, Palestinians and Israelis
will be possible. It does not violate the essence of modernity, because that
essence is not secularism per se, but a moral order based on individuation. It
is a patriotic and rooted cosmopolitanism.
References
Appiah, K. A. (1998) “Cosmopolitan Patriots”, in P. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds)
Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 91–114.
Arendt, H. (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Meridan.
Beck, U. (2002) “The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies”, Theory, Culture and
Society, 19(1–2): 17–44.
Boyarin, D. and J. Boyarin (1993) “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of
Jewish identity”, Critical Inquiry 19(3): 693–726.
Brubaker, R. (2005) “The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(1):
1–19.
Clifford, J. (1994) “Diasporas”, Cultural Anthropology, 9(3): 302–38.
Cohen, M. (1992) “Rooted Cosmopolitanism”, Dissent, 39: 478–83.
Delanty, G. (2003) “The Making of a Post-Western Europe: A Civilizational
Analysis”, Thesis Eleven, 72: 9–25.
Out of Europe but not in Europe 239
Eisenstadt, S. N. (1992) Jewish Civilization, New York: Oxford University Press.
Feuchtwanger, L. (1956) Die Jüdin von Toledo, Frankfurt: Fischer.
Gosh, A. (1992) In an Antique Land, New York: Vintage Press.
Hacohen, M. (1999) “Dilemmas of Cosmopolitanism: Karl Popper, Jewish Identity
and Central European Culture”, Journal of Modern History, 71: 105–49.
Hertzberg, A. (1998) Jews: The Essence and the Character of a People, San Francisco: Harper.
Huntington, S. (1996) “The West Unique, Not Universal”, Foreign Affairs, 75(6):
28–46.
Judt, T. (2003) “Israel: The Alternative”, New York Review of Books, 50(16).
Nimni, E. (ed.) (2003) The Challenge of Post-Zionism, London: Zed Books.
Peled, Y. and G. Shafir (1996) “The Roots of Peacemaking: The Dynamics of Citizenship in Israel, 1948–93”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28:
391–413.
Siedentop, L. (1989) “Liberalism: The Christian Connection”, Times Literary Supplement, March 24: 308.
Part IV
Otherness in Europe and
Asia
17 Europe’s otherness
Cosmopolitanism and the
construction of cultural unities
Heidrun Friese
Herrlich ist der Orient
Übers Mittelmeer gedrungen;
Nur wer Hafis liebt und kennt,
Weiß was Calderon gesungen.
Wer sich selbst und andere kennt
Wird auch hier erkennen
Orient und Okzident
Sind nicht mehr zu trennen
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
West-östlicher Diwan, Hafis-Goethe Monument, Weimar1
It seems we no longer comfortably take a seat on this West-östlicher
Diwan, a semantic space which had been united by a hyphen and was
held together by an undividable, shared space and the common logos of
poetry, it looks as if the common seat has been separated into two distinct, if not opposed entities, namely East and West. However, what is
meant by ‘East and West’ and how is the ‘Beyond’ in the title of this
book to be understood? In a literal sense, the terms indicate first of all
marks of orientation that operate from a privileged, stable and secure
point of view, namely ‘Europe’. If Hegel – Goethe’s Zeitgenosse –
remarks that Asia ‘is a West to America, but just like Europe is the centre
and the end of the old world and the absolute West, Asia is the absolute
East’ (Hegel 1992: 130), what is indicated are not neutral geographical
or cartographical positions, rather, the spatial metaphors open up to a
broader semantic field, its historically widely branched legacy and its
inherent work of spacing and timing. Thus, the term ‘West’ designates
not just quite specific cultural, socio-historical and political configurations, but points to specific concepts of time and space. The following
remarks will take up some of the discursive components of the ambivalent legacy which are to ground the (historically) exceptional occidental
configuration, or to be more specific: the European particularity that
attained universal significance, validity and force, elements at the same
244 Heidrun Friese
time that show how questions of what might be the distinctive features
of Europe, its specific modernity and its – alleged – identity have been
negotiated (Friese 2004a).
In early modern time, Europe learned to comprehend – as Peter Sloterdijk remarks – not just the ‘unity of the human species within the variety
of cultures’ (Sloterdijk 2002: 10), a notion which established specific relations and tensions between the universal and the particular and subsequently was expressed in the Declaration of Human Rights, concepts of a
cosmopolitan order and visions of global justice. At the same time, colonial expansions and domination produced powerful spatio-political narrations and images of a familiar ‘one’s own’ and the uncanny ‘stranger’ as
well. An all too easy criticism of Eurocentrism, however, does not just
flatten the recognition of differences but fails to realize that the imaginaries
in which Europe recognizes and negotiates itself are always already inhabited by internal caesuras, rifts and an otherness at work within these narratives (Friese 2004a).
In this context, what will be recalled in the following is the mechanism
of constructing a cultural identity that was considered to constitute, to
enact Europe’s – alleged – unity. The by now well-established culturalist
paradigm assumes stable and unequivocal identities and allocates those in
space and in time, one world-history, a single time with universal validity
that only allows for the unity to be established. Against assumptions of
unrejectable stages of development and a despotic universal time, what is
advocated is the questioning of a homogeneous world-time and wellintegrated societies and cultures, be it the West or the East, a critique
allowing for a perspective to evolve that interprets the particularities of
social worlds, cultural cosmologies and imaginaries as multiply authored
inventions, shifting paradoxes, non-consensual negotiation and ongoing
translations.
These highly problematic notions thus point toward a variety of tensions: the tension between the (civic) universal and the (ethnic) particular,
between cosmopolitism and (cultural) singularity, the dilemma between
universalism and (ethical) particularity, universally applicable norms,
particular values and cultural differences, between egalitarians and multiculturalists which are challenging and limiting the basic concerns of liberalism. An attempt to engage with these tensions will be pursued in three
steps. In the first step, the ambivalent discursive heritage narratives of
Europe’s unity will be recalled. I will not, however, draw on the familiar
narratives of the political constitution of Europe and on concepts such as
liberty, statehood and democracy (Friese and Wagner 2002). Rather, and
in the second step, the focus will be on the modes of creating spatial and
temporal demarcations that are to constitute cultural unities. Against the
exercised dualisms and powerful politics of identities in a ‘globalizing’
world – currently discussed under the label ‘Orientalism’ and ‘Occidentalism’, in the third step, I aim to recall perspectives which brought attention
Europe’s otherness 245
to the occurrence of being-othered (Veranderung) that trouble assumptions
of cultural coherence and point towards Europe’s cosmopolitism.
Europe’s unity – Europe’s otherness
‘The sun, the light arises in the East . . . World history moves from East to
West since Europe is by all means the end of world history whereas Asia is
its beginning’ as Hegel (1992: 133, 134) remarks, relating a geographical
synopsis to the idea of freedom and to the teleological course of history.
Whereas the New World, ‘land of the future’ is still out of reach for
history, whereas Africa is not a ‘historical region’ and excluded from the
‘transition of human Spirit from East to West’ and thus does neither know
‘movement nor development’ (Hegel 1992: 129), whereas Asia is the origin
of history, Europe is the scene, the theatre of world history, centre and end
of the Old world and the stage on which Spirit reaches itself as Spirit:
‘there are entire regions of the world which didn’t have this idea or do not
have it yet’ (Hegel 1986: 301, §482). The positivity of Spirit and freedom
thus are tied to its negation and the spatial and temporal exclusion, it progresses in a temporal dimension of a not yet and a never ever. Substituting
natural consciousness, philosophy, aesthetics and freedom inaugurate in
the West, it is only ‘in the Occident that the light becomes sudden inspiration which, struck by this lightning, creates its world’ (Hegel 1993: 121).
An easy gesture to denounce this attitude, the rejection of this teleological philosophy of history or Europe’s fascination with the Orient,
however, fails to take into account the historical circumstances – the staggering socio-political and cultural upheavals – and thus loses out of sight
the will for emancipation but the tensions and aporias of these notions.
Nevertheless, this thought and the tropes of inversion represent ‘one’s
own’ by means of spacing and setting boundaries. In this negative definition and via including differences in an – alleged – homogeneous identity,
otherness cannot but show itself as non-intelligible. The mise-en-scène of a
mythical-solar course of history – which was not really interrupted by
Columbus’ inauguration of the Western option that constituted the
Western hemisphere as the West (Sloterdijk 1999: 832) – allows for
the dualism Orient and Occident to persist (Chattopadhyaya 1997). Even
the grand récits of the ‘decline of the Occident’ (Oswald Spengler), the
‘dis-enchantment of the world’ (Max Weber), the ‘crisis of European sciences’ (Edmund Husserl), and the mechanization of life in Western modernity (Martin Heidegger) do echo this topos.
A quite familiar narration states that the consolidation of the modern
European nation-state led to more or less homogeneous cultural and ethnical entities. Within this broad legacy, however, there are to be found – at
least within the eighteenth century – not just narrations that are to ground
Europe’s alterity. Within this legacy there are as well discursive elements
pointing to Europe’s blurring the ‘original character of peoples’ which
246 Heidrun Friese
increasingly ‘do mix and melt into another’ (Rousseau [1762]: 498). The
progress of technology, increasing traffic and long distance voyage that
establish common or agonistic political interests and dense commercial
relations became driving forces, wiping out the self-containment of
nations: ‘Today, traffic between Europe and Asia is a hundred times more
frequent than the one between France and Spain in former times. The parts
of Europe were more disconnected than the entire globe in our times’
(Rousseau [1762]: 499). Not just Jean Paul shares this diagnosis and
remarks in 1804 that technological inventions had led to an unprecedented
mobility and the way of life has incredibly been accelerated: ‘Our book of
life resembles the more and more a thin and restless leaflet that flies
around and vanishes – from airships to steamers and express post: it is
evident that Europe is on the move and one migration of peoples meets the
other’ (Jean Paul 1959–1963: 494). Twenty years earlier – in 1784 –
Johann Gottfried Herder notes that Europe is distinguished ‘by its diversity
of Nations, by the diversity of customs and arts’. Europe’s impact is the
result of its heterogeneity, it is based on the fact that it assembles particularities and hosts its otherness. ‘In no part of the world the peoples have
mixed in such a large proportion . . ., a melting without which the Europe’s
general spirit [Allgemeingeist] would not have been aroused’ (Herder
1965: 289). This humanism is far from considering Europe as a shining
universal example for leading a good life, but recognizes the worth of the
varieties of languages and cultures in which humankind expresses itself.
Europe’s characteristic features are to be found not just in an inaugural
heterogeneity or the confident faith in inevitable progress in the name of
reason. The assertion of freedom and the various concepts of cosmopolitism are considered to be European attributes. The idea of freedom
has been related to Christianity because the individual is being embraced
by God’s love that destines man to freedom (Hegel 1986: 301–2, §482).
From a different standpoint, Novalis’ fragmentary pamphlet ‘Christendom
or Europe’ (Die Christenheit oder Europa 1799) addressed the unifying,
individualizing principle of Christendom as an ideal, peaceful and brotherly cosmopolis, advocated the Renaissance of Europe and its holy unity
and justice. Johann Gottlieb Fichte related the Europe to come to a
renewed Christendom as well which unites the formerly divided peoples to
one nation. This renewed Europe will determine the relations of single
nations that compete to permit individual freedom, equality before the
law, freedom of religion and of (political) judgement ‘wherever one part
lacks’ as he confidently notes, ‘they long for being away; where they are
granted, they long to gather’ (Fichte 1845/1846a: 204–5). The unifying
moment of single nations – even in their mutual competition to allow for
freedom – is to be found in the undeniable course of history striving for
the realization of reason and with it, the citizen once tied to its soil
becomes the cosmopolitan European: ‘In this cosmopolitan sense we can
be perfectly calm with regard to the actions and the destiny of the States,
Europe’s otherness 247
for our generation, for those who are to come until the end of days’ (Fichte
1845/1846b: 211–12). From quite different viewpoints, enlightened visions
assume that humankind would unite in a global association grounded in
particularity that illustrates universal humanity. It advocated a peaceful
cosmopolis allowing for freedom, the rule of law, freedom of religion and
a rational, secular and humanist morality – be it contractual or utilitarian,
based on rights or on duty – that convey universal principles of judgement.
These notions relate Europe not just to a cosmopolitism but to its
shared historical responsibility as well. The critique of religion, ‘superstition’ and the ‘political tricks’ of papacy (Lessing 1970: 263–4) which
brought unspeakable suffering to humankind becomes a unifying moment.
Europe thus is united in the indignation about the deeds done in its name
and in the name of Christianity. Europe is not founded in heroic deeds; it
is founded in an act of unnameable atrocity, frenzy, the otherness of
reason which remain ‘an eternal accuser of the therein insulted
humankind’ (Herder 1965: 404). If Europe is united by this shared history
of misdeeds, only consideration, compensation and enlightened reason can
guide Europe. Europe’s future comes into being in remembering extermination and despotism, it incurs and bears responsibility.
Against blind nationalism Friedrich Nietzsche still refers to the European cosmopolitan heritage. Neither God nor nation but modern homelessness and permanent exile shape the ‘good European’, who, because he
has grown within Christendom has grown out of it. Europe, therefore, is
founded in a ‘We’ of those who are ‘homeless’ and who resist a ‘We’. ‘We,
the homeless . . . are by race and descent all too mixed and therefore not
inclined to participate in . . . self-adoration of race and its prostitution
[Unzucht] . . .’ (Nietzsche 1988: 630–1, no. 277). Such modernity, understood both as legacy of and as obligation and indebtedness to the European spirit, can hardly tolerate apologetic and regressive national atavisms
(Nietzsche 1988, 180–1, no. 241).
Max Weber takes up this heritage and the topos of Europe’s singularity
that has to be explained. Situating the text in a specific genealogy (‘the son
of the modern European world’), the inaugural gesture in the Preface to
the Sociology of Religion however restricts assumptions of a strict law of
development and opens to the – tragic insight – of the enchainment of
historical circumstances and contingencies that gained universal importance and threaten to overwhelm everything else. At the same time his protocol of what lacks elsewhere enacts a negative method. For Hegel, the
particularity of the European spirit is made of its inclinations to freedom
and self-consciousness, negation and the detachment from unquestioned
traditions. Weber, in turn, relates the uniqueness of the Occident to specific institutions, such as systematic science, a rational doctrine of law, the
State, a rational statutory constitution and administration. It is only here
that the ‘fateful force’ of capitalism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
developed: by means of a negative comparison Europe becomes the other
248 Heidrun Friese
that has to be explained. At the same time, the comparative method – the
determination of positive and distinguishing marks of a way of life via
exclusion and figures of absence has consequences not just for an understanding of other peoples. The reductio ad unum conceptualizes Europe as
a monolithic structure opposed to other monolithic structures or ways of
life as well. In one breath, the structural identity of Europe is determined
and its inner unity is proclaimed. Accordingly, different variations of
modernity which are not based on adaptation to external impulses but on
creations of different histories are excluded.
Europe’s singularity, its distinctive features set out by these accounts are
based on the idea of freedom, the autonomy of the individual against
unquestioned tradition and the need to legitimize political action. Europe’s
singularity is based on religion as well as on its critique and secular orientations, on remembrance and the quest for responsibility. Its singularity is
made up by specific social institutions of organized curiosity, science and
technology, a bureaucracy, the state, a rational system of law and the specific mode of capitalistic economy. Briefly, it is based on specific institutionalized forms of reason and rationality. Additionally, concepts such as
cosmopolitism, civil society, citizenship, public sphere and justice are
indebted to this heritage which now became globalized. A feature of this –
quite heterogeneous – European heritage, however, is dissent as well; the
unifying moment is scarcely continuity but rupture and therefore cannot
easily be accommodated in a unifying narrative. Europe’s legacy is made up
by remembering its unredeemed promises, the remembrance of ‘what lacks’
or has historically been missed. Europe is inaugurated in ‘a rift, a caesura, an
incision’ (Marramao 2003: 60). Therefore, it is constituted not via an external segregation and the spacing of clear borders but by ‘inner polarities’, an
original ‘eccentricity’ (Jaspers 1963: 93; Brague 1999).2 Europe thus locates
its non-founded foundation in an otherness as well as in its otherness.
Demarcations: spatial and temporal
The terms East and West are based on a double denial that sets spatial and
temporal demarcations. Space and time are fundamental categories of the
various practices and symbolizations of social life which mark boundaries
as well as commonalties and therefore are far from being merely neutral
definitions. For a long time social sciences relied on concepts that were to
demarcate otherness not just by setting spatial borders in order to identify
commonalties, but by situating the Other on a homogeneous axis of time
which was to guarantee cultural unity and ontological stability of social
life. The spatial and temporal continuum, the congruence of space and
time respectively – the ‘here’ and ‘now’ of modernity vs. the ‘there’ and
‘then’, ‘not yet’ of tradition (Fabian 1983; Chakrabarty 2000) – which rely
on the assumption of a linear world-time, were to mark the socio-cultural
identity of Western modernity.
Europe’s otherness 249
The procedure of analysis and cross-cultural comparison, therefore, was
the construction of segregated, homogeneous and well-integrated entities;
it was based on the presupposition of an epistemological break between
‘subject’ and ‘object’ and of a congruence between spatial-historical distance and cultural difference. In the course of the establishment of academic disciplines, geographical spaces have been assigned socio-cultural
commonalities, not least with a view to constitute autonomous fields of
research and to gain legitimacy within the academic canon. The focus of
attention therefore, was not the particularities, the whole range of varieties
of cultural forms and imaginaries, languages and symbolical worlds. On
the contrary, the search was for correspondences of heterogeneous elements within one space and one frame of time; the search was for cultural
identity and the uniformity of its traits. Given the distance between the
researching subject and the researched object – a distance that is precisely
meant to safeguard difference – what came into view were hardly the reciprocal and power-laden processes of translation and interpretation, but the
analysable identity of the ‘objects’, an identity without which, indeed, the
whole procedure would appear as rather dubious.
Both procedures inscribe the varieties of cultural practices into a generalized time and history dominating the entirety of humanity. Particularity
is turned into a generality, indeed it only permits the very assumption of a
self-identical generality that in turn guarantees the possibility of uniformity
and thus the constancy of its objects of cognition. Time and history are not
only spatialized, i.e. one time and one history are located in a common
space, both are also represented as an empty continuum in which action is
only represented, without being enabled to become effective. Neither,
however, is identical action thinkable, since one would need to think it as
timeless eternity, nor – and this would be Kant’s epistemological and
Hegel’s thesis on the philosophy of history – do action or history move in
time. Kant anchored time in the form of an apriori intuition which as a
(transcendental) form is situated before history and Hegel gave a consistent teleological direction to history which appeared in the concept of
progress. Theoretical arrangements declaring that history moves in a
homogeneous time still determine scientific procedures. Similarly, this procedure has inscribed into itself the construct of a general history in which
particularity enters as nothing but a moment of that generality, to dissolve
into the generality. It is not history, not historical action or historical practices, that found time (or better: times), but it is the general that is said to
determine action.
Predominant macro-sociological perspectives, which located sociocultural configurations on a unilinear axis of development to characterize
them as ‘people without history’, ‘tribal’, ‘feudal’, ‘early-capitalist’, ‘traditional’ or more recently ‘pre-modern’, have lost legitimation. However, the
‘externalist’ paradigm focusing on the impact of Western colonial history
or on the penetration of capitalist world markets – recently analysed under
250 Heidrun Friese
the term ‘globalization’ – is still quite common. Thus, it is not the historical practices of the respective society under consideration, but external
factors that lead to the dynamics of socio-cultural change.
Current concepts are influenced by these assumptions as well and have
passed on the legacy of the philosophies of history. In the first instance,
such reasoning assumes a drastic rupture with former conceptions which
relied on tradition and postulate an omnipresent orientation towards the
future in modern times (without, however, explaining which specific social
configurations are characterized by such modernity and by the infinite
possibilities allegedly opened by it). Western modernity thus is characterized by the break with the conceptions of time in ‘traditional’ societies and
is substituted by the emergent ‘open horizon of future possibilities’ (Habermas 1985). It is marked by the scission of ‘the time of life’ and the ‘time of
the world’ (Blumenberg 1986) and a precarious relation between finitude
and of infinite possibilities and contingencies is opened up (Koselleck
1979). As a result, different ontologies of time and versions of modernities
are measured against the yardstick of a specific, yet dominant variation
and the conquest of space through time.
Attempts of theorizing ‘multiple modernities’ thematize again the interdependencies of social configurations and – like similar explorations of the
mutual interrelationships between micro- and macro-structure, between
family, local community and capitalist world-market – provide a conceptual space for varieties of modernity. The integration of those various
forms of modernity into a ‘global history’, however, again locks such
particular constellations into a unity and into the general developmental
process of ‘globalization’. The ‘externalist’ perspective and a procedure
which already constituted the demarcations of Orient and Occident are
repeated, a procedure which neglects the diversities of cultural practices,
the variety of local landscapes ‘within’ such constellations. The creation of
clear borders indicating breaks and continuities between forms of life is, as
Geertz (2000: 247) remarks, ‘a good deal easier in theory than it is in practice’ and concepts of cultural homogeneity, identity and consensus as well
as simplistic slogans of a ‘global village’ or a homogenizing ‘global capitalism’ fail to take into account the ‘reworking and multiplication’ of cultural
traits (Geertz 2000: 247).
Migration and the increasing mobility of people troubled the familiar
correspondence of time and space and led to a reasoning emphasizing
uncertain identities, blurred borders, intersections and ‘contact zones’
(James Clifford). Concepts such as ‘transnationalism’, ‘travelling cultures’,
‘diasporas’ and ‘dislocation’, seem to indicate the weakening of the congruence of time, space and culture. Notions like ‘acculturation’, ‘syncretism’ or even ‘assimilation’ which once described linear processes from
one culture to another, the overlapping of two different systems or the dissolution of a distinct and confineable culture, its practices, symbols into
another distinguishable and confinable culture (Clifford 1999: 7), have
Europe’s otherness 251
been replaced by concepts that focus on the interrelation of socio-cultural
configurations. Furthermore, these shifting formations are seen as always
having been constituted reciprocally, as part of ambivalent, dynamic transnational and power-loaded processes which escape the establishment of
clearly identifiable borders and identities (Friese 2002b).
Following Edward Said’s classical discourse-analysis of ‘Orientalism’
that effectively gained force from the eighteenth-century onwards, patterns
have been scrutinized that assert the unity and identity of Europe or the
West in tropes of ‘Occidentialism’ (Said 1978; Carrier 1995). (Romantic)
self-representations – not just those of the elites – have developed a
counter-discourse against Western narratives and images about the Orient
that in turn develop essentialist images of the identity of the West. These
narratives take up the topoi already addressed above and become an integral part of the social imagination. Accordingly to such assertions, the West
is to be considered as the reign of unlimited freedom, unrestrained individualism, materialistic orientation, nihilistic and destructive negation and
corrosion of belief, custom and tradition. Such persuasive representations
enter into an alliance with the modern critique of modernity and the legitimization of traditions which seem to vanish due to modernity and the
processes of globalization. Revealing an astonishing analogy, what is proclaimed it not just the unity of ‘Asian values’ etc. but – paradoxically – the
unity of one’s ‘own’ alterity based on a variety of glaring contrasts and
antinomies repeating the tensions that constitute ‘modernity’ (Kaiwar and
Mazumdar 2003). Western political liberalism is contrasted with a substantial political order, secular life bluntly set against a way of life rooted
in religious prescriptions and the promises of salvation, materialism
against the legacies delivered by tradition.
Such constructions are immediately interwoven with a powerful politics
of identity – such as new nationalisms or the fusion of ethnicity and territory
– that mystifies one’s own and distinct ‘authenticity’ and seeks to safeguard
‘difference’ (Friese 2004b). In redress of a closed – alleged – homogeneous
and monolithic identity of ‘logocentric and Eurocentric thought’ or a flattening and uniforming cosmopolitism, ‘counter-concepts’ of identity are constructed which assume opposing primordial cultural dispositions. Ironically,
such obsessions are consolidated at a point in time in which ontological
essences, primordial, collective identities and reifications are questioned, a
critique which in the meantime has been adjoined to various ‘postmodern
ethics’ of difference and alterity that take account of the irreducible singularity of an Other and focus on responsibility, friendship, hospitality and a
renewed openness (Derrida 1992; Bauman 1993; Irigaray 1999).
Europe’s cosmopolitism
Europe again is asked to allow for an open space, a space of an active otherness which is not only marked by the presence of an Other within it but
252 Heidrun Friese
points towards an otherness already at work that halts any notion of cultural identity. Such an opening towards an Other has been demanded not
just by Edgar Morin (1987). From another point of view Jacques Derrida
insists on ‘an opening and a non-exclusion for which Europe would in
someway be responsible’, an opening that includes unconditional hospitality (Derrida 1992: 28–9).3
This proposal is of course already related to a specific, if heterogeneous
and branched tradition, it is bound to a cosmopolitanism and concepts of
universal rights even if it distances itself clearly from them. In contrast to
Kant’s cosmopolitanism which puts forward the law of universal citizenship (Weltbürgerrecht), limited and conditioned by general hospitality
and a general law of hospitality which are bound to the authority of the
state, the control of residence and its duration,4 Derrida proposes a notion
of cosmopolitan justice beyond both the nation-state and this cosmopolitanism. ‘Absolute hospitality’ requires the commitment to unconditional
accommodation of the ‘absolute, unknown, anonymous’ Other, it requires
to accept an Other ‘at home’ (chez moi, chez nous), to donate, to ‘give him
a place’, without enquiring as to origin or identity (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 1997: 29). Unconditional, absolute hospitality – which suspends
reciprocity, does not require identification and is beyond the order of law,
its application and a judgement – breaks with the law and its regulations
which bestow hospitality with conditions and limits. This unconditionality
is equitable with a regulative idea that dynamizes action and political
decision, without applying a normative continuum which guarantees its
realization because it remains as alien from law as justice from law. The
relationship between absolute hospitality and the laws and rules which
should serve its unconditionality thus becomes part of political negotiation
and (cosmo)political deliberation. Although it is not clear, who – beyond
membership and citizenship – is to be considered to be the subject(s) of
political negotiation and deliberation (Friese 2004b), an active otherness is
introduced which cannot be removed beyond political or cultural borders.
Any fetishization of cultural unity does not only fail to see the contingencies that inhabit cultural practices, but falls short of perceiving the
caesuras which indicate (one’s ‘own’) otherness. Assumptions of stable
unities or ascertainable cultural identities do not account for the constitutive Veranderung (being-othered) enacted in socio-cultural practices. In
accordance with, but as well against theories of intersubjectivity, dialogue
and a hermeuneutics of empathy and understanding and drawing on
Edmund Husserl, Michael Theunissen (1984) brought a perspective into
play which focuses on the event of Veranderung.5 With the occurrence of
reciprocal Veranderung already at work, the singular human being
becomes estranged by an Other and at the same time becomes an Other
among others. The subject thus is deprived of its world-constituting
power, s/he is decentralized and experiences him/herself as constituting as
well as being constituted by the Other, to whom s/he gives himself as well
Europe’s otherness 253
as s/he is given. This perspective cannot advocate for demarcated personal
and/or cultural identities but evidences an otherness which is already at
work. Such a perspective undermines the certainties of clear demarcations
and fixed identities. It neither subscribes to an emphasis of identity and
alterity nor inscribes a singular Other into a cultural collectivity.
A further elaboration of such a perspective would work in two directions. It would address the epistemological problems, i.e. the constitution
of the ‘object’ and at the same time the powerful politics of identity:
neither could socio-cultural essentials be identified that are to form a stable
identity, nor could an unbridgeable distance between the subject and the
‘object’ of research be assumed. Far from being dominated by common
underlying internal structures which are to guarantee their identity, what
could be shown is the heterogeneity of spaces, the various regional ontologies of time and the varieties of historical landscapes which are constituted
by different practices, narratives and ways of writing. At the same time,
identity could not be tied to a common, universal time, but could be seen
as already postponed, displaced and exceeded.
Once the constitutive Veranderung is taken into account, boundaries of
an – alleged – inner and outer dimension and unfruitful dualisms can be
avoided, without inscribing different (historical) times into one despotic
world-time. A perspective that evidences the constitutive Veranderung
already at work thus does not just recognize the Other in the supposed
own self and that which is one’s own in the Other, but is aware of and
insists on the principled impossibility of a clearly defined ‘own’ and/or
‘other’, a clearly defined Occident, a ‘European Modernity’ as opposed to
an Orient and other forms of modernities.
Goethe related self-cognition to the recognition of the Other within
oneself that prohibits strict demarcations. Beyond that, what could be indicated is a Beyond already at work.
Notes
1 Literally: ‘Across the Mediterranean, magnificently, the Orient made its
way/only the one who loves and knows Hafis/does know what Calderon has
sung.// The one who knows himself and others/ here will recognize as
well/Orient and Occident can no longer be divided’ (Goethe, 1998: 57). In the
following, all translations are mine and page numbers follow the original
edition.
I am indebted to Naomi Salmon for friendship and hospitality, her inquiries
with the ‘Stiftung Weimarer Klassik’, late night faxes and Volkart Knigge for a
wonderful walk through Weimar.
2 Rémi Brague has argued that being secondary culturally towards ancient Greece
and religiously towards Judaism is Europe’s specificity. For a critique of
Brague’s focus on Roman Catholicism, see Friese (2004a).
3 Derrida uses both the terms ‘responsibility’ and ‘obligation, duty’. The astonishing shift in concepts from ‘brotherhood’ to ‘duty’, from ‘solidarity’ to ‘responsibility’ would merit a detailed critique. For a critique of the current emphasis on
254 Heidrun Friese
‘responsibility’, a concept which is deeply rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, see Friese (2004b).
4 The concept of a peaceful community is not an ‘ethic-philanthropic’ venture but,
as Kant stresses, a ‘legal principle’. Nations are not legal communities of propriety (communio) but of interrelation (commercium). The law that guarantees
this, is cosmopolitan law (ius cosmopoliticum) which entails the right to visit but
not to stay. For the latter, Kant insisted on the need of a ‘special treaty’ (Kant,
1997: 475–7, §62). For an interpretation of Kant, see Benhabib (2004);
Bohmann and Lutz-Bachmann (1997).
5 According to Theunissen, three interconnected perspectives can be identified.
Transcendental approaches, drawing on Edmund Husserl, first, focus on the
constitution of the Other in and through world-projecting subjectivity. Dialogical approaches, as in Martin Buber, second, emphasize the encounter of the
Other and the birth of self in and through the encounter. Approaches as elaborated by Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber or Alfred Schütz, finally, have proposed a
hermeneutics of understanding and empathy. Whereas transcendental
approaches seek the original being of the Other in the ‘strange-I’ and its existential modifications, dialogical thinking encounters the Other in the Thou.
Hermeneutic approaches, in turn hope to ‘overcome’ the ‘gap’ between self and
Other by interpretative means.
References
Bauman, Z. (1993) Postmodern Ethics, Oxford: Blackwell.
Benhabib, S. (2004) The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blumenberg, H. (1986) Weltzeit und Lebenszeit, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Bohmann, J. and M. Lutz-Bachmann (eds) (1997) Perpetual Peace: Essays on
Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Brague, R. (1999) Europe, la voie romaine, Paris: Gallimard.
Carrier, J. G. (ed.) (1995) Occidentalism: Images of the West, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chattopadhyaya, D. P. (1997) Sociology, Ideology and Utopia: Socio-political
Philosophy of East and West, Leiden: Brill.
Clifford, J. (1999) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Derrida, J. (1992) The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, trans. P.-A.
Brault and M. B. Naas, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Derrida, J. and A. Dufourmantelle (1997) De l’hospitalité, Paris: Calmann-Lévy.
Fabian, J. (1983) Time and the Other: How Anthropology makes its Object, New
York: Columbia University Press.
Fichte, J. G. ([1800] 1845/1846a) ‘Der geschlossene Handelsstaat’, in Fichtes
sämmtliche Werke, ed. by I. H. Fichte, Vol. 3, Berlin: Veit & Comp.
Fichte, J. G. (1845/1846b) ‘Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters’, in Fichtes
sämmtliche Werke, ed. by I. H. Fichte, Vol. 7, Berlin: Veit & Comp.
Friese, H. (2002a) ‘L’Europa a venire’, in H. Friese, T. Negri and P. Wagner (eds)
Europa politica: Ragioni di una necessità, Rome: manifestolibri, pp. 59–77.
Friese, H. (ed.) (2002b) Identities: Time, Boundary and Difference, Oxford:
Berghahn.
Europe’s otherness 255
Friese, H. (2004a) ‘La otredad de Europa’, Política y sociedad, 41(3): 99–112.
Friese, H. (2004b) ‘Spaces of Hospitality’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical
Humanities, 9(2): 67–79.
Friese, H. and P. Wagner (2002) ‘The Nascent Political Philosophy of the European Polity’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 10(3): 342–64.
Geertz, C. (2000) Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical
Topics, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Goethe, J. W. v. (1998 [1819]) ‘Hikmet Nameh, Buch der Sprüche’, West-östlicher
Divan. Hamburger Ausgabe, Vol. 2, Hamburg: DTV.
Habermas, J. (1985) Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp.
Hegel, G. W. F. ([1837/1838] 1993) ‘Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie’, in Werke, Vol. 18–20, ed. by E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1986 [1830]) ‘Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften
im Grundrisse, Dritter Teil. Die Philosophie des Geistes’, in Werke, Vol. 10, ed.
by E, Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1992 [1837]) ‘Vorlesungen über die Philosophie
der Geschichte’, in Werke, Vol. 12, ed. by E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel,
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Herder, J. G. (1965 [1784]) Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,
Vol. 1 and 2., ed. by H. Stolpe, Berlin: Aufbau Verlag.
Irigaray, L. (1999) Entre Orient et Occident: De la singularité à la communauté,
Paris: Grasset.
Jaspers, K. (1963 [1949]) ‘Orient und Okzident (Morgenland und Abendland)’, in
Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, Munich: Piper, pp. 93–7.
Kaiwar, V. and S. Mazumdar (eds) (2003) Antinomies of Modernity: Essays on
Race, Orient, Nation, Durham: Duke University Press.
Kant, I. (1997 [1797A/1798B]) ‘Die Metaphysik der Sitten’, in Werkausgabe, Vol.
8, ed. by W. Weischedel, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Koselleck, R. (1979) Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten,
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Lessing, G. E. (1970 [1767/1969]) ‘Hamburgische Dramaturgie’, in Werke, Vol. 4,
ed. by H. G. Göpfert in collaboration with K. Eibl, H. Göbel, K. S. Guthke et
al., Munich: Carl Hanser.
Marramao, G. (2003) Passaggio a Occidente: Filosofia e globalizzazione, Torino:
Bollati Boringhieri.
Morin, E. (1987) Penser l’Europe, Paris: Gallimard.
Nietzsche, F. (1988, 2nd edn) ‘Jenseits von Gut und Böse’, in Kritische Studienausgabe, Vol. 5, ed. by G. Colli and M. Montinari, Munich: DTV/de Gruyter, pp.
9–243.
Nietzsche, F. (1988, 2nd edn [1882/1887]) ‘Die fröhliche Wissenschaft’, in Kritische Studienausgabe, Vol. 3, ed. by G. Colli and M. Montinari, Munich: DTV
and de Gruyter, pp. 343–651.
Novalis (1981/1999) ‘Die Christenheit oder Europa’, in Werke, ed. by H.-J. Mähl
and R. Samuel, Munich: Hanser.
Paul, J. (1959–1963 [1804/1812]) ‘Vorschule der Ästhetik, Über Tagblätter und
Taschenbücher’, in Werke, 1. Abteilung, Vol. 5, ed. by N. Miller and G.
Lohmann, Munich: Carl Hanser.
256 Heidrun Friese
Rousseau, J.-J. (1998, 13th edn [1762]) ‘Emil oder Über die Erziehung’ (trans. L.
Schmidts), Paderborn, Munich: UTB, Ferdinand Schöningh.
Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism, London: Penguin Books.
Sloterdijk, P. (1999) Sphären, Vol. 2, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Sloterdijk, P. (2002) Falls Europa erwacht: Gedanken zum Programm einer Weltmacht am Ende des Zeitalters ihrer politischen Absence, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp.
Theunissen, M. (1984) The Other, Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Buber, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Weber, M. (1988, 9th edn [1920]) Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie,
Vol. I, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
18 Is there such a thing as
Eurocentrism?
Rémi Brague
In a book on European cultural identity, to be precise in the American
translation of a book written originally in French, I wrote some lines,
which I will now quote. “No culture was ever so little centred on itself and
so interested in the others as Europe. China called itself ‘the Middle
Kingdom’ Europe never did. Eurocentrism is a misnomer. It is even the
contrary of truth” (Brague 2002a: 133ff.). In a review of recent books on
Europe, Gerard Delanty quoted some of those words and saw in them a
“seductive argument” in which, however, “there is a philosophical sleight
of hand”. As a consequence, “this problem is not adequately addressed”
(Delanty 2003: 471–88, especially 486). I cannot see where the legerdemain resides, but I can agree on the sketchy character of this somewhat
provocative thesis. The aim of what follows is to flesh it out.
Eurocentrism
I am sorry to have to confess that I have been unable to discover exactly
who coined the word Eurocentrism, and when this took place and for
what purposes. The earliest occurrence of the term that I could locate,
albeit after rather superficial inquiry, is in the title of a book written in
1988 by Samir Amin. Mr. Amin is an economist, apparently of Marxist
persuasian, and an opponent of “globalization”. He was born in 1931 to
an Egyptian father and a French mother (which explains why his book was
written in French).
Obviously, “Eurocentrism” combines two substantives: “Europe”,
shortened into a prefix of sorts, “centre”, and the suffix “-ism”. The latter
adds a derogatory shade. It implies that it is wrong to consider Europe as
the centre of the world. In the same way, “geocentricism” is the name that
was given to Ptolemy’s geocentric cosmology, when it was proved wrong.
I understand the word “centrism” as standing for an intellectual phenomenon. For, in order to describe the concrete stance of European
peoples towards the rest of the world, a great deal of other words are
available. They are more to the point than Eurocentrism. Some are merely
descriptive, such as colonization. Some capture the inner stance that is
258 Rémi Brague
supposed to have triggered the former, such as imperialism. For the most
part, they imply a judgement of value, and a negative one. I understand
Eurocentrism as meaning the way in which Europeans are supposed to
look at other cultures from their own point of view, to measure them
according to their own standards.
“Centrism” as a universal phenomenon
What I should like to call “centrism” is a common phenomenon among
cultures. If we are allowed to draw a parallel between cultural and biological phenomena, and I know full well that this cannot be done without due
care, a “centrist” view of things is a common feature of living beings. They
do not take in their environment as it is. Their perceptive apparel selects
what is “interesting” for them in the constant struggle for life, i.e. what
can be a danger, like predators, or what can be useful for the individual or
the species: food supply, sexual partners, etc.
The same holds true, mutatis mutandis, for human societies. Many
among them consider themselves as being identical with mankind. People
in them often call themselves “men” tout court, whereas the other peoples
are animals. Each culture looks at the other ones from its own vantage
point. Claude Levi-Strauss tells us the story of an Indian from the Brazilian
heartland who is brought to Rio de Janeiro. Asked about the differences he
sees between Indians and “Europeans”, he says that the main one is that,
unlike Europeans, Indians never pluck flowers.
Europe makes no exception. What distinguishes European “centrism”
from other instances of the same attitude is merely quantitative in nature.
The fact that Europe has conquered the whole world had to swell the
European view of the world to gigantic proportions. Of course, one could
invoke the famous “law” of dialectical materialism according to which
quantity allegedly becomes quality. One could plead that such a switch
must occur when a definite world-view becomes so broadly accepted that
its possible rivals are automatically out of court. Hence, if I had to answer
my question with a blunt yes or no, I should acknowledge that Eurocentrism existed, and still exists. Drawing a list of what bears witness of a
Eurocentric stance, unmasking it and exposing it is quite an easy task.
There are some people for whom it is interesting. In my opinion, the
results of this kind of enquiry have the unbearable tediousness that
belabouring the obvious produces when it is presented as a feat of scholarship and insight.
Europe as eccentric
Let us now have a look at the other component of the word I am trying to
scrutinize, i.e. the prefix “Euro”. If Europe is Eurocentric, is Eurocentrism
typically European? My answer is emphatically “no”. In the book I have
Is there such a thing as Eurocentrism? 259
just alluded to, I endeavoured to show that Europe fed upon previous cultures from which it felt estranged. This is what I called Europe’s secondarity. What I called “eccentric identity” is a feature of European culture, nay
its backbone. I need not repeat what I explained there.
To the best of my knowledge, cultural secondarity and eccentricity do
not exist except in Europe. We are not that prone to acknowledge this,
because of a difficulty that was pointed out in its whole breath by a
famous legal historian: “In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of Western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself
the truth that the civilization which surrounds him is a rare exception in
the history of the world” (Maine 1970 [1861]: 13f.).
In order to show once more European cultural eccentricity, I will
proceed indirectly. Being eccentric necessarily leads to an eccentric view of
oneself. Russian literary theorists of the pre-First World War period, the
so-called “formalists”, coined the concept of singularization
to capture the very essence of literature: “whereas everyday experience is
inevitably worn out by habit, the writer enables the reader to look at it
with fresh eyes by making it look strange through various devices”
(Chklovski 1965 [1917]: 83). Later on, the idea was taken up by Brecht
with his Verfremdung, distantiation. Now, I will try to show that European culture as such shows phenomena that can be grouped under the
heading of distantiation.
In order to do so, I will focus on the Middle Ages. Since this period is
anterior to Europe’s overseas expansion, it will be easier to grasp its cultural features in some sort of state of chemical purity, unalloyed by any
feedback phenomenon from the countries that it later conquered. Let me
highlight three aspects. I will deal with them with a decreasing brevity.
Far away
First, the very place that people knew they were occupying on the map was
far from being central. If we look at medieval maps (see, for example,
Maurolico’s map in Bertola 1996: 130), we observe that a basic agreement
obtains between European, Byzantine Greek and Islamic cartographers.
The shape of the world, such as it was known, differs only in details. In
each case, the centre of the world was located somewhere in the Near East,
for instance, Iran and the Arabic Peninsula (see, for example, Al-Amiri
1988: 66ff.). Furthermore, a centre is more than geometry. It means a
point of reference. The mathematical centre does not always coincide with
what I should call the axiological centre. I showed this elsewhere for preCopernican cosmology (see Brague 1997: 187–210). Now, such a centre
for the medieval man is definitely not Europe, but again the Middle East:
for the Jews and Christians, it is Jerusalem; for the Muslims it is Mecca.
This is shown in a famous poem by a medieval Jew and apologist of his
religion, Jehuda Halevi, who lived in Andalusia and died in 1140 in
260 Rémi Brague
Alexandria, on his way to the Holy Land. He writes: “my heart is in
Orient, but I am dwelling in the farthest West”. Now, the heart is more
than a metaphor for affectivity. Halevi does not mean only that his longing
is towards the holy city of Jerusalem. The Hebrew lev actually had this
meaning, among other ones, in the ancient language. But it had taken a
new shade that it did not yet possess in Biblical time, but had borrowed
from the Arabic lubb. This word means the kernel of a fruit. In medieval
parlance, it is a common metaphor for the innermost core of a being. This
is the case in Halevi’s own writings, especially his masterpiece the Kuzari,
where the idea plays a decisive part: Israel is claimed to be the kernel of
mankind.1 What Halevi means in the poem is that his centre of gravity, his
point of reference, the hard core of his religious identity is in the East, i.e.
Jerusalem, whereas his concrete abode, the place of his body, is Spain.
Interest
Second, I contend that Europe is the only culture that ever became interested in the other cultures. Let me qualify this somewhat provocative
thesis. I spoke of a culture as a subject and said that European culture did
this and failed to do that, and so forth. This is obviously shorthand for
more careful formulas that competent people could formulate more aptly.
Individuals can qualify as subjects of actions and, to some extent, social
groups, too. What I mean with “European culture did this”, etc. is something like: a definite practice was commonly received for a long time and
in social groups large in number and powerful in influence.
Now, we can find in pre-European or extra-European cultures examples
of individuals who became interested in other cultures and tried to study
them in a fair way. Herodotus did precisely that in ancient Greece with his
accounts of Egypt, Persia, etc. Al-Biruni (d. 1053) did that in medieval
Persian Islam with his reports on India. He even reflected on parochialism,
an intellectual flaw that he ascribed to the Indians of his time. For them,
the earth is their country, mankind is their people, the kings are their
leaders, religion is their sect, knowledge is what they know (Al-Biruni
1983: 20). But people like Herodotus and Al-Biruni remained shooting
stars and left no intellectual posterity. A swallow does not make a spring.
A notable fact is that Arab travellers explored each and every nook and
corner of the Islamic world. But we find no examples among them of
people who went to European countries (see Fletcher 2003: 163). And few
examples of people who listened with interest to what foreign travellers
told them about their country of origin (see the cases in Malvezzi 1956:
116ff. and 125, cited in von Grunebaum 1973: 232). On the other hand,
we find many instances of foreign peoples who cannot understand why
Europeans came and visited them just for the fun of it. In the late seventeenth century, the French traveller Jean Chardin recorded the surprise of
the Persians – the real ones, not Montesquieu’s – when they understood
Is there such a thing as Eurocentrism? 261
that he had undertaken a long and dangerous trip just for the sake of
curiosity.2
In Europe, interest for foreign mores became common and fostered a
whole literary genre. There exists a long tradition of travel literature. In
the thirteenth century, monks were sent to the Mongols, like John of
Piano-Carpini, OFM (d. 1252). William Rubruk, OFM went to Karakorum to the court of the Grand Khan. The latter was sent by the Pope and
the King of France in order to try and win the alliance of the Mongols
against Islam. In 1258, he took part in a religious disputation in the presence of the Khan. One could mention other people like William of Boldensele, OP, John of Montecorbino (d. 1328) or Odoric of Pordenone,
OFM (d. 1331) who went as far as China.
What is revealing for us are not the travellers, let alone their diplomatic
aims, but the fact that they wrote their travel diary and published it.
Marco Polo perhaps never went to China and simply listened to sailors’
yarns somewhere in Bassorah or such places (see Wood’s provocative 1995
book: 208pp.). But his book was immensely successful. In the same way,
Sir John Mandeville, the imaginary author of an imaginary travel book
that appeared in 1356–1357 in Anglo-Norman French met a huge success
and was translated into many languages. The forger took the existence of
an interested readership for granted.
The other as vantage point
I should like to make my third point on the basis of the second one.
Getting interested in something is more than a sheer token of curiosity; or,
rather, there are several levels of interest. The deepest one consists of
understanding that the other one is interesting also because of the light it
throws back on the observer (Brague 2002b: 183–201, especially 184).
This is what European culture did.
A well-known literary device among European writers consists of pretending that a traveller from a remote country looks at Europe and describes it
naively. This enables a veiled critique of one’s own basic assumptions. Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes (1721), a classical work that every French person
has read at high school, is the most famous example of this literary genre. But
Montesquieu was in the wake of an older tradition of European self-criticism
and endeavouring to look at oneself through foreign eyes.
In modern times, the first to make use of this literary device probably
was an Italian who lived mainly in France, Giovanni Paolo Marana
(1642–1693) in his L’esploratore turco (1682), in Marana’s own French
L’Espion du Grand Seigneur (1684). The book presents itself as a collection of reports allegedly translated from the Arabic of a Turkish spy by the
name of Mahmut.3 In the last decade of the seventeenth century, the
French polygraph Charles Dufresny in his Amusements sérieux et
comiques (1699) already reflects on this practice.
262 Rémi Brague
Let me quote my English translation:
For us to be more vividly struck by a variety that the prejudices of
habit make appear almost uniform, let us imagine that a Siamese
enters Paris. What fun could it be for him to examine with the eyes of
a traveller all the pecularities of this large city [. . .] we will see in
which manner he will be struck by some things that the prejudices of
habit make look reasonable and natural to us.
(Dufresny 1992: 994–1050 – my emphasis)
This passage is interesting because, amongst other reasons, of the stress
it lays on the idea of prejudice. This idea originated in Descartes and Malebranche. It was already a lively topic of discussion during the Querelle des
Anciens et des Modernes (see Longepierre 2001 [1687]: 286–9), and it was
to become a catchword of the Enlightenment.
As for Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes, nobody challenges their place as
the masterpiece of this literary genre. Little wonder that they were largely
imitated, so that the trick became simply hackneyed in the eighteenth
century. Let me mention some instances following the chronological order.
Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’Argens (1704–1771), a French polygraph, siding with the “Philosophes”, published two series of Letters, first
Jewish, then Chinese, that contain a scathing critique of “superstition” –
code-word for Christianity (Boyer d’Argens 1736–1737 and 1751).
In England Oliver Goldsmith, more famous for his novel The Vicar of
Wakefield (1766), published between January 1760 and August 1761 a
series of 119 “Chinese Letters” that were published in the next year with
the new title of The Citizen of the World (Friedman (ed.) 1966 [1762]:
XIX, 476pp.). An imaginary Chinaman, Lien Chi Altangi, mocks London
life and manners. The works draws heavily on d’Argens previous work,
which Goldsmith from time to time simply cribbed, and on various reports
on things Chinese.
In L’Ingénu (1767), Voltaire dropped the genre of letters and wrote of a
red Indian, a Huron, in Paris. The contrast is between the refinement and
corruption of Parisian high life and the innocence of the noble savage.
In Spain José Cadalso (d. 1782), an officer, in his Cartas Marruecas
(posthumous, 1789), has a traveller from Morocco, helped by a Spaniard,
write a satire on Spanish mores (Cadalso 1956: XLVI, 232pp.).
After the French Revolution, the procedure seems to have lost its
charm, although some examples are still to be found nowadays, as in the
case of the German writer Herbert Rosendorfer who took up the rather
obsolete form of the letters to have a Chinese mandarin of the tenth
century describe with amazement the mores of contemporary Munich
(1994 [1983]: 275pp.).
To be sure, this conjunction of works bears witness to the spirit of the
Enlightenment. Interestingly, it lasted for slightly more than one century,
Is there such a thing as Eurocentrism? 263
and this century is precisely the one which we commonly call by the name
of Enlightenment. The oldest work, Marana’s, was published at a mighty
intellectual watershed: the 1670s and 1680s, a period that the French historian of ideas Paul Hazard called, in a book by this title that he published
in 1935, The Crisis of the European Conscience. The last one, Cadalso’s,
was printed in the very first year of the French Revolution and had been
written a few years earlier. All those works actually contribute to the strategy of the Enlightenment.
The Middle Ages
We then must ask: is this ability to look at oneself from afar a feature of
European culture as such? Or does it belong to the modern period only?
Seeing from afar is a common trait of modernity, after the discovery of
America, the circumnavigation of the world, and so on. This does not hold
true for geographic distance only. More generally, the astronomic revolution brought about by Copernicus may have opened up a new perspective,
although the idea of an ascension towards the highest spheres that enables
us to literally look down on our own everyday world is very ancient (see
Brague 2003: 73, 88, 90).
In the same way, attempts at looking at oneself through foreign eyes are
far earlier than Modern times. Examples are to be found several centuries
earlier, i.e. in the Middle Ages, too. In the twelfth century, the French
philosopher Pierre Abélard (d. 1142) wrote a dialogue between a Christian, a Jew and a Philosopher, who happens to be a Muslim in origin. He
has a cue in which the Jew complains about the situation of humiliation in
which his people have been living under Christian domination.4 What is
remarkable is not the content of such an outburst, but the fact that it was
written by a Christian. Abélard had to suffer from some of his fellow
Christians and had first-hand experience of persecution. In his autobiography, he even confesses that he has toyed with the idea of settling in Pagan
(i.e. Islamic) countries, in order to live there as a Christian, paying the
special poll-tax for non-Muslims, but enjoying a greater freedom than in
Christendom.5 We have another example of a comparison between one’s
own habits and foreign practice to the benefit of the foreign: Ibn Jubayr, a
Muslim traveller who visited Palestine at the time of the Crusades, compares the situation of Muslims under Islamic rule and under Frankish rule,
to the advantage of the latter (Ibn Jubayr 1953 [1907], cited in Lewis
1990: 93). Nevertheless, what is remarkable in Abelard is the ability to put
into the mouth of the other one arguments against oneself.
Another example of this stance is to be found in the travelogue of a
Franciscan monk whom I have already mentioned: William of Rubruk.
The Great Khan taunts William’s brothers in the faith with inconsistency:
they allegedly were given a Holy Scripture, but they hardly abide by its
regulations (Rubrouck 1993: 182–6). There may be a grain of truth in this.
264 Rémi Brague
Yet, what is really interesting is that such accusations levelled against
Christianity by a foreign prince became a topos in medieval travel literature (see Kastner 1997: 280–95).
Honoré Bouvet as a key example
Let me spend some time on another medieval work. Its author, by the
name of Honoré Bouvet, was a Benedictine monk, trained in Canon Law,
who lived in the abbey of Selonnet (in the French département of the Alpes
de Haute-Provence, near the dam of Serre-Ponçon). He was born around
1340 and died in the first decade of the fifteenth century. Bouvet was not
exactly a dove. On the contrary, he had a lively interest in military things
and wrote a compendium of military rules, some sort of mirror of the
noble soldier, by the title of L’Arbre des Batailles (The Tree of Battles)
(1387), which remained his most successful production and was translated
into several languages.
I will deal here with another work, L’apparicion maistre Jean de Meung,
written in 1398 (Arnold 1926: 1–68).6 The author dreams that the famous
author of the second part of the Roman de la Rose appears to him. The
great writer engages in a dialogue with a physician, a Jew, a Saracen and a
Jacobin monk, four people who, for different reasons, were in disrepute.7
Through them, Bouvet expresses his strictures against the mores of his
contemporaries. Some of them are put into the mouths of foreigners, the Jew
and mainly the Saracen. We will see that he hardly pulls his punches.
The Jew had to come in hiding,8 because of the ban published by the
King in 1394, expelling the Jews because of their sins, especially usury.9
He asks that the ban be lifted, for the Christians do far worse. They practice usury under the veil, by pretending to engage in lawful commercial
transactions. Why should the Jews, who are not a match against Christian
cupidity, remain in exile? If they were granted permission to come back,
they would ask for lower interest than Christians do: “Et nous serions plus
gracioux / De prendre plus petite usure”.10
Bouvet puts into the mouth of his Saracen a far longer speech. His character is a black man, “aussy noir comme charbon”; he is an interpreter, of
noble breed, and steeped in the Muslim religion: “. . . je suy plus franc
trossimant / Qui soit en Sarrasisme grant, / Car je sçay parler tout langage;
/ Et sy suy home de paraige / Et suy bon clerc en nostre loy”.11 He was sent
to study French people in order to report upon their habits, their creed,
their political system: “. . . nos seigneurs de la / Sy m’ont envoyé par deça /
Pour vëoir l’estat des crestians. [. . .] Pour ce suy venuz en partie / Pour
vëoir des Françoys leur vie, / Leur fait, leur noble contenance, / Quel foy
ilz ont, quel ordonnance.”12 The critique he levels against French Christians is harsher still than the Jew’s. The first one betrays Bouvet’s interest
in things military: Christians live in luxury and effeminacy. Hence, they
are weak soldiers.13
Is there such a thing as Eurocentrism? 265
But there are far worse things. Among Saracens, the Christian law, i.e.
the Christian religion, is said to rest on charity. But Saracens are more
charitable to each other than the Christians vis-à-vis their neighbours.
Among Christians, there is neither charity nor mercy: “On dit entre nous
une fable / Que vostre loy est charitable, / Mais je vous dy pour verité /
Que nous avons plus de charité / Entre nous autres Sarrazins / Que vous
n’avez a vos voisins”.14 In particular, Christians do not care about the sad
condition of their prisoners in Muslim countries. Therefore, they know
neither charity nor even pity: “Pour ce dy je que charité / N’est entre
crestiens ne pitié”.15 Christian tradesmen swear upon their faith and
commit perjury all the same. Christian people commit adultery and theft.
Christian soldiers prey upon their own folks, and on and on.16
The content of this critique is interesting. But it is not original. We read
very much the same things at the same period, for instance in Eustache
Dechamps.17 What is more interesting still, is the literary device. The
Saracen is put into scene by a Christian to put his fellow Christians to
shame. The device is even doubled, for the Saracen begins with reminding
the Latin Christians of the hatred of their brothers, the Greek Christians of
Byzantium against them: “j’ay ouÿ par plusieurs foys / Parler aux Rommains des Françoys, / Mais c’estoit bien vilainemant: / Ilz les prisent moins
que neant, / Car ilz les ont pour scismatiques.”18 The wheel comes full
circle: a Latin Christian writer has a Muslim character report about the
critique of Byzantine Christians against Latin Christians.
Conclusion
We find hardly any match to this attitude outside Europe. André Miquel
contends that some Muslim geographers praised foreign, far-eastern mores
as a mirror held to their own world for it to improve itself. Yet, the passages of his large work on the geographers which he refers to are not convincing (Miquel 2000: 108–14).
Now, as a matter or course, all this is mere fiction. The alleged foreigners are described on the basis of reports of European travellers. They are
hardly more than mouthpieces for the author’s own assumptions. One
could say that such a device is the heyday of Eurocentrism. Moreover, the
writers who make use of this device are not free of prejudices against other
European countries. For instance, Montesquieu has his Persian traveller
lampoon France, but he has him criticize Russia, too, so harshly that this
elicited an answer from a German who wrote in French, Strube de Piermont, who chose the same literary form of a correspondence to launch a
counter-attack on L’Esprit des Lois (Strube de Piermont 1978: 219pp.).
Nevertheless, we are not allowed to reduce these texts to sheer Eurocentrism, since it would not have been possible without what I alluded to a
while ago, i.e. the tradition of travel literature and the interest for the
other that made it possible. Even if the “other” is a construction, his place
266 Rémi Brague
remains as a possibility of self-distantiation for European consciousness.
To be sure, the other is an imaginary focus. But it is enough to change the
circle of which Europe would be the centre into an ellipse that displaces it
from itself.
In a nutshell, Eurocentrism as a concept is either too broad or too
narrow. As a subspecies of “centrism”, it is too broad to capture Europe
and does not tell us anything specific about it. In so far as it is supposed to
describe Europe as such and to the exclusion of whatsoever else, it simply
misses the mark.
I could even go farther and claim: speaking of Eurocentrism, i.e. applying this broad concept to Europe only, is a typically Eurocentric move.
Nothing is more Eurocentric than the critique levelled against Eurocentrism. Perhaps the very idea that there is such a thing as Eurocentrism is
the only genuine Eurocentric stance.
Notes
1 Jehuda Halevi, Kuzari, I, 95; II, 12; IV, 15, etc.
2 Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse, et autres lieux de l’Orient [. . .], Amsterdam 1735, Vol. 3 [. . .] Description générale de la Perse, ch. 11, 53.
3 Unfortunately, I could not access the text and had to rely on secondary literature (see Roscioni 1992: 518pp.; also see Berger 2002: 57–91 for an English
translation of another work by Roscioni that draws on the same device).
4 Abélard, Dialogus inter Judaeum, Philosophum et Christianum, PL, 178,
1617d–1618d.
5 Abélard, Historia calamitatum, ch. 12; PL, 164b.
6 I owe my acquaintance with the work of Bouvet to I. Fletcher, op. cit., 153ff.
7 Bouvet, Apparicion, I. Arnold’s Introduction, XVII.
8 Bouvet, Apparicion, V. 289–92, p. 17.
9 Bouvet, Apparicion, V. 234, p. 15.
10 Bouvet, Apparicion, V. 246–92, p. 16ff.
11 Bouvet, Apparicion, Prose 116ff., p. 9; V. 303–6, p. 17ff.
12 Bouvet, Apparicion, V. 311–13, 319–22, p. 18.
13 Bouvet, Apparicion, V. 420ff., p. 21ff.
14 Bouvet, Apparicion, V. 631–6, p. 30. Interestingly, the characterization of
Christianity as a religion of love alone is not an invention of Bouvet. It is to be
found, with a critical slant, in Muslim authors, e.g. in al-Biruni, op. cit., 433.
15 Bouvet, Apparicion, V. 665ff., p. 31.
16 Bouvet, Apparicion, V. 767–80, p. 36f.
17 Bouvet, Apparicion, I. Arnold’s Introduction, XXV–XXVII.
18 Bouvet, Apparicion, V. 357–61, p. 19.
References
Al-Amiri (1988) Kitab al-amad ‘ala’ l-abad, II, 18, in E. Rowson A Muslim Philosopher on the Soul and its Fate [. . .], New Haven: American Oriental Society.
Al-Biruni (1983) India, edited by A. Safâ, Beirut: ‘Alam al-kutub.
Amin, S. (1988) L’Eurocentrisme: Critique d’une ideologie, Paris: Anthropos:
162pp.
Is there such a thing as Eurocentrism? 267
Arnold, I. (1926) L’apparicion maistre Jehan de Meun et le Somnium super
materia scismatis d’Honoré Bonet [wrongly for Bouvet], Paris: Belles Lettres and
Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1–68 [here: Bouvet, Apparicion].
Berger, R. W. (ed. and trans.) (2002) An Anthology of Source Descriptions,
1323–1790, New York: Italica Press.
Bertola, F. (1996) Imago mundi: La représentation de l’univers à travers les siècles,
French translation by A. Hayli, Bruxelles: La Renaissance du Livre.
Boyer d’Argens, J.-B. (1736–1737) Lettres juives, ou correspondance
philosophique, historique et critique, entre un juif voyageur à Paris et ses correspondants en divers endroits, 4 volumes, Amsterdam.
Boyer d’Argens, J.-B. (1751) Lettres chinoises, ou [. . .] entre un chinois [. . .] à la
Chine, en Muscovie, en Perse et au Japon, 5 volumes, La Haye.
Brague, R. (1997) “Geocentrism as a Humiliation for Man”, Medieval Encounters,
3: 187–210.
Brague, R. (2002a) Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, translated
by S. Lester, South Bend, Indiana: Saint Augustine’s Press.
Brague, R. (2002b) “Is Physics Interesting?”, Graduate Faculty Philosophy
Journal, 23(2): 183–201.
Brague, R. (2003) The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought, English translation, T. Fagan, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Cadalso, J. (1956) Cartas Marruecas, edited by J. Tamayo y Rubio, Madrid:
Espasa-Calpe: XLVI, 232pp.
Chklovski, V. (1965 [1917]) “L’art comme procédé”, French translation in T.
Todorov (ed.) Théorie de la littérature: Textes des formalistes russes réunis,
présentés et traduits par T. Todorov, Paris: Seuil.
Delanty, G. (2003) “Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends”, European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4): 471–88.
Dufresny, C. R. (1992) “Amusements sérieux et comiques”, in J. Lafond (ed.)
Moralistes du XVIIe siècle, Paris: Laffont.
Fletcher, R. (2003) La Croix et le Croissant. Le Christianisme et l’Islam, de
Mahomet à la Réforme, translated by C. Loiseau, Paris: Audibert.
Friedman, A. (ed.) (1966) Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Volume II: The
Citizen of the World, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Grunebaum, G. E. von (1973) L’Identité culturelle de l’islam, translated from
French by R. Stuvéras, Paris: Gallimard: 232, n. 2.
Kastner, H. (1997) “Das Gesprach des Orientreisenden mit dem hiednischen
Herrscher: Zur Typik und zur Funktion einer interkulturellen Dialogsszene in
der Reiseliteratur des Spatmittelalters und der fruhen Neuzeit”, in H. Wenzel
(ed.) Gesprache-Boten-Briefe: Korpergedachtnis und Schriftgedachtnis im Mittelalter, Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.
Lewis, B. (1990) Comment l’islam a découvert l’Europe, translated by A. Pélissier,
Paris: Gallimard.
Longepierre, H. B. de (2001 [1687]) “Discours sur les Anciens”, in M. Fumaroli
(ed.) La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, Paris: Gallimard, pp. 286–9.
Maine, H. S. (1970 [1861]) Ancient Law, edited by J. H. Morgan, London: Dent.
Miquel, A. (2000) L’Orient d’une vie, Paris, Payot, and Géographie humaine du
monde musulman, Paris: Colin, Volume 2, pp. 108–14.
Roscioni, G. C. (1992) Sulle tracee dell: “Esploratore turco”, Milan: Rizzoli.
268 Rémi Brague
Rosendorfer, H. (1994 [1983]) Briefe in die chinesische Vergangenheit, Munich:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.
Rubrouck, G. de (1993) Voyage dans l’empire mongol, 1253–1255, translated by
C-C. and R. Kappler, Paris: Payot.
Strube de Piermont, F.-H. (1978) Lettres russiennes, edited by C. Rosso, Pisa: La
Goliardica.
Wood, F. (1995) Did Marco Polo Go to China?, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
19 Rethinking Asia
Multiplying modernity
Alastair Bonnett
Asia is a persistent idea. Despite its shifting political and geographical contours, it has gained a seemingly secure place in the modern geopolitical
vocabulary. Yet ‘Asia’ is also persistently represented as something supplementary: as an idea dependent on and derivative of the ur-continent of
Europe. Ravi Palat (2002: 687) assures us that, ‘[s]imply put, Asia’s unity
derives from, and derives only from, its historical and contemporary role
as Europe’s civilisational other’. Grounding the argument in etymology,
Sakai adopts a similarly commonsensical tone: ‘It is well known that the
word Asia was coined by the Europeans in order to distinguish Europe
from its eastern others’ (2000: 791). Leo Ching theoretically elaborates the
point as follows:
The principle of [Asian] identity lies outside itself, in relation to
(an)Other. If one can ascribe to Asia any vague sense of unity, it is
that which is excluded and objectified by the West in the service of its
historical progress. Asia is, and can be one, only under the imperial
eye of the West.
(1998: 70)
The theoretical heritage behind Ching’s depiction is certainly weighty.
Deconstruction, psychoanalysis, existentialism and a dialectical theory of
the formation of self are all put to work on what is, essentially, a political
argument. In this way philosophical abstractions are given historical resonance and spatial content. Fanon and Sartre showed us how rhetorically
powerful this combination could be. Yet it is a formula that, in relying on
Europe (and ‘the West’) as the original site of definition, overlooks the
ambiguous, transcultural origins of notions of orient and occident, Asia
and Europe, both in pre-modern (see Toynbee 1954; Korhonen 2002) and
modern Asia.
This chapter addresses ‘Asia’ as an idea that responds to particular
Asian intellectual projects, lineages that relied on and called forth images
of Europe and the West. This kind of ‘turning of the tables’ between Asia
and Europe is already a familiar device. It is often allied to a positioning of
270 Alastair Bonnett
‘Asia’ as an historical agent which ‘invented’ both itself and the West:
examples include Clarke’s (1997) Oriental Enlightenment and Hobson’s
(2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (we might also wish to
add Keene 1969 and Hay 1970). However, I intend to offer a more limited
argument, one which relies on the identification of the geopolitical imagination of specific Asian intellectuals and resists extrapolation to the
anthropomorphic impulse that demands consideration of the ‘ambitions’
or ‘achievements’ of nations or regions (see also Sun 2000a, 2000b). I will
also exemplify two other, closely related, arguments: (i) that ideas of Asia
were developed in relationship with constructions of the West and Europe;
and (ii), that these geographical visions were employed and deployed
within and through different visions of Asian modernity.
These arguments are sketched through brief assessments of the starkly
different images of ‘Asia’ and ‘Europe’ offered by two of the most influential interpreters of both of these categories – the Japanese ‘Westerniser’
and nationalist Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834–1901) and the Indian poet and
advocate of spiritual Asia, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). Tagore’s
pathway led to a rhetoric of ‘soulless’ and ‘industrial’ West and an attempt
to imagine a non-materialist Asian modernity. Fukuzawa’s route
demanded a distinction between an advanced and aggressive Europe and a
backward, passive Asia; a contrast from which a Japanese project of
national modernity (through ‘leaving Asia’) emerged. The comparison of
the geographical imaginations of these two men has far more than purely
historical interest. For its legacies and strains can be found at work within
many of the contemporary dilemmas that surround Asian identity. The
example that I use to show this is the late twentieth-century debate
surrounding ‘Asia values’. At once a novel moment of Asian self-invention,
the idea of ‘Asian values’ both employed and inverted Fukuzawa’s binary,
offering a lazy West and a hard-working, productive Asia. Yet it also
remained haunted by Tagore’s aspiration that Asia could be an utterly different and better place than the West, a community that is more than
merely a site of material progress.
Tagore’s spiritual Asia
It is difficult for us to sense the excitement and political provocation contained in the opening words of Kakuzo Okakura’s The Ideals of the East
(which first appeared in 1904), that ‘Asia is one’. Yet, what a stupendous
and improbable idea it is. The notion that there is some shared essence
between all the different cultures of this vast space – or, at a more particular level, between, for example, ‘Indian culture’ and ‘Japanese culture’ – is
an imaginative leap of considerable proportions.
Tagore and Okakura claimed to detect such an essence in spiritual traditions that stretch across a greater portion of the continent, most notably
in Buddhism. Yet to even begin naming commonalties immediately opens
Rethinking Asia 271
up the implausible nature of any vision of Asia as a single entity. Buddhism, after all, is a minority religious current in Asia. Moreover, its
absorption into regional cultures, from India to Japan, has taken different
paths. Thus any claim of contemporary solidarity based upon Buddhism
becomes a reclamation and reinvention of a distant past. Okakura, like
Tagore, acknowledged that his was a project of historical retrieval, a
necessary fabrication of identity: ‘For the shadows of the past are the
promise of the future’ (Okakura 2000: 240).
Paying homage after Okakura’s death in 1913, Tagore said, ‘from him
we first came to know that there was such a thing as an Asiatic mind’
(cited in Hay 1970: 38). For Tagore, the West and Europe (terms he used
interchangeably) were mechanical, officious civilisations, the antithesis of
the organic culture found within Asia. This distinction mapped onto
another: the West was essentially urban, and spread itself around the
world by way of urbanisation. ‘[D]ead monotony is the sign of the Nation.
The modern towns’, Tagore wrote in Creative Unity (1922: 144), ‘are
everywhere the same, from San Francisco to London, from London to
Tokyo. They show no faces, but merely masks’.
Tagore cast Asia as a community of tradition that could and should
modernise on its own terms. This also implied a vision of Asia as united
by its status as a victim of European (per)versions of modernity. The
issue of what is meant by freedom was central to Tagore’s concerns. He
came to associate the term with the possibility of individual and social
creativity, a process that he identified in the Asian relationship to the
spiritual. Thus, although critical of many areas where freedom and individual development are stymied in the East, he cited Buddhism and the
epic poem of Hinduism, the Mahabharata, as an illustration of the possibilities of free expression: ‘full of freedom of enquiry and experiment’
(1922: 137). Tagore, who travelled extensively and for long periods in
both Europe and the USA, was cynical about the claims he heard there
about the value Westerners’ placed on freedom. In a open letter from
New York, published in 1922, he writes that ‘In my recent travels in the
West I have felt that out there freedom as an idea has become feeble and
ineffectual’ (Tagore 1922: 133). What Tagore saw in the West was not
freedom but a ‘spirit of repression and coercion’, driven by the industrialisation of social relations and the ‘immense power of money’ (1922:
136). Tagore was also clear that, as freedom had diminished, the personality and individuality of Westerners had become what he called ‘professionalised’; that is, made superficial and vulnerable to political
manipulation:
Man as a person has his individuality, which is the field where his
spirit has its freedom to express itself and grow. The professional man
carries a rigid crust around him which has little variation and hardly
any elasticity. This professionalism is the region where men specialise
272 Alastair Bonnett
their knowledge and organise their power, mercilessly elbowing each
other in their struggle to come to the front.
(1922: 145)
Tagore wanted to break the association, not just between freedom and
Westernisation, but also between modernisation and Westernisation.
‘Modernism is not in the dress of the Europeans; or in the hideous structures, where their children are interned to take lessons’ he argued, ‘These
are not modern but merely European’ (cited in Hay 1970: 70). ‘True modernism’, he continued, ‘is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is
independence of thought and action, not tutelage under European schoolmasters. It is science, but not its wrong application in life’.
Tagore was scornful of the way Japan had dramatically ‘proved itself’
as a modern nation by virtue of its military victory in the Russo-Japanese
war (1904–1905). In one of the angriest passages in Nationalism (1991;
first published 1917), he argues that, Westerners ‘admit Japan’s equality
with themselves, only when they know that Japan also possesses the key to
open the floodgate of hell-fire upon the fair earth whenever she chooses’
(1991: 39–40).
Tagore’s books swarm with fond images of the English romantic poets
and he was keenly alert to the utility of science and technology in the alleviation of poverty and oppression. Indeed, his reformist, conciliatory
approach made him vulnerable throughout his life to accusations of being
a Westerniser. Yet, however much Tagore protested his faith in a ‘creative
unity’ of East and West, his dialectical logic was constantly interrupted by
the stereotypes of both Europe and the West he had worked so hard to
develop. What I mean by this is that, because Tagore’s West was a place of
instrumentalism and soulless anomie, it was also a place quite unsuitable
for ‘creative unity’. It was a civilisation that did not want real contact with
others and that was, at root, inherently destructive: ‘The dominant collective idea of the Western countries is not creative . . . It is wholly wanting in
spiritual power to balance and harmonise; it lacks the sense of the great
personality of man’ (1991: 99).
Tagore’s modernity contrasts sharply both with the nationalism fostered by Fukuzawa as well as with the ubiquitous portrayal of modernity
as interwoven with industrialisation. However, the inventive capacity of
Tagore, his willingness to re-align old identities into new patterns of
belonging, suggest he was embarked on a project that is formally similar to
these other modernist enterprises. Another parallel can also be drawn, one
that concerns the way that the logic of modernity is aligned to a selfquestioning and critical sensibility. Themes of uncertainty and reflexivity,
along with the challenge of living in ‘post-traditional’ communities, have
become staple topics within Western social theory. They are usually
employed to describe the state of consciousness that accompanies postFordist capitalism (Beck 1994; see also Lash 1999). Since Tagore wished
Rethinking Asia 273
to defend certain traditional values it is understandable that he does not
appear in the kind of historical overview offered by Beck. Yet, Tagore considered himself a defender of the modern. What he was concerned with is
the identification of progress and modernity with the West, the conflation
that continues to render provincial so much Western social theory.
Tagore’s notion of a spiritual modernity idea developed mystical and meditative Buddhist and non-doctrinal Hindu traditions, where emphasis is
placed on inner reflection and the removal of dogmatic conceit. It is an
individualistic exploration that has the restless quality of a perpetual and
dissatisfied seeking for ‘unity’ and ‘reconciliation’. ‘In dogmatic religion’,
Tagore tells us, ‘all doubts are laid to rest’. Tagore’s own understanding of
religion is, he says, ‘indefinite and elastic’: it offers ‘no doctrine or injunction’ and ‘never undertakes to lead anybody anywhere to any solid conclusion; yet it reveals endless spheres of light, because it has no walls round
itself’ (1922: 16). This language of spiritual self-discovery found a following in the West, partly because it appears to offer transcendental
experience without succumbing to the rigid anachronisms of conventional
Christianity. However, there is little that is ‘alternative’ about Tagore’s
approach to the spiritual. It represents, rather, a reflexive, self-questioning
approach to the problem of modernity, an approach that hopes to embrace
modernity without being over-impressed by the instrumental logic that,
Tagore claimed, characterises its Western incarnation.
Fukuzawa: nationalist modernity in and against Asia
Fukuzawa Yukichi is the most well known and influential of the nineteenthcentury Japanese Westernisers. Born in 1834, as a child Fukuzawa studied
rangaku (‘Dutch learning’) at school in Nagasaki, at a time when the
Dutch were the only Westerners allowed even limited entry into the
country. In 1862 he was part of the Takenouchi mission to the West, the
first of a series of official Japanese investigations of Western society, industry and economic development. His glowing account of what he saw was
published in 1866 (‘Conditions in the West’, 1958) and became an immediate best seller. Fukuzawa later wrote the primary school textbook,
World Geography (1959; first published 1869), which drew on similar
material and explicitly placed Europe at the centre of world civilisation.
In terms of the structure of Fukuzawa’s argument, China has as important a role in An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (1973) as the West. It
is China that is represented as static and passive, China that is cast as
hopelessly archaic and vulnerable to national humiliation. Where these
attributes are located in Japan they are cast as stemming from the age-old
domination of Japanese culture by China. The following passage exemplifies this ‘othering’ of China, as well as hinting at the aggressive and nationalistic foreign policies that Fukuzawa’s work was later taken to condone.
Such phrases as ‘be gentle, modest, and deferring to others’, or ‘rule by
274 Alastair Bonnett
inaction’, or ‘the holy man does not have ambition’ . . . all refer to inner
states which in the West would be described as merely ‘passive’ (Fukuzawa
1973: 79).
For Sakamoto (2001: 149), Fukuzawa may be identified as holding
‘Western racialist-Orientalist images’ of China. However, the notion that
Fukuzawa’s vision of Asia was a mere repetition of a master discourse of
East and West disseminated from the West is inadequate. ‘Asia’, ‘the East’
and ‘the West’ were ideas already in circulation in Japan before their elaboration in the West. Iida (1997: 412) notes that, as early as 1715, Arai
Hakuseki had offered a ‘proto-type of the notion of Asia’ when he contrasted the East as ‘spiritual civilisation’ to the ‘material civilisation’ of the
West. In Japan’s Orient, Stefan Tanaka (1993) details the long history of
orientalist and occidentalist commentary. Tanaka also argues that the
‘shift’ from China to the West as the dominant influence on Japanese
culture,
did not entail the simple replacement of China by the West . . . The
difference between the use of China and the use of the West was that
the previous world was one in which all life was construed as being
part of a fixed realm . . . The West brought a different perspective, the
probable future; knowledge was infinite.
(1993: 32–3)
The most well known slogan associated with Fukuzawa concerns the
relation between Japan, the West and Asia. The title of his essay Datsu-a
nyu-o (1997), first published in 1885, has been translated as ‘On leaving
Asia’, ‘Disassociating Asia’ and, more simply, ‘Good-bye Asia’. It suggests
that Japan must now consider itself part of Western civilisation and thus
‘dissociate’ itself from its barbaric and doomed neighbours:
We do not have time to wait for the enlightenment of our neighbors so
that we can work together toward the development of Asia. It is better
for us to leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with civilized nations of the West. As for the way of dealing with China and
Korea, no special treatment is necessary just because they happen to
be our neighbors. We simply follow the manner of the Westerners in
knowing how to treat them.
(Fukuzawa 1997: 353).
This stance did not suggest that Japan should cut itself off from Asia
but, rather, that Japan was a nation of a different order, a higher type.
Saying good-bye to Asia meant being more involved with it; not as an
equal but in a similar fashion to other Western powers. This position was
also developed by Fukuzawa to suggest that Japan was the natural leader
and defender of weak and anarchic Asian nations against Western military
Rethinking Asia 275
might. As Sakamoto (1996) has shown, this attitude to Asia, whilst more
explicit and clearly colonialist towards the end of Fukuzawa’s life, was
present throughout his work. He goes on to argue that Fukuzawa’s work
‘annuls the West/Japan dichotomy’, leaving the ‘civilisation/non-civilisation
dichotomy’ intact, and ‘ “Asia” [to function] as the negative Other of
civilised Westernised/hybridised Japan’ (1996: 125). Sakamoto’s real target
here is the political naiveté of contemporary theories of hybridisation. He
concludes that ‘the construction of a hybrid discourse, at least in Japan’s
case, led to the exclusion of another Other, which Bhabha’s theory
ignores. To “go beyond” one dichotomy without creating yet another may
not be an easy project’ (1996: 126).
Clearly, Fukuzawa’s work does not sustain a vision of hybridity as a
kind of ‘open’ and reflexive third moment. Indeed, to extend Sakamoto’s
argument, I would cast doubt on the utility of conceptualising his work as
an example of hybridity at all. Fukuzawa actively fashioned a certain
representation of the West to suit his own (and, in large measure, his social
class’s) particular political ambitions. This process is best understood as a
creative and original intervention in the history of the idea of the West that
can be positioned alongside the contributions of Kidd, Spengler and
Toynbee in Europe (Gogwilt 1995; Bonnett 2004), as well as other intellectuals in the ‘non-Western’ world (such as Tagore): intellectuals engaged
with the challenge of working out the meaning of modern national and
international identities.
It is through Fukuzawa’s desire to invent and shape identity that his
modernity emerges most clearly. This attitude, one of the few he shares
with Tagore, ensures that collective identities become denaturalised and
emerge as ‘foci of contestation and struggle’ (Eisenstadt 2000: 7). The
central identities for Fukuzawa are Europe, the West, Asia, China and,
above all, Japan. For Fukuzawa modernity is a discourse of national
independence. It is a form of resistance to Western hegemony that co-opts
Western civilisation in order to both preserve national autonomy and
ensure its continued existence. Despite Fukuzawa’s reputation as a
reformer, his primary motivation is to conserve the nation. ‘Japan’s
uniqueness’, Fukuzawa notes ‘lies only in the fact that she has preserved
national polity intact from earliest antiquity and has never been deprived
of her sovereignty by a foreign power’ (2000: 27). At the end of An
Outline of a Theory of Civilisation he reminds readers that his ‘ultimate
goal’ is ‘national independence and all aspects of life [should be] made to
converge on this single goal . . . Whether institutions, learning, business, or
industry, they are all means to this end’ (1973: 196).
The ideas of ‘the West’ and of ‘Asia’ are employed and deployed by
Fukuzawa in order to fashion not just a new Japan but a Japan that is
capable of surviving in an increasingly aggressive and predatory world.
Fukuzawa’s West is a place of meritocracy and rational learning, a place
where the middle class thrives and where a sense of national community
276 Alastair Bonnett
and solidarity ensures an active, participatory population. Yet despite
Fukuzawa’s desire for a profound cultural shift towards the West, he also
continued to conceptualise the West as a set of traits that could be bolted
on to an existing primordial national unit: ‘Western civilization is the best
possible means of making our country strong and our Imperial line flourish, so why should we hesitate to adopt it’ (cited in Blacker 1969: 33).
Thus he made fun of unthinking Westernisers who had forgotten the
national raison d’être of the modernising impulse. Such folk, says
Fukuzawa, believed ‘in the new with the same belief that they had believed
in the old’ (cited in Blacker 1969: 39).
Asian values and the idle West
In 1931 Budhhadev Bose had already announced that ‘the age of Tagore
was gone’ (cited in Chakrabarty 2000: 160). The transition from predominantly colonial to post-colonial regimes across Asia that occurred from the
late 1940s onwards ushered in new generations of leaders keen to assert
modern, forward-looking, national agendas. The rise of Asian independence corresponded with a shift in the way Europe and the West were imagined. Most obviously, the association of power, of political and economic
decision making, with Europe and the West, could be challenged, not just
by Japan and China, but by countries across the continent.
It was predictable that, as the levers of power became decolonised, and
the institutions and ideologies of nation-building took an ever more
dominant position, the post-national, anti-political, aspirations articulated
by Tagore would appear increasingly utopian. Indeed, the themes of creativity and individual freedom, which Tagore saw as being crushed in the
West, were given a negative spin and associated by those who, in the
1980s and 1990s, came to espouse ‘Asian values’ with chaos, decline and
decadence. By the end of the century the ‘Asian image of the West’ was
transformed: not so much soulless as work-shy; not a ghastly, efficient
machine stamping conformity and alienation across the planet but an individualistic, welfare-dependent yet anti-social creature that could no longer
‘keep up’ with Asia. It is a curious transition: for it turned Asia into the
scold of the West for not possessing the very qualities that Tagore most
despised. Fukuzawa’s caricature of a passive Asia which must be rejected
in order to embrace national modernity was also turned on its head.
Within ‘Asian values’ narratives, it is the passive, idle West that must be
rejected, in order to embrace a regional modernity centred on the cliché of
‘hard working Asians’.
One constant within this transition is the centrality of representations of
Europe and the West to claims on modernity and Asia. ‘The West’ is
employed and deployed in ways that suggest, not simply or merely its
fictive character, but that Asia has continued to be a site for its imaginative
construction. Today, the arguments of both Tagore and Fukuzawa may
Rethinking Asia 277
appear to have been rejected. Yet each man is associated with images of
Asia that continue to haunt the present. Fukuzawa’s quest for national
modernity remains a potent model, not only in Japan. The nationalisms
formed through independence struggles have combined with the continuing difficulty of instituting Asian regional governance to ensure the prominence of the ‘modernising nation-state’ amongst Asian visions of the
future. Indeed, after the East Asian economic crisis of 1997 the Malaysian
social scientist Khoo Boo Teik described how quickly the regional aspirations implied by ‘Asian values’ could evaporate,
Now the miracle has turned to meltdown in the short period of one
and half years, Asians have been scrambling to distinguish themselves
from other Asians – not least in the eyes of a Western-dominated
international money market. Under the conditions which began in July
1997, the consensus of the Asian state elites over critical issues – so to
speak, a surrogate measure of the workability of the principle of
‘Asian consensus’ – has been almost nowhere in sight.
(1999: 188)
Neither has Fukuzawa’s stereotype of Asian passivity entirely disappeared. The nagging, anxious fears it plays on have a clear presence in the
attempts by proponents of ‘Asian values’ to create a region-wide disciplinary and transformatory culture based on an ‘Asian work ethic’.
An irony within narratives of ‘Asian values’ is the lack of interest they
exhibit in the diverse heritages of Asia outside of those deemed to sustain
economic progress. At the same time, it is revealing that ‘Asian values’ are
routinely rooted in ‘Asian traditions’, even in ‘Asian religious traditions’.
This reminds us that Tagore’s distinction between Asian spirituality and
Western soullessness is not quite dead. Despite being cast into a strange,
sentimental, limbo, it retains a certain symbolic power. What it symbolises
is cultural depth. Asian spirituality remains attached to – or, perhaps, we
should say clings to – the idea of Asia. I shall return to this attachment
later, after addressing the reciprocal relationship between ‘Asian values’
and ‘Western values’.
Asian values bring together economic goals with supposedly traditional
family values and traditional networks. Such a combination of old and
new is said to promise a different, less disruptive and less inhumane, route
to modernisation (as compared, inevitably, with Western industrialisation). A related notion, once surprisingly prevalent even in Europe and the
USA, had it that business practices in the Far East are less brutal and
instrumental than those in the West. In the words of business journalist
Shui-shen Liu, the Chinese ‘pay more attention to human relations than to
“things” . . . In the West “things” are more important than human relations’ (cited in Tai 1989: 19). However, it is significant that, although
strong family ties and collectivism can both be found across Asia, it is the
278 Alastair Bonnett
supposed absence of the work-ethic that differentiated Asians outside the
fold of the Asian values debate (especially South Asians) in the 1980s and
1990s, from those at its centre (East Asians). East Asians, the Malaysian
intellectual, Noordin Sopiee has argued, are characterised by their ability
to ‘work very hard’ and a disposition to ‘saving and thriftiness’ (cited in
Milner and Johnson 2002). Indeed, Asian religious and mystical traditions
have been emptied of transcendental content and put to work to suggest
that the work-ethic has a specific, East Asian, heritage. Thus, for example,
Japanese Buddhism, and Confucianism in a number of East Asian countries, have been used to explain and illustrate a disposition towards asceticism, self-discipline and self-sacrifice. By contrast India, as Francis
Fukuyama puts it, has the wrong kind of Asian religion: it suffers from the
‘toper and inertia’ encouraged by Hindu mysticism. Hinduism, Fukuyama
tells us, ‘is in many respects the opposite of the spirit of capitalism’ (1992:
228).
Asian values perspectives emphasise social cohesion and community.
However, societal progress is measured, overwhelmingly, in economic
terms. In Can Asians Think?, the Singaporean ambassador to the United
Nations, Kishore Mahbubani, was unapologetic about the primacy of
wealth creation as the focus and destiny of Asian culture. Answering ‘yes’
to the bizarre question he poses in his title, Mahbubani finds the conclusive evidence from a single source, ‘the incredible economic performance
of East Asian societies in the past few decades’ (1998: 23). As with nearly
all proponents of Asian values, Kishore Mahbubani’s idea of Asia relies
on an interpretation of what is wrong with the West. Tagore’s concern
with soulless and mechanical Westernisation is replaced by a West of
decadence and indulgence. The debauched, idle and self-destructive West
is not a new image, either in the West or Asia. However, its ubiquity and
unrivalled deployment in the 1980s and 1990s to shape what Asia is,
more specifically to shape the Asian ideal, was unprecedented. The West’s
‘undoing’ is not merely a favourite theme amongst advocates of Asian
values but a defining theme: without ‘Western decadence’ the notion that
real or good Asians are devoted to wealth creation would be incomprehensible and easily rendered as a shallow and materialistic subversion of
Asian identity. Mahbubani provides a fairly typical account of Western
decline:
Only hubris can explain why so many Western societies are trying to
defy the economic laws of gravity. Budgetary discipline is disappearing. Expensive social programs and pork-barrel projects multiply with
little heed to costs. The West’s low savings and investment rates lead
to declining competitiveness vis-à-vis East Asia. The work ethic is
eroding while politicians delude workers into believing that they can
retain high wages despite becoming internationally uncompetitive.
(1998: 97)
Rethinking Asia 279
The twin themes of the work-shy West and the violent, ‘out of control’
West can be found throughout Asian values narratives. It is an assessment
that carries a historical judgement. For it shows, as Singapore Prime
Minister, Goh Chok Tong, put it during his National Day speech on 21
August 1994 that ‘societies can go wrong quickly’:
US and British societies have changed profoundly in the last 30 years.
Up to the early 60s they were disciplined, conservative, with the family
very much the pillar of their societies. Since then both the US and
Britain have seen a sharp rise in broken families, teenage mothers, illegitimate children, juvenile delinquency, vandalism and violent crime.
(cited in Sheridan 1999: 72)
The Singaporean sociologist Soek-Fang Sim has highlighted the suspiciously over-zealous way that anti-social behaviour is presented as
Western. This kind of geographical despatching of the sins of modernity
never rings true. ‘With the increasing realisation that the ‘West’ is within
and inevitable, that Singaporeans are indelibly Westernised’, Sim (2001:
51) argues, this kind of rhetoric is required, ‘not only to protect the Singapore nation from the dangerous West but also to protect Singapore from
Singaporeans’. In other words, Goh’s and Mahbubani’s attitude towards
the West represents a displacement of internal problems. It is a process of
purification of the nation that sanctions and demands strict protection and
self-discipline as well as the perpetuation of an image of the West as an
external, ever looming, ‘folk-devil’.
The shift, in the late twentieth century, to notions of an Asian regional
identity that are eagerly submissive to neo-liberal globalisation has subverted the appeal of Asian spirituality. Some will be tempted to describe
this shift in terms of a decline in the ability of South Asia to determine the
meaning of Asia and the rise of pragmatic, secular East Asia.1 However,
since such an explanation would have the effect of cementing stereotypes
whose creation is part of our enquiry, it is better to approach these
regional attributes as changeable and temporary. Moreover, the ideal of
Asian spirituality is not entirely dead in Asia today. It is, rather, petrified:
frozen into cultural capital, into a symbol of Asian ethnic specialness. It is
sustained as a marketable cultural distinction, one that implies that, no
matter how ferocious and flexible the labour market may be in East Asia,
certain values, especially those associated with the family, will remain
unchanged. In this way, a non-instrumental essence of Asianess continues
to be invoked, in large measure, because it consolidates the legitimacy of
the dominant paradigm of economic growth. Perhaps, though, it is
retained for another reason too. Asian spirituality clings to our imagination because it is an idea made necessary by the revolutions of modernity;
it offers a necessary hope. For whilst Asian values and Western values now
chorus that, in the words of Deng Xiaoping, ‘to get rich is glorious’, many
280 Alastair Bonnett
continue to sense that materialistic, industrialised lives are not full lives;
that there may be some other type of value in Asia.
The vision of Asia as containing the potential to transcend both the
West and industrialised modernity, a vision associated with ‘Asian spirituality’, continues to be hard to dispatch entirely. It casts its shadow over the
debate, especially whenever Asian ‘family values’ are relied on as the
uncommercialised, bedrock of humane conduct that will help Asia get
through its latest economic crisis. It also has a certain sickly presence in
the conduct of Asian statism: the state that directs all, knows all, looks
after the righteous and punishes the wrong-doers, takes on the role of an
omnipresent and all-knowing deity. More concretely, it was political nous
rather than woolly liberalism that seems to have spurred the Malaysian
deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim to flesh out a conception of a more
democratic and less soulless Asia – to be achieved by what he called an
‘Asian Renaissance’ – in the early 1990s (Ibrahim 1996). Ibrahim’s project
explicitly cited Tagore as an inspiration. It also directly challenged
Mahathir’s ‘Asian values’, an act of insubordination that many consider to
have provoked Ibrahim’s persecution (and lengthy jail sentence). Ibrahim’s
contention that ‘Asian man at heart is persona religiosis’ (cited in Milner
and Johnson 2002), reflected not simply a renewed interest in Muslim
identity in Malaysia but also the continuing ability of the idea of Asia to
imply another kind of modernity.
Conclusions
Tagore worried that Western colonialism had become the paradigm for all
intercultural contact:
The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us,
but made it difficult for us to come into touch with man. We go to
strange lands and observe; we do not live there. We hardly meet men:
but only specimens of knowledge. We are in haste to seek for general
types and overlook individuals.
(Tagore 1922: 95)
For Tagore, the development of alienated, instrumental relations
between people encourages a hollow cosmopolitanism, in which people are
able to travel extensively, encountering many different cultures, yet never
experience any vulnerability or desire for genuine exchange. ‘[O]ur knowledge of foreign people grows insensitive’, wrote Tagore (1922: 95),
coming to resemble the way that ‘Western people’ know about other
people yet ‘do not recognise any obligation of kinship’.
Europeans and Asians know each other and themselves through a range
of stereotypes, which, as we have seen, have been central to the construction of particular visions of Asia (including Tagore’s own). I have crudely
Rethinking Asia 281
sketched two very particular visions – Tagore’s ‘Asian spirituality’ and
Fukazawa’s ‘passive Asia’, and shown some of the connections each has
with a more general and contemporary expression of Asian identity,
namely ‘Asian values’. All three of these imaginative geographies are structured around representations of Europe and the West, representations
which were used to develop different ‘Asian visions’ of modernity. The
multiplicity of modernity is now an established theme in historical and
international research (Gaonkar 1999; Sachsenmaier et al. 2002; Bonnett
2005). The phrase ‘Western modernity’ is becoming less and less available
as a tautology. This chapter has sought to evoke the intimate association
that exists between the articulation of modernities and the creation of
images of Europe and Asia. To trace these patterns may, perhaps, help us
challenge the kind of arrogance that is the target of Tagore’s observations;
thus unshackling cosmopolitanism from the presumption that either
modernity, or the great geographical ideas of our era, are rooted permanently in the West.
Note
1 In the country once seen as the home of Asian spirituality – India – Asian identity has been increasingly ignored. National considerations and the rise of more
immediate and pressing regional, South Asian and East Asian identities led
towards Indians’ disassociation from a wider sense of ‘their continent’. By the
end of the century Ravi Palat, writing in The Hindu in December 2000, felt able
to be unequivocal about ‘India’s excision from dominant conceptions of Asia’.
This process, he noted, has occurred ‘both in the West and in much of Southeast
and East Asia, as indicated by [East Asian focused] debates on “Asian values” ’.
Another reflection of this process is that Tagore’s Asianist imagination is barely
mentioned by recent ‘post-colonial’ writers. Rather, Spivak (2001) and
Chakrabarty (2000: 178) stress his contribution in terms of an ‘irreducible . . .
aesthetic moment’ in the politics of colonialism.
References
Beck, U. (1994) ‘The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive
Modernisation’, in U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash (eds) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, Oxford:
Polity.
Blacker, C. (1969) The Japanese Enlightenment: A Study of the Writings of
Fukuzawa Yukichi, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bonnett, A. (2004) The Idea of the West: History, Culture and Politics,
Houndsmills: Palgrave
Bonnett, A. (2005) ‘Occidentalism and Plural Modernities: Or, how Fukuzawa and
Tagore Invented the West’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23:
505–25.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ching, L. (1998) ‘Yellow Skins, White Masks: Race, Class, and Identification in
282 Alastair Bonnett
Japanese Colonial Discourse’, in K. Chen (ed.) Trajectories: Inter-Asian Cultural
Studies, Routledge: London, pp. 65–8.
Clarke, J. (1997) Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and
Western Thought, London: Routledge.
Eisenstadt, S. (2000) ‘Multiple Modernities’, Daedalus, 129(1): 1–29.
Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and The Last Man, London: Hamish
Hamilton.
Fukuzawa, Y. (1958) ‘Seiyo Jijo’ [Conditions in the West], in Fukuzawa Yukichi
Zenshu: Vol. 1, Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, p. 511.
Fukuzawa, Y. (1959) ‘Sekai Kunizukushi’ [World Geography], in Fukuzawa
Yukichi Zenshu: Vol. 2, Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, pp. 591–668.
Fukuzawa, Y. (1973) An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, Tokyo: Sophia University Press.
Fukuzawa, Y. (1997) ‘Good-bye Asia (Datsu-a), 1885’, in D. Lu (ed.) Japan:
A Documentary History: The Late Tokugawa Period to the Present, Armonk:
M. E. Sharpe.
Gaonkar, D. (1999) ‘On Alternative Modernities’, Public Culture, 11(1): 245–68.
Gogwilt, C. (1995) The Invention of the West: Joseph Conrad and the Doublemapping of Europe and Empire, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hay, S. (1970) Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and his Critics in Japan,
China, and India, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hobson, J. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ibrahim, A. (1996) The Asian Renaissance, Singapore: Times Books International.
Iida, Y. (1997) ‘Fleeing the West, Making Asia Home: Transpositions of Otherness
in Japanese Pan-Asianism, 1905–1930’, Alternatives, 22: 409–32.
Keene, D. (1969) The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720–1830: Revised edition,
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Korhonen, P. (2002) ‘Asia’s Chinese Name’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 3(2): 253–70.
Lash, S. (1999) Another Modernity, A Different Rationality, Oxford: Blackwell.
Mahbubani, K. (1998) Can Asians Think? Understanding the Divide between East
and West, South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press.
Milner, A. and D. Johnson (2002) ‘The Idea of Asia’, at www.anu.edu.au/
asianstudies/ideas.html, accessed 28/08/02.
Okakura, K. (2000) The Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of
Japan, ICG Muse, New York and Tokyo.
Palat, R. (2000) ‘India and Asia’, The Hindu, Monday 4 December at www.
hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2000/12/04/stories/05042524.htm, accessed 28/08/02.
Palat, R. (2002) ‘Is India part of Asia?’, Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space, 20: 669–91.
Sachsenmaier, D., S. Eisenstadt and J. Riedel (eds) (2002) Reflections on Multiple
Modernities: European, Chinese and Other Interpretations, Leiden: Brill.
Sakai, N. (2000) ‘ “You Asians:” On the Historical Role of the West and Asia
Binary’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 99(4): 789–817.
Sakamoto, R. (1996) ‘Japan, Hybridity and the Creation of Colonialist Discourse’,
Theory, Culture and Society, 13(3): 113–28.
Sakamoto, R. (2001) ‘Dream of a Modern Subject: Maruyama Masao, Fukuzawa
Yukichi, and ‘Asia’ as the Limits of Ideology Critique’, Japanese Studies, 21(2):
137–53.
Rethinking Asia 283
Sheridan, G. (1999) Asian Values, Western Dreams: Understanding the New Asia,
St Leonards, New South Wales: Allen & Unwin.
Sim, S. (2001) ‘Asian Values, Authoritarianism and Capitalism in Singapore’,
Javnost: The Public, 8(2): 45–66.
Spivak (2001) ‘The Burden of English’, in G. Castle (ed.) Postcolonial Discourses:
An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell.
Sun, G. (2000a) ‘How Does Asia Mean? (Part II)’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies,
1(2): 319–41.
Sun, G. (2000b) ‘How Does Asia Mean? (Part I)’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 1(1):
13–47.
Tagore, R. (1922) Creative Unity, London: Macmillan.
Tagore, R. (1991) Nationalism, London: Macmillan.
Tai, H. (1989) ‘The Oriental Alternative: An Hypothesis on Culture and
Economy’, in H. Tai (ed.) Confucianism and Economic Development, Washington: Washington Institute Press.
Tanaka, S. (1993) Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Teik, Khoo Boo (1999) ‘The Value(s) of a Miracle: Malaysian and Singaporean
Elite Constructions of Asia’, Asian Studies Review, 23(2): 181–92.
Toynbee, A. (1954) A Study of History: Volume VIII, London: Oxford University
Press.
20 Critical intellectuals in a global
age
Asian and European encounters
Fred Dallmayr
So long as it remains true to itself, philosophy partakes in the lived
experience of its time, including its traumas and agonies. Among the most
prominent features of our age is the process of globalization, that is, the
perceived shrinkage of the globe into a commonly shared space. Although
acutely felt in the domains of economics and information technology, the
significance of this process is not always sufficiently acknowledged by
philosophers and social theorists. Sometimes geographical labels are
attached to perspectives or schools of thought, like “Continental philosophy”, “Frankfurt School” and so on – labels whose meaning is often
belied by what is happening on the ground. Thus, travelers in distant lands
may find there more vibrant resonances of “Continental” thought than can
be found in Europe today, just as seminal ideas of the early “Frankfurt
School” are sometimes more intensely discussed in Asia or Latin America
than in their native city. This does not mean that European perspectives
are simply disseminated across the world without reciprocity or reciprocal
learning. Nor does it mean that local origins are simply erased in favor of
a bland universalism (since local origins are often inscribed with concrete
and singular sufferings). What it does mean is that landscapes and localities undergo symbolic metamorphoses, and that experiences once localized
at a given place increasingly find echoes or resonance chambers among
distant societies and peoples.
Symbolic migration today is characteristic of several intellectual or
theoretical perspectives – including, perhaps most prominently, the
perspective of “analytical” or “Anglo-American” philosophy (whose
teachings sometimes exert hegemonic claims around the world). However,
a similar outreach also marks Continental-European thought and social
theory. No doubt, the latter perspective exhibits a great variety of distinct
orientations and emphases. Yet, for purposes of the present discussion, I
want to highlight what I consider the chief common traits of ContinentalEuropean thought as it developed (roughly) during the past century. As it
seems to me, the central common trait of this thought – especially when
compared with the “analytical” perspective – is its close attention to the
theory–praxis connection, that is, the connection of thinking and doing.
Critical intellectuals in a global age 285
This entails an opposition to “pure” theory or a purely spectatorial theorizing which, aiming at objective knowledge, distances the spectator or
analyst rigidly from the targets of his/her analysis. The basic underpinnings
of this spectatorial approach can be found in the modern Cartesian worldview which, in separating subject and object (cogito and extended matter),
provided the engine for the rise of modern science and technology (and
generally the replacement of quality by quantity). The difference of outlooks has social implications: while spectatorial theory is congenial to, and
favored by, people satisfied on the whole with “the way things are” and
“the powers that be”, practical theorizing appeals mainly to people alienated from the way of the world and bent on some kind of transformation.
Seen in this light, Continental-European thought (in its different versions)
has tended to be mostly critical and self-critical – by mounting a sustained
critique of the modern cult of science, technology and the market and,
more broadly, of the “underside of modernity”. In the following I shall
first highlight the “critical” dimension pervading Continental-European
thought in recent times. Next, I shall discuss parallel critical arguments
advanced in the content of non-Western societies, with special attention to
Indian social thought. In doing so, I follow in a way the lead of Ulrich
Beck who, not long ago, called for “a new critical theory with a cosmopolitan intent” (Beck 2003: 453–68). By way of conclusion, I offer some comments on the prospects of a global critical theory.
European critical thought
As indicated, Continental-European thought (as the term is used here)
comprises a number of distinct strands. For present purposes I shall refer
to three main perspectives: critical theory (Frankfurt School); phenomenology and hermeneutics (Freiburg School); and deconstruction (French
School). Early critical theory provides us with a document which, in
instructive fashion, highlights both the practical (or praxis-related) and
critical dimensions of European thought of the period: Max Horkheimer’s
programmatic essay on “Traditional and Critical Theory” (of 1937). In
this essay, Horkheimer sharply opposes to each other two kinds of theory:
namely, “traditional” theory (corresponding to what I have called a purely
spectatorial mode of theorizing) and a critical outlook steeped in practical
social engagement. Following the French philosopher of science, Henri
Poincaré, Horkheimer defines the gist of traditional theory as “the sumtotal of propositions about a subject, the propositions being so linked with
each other that a few are basic and the rest derive from these”. The definition contains two components: the propositional and the factual. While
the validity of such a theory depends on the correspondence of propositions with actual facts or states of affairs, the propositions themselves aim
at the greatest possible parsimony and logical transparency. Following
again Poincaré, Horkheimer adds that traditional (or scientifically
286 Fred Dallmayr
verifiable) theory constitutes a matrix of “stored-up knowledge, put in a
form that makes it useful for the closest possible description of facts”. In
line with the “unified science” movement popular at the time (and supported by Poincaré), the ultimate perfection of pure theory consists in a
limited set of highly abstract propositions whose validity extends to the
largest possible number of data, and in the end to all phenomena in the
world: “The general goal of all theory is a universal systematic science, not
limited to any particular subject matter but embracing all possible objects”
(although we are still “rather far from such an ideal situation”)
(Horkheimer 1972 [1937]: 188–9; see also Poincaré 1905: 105).
As Horkheimer points out, the origins of this mode of theorizing are
not of recent date but can be traced to “the beginnings of modern philosophy”, and particularly to the Cartesian worldview with its division of
subject and object, cogito and extended matter, where the former is
placed in the analytical judgment seat. In accord with Descartes’ conception of method, knowledge properly speaking resides in a set of “clear
and distinct” ideas, linked together through chains of deductive reasoning, and ultimately translatable into mathematical formulas. Insofar as
this conception of theory shows a tendency, the essay states, it is “toward
a purely mathematical system of symbols” – a tendency which by logical
necessity progresses from the natural sciences to the human and social sciences as well. In more recent times, the Cartesian worldview has been
continued especially by positivists and logical positivists whose overall
emphasis has been on transforming philosophy (or theorizing) into a
“handmaiden” of science. Although more attentive to practical and social
concerns, even the so-called “pragmatists” followed the positivist lead by
construing praxis in a purely “instrumental” sense, thereby subjecting it
to the efficiency criteria of existing society. What persists from Descartes
to positivism and pragmatism is the predominance of the Cartesian paradigm (with its “dualism of thought and being”) which assigns to the theorizing scholar an extra-mundane or purely spectatorial position –
although this position on closer inspection turns out to be illusory. For,
no matter how “independent” and “detached” the expert’s knowledge
may claim to be, the scholar and his/her theorizing remain “incorporated
into the [existing] apparatus of society”. To this extent, the scholar’s
achievements and “original” contributions are “a factor in the conservation and continuous renewal of the existing state of affairs, no matter
what fine names s/he gives to what s/he does” (Horkheimer 1972 [1937]:
189–90, 196–7).1
By contrast to this spectatorial outlook, “critical” theorizing presupposes the participatory engagement of the theorist in his world. In
Horkheimer’s account, the task of critical intellectuals is not to be pliantly
supportive of an existing state of affairs, but to problematize and call into
question this state from an existential and normative angle; hence, the relation between such intellectuals and their society is necessarily “marked by
Critical intellectuals in a global age 287
tension” and this tension characterizes “all the concepts of the critical
mode of thinking”. Given its accent on participatory engagement, critical
theorizing clearly departs from the Cartesian worldview with its separation
of cogito and nature, observer and target of analysis. In the words of the
essay: “The inability to grasp in thought the unity of theory and praxis,
and the limitation of the concept of necessity to inevitable [causal] events
are both due, from the epistemological viewpoint, to the Cartesian dualism
of thought and being” – a dualism which is “congenial both to nature and
to bourgeois society insofar as the latter resembles a natural mechanism”.
In the traditional mode of theorizing – this is for Horkheimer the “decisive” point – the targets of analysis are not at all affected by the theorist’s
endeavors, nor are these endeavors in turn affected by, or responsive to,
dilemmas in the “external world”. Being a part of the prevailing “mode of
production”, the traditional mainstream scholar simply registers and
acknowledges existing social conditions (which seem to be ineluctable like
forces of nature) without taking a stand. Critical intellectuals are unable to
operate in this fashion. In their case, theorizing responds to and inserts
itself in the ongoing dilemmas and agonies of social life, from a practical
and normative perspective. Simply put: “Critical theory of society is, in its
totality, the unfolding of a single existential judgment” (Horkheimer 1972
[1937]: 208, 227–9, 231).
The notion of an “existential judgment” brings into view the conception of a social ethics which is not purely cognitive but rooted in historical
experience – without being merely subjective or arbitrary. Proceeding from
a broadly Marxian vantage, Horkheimer sees modern Western history as
exhibiting a dialectic of progress and regress, of growing emancipation and
domination. As he writes, the kind of commodity economy on which
modern history rests “contains in itself all the internal and external tensions of the modern era; it generates these tensions in an increasingly
heightened form, and after a period of progress . . . [may drive] humanity
into a new barbarism”. Deviating from even a non-orthodox Marxian
ideology, Horkheimer does not find any historical assurance that the
decline into barbarism can be averted – except for the efforts of resistance
on the part of critical intellectuals who at all times are in short supply.
“The idea of a transformed society”, he writes soberly, “does not have the
advantage of widespread acceptance”. In the general course of events,
“truth [meaning: existential-ethical truth] may reside with numerically
small groups of people”. Yet, he adds, “history teaches us that such
groups, hardly noticed even by those opposed to the status quo, outlawed
but imperturbable, may at the decisive moment become the leaders
because of their deeper insight”. Returning to the notion of existential
judgment, Horkheimer concludes his essay by stressing the crucial importance of such judgment whose place cannot be usurped by pure theory,
formal logic or mathematical algorithms, for all its insight into social life
and social change:
288 Fred Dallmayr
critical theory has no specific influence on its side, except the abolition
of social injustice. This negative formulation, if we wish to express it
abstractly, is the materialist content of the idealist concept of reason.
(Horkheimer 1972 [1937]: 227, 241–2)
Despite a diversity of philosophical and political premises, many of the
basic points of Horkheimer’s essay find a parallel in both Continental
phenomenology and deconstruction. A major affinity resides in the effort
to overcome traditional “metaphysics” (or pure theory), and especially the
predominance of the Cartesian egocentric worldview. In the latter respect,
Edmund Husserl’s life-work constitutes a crucial waystation in the formation of contemporary Continental thought. From the time of his early writings, Husserl’s central aim was to breach the Cartesian subject–object split
through the accent on the “intentional” directedness of human consciousness, captured in the motto “to the things themselves” (zu den Sachen).
Far from celebrating the pure self-confinement of reason in a kind of metaphysical narcissism, his practice of “phenomenology” urged reason to
venture into the world of phenomena and to allow itself to be nurtured
and enriched by this experience. To be sure, despite his principled remonstrations, Husserl’s approach in many ways remained heir to the Cartesian
(and neo-Kantian) paradigm – a fact evident in his attachment to “transcendental idealism” and his fondness for mathematical logic. Nevertheless, his later writings amply testify to his dissatisfaction with this legacy.
A major text of that period is entitled Cartesian Meditations – a magisterial work showing the phenomenologist wrestling with the spirit (or ghost)
of the Cartesian method. Still later, his disenchantment with positivism
and logical empiricism led Husserl to launch a sustained assault on the
rootlessness of the modern scientific enterprise, that is, its growing divorce
from practical engagement and the concrete experiences of the social “lifeworld”.2
Husserl’s life-work was carried forward in novel directions by Martin
Heidegger’s “hermeneutical phenomenology” with its accent on “worldliness” – human existence being defined as “being-in-the-world” – and a
further move away from metaphysical theorizing. In his Being and Time
(of 1927), Heidegger offered a sustained critique of modern metaphysics,
insisting on the implausibility or untenability of both the Cartesian cogito
and Kant’s transcendental consciousness. In turning to the linkage of
“being” and “time”, the text underscored the importance of the experience
of finitude or mortality – stylized in the expression of “being-towarddeath”. At the same time, the central trademark of being human was
shifted in the text from “reason” (or animal with reason, animal rationale)
to the dimension of “care” (Sorge) – a shift which marks a decisive move
from cognition to praxis. In fact, it is possible to argue that all of Heidegger’s central terms – from “being” to language to “Ereignis” – should be
seen not as nouns (amenable to pure theorizing) but as verbs calling for a
Critical intellectuals in a global age 289
transformative praxis. As in the case of Husserl, it is true that Heidegger
himself did not always draw the required conclusions from his thought
(and at least in one instance drew precisely the wrong conclusion). Nevertheless, the practical as well as critical-social implications of his work
can hardly be denied. In terms of praxis-orientation, many observers
have pointed to certain affinities with Aristotelian ethics as well as a
certain non-instrumental form of pragmatism. As Lawrence Hatab
observes correctly, for Heidegger human existence “is what it does”, disclosing itself in “its living dealings and movements”; to this extent, Heideggerian ethics is released from the subject–object and fact–value
binaries of the Cartesian paradigm while approximating the Aristotelian
notion of the self as “essentially an activity, not a static essence”. In
terms of social-historical critique, Heidegger’s work is well known for its
sharp denunciation of the modern cult of science and technology, especially the cult of giant control mechanisms (Gestell) from whose vantage
human beings appear as mere cogs in a machine (see Heidegger 1974 and
Hatab 2000: 63, 72, 102).3
The practical orientation of (Freiburg-style) Continental thought is even
more pronounced in the case of Hans-Georg Gadamer whose “philosophical hermeneutics” is basically centered on engaged praxis – where the
latter means an engagement with texts, with fellow-beings, and with
social-historical constellations. As Gadamer notes in an essay specifically
titled “Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy”, hermeneutics or the
endeavor to make sense of texts and experiences is indeed “philosophical”,
but in the sense of what traditionally has been called “practical philosophy”. This means that, seen as an ongoing effort to understand,
hermeneutical interpretation cannot be stabilized in an abstract metaphysical system, nor can it be reduced to a mere technical skill or a mechanically applied recipe. Rather, given the variety of concrete contexts,
understanding has to remain constantly open and responsive to situational
challenges, precisely in the way of an engaged social praxis. In Gadamer’s
words, there is a “mutual implication” between understanding and practical action – and it was Aristotle who first thought through this implication “with complete lucidity” in his ethics with its central category of
phronesis. This outlook stands again in complete contrast with the modern
Cartesian worldview with its emphasis on spectatorship and the instrumental mastery of nature through technical fabrication or construction.
This “ideal of technical production” implicit in the concept of mechanics,
Gadamer states at another point, has had a triumphant ascendancy in
modern times and has in fact “become an arm prolonged to monstrous
proportions” – a development which has made possible “the nature of our
machines, our transformation of nature, and our outreach into space” for
purposes of planetary control. What is eclipsed and threatened with
erasure in this development is the domain of practical engagement in collaborative understanding, that is, “the realm of all that transcends utility,
290 Fred Dallmayr
usefulness, and instrumental calculation” (Gadamer 1981: 70–1, 77, 111;
compare with Taylor 1985: 91–115).
The practical and social-critical components were further intensified in
French existential phenomenology, particularly the writings of Jean-Paul
Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Specially memorable in the case of
Sartre was his denunciation of orthodox Marxism – and of any comprehensive ideology – for celebrating an abstract “scholasticism of the totality”, while neglecting the inevitably “heuristic” character of every inquiry
and the praxis-orientation of social theorizing (Sartre 1963: 22, 26–8).4 In
the case of Merleau-Ponty, critique of dominant ideologies was from the
beginning part and parcel of his “genetic” phenomenology (concerned
with the “becoming” of phenomena) and extended from Communist to
liberal political doctrines. His book Humanism and Terror (1947) contains
this startling passage (whose relevance has only increased with time): “An
aggressive liberalism exists which is a dogma and already an ideology of
war. It can be recognized by its love for the empyrean of principles, its
failure ever to mention the geographical and historical circumstances to
which it owes its birth, and its abstract judgment of political systems
without regard for the specific conditions under which they develop”.
Turning to the praxis-dimension of political life, the book added: “It is not
just a question of knowing what the liberals have in mind but what in
reality is done by the liberal state [or the state professing to defend
freedom] within and beyond its borders” (italics added). For MerleauPonty, the relation to praxis was endemic not only to political thought, but
to philosophy in general – despite an acknowledged need to avoid narrow
partisanship. Far from allowing the philosopher to abscond into an ivory
tower, his Eulogy of Philosophy ascribed to theoretical reflection a practical task: “One must be able to withdraw and gain distance in order to
become truly engaged, which is also, always, an engagement in the truth”.
Yet, “the very detachment of the philosopher assigns to him a certain kind
of action among fellow-men”. Here is a passage from the same text which
eloquently captures the gist of critical Continental thought:
At the conclusion of a reflection which at first isolates him, the philosopher, in order to experience more fully the ties of truth which bind
him to the world and history, finds neither the depth of himself nor
absolute knowledge, but a renewed image of the world and of himself
placed within it among others.
(Merleau-Ponty 1969, 1963)
Despite a certain intellectual sea-change – which happened around 1968
– many of the discussed accents of hermeneutics and phenomenology continue to reverberate in late twentieth-century European thought, including
French post-structuralism and deconstruction. To some extent, this persistence can even be detected in the writings of Jacques Derrida – a thinker
Critical intellectuals in a global age 291
whose work is often associated with radical rupture and a complete dismissal of social agency. What is correct about this reputation is Derrida’s
undeniable radicalization of the critique of the Cartesian cogito and his
dismantling of human self-identity in favor of a resolute openness to the
“Other’s” initiative. Yet, precisely in light of this dismantling, a transformed kind of agency comes into view bent, no longer on predatory
mastery but on a generous hospitality toward others (akin to Heidegger’s
“letting be”). In his famous “Reflections on Today’s Europe”, Derrida
urged Europeans (and people in the West more generally) to open themselves up to the rest of the world more hospitably than was the case in the
past (when colonialism and “white man’s burden” were the preferred policies). In the same text, he also encouraged liberal democrats, comfortably
ensconced in “lands of the free”, to ponder the possibility of a more generous mode of democratic life – what Derrida called a “democracy to come”
or a “democracy that must have the structure of a promise” (thus cannot
now be cognitively mapped or managed). For Derrida, the same openness
or generosity is also the hallmark of philosophical thinking as such – a
thinking which is not the privilege of mandarins nor the monopoly of selfappointed experts but a general human birthright in need of practical cultivation. As he stated at one point (echoing Merleau-Ponty): “The right to
philosophize becomes increasingly urgent”, as does the call for philosophers to evaluate and critique perspectives that “in the name of a technical-economic-military positivism” tend to reduce the field and the
chances of an “open and unrestricted philosophizing” both in colleges and
in international life (Derrida 1992: 77–9; 2002: 15).
Non-Western critical thought
Derrida’s call for a critical kind of theorizing or philosophizing – one
opposed to the hegemonic “positivism” (in technological, military and economic domains) – obviously is not restricted to the confines of Europe, but
has a “cosmopolitan intent”. The French philosopher’s cosmopolitan or
cosmopolitical leanings are well known – having been voiced on numerous
occasions, including his text On Cosmopolitanism (of 2001).5 As it
happens, his summons today finds echoes or resonances in many parts of
the world, from Asia to Africa and Latin America. Actually, given the
intrusive and oppressive effects of the reigning “positivism” in most nonWesterns societies, critical theorizing tends to be widespread and at a
premium precisely in those parts of the world. In the following, I shall be
able to give only a very limited sample of non-Western critical intellectuals
voicing their opposition to mainstream positivism as well as to a purely
spectatorial (and ethically irresponsible) mode of theorizing. In view of my
own frequent and extended visits to India, I shall concentrate my discussion first on theoretical initiatives on the subcontinent, before extending
my review to other parts of the world.
292 Fred Dallmayr
In post-independence India, the closest parallel to the outlook of the
early Frankfurt School – as articulated in Horkheimer’s programmatic
essay – can be found in the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
(CSDS) operating in Delhi since 1963. In its structure and design, the Delhi
Centre from the beginning resembled its German counterpart: particularly
in its emphasis on interdisciplinary cooperation (comprising scholars from
the humanities, the social sciences and psychology) and its concerted effort
to bridge the theory–praxis divide. As a result of its interdisciplinary character, studies sponsored or published by the Centre have dealt with a
broad spectrum of topics: ranging from the ethnic and social-psychological
components of social change to problems of rural development and ethnoagriculture to the role of science and technology in the modern world. In
terms of theoretical orientation, a primary role has always been played by
Rajni Kothari, the initial founder and longtime director of the Centre.6
Trained both in India and the West, Kothari has distinguished himself (like
Horkheimer) as a scholar and institution builder; in addition he has been
an activist on all levels (local, national and international) of politics. About
ten years after founding the Centre, he was instrumental in launching the
quarterly Alternatives, a journal that soon emerged as a leading forum in
India for the discussion of issues relating to social change and global transformation. Both his scholarly and his practical-political talents coalesced in
1980 when, together with other Centre colleagues, he inaugurated the
movement “Lokayan” (meaning “dialogue among people”), designed as
an arena for the meeting of academics, policy-makers and activists concerned with grassroots initiatives. His moment of greatest public visibility
came in 1989 when, following the defeat of Rajiv Gandhi, he joined the
National Front government as a member of the national Planning Commission.
Among Kothari’s prolific writings, I want to single out for present purposes these four: State Against Democracy (1988), Transformation and
Survival (1988), Rethinking Development (1989) and Growing Amnesia
(1993). Subtitled “In search of humane governance”, the first volume was
written mainly in protest against the policies of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi
whose regimes were denounced for their attempt to marshall state power –
what Derrida might have called state positivism – against the democratic
aspirations of the people. In large measure, the book was meant as a challenge to the relentless process of centralization that, during the postindependence period, was steadily molding India into a uniform
“nation-state” along Western lines. Buttressed by the resources of modern
technology and corporate business, this nation-state – in Kothari’s view –
was re-erecting or deepening the structure of social inequality which the
struggle against colonialism had aimed to erase. The situation was further
aggravated by the progressive militarization of the state promoted in the
name of “national security”. These and related factors conspired to
produce a socio-political crisis which, according to Kothari, was changing
Critical intellectuals in a global age 293
or perverting the character of the state: namely, from “being an instrument
of liberation of the masses to being a source of so much oppression for
them” (see Kothari 1988a: 60).7 The critique of state-centered accumulation of power was extended into the global arena in the second book,
Transformation and Survival. Paralleling the growing stratification of
domestic society, the operation of the international state system – in
Kothari’s account – promoted and reinforced a global structure of asymmetry between North and South, “developed” and “developing” societies,
and center and periphery. As on the national level, this global asymmetry
was compounded by the concentration of technological, economic and
military resources in the hands of hegemonic (developed) states or superpowers. In combination, these forces posed a threat to the natural environment, international peace and ultimately the survival of humankind itself.
As an antidote to these dangers, the two cited volumes formulated an
alternative vision of human existence and socio-political life that was not
beholden to any of the reigning ideologies of the time. In fact, as Kothari
insisted, it was necessary to move beyond both the liberal-capitalist and
the orthodox Marxist paradigms, since both derived from the same Cartesian worldview: they were both “offshoots of the same philosophic pedigree of the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century (mechanistic)
humanism” with their unlimited faith in progress fueled by technological
mastery over nature. In lieu of this “modernist” and positivist pedigree,
the books invoked the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi whose life-work had
challenged Western imperialism while at the same time enlisting popular
grassroots beliefs and traditions for democratic purposes. In both his writings and his actions, Gandhi had thus honored “the moral imperative of
treating [ordinary] people as a source in the recovery of a humane order”.
In addition to Gandhian teachings, the texts also drew inspiration from
various left-leaning modes of political radicalism wedded to the promotion
of human freedom and social justice. As used by Kothari, “freedom” was
not a synonym for the pursuit of libertarian self-interest nor for a retreat
into public abstinence, but rather denoted the capacity (or capability) for
public participation and the promotion of social well-being. To this extent,
the notion of “human rights” signaled not only private entitlements or
privileges as rather basic constituents of a good and “humane” social
order (see Kothari 1988a: 2–3, 151; also 1988b: 6, 170–1).
Kothari’s Rethinking Development sought to expose both the pitfalls
and the muddle-headedness of much of the dominant literature and planning in this field. Both in mainstream writings and mainline policy-making,
he noted, “development” has tended to be equated with unfettered economic and industrial expansion propelled by advances in modern science
and technology. As was to be expected, this approach has engendered not
only a deadly arms race and a wasteful, consumption-driven economy, but
also a pernicious class structure on both the national and the global levels.
As a consequence, democracy was under siege both at home and in the
294 Fred Dallmayr
world at large. For Kothari, the trouble with the dominant approach was
that it was not only difficult to implement but inherently flawed and misguided. Echoing again Horkheimer, his text located the root problem of
the “developmental” ideology in its attachment to a dominant worldview
or philosophical doctrine which, although originating in Europe, was now
encircling the globe: the “doctrine of modernity” according to which “the
end of life is narrowly defined as to be within the grasp of all – progress
based on economic prosperity”. Fueled by Enlightenment teachings, this
doctrine presented social advancement entirely as a matter of social engineering, backed up by “science-based technology”; all that human beings
and societies had to do according to this model was to “discard tradition
and superstition and become rational and ‘modern’ ”. In language reminiscent (but also sharpening the edge) of the “dialectic of Enlightenment”
articulated by Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Rethinking Development
asked these questions:
Isn’t the theory of progress, as developed in the West, based on an
anthropocentric view of nature and a positivist conception of knowledge and science, which are responsible for a model of development
spelling domination and exploitation? And if these be the essence of
Occidental culture and its contribution to human thought and values
shouldn’t we discard large parts of it, and look for alternative modes
of thought and values embedded in some other cultures?
(Kothari 1989: 3–5, 48–9, 51)8
Growing Amnesia was published four years later, in the wake of the
dismantling of the Soviet Union and the vanishing of the so-called “nonalignment” policy (sponsored by India and other “developing” countries).
Although widely hailed in the West as the dawn of a new “world order”,
the emerging global situation raised serious worries and apprehensions for
Kothari. In his view, the turn of events signaled basically the triumph of
corporate capitalism, a triumph that augured ill for the cause of social
justice and participatory or grassroots democracy. Given the concentration
of power and wealth in developed countries and multinational conglomerates, the existing gulf between North and South, centre and periphery was
prone to be further deepened, while the fate of underprivileged masses
around the world was bound to be abandoned to apathy or else consigned
to “growing amnesia”. Above all, the priority granted to policies of
“deregulation” and “liberalization” of the market was bought at a steep
price: its overall effect was to “destabilize the democratic polity, put the
masses under severe strain, turn against labor and further marginalize the
poor”. To be sure, the remedy for deregulation could not reside in a centralized state bureaucracy controlling and planning every facet of social life
in a top-down fashion. In opposition to the dystopias of both the
Leviathan state and unchecked market forces, Growing Amnesia spon-
Critical intellectuals in a global age 295
sored a social-democratic alternative where the apparatus of the modern
state was retained but sharply refocused in the direction of democratic participation and self-rule. Embracing again aspects of the Gandhian legacy,
the alternative placed a strong accent on political and economic decentralization as an antidote to technocratic or corporate elitism. Such a shift of
accent, Kothari argued, was guided and inspired by a commitment to
“take people seriously”, by “respecting their thinking and wisdom” and by
fostering institutions that would “respond to their needs”. Only by following these guideposts was it possible to avoid both plutocracy and rampant
consumerism and to establish an economic system that, in Gandhi’s words,
“not only produces for the mass of the people but in which the mass of the
people are also the producers” (Kothari 1993: 8–9, 123, 134, 149–51).
Next to Kothari, the most prominent member of the Delhi Centre is
Ashis Nandy, a senior fellow and sometime director of the institute. In its
basic thrust, Nandy shares Kothari’s political orientation: the commitment
to democratic transformative change – but a change popularly or locally
legitimated rather than imposed by hegemonic (colonial or neocolonial)
forces. A main difference between the two thinkers has to do with disciplinary focus: whereas Kothari has tended to center-stage issues of political
economy and sociology, Nandy – a trained psychologist and psychoanalyst
– has been more concerned with psychic or psychocultural sources of
popular resistance as well as the inner traumas of colonial oppression. One
of his early publications, At the Edge of Psychology (1980), traced the
intersections linking politics, culture and psychology, especially as experienced in non-Western societies. His next book, The Intimate Enemy
(1983), probed these linkages more concretely by focusing on the introjection or internalization of the colonizer’s worldview, which, among the
colonized, can lead to self-hatred and “loss of self”. Nandy’s own alternative vision was outlined in Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopia (1987), especially in the chapter “Toward a Third World Utopia”. The chapter
deliberately took its stand at the grassroots level by viewing the world
“from the bottom up”. As Nandy emphasized, the notion “Third World”
was not a timeless, metaphysical idea but rather a political and economic
category “born of poverty, exploitation, indignity and self-contempt”.
Given this stark historical background, the formulation of an alternative
future for non-Western societies had to start from the experience of “manmade suffering” – not for the sake of inducing self-pity, but in order to
permit a therapeutic “working through” of the traumas of oppression. As
helpmates in this process of coping and working through, the text invoked
the healing powers latent in indigenous traditions, especially powers like
those tapped in the Gandhian struggle for independence. An additional
helpmate was the relative distance of non-Western cultures from the
modern Cartesian paradigm with its dualisms and dichotomies – between
subject and object, humans and nature, and colonizers and colonized
(Nandy 1987a: 21, 31–5; see also 1980 and 1983).
296 Fred Dallmayr
In still more forceful terms, Nandy’s alternative vision for the future
was spelled out in his essay “Cultural Frames for Social Transformation: A
credo”, published in the Centre’s journal Alternatives (in 1987). The essay
took its point of departure from the anti-colonial struggle in Africa, especially from Amilcar Cabral’s stress on popular or indigenous culture as a
counterpoint to hegemonic oppression. In Nandy’s view, this outlook
could be extended to other colonial or postcolonial societies. Basically, the
stress on indigenous legacies signaled a defiance of the modern (Western)
idea of intellectual and scientific “expertise” uncontaminated by popular
customs or beliefs; it gave voice to societies and peoples “which have been
the victims of history and are now trying to rediscover their own visions of
a desirable society”. In our time of relentless globalization and Westernstyle standardization, this kind of self-assertion and defiance gained global
significance. To this extent, the stress on “cultural frames of social transformation” constitutes in our time “a plea for a minimum cultural plurality in an increasingly uniformized world”. One of the prominent features
of global standardization was for Nandy the imposition of the model of
the “nation-state” and Western-style nationalism in all parts of the world,
including the Indian subcontinent. This topic was pursued further in his
subsequent study, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism (1994), which launched
a blistering attack on the rise of centralization and nationalist standardization which have become dominant traits of post-independence India. In
Nandy’s portrayal, nationalism and nation-state structures are basically
Western imports foisted indiscriminately on non-Western societies and cultures. Indigneous cultural resources are again marshaled as antidotes to
this imposition. Following the lead of Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore,
Nandy stressed the highly ambivalent role of nation-states as agents of
both liberation and oppression; as an alternative he postulated a global
perspective rooted in “the tolerance encoded in various traditional ways of
life in a highly diverse, plural society” (Nandy 1994: x–xi; see also 1987b:
113–16).
In his critique of nationalism and the nation-state, Nandy comes close
to the position of another major intellectual school in post-independence
India: the so-called “Subaltern Studies” project launched by the historian
Ranajit Guha around 1982. By comparison with the Delhi Centre, the
Subaltern Studies movement (in its early phase) was more directly inspired
by the teaching of Antonio Gramsci and humanist Marxism. For members
of the movement, the gaining of independence and the erection of the
Indian nation-state were only very superficial and ambivalent accomplishments, involving basically the transfer of power from Britain to postcolonial bourgeois and capitalist elites. A major articulation of this
outlook was provided by Partha Chatterjee, a prominent social scientist
working and teaching in Calcutta. In his Nationalist Thought and the
Colonial World (1986), Chatterjee denounced nationalist independence as
a borrowed ideology and purely “derivative discourse”: concealing and
Critical intellectuals in a global age 297
legitimating a mere shift in the agents of domination. His subsequent
book, The Nation and Its Fragments (1993), offered a more nuanced and
differentiated assessment, attentive to recent post-Marxist and post-structuralist tendencies. In this respect, Chatterjee’s work is representative of a
broader intellectual realignment characterizing the Subaltern Studies movement as a whole. In writing a preface to a volume seeking to provide an
overview of the movement, Edward Said perceptively registered a certain
shift away from the school’s earlier Marxist and Gramscian moorings. As
he observed: “None of the Subaltern Scholars is anything less than a critical student of Karl Marx”; moreover, today “the influence of structuralist
and post-structuralist thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, Roland Barthes and
Louis Althusser is evident, along with the influence of British and American thinkers, like E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, and others” (Said
1988: x; also compare Chatterjee 1986 and 1993).
Apart from multi-member institutes and research agendas India is, of
course, replete with talented and innovative individual thinkers. For
present purposes (given limitations of space), I want to single out three
prominent recent philosophers: Daya Krishna, Sundara Rajan and J. L.
Mehta. Trained both in India and the West, Daya Krishna has been keenly
attentive to, and critical of, dominant paradigms promulgated by Western
social scientists during the Cold War era. Foremost among these were the
formulas of “development” and “modernization” postulating the progressive assimilation of non-Western societies to Western yardsticks. For
Krishna, these formulas were both theoretically confused and socio-politically
obnoxious. As he queried in his book Political Development (1979), how
could one speak of linear development in the case of cultural frameworks,
more specifically when comparing artworks of modernity with those of
Greek antiquity or else with the masterpieces of India and China? Sociopolitically, he added, the relevant distinction should not be between
“developed” and “undeveloped”, but between “good” and “bad” or
legitimate and illegitimate political regimes. His compatriot Sundara Rajan
has been similarly critical of linear or one-dimensional schemes of social
advancement, relying for his purposes on a combination of social phenomenology and Frankfurt School critical theory. As he wrote in his book
Innovative Competence and Social Change (1986): “If the alignment of
[Frankfurt-style] communicative competence and [phenomenological]
social theory could be defended, then I suggest we have a possibility of carrying over a ‘transcendental’ point of view into the domain of social
theory”. In Rajan’s later writings, the influence of Continental hermeneutics – especially Paul Riceour’s version – became steadily more decisive,
leading him to differentiate between contextual “signification” and a more
de-contextualized critical-emancipatory “symbolization”. In J. L. Mehta’s
case, finally, the most striking features of his work are the resonances he
developed between Indian classical thought and aspects of Heideggerian
ontology and Gadamerian hermeneutics.9
298 Fred Dallmayr
Turning to East Asia, one finds again a plethora of innovative and critical perspectives, developed by both Buddhist and Confucian intellectuals
and scholars. In the Buddhist camp, one must mention first of all the
renowned Kyoto School of philosophy in Japan, inaugurated by Kitaro
Nishida and further developed by such thinkers as Keiji Nishitani, Hajime
Tanabe, Hisamatsu Shin’ihi and Masao Abe. In the case of all these
thinkers the resonances with Continental thought are pronounced: while
Nishida’s work makes frequent appeal to Kierkegaard, Bergson and
Husserl, the writings of Nishitani and others reveal a more distinct Heideggerian slant. Given the heavy emphasis of the entire school on such key
Zen notions of “nothingness” and “emptiness” (sunyata), one may
wonder about the practical implications of their perspective. However, as
soon as the affinity of “sunyata” with Heidegger’s “nihilating nothingness” is taken into account, the practical and critical impulses spring
instantly into view. For clearly, from the angle of nihilation, Buddhist
thought can have no truck with totalizing modes of domination (with
Derrida’s “technical-economic-military positivism”). The only proper and
legitimate form of action or agency, under Zen Buddhist auspices, is a
non-possessive and non-domineering kind of action – traditionally called
“wu-wei” (again akin to Heidegger’s “letting be”).10 Outside the confines
of Kyoto, more resolutely praxis-oriented forms of Buddhist thought have
emerged in recent decades in many parts of Asia and South Asia. Sometimes labeled “Buddhist liberation movement” or movement of “engaged
Buddhism”, this outlook – often aiming at radical social transformation –
is represented by such figures as Thich Nhat Hanh (from Vietnam), the
Dalai Lama (from Tibet), Sulak Sivaraksa (Thailand), A. T. Ariyaratne (Sri
Lanka) and the late Dr Ambedkar (India). (Compare, for example, Hanh
1967, Sivaraksa 1994 and Ambedkar 1984. See also Queen and King
1996.) Despite limitations imposed by the regime in mainland China, Confucianism has also experienced a remarkable revival in East and Southeast
Asia, often with a critical edge against centralizing or totalizing types of
government. (Compare, for example, Tu 1985, Bell and Hahm 2003 and
Dallmayr 1998b: 123–44.)
Contrary to simplistic assumptions much in vogue in the West, Islamic
societies today are not uniformly dominated by dogmatic-clerical or “fundamentalist” doctrines, but display a rich welter of intellectual orientations
– some of them with clearly practical-critical overtones. In Southeast Asia,
the prototype of a critical Muslim intellectual is Chandra Muzaffer, head
of an NGO called “Just World Trust”, whose publications and public
statements have been exemplary in denouncing both Western aggressive or
imperialist policies and unjust or corrupt practices in the Islamic world
(see, for example, Muzaffer 2002 and 1993). Some of the liveliest intellectual debates in that part of the world are carried on today in Iran, with
“reformers” and “conservatives” engaging each other in sustained
exchanges on philosophical and political issues – often with a high degree
Critical intellectuals in a global age 299
of erudition and sophistication. As in India and East Asia, European resonances can readily be detected in these exchanges, particularly in the arguments of reformers whose writings frequently appeal to Continental
perspectives, ranging from the Vienna School to Husserlian phenomenology,
Heideggerian ontology, Gadamerian hermeneutics and French-style postmodernism.11 The influence of phenomenology and hermeneutics can also be
found in the works of other Muslims thinkers, such as the Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi (2000), while aspects of Frankfurt School critical
theory surface in the publications of the Moroccan Mohammed al-Jabiri
(see, for example, Hanafi 1965 and Abed al-Jabiri 1999). Limitations of
space prevent here a discussion of intellectual debates in Africa and Latin
America – except to say that, in the one case, the legacies of Frantz Fanon
and Aime Césaire continue to provide powerful support to critical praxis
while, in the other case, the writings of Paolo Freire, Enrique Dussel and
others testify to their unflagging commitment to a “pedagogy of the
oppressed” (see, for example, Freire 1982; Dussel 1995; Schutte 1993;
Fanon 1968; Césaire 1968; Hountondji 1996; and Masolo 1994).
Toward a global public sphere
The preceding discussion was meant to provide a glimpse into arenas of critical theorizing in many parts of the world, and thus to counteract parochial
assumptions of a European (or Western) monopoly in the domain of critical
philosophy and social thought. As has been shown, networks of critical
intellectual life are present around the globe, stretching from East and South
Asia to the Middle East, Africa and South America; as has also been indicated, many of these networks stand in close and reciprocal interactions
with schools or perspectives originating on the Continent. In our age of
globalization, these interactions are bound to multiply and to deepen,
leading to the emergence of a global community of critically engaged intellectuals – an updated and cosmopolitan version of the traditional “republic
of letters”. This development is crucially important in our time of immense
superpower predominance, a domination which – following the model of
earlier imperial systems – is hostile to the cultivation of critical scrutiny and
contestation. To speak with Jacques Derrida, it is imperative in our time to
defend the “right to philosophy”, that is, the right to critical theorizing
among ordinary people around the world, as an antidote and response to
the dictates of a coercive “technical-economic-military positivism”. In
Derrida’s sense, this defense is necessary in order to preserve the open spaces
needed for unregimented and “unrestricted” inquiry and questioning – open
spaces which, in turn, serve as heralds or anticipations of a “democracy to
come”. To express the point in somewhat different language: the emerging
global networks of critical thinking can be seen as waystations to the formation of a global public sphere – a sphere indispensable for anything like a
democratically constituted cosmopolis.
300 Fred Dallmayr
In his plea for a “critical theory with a cosmopolitan intent”, Ulrich
Beck mentions a number of challenges or tasks which must be tackled by
the emerging networks of critical global theorizing. Foremost among these
tasks is the need to break through and dismantle the ideological tactics and
obfuscations employed by dominant hegemonic or nationalist powers,
above all “the forms and strategies used to render cosmopolitan realities
[or possibilities] invisible”. These strategies are particularly evident whenever existing global institutions or norms are bypassed or erased in the
name of the protection of “national security” interests. Prominent
examples that come to mind are the evisceration of provisions of the
United Nations Charter, the shuttling of the Geneva Conventions, and the
erosion of codes of military conduct. Next to the need to contest such
strategies, Beck stresses the role of innovative social and political imagination, that is, the endeavor to make theoretical room for open spaces going
beyond the confines of national sovereignties (but without merely surrendering to a global superpower). In his words, what is called for is a “reimagination of the political” which would explore and experiment with
“the difference between the national viewpoint of political actors and the
cosmopolitan perspective” becoming available today. Specifically reserved
for critical intellectuals everywhere is the additional task of rethinking and
reformulating prevailing conceptual categories – especially categories used
in social and political analysis – in favor of new and more “hospitable”
theoretical frames of reference. As Beck summarizes his argument, the
main focus in contemporary debates revolves around “gaining a new
cosmopolitan perspective on the global power field, pushing new actors
and actor networks, power potentials, strategies, and forms of organization of ‘debounded’ politics into the field of vision” (Beck 2003: 467).
To return to some points made at the beginning of this chapter: critical
theory situates itself in the prevailing agonies and dilemmas of the age and
is willing to take a practical and normative stand in opposition to injustice,
cruelty and oppression. This does not mean that critical theory does not
think or theorize – which would render it blind or myopic; but it does
allow its thinking to be informed and nurtured by practical experience. In
doing so, critical theorizing stands opposed to what Max Horkheimer
called “traditional theory” and what I have termed a purely spectatorial
stance – the assumption that human beings can be mere spectators or
onlookers in a world torn apart by so much turmoil, misery and suffering
(and today the possibility of a nuclear holocaust). As indicated before, this
spectatorial stance was in large measure promoted by the modern Cartesian worldview and its offshoots (as well as by certain modes of traditional
metaphysics). What is required in our time is perhaps not a complete
dismantling of this worldview but its resolute recasting and reformulation
– in such a manner that spectators can return as participants in their
experienced life-world. The old dispute between theory and praxis is thus
not resolved in favor of a blind activism, but in favor of a more thoughtful
Critical intellectuals in a global age 301
and responsible praxis. Given the retreat of Cartesian egocentrism, this
praxis is destined to be non-domineering, enabling and liberating –
without insisting at any point on its own meritorious agency or achievements. To recall a passage penned by Horkheimer toward the conclusion
of his essay: “Critical theory has no specific influence on its side, except
concern for the abolition of social injustice. This negative formulation . . .
is the materialist content of the idealist concept of reason”.
Notes
1 The essay includes in the category of traditional or spectatorial theorizing also
the “neo-Kantianism of the Marburg School” with its emphasis on universal
categories and the pure “logos” of the world-mind (1972 [1937]: 198). As
Horkheimer acknowledges (1972 [1937]: 204), Hegelian philosophy tried to
overcome the Kantian antimonies (of noumena/phenomena, of activity/passivity) by “sublating” them on the level of objective and absolute spirit. However,
this solution remained “a purely private assertion, a personal peace treaty
between the philosopher and an inhuman world”.
2 Compare in this context Husserl (1973) and (1970).
3 As Hatab adds (2000: 109): “In a way we can understand Heidegger’s ontology as a radicalization of Aristotelian teleology that inscribes creative openness
into temporal development”. Compare with Zimmerman (1990).
4 The Search served as prefatory essay to Sartre’s ambitious Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960).
5 The text On Cosmopolitanism is based on an address by Derrida to the International Parliament of Writers in Strasbourg in 1996, titled “Cosmopolites de
tous les pays, encore un effort!”
6 A brief introduction to the perspective and work of the Centre is provided by
Kothari (1989: 23–43). For a more detailed discussion of Kothari and the
Centre see Dallmayr (1998a: 219–40).
7 As one should note, Kothari did not entirely condemn the modern state. In a
progressive democratic vein, he endorsed the state provided it served as an
agency of democratization and a guardian of the common people.
8 Among the alternative modes of thought, Kothari included cultural and religious traditions of non-Western societies. In his words (1989: 50): “The religions and civilizations of India, of the Islamic world, of the complex of
humanist thought that has informed China, and of Buddhism provide major
streams of thought that could substantially contribute to the present search for
alternatives”. As one should note, however, the text in no way supported a
simple anti-Western or anti-modern stance, but rather conceded (1989: 52)
that modernity is “part of us all” just as “the West is part of us all”.
9 Compare with the above Krishna 1979: 187, 190, 201, and 1965; Rajan 1986:
87–9, 1987 and 1991; and Mehta 1976, 1985 and 1990. For a fuller development of these thinkers’ views, see the chapters “Heidegger, Bhakti, and
Vedanta” and “Modernization and Postmodernization” in Dallmayr 1996:
89–114, 149–74. Apart from these philosophers there are several social and
political theorists who, in their own ways, have articulated a critical Indian
perspective. Among them I should mention Thomas Pantham (University of
Baroda); Vrajendra Raj Mehta (former Vice-Chancelor of Delhi University);
Rajeev Bhargava (Delhi University); Ananta K. Giri (Center for Developing
Societies, Chennai), and the prominent expatriate political theorist Bhikhu
Parekh (now Lord Parekh), a leading student of Gandhi’s thought.
302 Fred Dallmayr
10 For some writings of Kyoto School thinkers, see Nishida (1958), Nishitani
(1982), Tanabe (1987) and Shin’ichi (1971). An important recent development
the Kyoto Forum for Public Philosophizing in Common: see Kim 2006.
11 On intellectual debates in Iran, see, for example, Boroujerdi 1996, Jahanbaksh
2001, Mirsepassi 2000 and Jahanbegloo 2004. Compare also the section
“Toward an Islamic Modernity?” and the chapter “Islam and Democracy:
Reflections on Abdolkarim Soroush” in Dallmayr 2002: 100–4, 167–84.
References
Abe, M. (1985) Zen and Western Thought, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Abed al-Jabiri, M. (1999) Arab-Islamic Philosophy: A Contemporary Critique,
trans. A. Abassi, Austin: University of Texas.
Ambedkar, B. R. (1984) The Buddha and His Dharma, 3rd edn, Bombay: Siddarth
Publications.
Beck, U. (2003) “Toward a New Critical Theory with a Cosmopolitan Intent”,
Constellations, 10(3): 453–68.
Bell, D. and C. Hahm (eds) (2003) Confucianism for the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boroujerdi, M. (1996) Iranian Intellectuals and the West, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press.
Césaire, A. (1968) Return to My Native Land, trans. E. Snyders, Paris: Présence
Africaine.
Chatterjee, P. (1986) Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative
Discourse, Tokyo: Zed Books.
Chatterjee, P. (1993) The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
Histories, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dallmayr, F. (1998a) Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-cultural Encounter,
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Dallmayr, F. (1998b) “Global Development? Alternative Voices from Delhi”, in
Alternative Visions: Paths in the Global Village, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Dallmayr, F. (2002) Dialogue Among Civilizations: Some Exemplary Voices, New
York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Dallmayr, F. (2003) “Humanity and Humanization: Comments on Confucianism”,
in Alternatives Visions, pp. 123–44.
Derrida, J. (1992) The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Derrida, J. (2001) On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, London: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (2002) “The Right to Philosophy from the Cosmopolitan Point of
View”, in P. P. Trifonas (ed.) Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy,
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Dussel, E. (1995) The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of the “Other” and the
Myth of Modernity, trans. M. D. Barber, New York: Continuum.
Fanon, F. (1968) The Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove Press.
Freire, P. (1982) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum.
Gadamer, H-G. (1981) “Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy”, in Gadamer,
Reason in the Age of Science, trans. F. G. Lawrence, Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Critical intellectuals in a global age 303
Hanafi, H. (1965) Les méthodes d’exégèse, Cairo: Conseil des Arts.
Hanafi, H. (2000) Islam in the Modern World, 2 vols, Cairo: Dar Kebaa.
Hanh, T. N. (1967) Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, with a foreword by T.
Merton, New York: Hill & Wang.
Hatab, L. J. (2000) Ethics and Finitude: Heideggerian Contributions to Moral
Philosophy, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Heidegger, M. (1974) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays,
trans. W. Lovitt, New York: Harper & Row.
Heidegger, M. (1996 [1927]) Being and Time, Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Horkheimer, M. (1972 [1937]) “Traditional and Critical Theory”, in M.
Horkheimer Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. M. J. O’Connell et al., New
York: Herder & Herder.
Hountondji, P. J. (1996) African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, 2nd edn, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Husserl, E. (1970 [1954]) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Husserl, E. (1973) Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology,
trans. Dorion Cairns, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Jahanbaksh, F. (2001) Islam, Democracy, and Religious Modernism in Iran,
1953–2000, Boston: Brill.
Jahanbegloo, R. (2004) Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity, Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books.
Kim, T. and N. Yamawaki (eds) (2006) Kyoto Forum and Public Philosophy,
Osaka: Kyoto Forum.
Kothari, R. (1988a) State against Democracy: In Search of Humane Governance,
Delhi: Ajanta.
Kothari, R. (1988b) Transformation and Survival: In Search of a Humane World
Order, Delhi: Ajanta.
Kothari, R. (1989) Rethinking Development: In Search for Humane Alternatives,
New York: New Horizons Press.
Kothari, R. (1993) Growing Amnesia: An Essay on Poverty and the Human Condition, New Delhi: Viking.
Krishna, D. (1965) Considerations Toward a Theory of Social Change, Bombay:
Manaktalas.
Krishna, D. (1979) Political Development: A Critical Perspective, Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
Masolo, D. A. (1994) African Philosophy in Search of Identity, Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
Mehta, J. L. (1976) Martin Heidegger: The Way and the Vision, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Mehta, J. L. (1985) India and the West: The Problem of Understanding, Chico,
CA: Scholars Press.
Mehta, J. L. (1990) Philosophy and Religion: Essays in Interpretation, New Delhi:
Manoharlal.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1963) In Praise of Philosophy, Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1969) Humanism and Terror: An Essay on the Communist
Problem, trans. John O’Neill, Boston: Beacon Press.
304 Fred Dallmayr
Mirsepassi, A. (2000) Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization:
Negotiating Modernity in Iran, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Muzaffer, C. (1993) Human Rights and the New World Order, Penang, Malaysia:
Just World Trust.
Muzaffer, C. (2002) Rights, Religion and Reform, London: Routledge Curzon.
Nandy, A. (1980) At the Edge of Psychology: Essays on Politics and Culture,
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Nandy, A. (1983) The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Nandy, A. (1987a) Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias, Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
Nandy, A. (1987b) “Cultural Frames for Social Transformation: A Credo”,
Alternatives, 12(2): 113–16.
Nandy, A. (1994) The Illegitimacy of Nationalism, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Nishida, K. (1958) Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness, Honolulu:
East–West Center Press.
Nishitani, K. (1982) Religion and Nothingness, Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Poincaré, H. (1905) Science and Hypothesis, trans. W. J. Greenstrect, London:
Walter Scott.
Queen, C. S. and S. B. King (eds) (1996) Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation
Movements in Asia, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Rajan, R. S. (1986) Innovative Competence and Social Change, Ganeshkind:
Poona University Press.
Rajan, R. S. (1987) Toward a Critique of Cultural Reason, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rajan, R. S. (1991) The Primacy of the Political, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Said, E. W. (1988) “Foreword”, in R. Guha and G. C. Spivak (eds) Selected Subaltern Studies, New York: Oxford University Press.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1963) Search for a Method, trans. H. E. Barnes, New York:
Alfred Knopf.
Schutte, O. (1993) Cultural Identity and Social Liberation in Latin American
Thought, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Shin’ichi, Hisamatsu (1971) Zen and the Fine Arts, Tokyo: Kodansha International.
Sivaraksa, S. (1994) A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society, Bangkok: Thai Interreligious Commission for Development.
Tanabe, H. (1987) Philosophy as Metanoetics, Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Taylor, C. (1985) “Social Theory as Practice”, in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tu, W.-M. (1985) Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation,
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Zimmerman, M. E. (1990) Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
21 Chinese thought and dialogical
universalism
Tong Shijun
Many arguments have been made by European and Chinese thinkers
against the current American foreign policy and its underlying political
philosophy. This article explores the possibility of combining the argument
based on the traditional Chinese idea of “tian xia” or “All under Heaven”
with the argument for a dialogical universalism versus the subject-centered
or monological universalism advanced by German philosopher Jürgen
Habermas.
The Chinese idea of “tian xia” vs. the Western idea of the
“world”
Habermas’s criticism of the “imperialist claim” of the American neoConservative strategists (see Habermas 2002, 2003) may seem to some
people to be a good case for making a distinction within “Western values”
between “European values” and “American values”, and this distinction
more or less amounts to that between a dialogical and de-centerized
version of universalism and a monological and self-centered version of universalism. In the view of the contemporary Chinese scholar, Zhao
Tingyang, however, it is still limited by the same political tradition shared
by Westerners across the Atlantic: Habermas’s “inter-subjectivity” is still
an “inter-ness” between the subjects (or the nation-states in this context),
but not a “transcendence” over the subjects. The real alternative to either
the nation-states or the empire with one nation as its core is what the
ancient Chinese imagined as “tian xia” or “All under Heaven”.
“Tian xia” is one of the most frequently used words in ancient Chinese
classics. Literally meaning “All under Heaven” or “All the land under
Heaven”, it was used by ancient Chinese to refer to the whole world as
they knew or imagined. It is different both from Heaven, which is above
us, and from the smaller parts within it. As something different from
Heaven, tian xia is actually the intersecting point of the “tian dao” or
Heavenly Dao and “ren dao” or Human Dao. In other words, the principle regulating tian xia is the Heavenly Dao in the form of Human Dao.
As something different from smaller parts within it, tian xia is the ideal
306 Tong Shijun
towards which ordinary people approach and by which their everyday
activities are judged. In a famous passage in the Confucian classics Great
Learning, tian xia is at the top of a hierarchy of ideas: tian xia (the world),
guo (states), jia (families), shen (individual persons), which is followed by
a series of ideas with regards to the individual persons: xin (minds), yi
(will), zhi (knowledge).
Although the word “guo” or state is mentioned here, the ancient
Chinese minds typically care more about tian xia or the world, which is
supposed to be shared by everybody under tian or Heaven, than about
guo, which is ruled by a jia (family) – the common Chinese equivalent of
the English word “state”, guo jia, actually is composed of the two words
respectively meaning state and family. The most famous contrast between
“tian xia” and “guo” was made by Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), who said:
There is the perishing (wang) of guo, there’s also the perishing of tian
xia. The changing of names and titles (of dynasties) is the former,
while blocking of ren [humanity] and yi [righteousness] even to the
degree of eating each other like beasts is the latter. . . . Therefore one
knows to protect tian xia before he knows to protect his guo. Protecting guo is the obligations of guo’s emperors, ministers and officials,
while protecting tian xia is the duty of everybody, including those in
the lowest rank.
Here Gu seems to be making a distinction between “institutional
obligations” and “natural duties” in John Rawls’s sense: what one owes to
tian xia is a natural duty, which needs no justification, while what one
owes to a guo or state is an institutional obligation, which needs justification on the basis of one’s natural duties.
This contrast between tian xia and guo/jia was noticed by many modern
Chinese thinkers when they tried to understand the meaning of nationstates when people’s obligation to their guo/jia justified by their duty to the
supposedly everybody’s tian xia was severely challenged by some nationstates who neither belonged to the Chinese guo/jia, nor accepted the claim
that the Chinese guo/jia was the embodiment of the principle of tian xia.
To many Chinese thinkers, the trouble is not only the fact that this claim
was not recognized by Western “barbarous” powers, but also the fact that
a nation that traditionally care more about tian xia than about guo/jia is
extremely vulnerable to foreign invaders in the age dominated by a system
of nation-states developed first in the West. Though few of them wanted to
give up their claim for the moral superiority of this idea of tian xia,
many of these Chinese thinkers warned that if we are going to survive as
Chinese at all, we should have our own sense of national identity and
national dignity defined according to the game rules of this world of
nation-states, rather than defined according to our traditional understanding of tian xia.
Chinese thought and dialogical universalism 307
While Modern Chinese thinkers like Liang Qichao (1873–1929) and
Liang Shuming (1893–1988) referred to the traditional idea of tian xia in
order to remind the Chinese people of the importance of developing something between tian xia and jia (family) while respecting their values, that
is, the importance of cultivating the “group life” in Liang Shuming’s
words, contemporary Chinese thinkers like Shen Hong and Zhao
Tingyang referred to the idea of tian xia in order to claim that the traditional Chinese political culture contains important insights that might be
helpful in solving the problems facing us at the global level.
The most important problem in our times of globalization, according to
Zhao Tingyang, is the fact that the system of nation-states has become
outdated: it is irrelevant when it comes to many problems at the global
level. As a reaction to this situation, some alternative projects have been
proposed, or even pursued, but none of them, in Zhao’s view, is satisfactory, because all of them are afflicted by the problem of failure really to go
beyond the horizon of the model of nation-state. The United Nations is
basically still a “world organization” rather than a “world institution”;
the difference between the two is that while a “world institution” needs an
idea of “the world” that transcends nations as its basis, a “world organization” is still an international arrangement. In theory, the UN has the
problem of trying to integrate the two incompatible things, that is, pluralism and universalism, into a coherent unity; in practice, the UN has the
problem of failure to do anything that any of the powers in the world does
not agree upon. It is true that the United States is now the only superpower in the world, but then the UN seems to be even weaker compared
with the USA in implementing its wills. Here comes the idea that the world
is turned to be a new empire, an empire of the age of globalization. This
“global empire”, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri described in their
Empire, is to Zhao’s idea actually a model of American imperialism, in
which America is not only the overwhelmingly powerful game player, but
also the sole game rule maker. Thus “the United States managed to
become the sole outlaw state in the world game” (Zhao 2005: 105). The
fact that America is now behaving lawlessly, in Zhao’s view, is not only a
result of the imperialist ambition of the USA, but also a result of the fact
that the world does not yet have a “world idea”, neither does it have a
world institution and the power to support it. “It is this”, Zhao said, “that
is the severe problem posed in our times” (Zhao 2005: 105).
The traditional Chinese idea of tian xia, thought Zhao, is a good candidate for this kind of world idea. Basically the idea tian xia has the following three levels of meaning:
•
First it is its geographical sense, referring to “all the lands under
heaven” in the geographical sense. It amounts to the “di” (earth) in
the traditional Chinese triad of “tian (heaven), di (earth), ren
(people)”, or the whole world that can be inhabited by human beings.
308 Tong Shijun
•
•
Second it is its psychological sense, referring to the mentality of all
those who live upon the earth, or what Chinese calls “min xin” or
“popular sentiments”. In traditional Chinese political culture having
supreme power over tian xia in the geographical sense is not “de tian
xia” or “acquiring the world” in the real sense. “Acquiring tian xia”
in the real sense is to have support by all the people on the earth and
under the heaven.
Third it is its ethical-political sense, referring to the ideal or Utopia of
everybody under heaven treating each other like members of one
family. What is special with this part of the idea of tian xia is that in it
there is an imagination of and aspiration for a certain “world institution”, and a certain “world government” supported by it.
Compared with the Western idea of “the world”, the Chinese idea of tian
xia is, according to Zhao, a philosophical rather than scientific idea, a conceptually completed world that contains all the possible meanings of the
world and excludes none of them. Compared with Husserl’s idea of “the life
world”, which is also filled with human meanings, the idea of tian xia contains the institutional dimension that the idea of lifeworld lacks. Compared
with the Christian worldview, the Chinese idea of tian xia is not afflicted
with all kinds of divisions, conflicts and struggles, and does not deprive us of
the ability to imagine a perfect future in this world, the human world.
It is interesting to note when he was arguing for the importance of the
idea of tian xia to our times, Zhao Tingyang was criticizing Habermas and
Rawls as well. Zhao’s criticism of Rawls is very harsh. Rawls’s thinking
follows the line of Kant, which is regarded by Zhao as the best one can do
before one goes beyond the paradigm of the non-world. But, according
Zhao, Rawls’s idea of “law of peoples” implies two gravely dangerous
ideas: the refusal to extend the principle of difference, which is in favor of
the disadvantaged, from the domestic societies to the global society, and
the suggestion that the so-called “liberal and decent peoples” are justified
not to tolerate the outlaw states. “Rawls’s theory amounts to advocating a
new imperialism, which is exactly what is carried on by the USA, a
country that is willing to invest more in wars than in the orderly international community” (Zhao 2005: 98).
Compared with Rawls, Habermas received less harsh criticism from
Zhao Tingyang. Habermas, in Zhao’s view, neglected two critical questions. On the one hand, Habermas does not see that some matters can
never be agreed upon by different parties, however rational a dialogue that
has been undergone might be, and even though the parties concerned have
understood each other perfectly. On the other hand, some issues involve
immediate interests, which would be lost if no action is taken immediately.
In addition to these two problems, Habermas’s approach is wrong mainly
because it has still not gone beyond the typically Western habit of taking
entities like “individuals” and “nations-states” as the decisive units of
Chinese thought and dialogical universalism 309
consideration. By contrast, in Chinese philosophy the basic unit of
consideration is a relational structure, such as family and tian xia. A philosophy based on “relationships” instead of “individuals” thus provides “the
view from everywhere” rather than “the view from somewhere” (Zhao
2005: 108).
“View from everywhere” vs. “view from somewhere”
Although the idea of tian xia is considered by Zhao Tingyang to be able to
provide a view from everywhere rather than a view from somewhere,
Zhao himself was making this claim from a very clearly expressed “somewhere”: China. The introduction to his book The System of Tian Xia: An
introduction to a philosophy of the world institution” is titled “Why
should we discuss the Chinese worldview?” Zhao’s answer to this question
is put forward against the background of the so-called “China’s rise” or
even “China threat”.
The reason why we should clearly state the Chinese conception of the
world, according to Zhao, is that China’s importance in thinking should
match its importance in economy. And this is also required by China’s
now growing responsibility to the world. “China threat” or “China’s
rise”, two phrases reflecting the growing importance of China in the world
from different positions, are both misconceptions of China. The former is
a negative misconception of an “Other” by the non-Chinese, while the
latter is a positive (self-)misconception of the Chinese themselves. In some
sense, all developed countries or large countries are threats to others,
because they consume large amounts of energy, and create pressure upon
others. But the key issue is to identify China’s possible contributions and
responsibility for the world, or to redefine the positive meaning of the idea
of “China”. Zhao said:
To the world, the positive meaning that China can contribute is to
become a new type of power, a power that is responsible to the world,
a power that is different from various empires in the world history. To
be responsible to the world, rather than merely to one’s own country,
is, theoretically speaking, a perspective of the Chinese philosophy, and
practically speaking, a brand new possibility, that is, to take “tian
xia” as a preferred unit of analysis of political/economic interests, to
understand the world from the perspective of tian xia, that is, to
analyze problems with “the world” as the unit of thinking, going
beyond the Western mode of thinking in terms of nation/state, to take
responsibility to the world as one’s own responsibility, and to create a
new world idea and a new world institution. World idea and world
institution are values and orders that this world has ever lacked. Both
the Great Britain, the power over the world in the past, and the USA,
the power over the world now, have no other ideas than the idea of
310 Tong Shijun
nation/state, and no other considerations than their own national
interests, and with regards to the administration of the world they
have had no legitimacy either in political or in philosophical senses.
The reason is that their “world thinking” is nothing but advocating
their particular values, and universalizing their own values. . . . The
problem is not that the Western nations do not think about the world;
actually they always do. But “to think about the world” and “to think
from the perspective of the world” are two totally different spheres of
thinking. With regards to world politics, the Chinese world-view, or
its theory of tian xia, is the only theory that takes into consideration
the legitimacy of the world order and the world institution, because
only the Chinese world-view possesses the idea of “tian xia” as a
perspective of analysis that is higher and larger than “nation”. Therefore our real problem is what kind of obligation that China is prepared to take for the world, and what kind of ideas China is prepared
to create for the world.
(2005: 3–4)
That is to say, the real importance of China to the world is that only in
Chinese tradition there is a way of thinking that is against not only other
powers’ egocentric thinking, but also its own egocentric thinking. Here
Zhao seems to imply that according to this tradition, a “threat from
China” would thus become a “threat against China” as well, and the only
correct understanding of “China’s rise” is the rise of China’s responsibility
to the world – not a responsibility in the sense of a “mission” to universalize its values and distribute them all over the world, but in the sense of a
duty to “think of tian xia from the perspective of tian xia”, and to regard
nobody as others or outsiders, because in relation to tian xia there are, by
definition, no outsiders.
The core of Zhao’s idea is a vision of a cosmopolitan order that calls
for a higher sense of responsibility rather than a stronger sense of power
and hegemony, and a perspective that is neither other-worldly transcendental, nor this-worldly utilitarian, but in a sense this-worldly transcendental. Zhao regards this “immanent transcendental” perspective as
“ontological” and “a priori”, but I would rather interpret it as a perspective concerning “who we are” or “who we want to be” instead of “what
we have” or “how much we have”, nor “what we should do” as one
would think on a deontological position. A cosmopolitan order or an
order of tian xia is justified not from any particular interest positions, nor
from any supposedly universalized or universalizable interest positions,
which is the core of Habermas’s version of Kantianism, but from the
perspective of tian xia itself, which is the “ontological condition” for our
happiness, or our “well-being”, which is our real being. In other words, a
cosmopolitan order, or the peaceful coexistence and cooperation among
all the peoples under heaven, is justified neither on the basis of the instru-
Chinese thought and dialogical universalism 311
mental value of coexistence and cooperation, nor on the basis of some
other-worldly meanings, but on the basis of the this-worldly immanent
values of coexistence and cooperation.
A utilitarian justification for coexistence and cooperation is limited
because interest-relations between different persons or different groups of
people could easily change with time, situation and particular considerations of the people concerned at particular moments. If one’s interest is the
major reason for his or her engagement in the coexistence and cooperation, he or she may well break this relationship easily for the very same
reason of self-interest.
One may then say that coexistence and cooperation should be justified
by long-term rather than short-term interests: in the long run cooperation
between different peoples is beneficial to each of them. Even if the current
cooperation is not very beneficial to us, we may say, we can rely on our
long-term interest-calculation, which would tell us that we would be guaranteed of a share of benefit of the cooperation in the future sooner or later.
At first sight this way of thinking seems much better than the above one,
the one based on short-term interest relations. On closer look, however, it
is also somehow problematic. Actually, those who argue for competition
rather than for cooperation are making the same type of consideration:
although competition on the basis of self-interests is harmful in many
cases, it will bring about beneficial results in the long run according to
certain laws or meanings governing human society or human history as a
whole. Behind both arguments we can perhaps see the following same way
of thinking: to base our hope or activity on our conviction of some deepseated laws or meanings of human society and history, no matter what
these laws and meanings say about the result of our hope or action. What
is problematic about this way of thinking is that in the human world, what
our future will be like depends, to a large degree, on what we choose to do
now and here, rather than some hidden or deep-seated laws and meanings.
To justify something on the ground that it will bring us beneficial results in
the future according to certain transcendental goals or objective laws could
lead, in my view, to easing our sense of urgency with regard to what we
should do now and here, while it is much more dangerous in our times
than in previous periods for us to sit and wait until what Kant called
“providence” or “the secret plan of Nature”, what Hegel called the
“cunning of Reason”, or what Marx called the “law of history”, show us
what our real destiny will be in the remote future. In our times, modern
science has already peeped into human genes, weapons of mass destruction
can be easily used for different reasons, and large-scale harmful ecological
changes have begun to influence our everyday life. This means that what
we choose to do now can easily delete any chance of our further choices in
the future, and we are no longer in the situation where we can be sure that
any mistake now can be corrected and its consequence be compensated in
the long run. This concerns the very “being” of us, rather than the mere
312 Tong Shijun
“having” of us. Against this background it is really very important to
emphasize our (Chinese) responsibility that is growing together with our
economic and technological power, and to consider the problem of the
world from the perspective of the world itself, rather than the perspective
of any particular interests. This is the implication in Zhao Tingyang’s idea
of tian xia, which is very important indeed.
“View from everywhere” as “ideal role-taking”
To see tian xia from the perspective of tian xia itself is to justify coexistence and cooperation on the basis of the immanent non-utilitarian value
of coexistence and cooperation themselves, and to say that coexistence and
cooperation have an immanent non-utilitarian value in them is to say that
to live together with each other in a friendly and cooperative way is to live
in a genuinely human way: when we are asked to define the meaning of a
genuinely human life, we have to mention friendship and cooperation and
include them in that definition. For this kind of thinking I want to give a
formulation that is less metaphysical than Zhao’s and which is developed
on the basis of my understanding of Confucianism.
The focus of Confucianism is to teach how to be a human being in the
full sense. To be a human in the full sense, according to Confucius, is to
cultivate “ren” in ourselves. “Ren” is the kernel concept of Confucianism,
and it is composed of “ ” “(man) and “ ”(two). One becomes a
human individual in the full sense only through interaction with other
people; “intersubjectivity” comes before “subjectivity” in this sense. Interaction with other people is first of all a process of getting mature as a
human being, or a process of learning to be a human being in the full
sense, instead of a mere process of benefiting each other. The first passage
of the Analectics records the Master’s saying that “Is it not pleasant to
learn with a constant perseverance and application? Is it not delightful to
have friends coming from distant quarters? Is he not a man of complete
virtue, who feels no discomposure though men may take no note of him?”
(Analectics 1992: Ch. 1). What is most relevant to the topic of this chapter
is the second sentence: “Is it not delightful to have friends coming from
distant quarters”. Having friends coming from distant quarters is something delightful, and it is delightful by itself, not because of any other
things. Of the same nature is “learning with constant perseverance and
application”. It is also something that is pleasant by itself and not because
of anything else. Put these two sentences together and we may say that
Confucius teaches us both to love others and to educate or cultivate ourselves, and these two things are actually closely connected with each other:
according to Confucius, loving others is a great way of cultivating ourselves, or a great way for us to learn to be human beings in the full sense.
That is why the concept “ren” is so important in the doctrine of Confucius
and later Confucians. It is, of course, not an easy thing to love others;
Chinese thought and dialogical universalism 313
otherwise it would not be so important to our personal development.
“Others” are others because they are different from us, and it is a great
challenge for us to learn to deal with differences between people. To have
a harmonious relation with others is not to reduce all the differences
between them and us. That is what Confucius means when he says that
“the gentleman aims at harmony, not uniformity; the small man prefers
uniformity, not harmony” (Analectics 1992: Ch. 12). Harmony, according
to Confucianism, is a relation between different elements, like what we
have in a “thick soup”. Given the differences and diversities between different people, it is only natural that misunderstandings can arise from time
to time. In order to deal with this kind of situation, Confucius asks us to
be patient, to be optimistic, and not to give up easily in striving for mutual
understanding and trust. That is why the third sentence of the first paragraph of the Analectics goes like this: “Is he not a man of complete virtue,
who feels no discomposure though men may take no note of him?”
(Analectics 1992: Ch. 1).
If we expand our understanding of coexistence and cooperation as the
“ontological condition” for our (well-)being, then we can see that when
we are engaged in friendly coexistence and cooperation, we should not
only avoid trying to benefit us alone, but also avoid trying to benefit others
according to our own understanding of “benefits” or “interests”. The first
principle in Confucianism in dealing with others is “Not to do to others as
you would not wish done to yourself” (Analectics 1992: Ch. 12). This, as
we all know, is the Confucian version of the “Golden Rule”. In addition to
this basically negative rule there is another Confucian rule, a positive one:
“Now the man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established himself, seeks
also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to
enlarge others” (Analectics 1992: Ch. 6). Here the expressions “to establish others” and “to enlarge others” should not be understood as simply
“making others live the same kind of life as we do”. It is well known that
to impose what we think to be good upon other people very often inflicts
great harm upon them instead. To have the view of tian xia in our times
means that we should not only do good things for others, but also respect
others’ understanding of the meaning of “a good life”. In order to show
our respect for other people’s right to interpret the meaning of “good”,
and, in order to seek mutual understanding between different people (and
different peoples) over the problem “what is a good life”, we should take
an active part in cooperation not only in trade, finance and economy in
general, but also in culture, in cultural exchange and intellectual dialogue.
What is said above is, contrary to Zhao Tingyang’s view, not very different from Habermas’s position. Or in other words, the traditional
Chinese idea of “tian xia” can be translated into the language of Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Both Habermas and Zhao
Tingyang want to find some a priori condition for our being as human
beings, but it is Habermas, instead of Zhao, who seems to be closer to
314 Tong Shijun
Confucius: Habermas, like a good Confucian typically would do, starts
from what is nearby, that is, everyday communication, while Zhao argues
that tian xia, the least probable Utopia, has the “logical precedence” over
all other orders. Zhao does not see that with Habermas, as with Confucius, subjectivity and intersubjectivity presuppose each other, rather than
the latter unilaterally depends on the former. Like many other people,
Zhao does not see clearly that Habermas’s idea of “ideal speech situation”
is not a purely regulative idea, but also something constitutive, or something we have already presupposed if interpersonal communication is to be
possible at all. And Habermas needs his theory of dialogue or argumentation not only because of the importance of dialogue and argumentation to
decision-making on domestic, international and global issues, but also
because of the importance of study of dialogue and argumentation to
answering some key questions in theory of knowledge, morality and law,
such as whether it is still possible to keep and defend the ideas of truth,
justice and goodness, and why we should bother to be moral at all. These
questions were answered by appealing to traditional worldviews in the
past, and thus were not real questions at all. In our times, however, they
become questions just because they no longer have ready-made answers.
Now both Confucius and Habermas can be said as accepting Herbert
Mead’s thesis of “individualization through socialization” (see Habermas
1992: 149–204). With the help of this thesis, we can see that to a person
who has become a mature individual through a process of social interaction in which rationalized social norms are internalized in him, “why
moral” is a problem that has already been solved in everyday life before it
is raised in expert discourse. At a higher level, in our times, one is
developed into a mature individual not only through a process of socialization in one particular cultural community, but also through a process of
being engaged in the process of communication between different cultural
communities in the global society as well as in domestic societies. A
mature individual is one who has learnt to take everybody’s perspective,
which is called by Mead (and Habermas) “the ideal role taking”: “In
moral discourse, the ethnocentric perspective of an unlimited communication community, all of whose members put themselves in each individual’s
situation, worldview, and self-understanding, and together practice an
ideal role taking (as understood by G. H. Mead)” (Habermas 1996: 162).
This, I think, is just what Zhao Tingyang means by “the view from everywhere”.
Confucianism, of course, can be and has been interpreted in many
ways. What I have proposed above is more or less a mutual translation
between the Confucian idea of “tian xia” or Zhao Tingyang’s “the view
from everywhere” on the one hand, and the idea of “ideal role-taking” in
Mead and Habermas, on the other. Preserving the traditional Chinese idea
of “tian xia” and interpreting the idea of “tian xia” with the help of the
idea of “ideal role-taking”, we can, on the one hand, connect the tradi-
Chinese thought and dialogical universalism 315
tional idea with the contemporary discussions on various relevant issues,
including the issue of institutional framework for implementing the idea of
“tian xia”, and, on the other hand, bring the achievements of these
contemporary discussions, of which Habermas’s dialogical universalism is
a very important one, into touch with the traditional Chinese culture, especially its idea of “tian xia” as a this-worldly transcendental Utopia.
References
“Analectics” (1992) The Chinese/English Four Books, translated by James Legge,
Changsha: Hunan Press.
Habermas, J. (1992) Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays, translated
by William Mark Hohengarten, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse
Theory of Law and Democracy, translated by William Rehg, Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
Habermas, J. (2002) “Letter to America”, Nation, 275(21), 12/16/2002.
Habermas, J. (2003) “Was bedeutet der Denkmalsturz?”, Frankfurter Allgemeinen
Zeitung vom 17, April.
Zhao, T. (2005) The System of Tian Xia: An Introduction to a Philosophy of the
World Institution (tian xia ti xi: shi jie zhi du zhe xue dao lun), Jiangsu Education Press.
Index
Abdel-Malek, A. 66, 67
Abélard, Pierre 263
Abrahamian, E. 162, 163, 171
Abu-Lughod, Janet 65, 112
Abulafia, D. 125
Adorno, Theodor 55, 294
Ahiska, M. 207
Ahmad, Peroz 206
AKP (Justice and Development Party),
Turkey 204, 211–12, 213
al-Jabiri, Abed 299
Alcock, S. E. 132
American triumphalism 65
Americas, European conquest of 81
Amin, Samir 257
Anderson, B. 157–8
Andreas, P. 183, 184
anthropology 130–1, 132
anti-modern reactions, Middle East 162–4
Appiah, K. A. 235
Applegate, C. 131
Arabic Empire 161–2
Arendt, Hannah 194, 230
Arjomand, A. S. 171
Arnason, Johann 47, 49–50, 56, 77–90,
164–5
Arneil, B. 173
Arnold, I. 264
Asia: comparison to the West 28–31;
critical theory 291–9; demographics
39–41; European interest in 260–1;
modernity 32–8; nationalist modernity
273–6; plurality of 31–2; responses to
Western ascendancy 77–9, 84–90;
revolutions and citizenship 152–8; rise
of 18–22; spiritual traditions 270–3,
277; values 276–80; as vantage point
261–5
Ataturk, Kemal 168, 169–71, 175, 206–8
authoritative modernities 169–72
Axial Age civilizations 48–9
Aymard, M. 126, 129
Babinger, F. 99
Bary, W. T. de 31, 32
Batt, J. 187
Bauman, Z. 251
Bayart, J. F. 82
Bayly, C. A. 65, 81, 82, 90, 126
Beck, Ulrich 11–22, 193, 196, 197,
198–9, 224, 226, 236, 272, 285, 300
Ben-Artzi, Y. 121, 127
Ben-Rafael, E. 3
Benjamin, Walter, 55
Bernal, M. 108, 110
Bertola, F. 259
Billington, James 46, 216, 220
Blazyca, G. 196
Bloom, D. 32, 39, 41
Blumenberg, H. 250
Bonnett, Alastair 1, 46, 269–81
borders: Eurasia 181–91; Russia 188,
221–2
Bossevain, J. 130
Bouvet, Honoré 264–5
Boyarin, D. and J. 230
Boyer d’Argens, J.-B. 262
Brague, Rémi 3–4, 51, 52, 248, 257–66
Braudel, Fernand 48, 67, 126, 132
Breckenridge, C. A. 53
Bronze Age 138
Brotton, Jerry 56, 95–7, 100, 101, 102–3
Brubaker, R. 217, 232
Buddhism 140, 271, 278, 298
Burckhardt, Jacob 95, 102
Buruma, I. 2, 46, 219
Byzantium 83
Cabral, Amilcar 296
Cadalso, José 262
Cameron, Fraser 195
Canning, D. 39, 41
capitalism: control of 21; spread of 161–2
Carr, E. H. 172
Carrier, J. G. 251
Index 317
cartography 103
Casola, Pietro 102
Castoriadis, C. 49
Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies (CSDS), Delhi 292–7
centre–periphery relations 13–14
centrism as a universal phenomenon 258
Césaire, A. 299
Chakrabarty, D. 45, 131, 248, 276
Chandhoke, N. 67
Chang, Ha-Joon 65–6
Chardin, Jean 260–1
charity 140–1, 265
Chatterjee, Partha 296–7
Chattopadhyaya, D. P. 245
Cheah, P. 53, 162
Chen, Xiangming 68
Childe, Gordon 138
China: citizenship 148–9, 155–7;
globalization 62–4, 65, 66; influence of
107–8, 115–16, 273–4; technology
117–18; trading networks 112
Chinese thought: tian xia 305–9; view
from everywhere as ideal role-taking
312–15; view from everywhere vs. view
from somewhere 309–12
Ching, Leo 269
Chklovski, V. 259
Christendom, Europe as 110, 246–7
Christianity 98, 138–9, 140–2, 264–5
Chua, A. 38
Chubais, Igor 220
citizenship: causes 150–2; China 148–9,
155–7; and cosmopolitanism 158–9;
definitions 149–50; Indonesia 149,
157–8; Japan 148–9, 152–5
civic nationalism 228–9
civil society, emergence in Europe 149–50
civilizational analysis 47–50
civilizational constellations: critical
hermeneutics and cosmopolitan
possibilities 50–3; cultural translations
and multiple modernities 53–5; multiple
modernities and civilizational analysis
47–50; and multiple modernities of
Europe 55–8
civilizational encounters 2–4
civilizations, clash of 45–7, 69, 86–7,
107–9, 203–4, 218
Clarke, J. J. 53, 116, 270
Clash of Civilizations (1996) 45–7, 69,
86–7, 107–9, 203–4, 218
classical learning 98–9
classical theories of modernity 165–6
classicism 126–7
Clifford, James 54, 231, 250–1
Cold War 25, 26, 34, 222–3
colonialism 34–5, 123, 165–6, 167
Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS), Russia 217, 223–5
communist regimes 84, 217
Confucianism 64, 67, 115, 140, 155–7,
278, 298, 312–15
constitutional movements 61–2
core–periphery relations 181–2
Cornell, E. 210
cosmopolitan possibilities and critical
hermeneutics 50–3
cosmopolitanism 11–14; and citizenship
158–9; and democratization 14–18;
Europe 193–201; globalization as
18–22; Israel 232–6; Middle East 174–5;
Oriental Europe 107–19; reality of 22; in
Renaissance 92–105; Russia 224–5
critical hermeneutics and cosmopolitan
possibilities 50–3
critical theory: European 284–91; nonWestern 291–9; towards a global public
sphere 299–301
Crusades 107, 108, 110
cultural adjustments, necessity for 41–2
cultural cosmopolitanism 92–5
cultural eccentricity 258–9
cultural exchange 97–101
cultural mutation 89
cultural theory of modernity 205–6
cultural translations and multiple
modernities 53–5
Cyprus, borders 188
Dallmayr, Fred 52–3, 284–301
Dante 108
Davis, John 130
De Deken, J. J. 173
de Montaigne, M. 102
Dechamps, Eustache 265
deconstruction 288, 290–1
Delanty, Gerard 1–5, 11–22, 45–59, 109,
123, 164, 181, 189, 190, 193, 199,
205, 207, 210–11, 234, 257
della Mirandola, P. 92, 93
Deluze, G. 165–6
democracies 172–4
democratization 14–18, 25
demographics 39–41
dependency theory 64
Derrida, Jacques 251, 252, 290–1, 292,
298, 299
dialogical universalism 305–15
diasporas 68–70, 229–32
Dirlik, Arif 69
Driessen, H. 129, 131
Dufourmantelle, A. 252
Dufresny, Charles 261–2
318 Index
Durkheim, Emile 167–8
Eades, J. S. 68
East Asia: globalization 67; road to
modernity 33–4; values 278–9
East–West divide, Europe 1–2
Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) 122,
123–6, 194–6
Eastern ideas/technology, European
assimilation of 113–18
Eastern-led global economy 111–13
eccentric, Europe as 258–9
Eder, K. 14
Egypt 107–8, 169
Eiseanstadt, S. N. 3, 47, 48, 50, 55, 81,
89, 163, 164, 205, 233, 275, 281
Eisenstein, E.L. 145
elites, relation with the masses 17–18
Elvin, M. 143
English Civil War 151, 159
Enlightenment 63, 93, 115–16, 122,
165–6, 262–3
Ertman, T. 172
Esenwein, G. 132
ethnic nationalism 228–9
ethnographic field research,
Mediterranean 130–1
Eurasia: cosmopolitan borders 181–3,
190–1; Renaissance 92–105
Eurasianism, Russia 218–20, 223–4
Euro-American West, undoing of 26–8
Euro-Mediterranean identity 120–34
Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP),
EU 133
Eurocentric: analyses of globalization
111–13, 114, 118; bias 108–9;
globalization 61–70
Eurocentrism 51, 52, 53; centrism as a
universal phenomenon 258; definition
of 257–8; demise of 131; Europe as
eccentric 258–9; Europe as far away
place 259–60; European interest in
other cultures 260–1; other as a vantage
point 261–5
Europe: assimilation of Eastern ideas/
technologies 113–18; citizenship
149–52; comparison to Asia 28–31;
comparison to the West 24–8; critical
theory 284–91; decline of 41–2;
democracy 172–3; demographics 39–41;
dependence on Eastern-led global
economy 111–13; development models
164–9; as eccentric 258–9; evolution of
193–201; as far away place 259–60;
interest in other cultures 260–1; and
Islam 138–46; otherness 243–53; postWestern 1–5; redefinition as an inclusive
and malleable moral idea 109–11;
relation of Asia to 18–22; relation to
Mediterranean 120–34; relation to US
18–19, 41–2; and Russia 220–4
European Commission 185–6, 194
European Constitution (draft) 15, 17–18,
19
European history, crisis of 131–2
European modernity: achievements of 21;
commonality of 28–31; reconsideration
of 45–59
European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)
186–7
European public culture 14–18
European Union: bordering 181–91;
enlargement 2, 4, 185, 186–7, 188,
194–6; Turkish accession 204, 212–13
Europeanization 11–18, 25, 121–2, 133,
203–4
Euroversalism of modernity 164–9
evolutionist social theories 166–8
Far East, religions 140
Fawaz, L. 126
Feuchtwanger, Leon 233
Feuer, L. S. 167
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 246–7
Finley, M. I. 141
Fletcher, R. 260
Frank, Andre Gunder 62, 63, 69, 82, 108,
112
Freire, P. 299
French Revolution 151, 159
Friese, Heidrun 243–53
Fukuyama, Francis 65, 219, 278
Fukuzawa, Yukichi 270, 273–7, 281
fundamentalism 139, 161–2, 171–2
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 53–4, 169–72,
289–90
Gandhi, Mahatma 293, 295
Gaonkar, D. P. 3, 55, 281
Geertz, C. 163, 250
geo-physical issues, Mediterranean
identity 121–2
geopolitics, Europe 13–14
Germany 151–2, 195, 196
Giddens, A. 141, 164
Gillis, John 131
Gilmore, David 130
global community of critically engaged
intellectuals 299–301
global consciousness 101–3
global economy, Eastern-led 111–13
globality in Renaissance 92–105
globalization 13; as cosmopolitanism
18–22; Russian resistance to 224
Index 319
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 243
Goff, J. Le 221
Goitein, S. D. 142
Goldberg, D. T. 173
Goldsmith, Oliver 262
Goldstone, Jack 87–8
Goody, Jack 3, 57, 93, 94, 110, 113,
138–46
Goonatilake, S. 63, 70
Gosh, Amitav 234
Gran, Peter 131
Grande, E. 3, 197, 198–9, 226
Greece 109–10, 113, 114, 123–4
Greek mythology 123
Greenblatt, S. 92
Greene, M. 125
Growing Amnesia (1993) 292, 294–5
Grunebaum, G. E. von 260
Guha, Ranajit 296
Gunn, Geoffrey 62
guo 306–7
Habermas, Jürgen. 3, 13, 51–2, 193, 195,
197–8, 250, 259–60, 305, 308–10,
313–15
Hacohen, M. 232, 233
Hairi, A.-H. 173
Halevi, Jehuda 259–60
Hanafi, Hassan 299
Hardt, Michael 307
Hay, D. 109
Hay, S. 270, 271, 272
Hayes, L. D. 153
Hazard, Paul 263
Hegel, G. W. F. 243, 245, 246, 247
Heidegger, Martin 288–9, 298
Heper, M. 207
Herder, Johann Gottfried 246, 247
hermeneutical conceptions of civilization
47–50
hermeneutical phenomenology 288–9
Herrman, R. K. 13
Hertzberg, A. 232
Herzfeld, Michael 130, 134
Herzl, Theodor 232
Hinduism 278
Hirschon, R. 129
Hobson, A. G. 64
Hobson, J. M. 112, 113, 116, 119, 144
Hobson, John M. 3, 53, 56, 62, 63, 107–19
Holbein, Hans 96–7
Holocaust 17–18, 232, 234–6
Horden, P. 123, 126, 132
Horkheimer, Max 285–8, 294, 300
Hountondji, P. 299
Huntington, Samuel 25, 45–6, 65, 69, 86,
162, 163, 173, 205, 218, 220, 237, 238
Husserl, Edmund 252, 288, 289
Hutanuwatr, P. 32, 42
Ibrahim, A. 280
Içduygu, A. 205, 209, 210
identities: Mediterranean 120–34; Russia
216–18
imperial expansionism, Mediterranean 128
imperial schisms 81–2
India: globalization 62–3, 64, 68–9;
theoretical initiatives 291–7
Indonesia, citizenship 149, 157–8
Industrial Revolution 82–3, 87–9, 118, 143
industrialization: Islamic countries 142–3;
Mediterranean 128
Inferno 108
institutional obligations 206–7
institutional systems 142; Japan 154
inter-Asian encounters 35–6
Ionian Islands 128
Iran 169–72, 175
Iraq 169, 172
Irigaray, L. 251
Islam 138–46: co-existence with
democracy 203–4; empire-building 83;
influences 108, 110; memories of
Holocaust 234–6; particularism of
162–4; role in Turkey 208, 210–12;
scholarship 113–14; selective and
authoritative modernities 169–72;
theoretical initiatives 298–9;
universalism of modernity 162–4
Islamic Revolution (1977–1979) 171
Israel: cosmopolitanism and nationalism
232–4; Holocaust 17–18, 232, 234–6;
Jewish nation and Israeli polity 228–9;
Zionism and diaspora 229–32
Italy: administrative decentralization 67;
trading networks 98, 99–100, 102, 112,
142–4
Jacques, Martin 224
Japan: globalization 66; imposition of
citizenship 148–9, 151–5; occupation of
Indonesia 157–8; road to modernity
33–4; Westernization 273–6
Jardine, Lisa 56, 95–6, 97, 99, 100, 102–3
Jaspers, Karl 48, 248
Jewess of Toledo, The (1956) 233–4
jia 306–7
Johnson, D. 278, 280
Jones, E. L. 82
Judaism 138–9, 140, 228–9, 237–8, 264–5
Judt, T. 235
Kara-Murza, Sergei 221
Karatani, K. 31
320 Index
Kaufmann, T. D. C. 29
Kennedy, Paul 66
Korhonen, P. 32, 269
Koselleck, R. 250
Kothari, Rajni 292–5
Krishna, Daya 297
Kuntay, M. C. 173
Kurdish question, Turkey 210
Kwok Kian-Woon 31
Kyoto School, Japan 298
Lach, Donald 63
Landes, David 65
Lavenex, S. 14, 186
Lawson, S. 14, 20
Lebanon 175
legal traditions 27–8
Leontidou, L. 121, 123, 129, 133
Levi-Strauss, Claude 258
Lewis, Bernard 65, 162, 163, 263
Lieberman, Victor 65
Ligachev, Egor 219
Liotta, P. H. 121
Lipset, Martin S. 164
Longpierre, H. B. de 262
Mahbubani, Kishore 278, 279
Mallory, J. P. 67
Manivannan, R. 32, 42
Mardin, S. 173, 208
Margalit, A. 2, 46, 219
Marino, J. A. 130
Marshall, P. J. 63, 64
Marxism 108, 151, 167, 168, 225
Masolo, D. A. 299
McNeil, William 47, 64, 77, 80, 82, 84–6
Mediterranean: identities 120–34; trading
networks 142–4; unity of 48
Mehmed II, Sultan 98–9, 100
Mehta, J. L. 297
Menocal, M. R. 110
mercantile capitalism 143–4
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 290
Merriman, J. 33
Michelet, Jules 95
Middle Ages 80, 263–4
Middle Eastern modernities:
Euroversalism of modernity 164–9;
modernities, histories and democracies
172–4; particularism and universalism
162–4; recent developments/need for
cosmopolitanism 174–5; selective and
authoritative modernities 169–72
migration streams: China 68–70; Europe
250–1; Mediterranean 129–30, 132–3
military organization 150–1, 169–70
military power 85–6
military revolution 117–18
Milner, A. 278, 280
Miquel, A. 265
mobility 182–3, 184
modernity 172–4; Asian 32–8; European
21, 28–31; Euroversalism of 164–9;
Middle Eastern 161–76; Turkish
203–13; universalism of 162–4
Mokyr, Joel 88
Mommsen, Hans 131
Mongol conquest of Eurasia 83
monological universalism 305–15
Moore, Barrington 152
Moore, R. I. 65
Morin, Edgar 58, 252
Morris, I. 123
Moulakis, A. 134
Mozaffari, M. 3, 47
Mrad, G. H. 314–15
multiple modernities: and civilizational
analysis 47–50; and civilizational
constellation, Europe 55–8; and cultural
translations 53–5; Middle East 169
Muzaffer, Chandra 298
Nandy, Ashis 295–6
nation-building: Mediterranean 122, 126,
127, 129; Turkey 208
nation-state: consolidation of 245–8;
creation of 151, 153–4; irrelevance of
307, 309–10, 312; role of 131
national identities, Mediterranean 129–30
nationalism, Israel 228–9, 232–6
nationalist modernity 273–6
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) 26, 121
navigational techniques 117
Near East, religion 138–40
Nederveen Pieterse, J. 45, 61–70
Needham, J. 63, 118
Negri, Antonio 307
Nelson, Benjamin 47
Netherlands 157–8
Network Europe 182, 183–5
Nietzsche, Friedrich 247
Nisbet, Richard 41
Occidental despotism 26–8
Occidentalism 1–3, 46, 251
Okakura, Kakuzo 31, 270–1
Ong, A. 205
Ong, W. 145
Oommen, T. K. 20
Oriental globalization: European
dependence on Eastern-led global
economy 111–13; history of 62–6;
importance of Eastern ideas in the rise;
Index 321
of Europe 113–16; importance of
Eastern technologies in the rise of
Europe 116–18; modern times 66–70
Orientalism 2–3, 173
Osterhammel, J. 53
otherness, Europe: cosmopolitanism
251–3; spatial and temporal
demarcations 248–51; unity 245–8
Ottoman Empire 57, 125–6, 144, 161–2,
168, 169–70, 173–4, 207; and
Renaissance 97–102
Özbudun, E. 209, 210
Palar, Ravi 269
Panarin, A. S. 218
particularism of Islam 162–4
Pater, Walter 93, 95
Peled, Y. 236
Persian Empire 68–9, 123–4, 161–2, 168,
169–70, 173–4
phenomenology 288–90
philosophical hermeneutics 289–90
Physiocrats 64
Piening, C. 14
Pilipenko, V. 29
Pina-Cabral, J. 131
pluralistic theory of civilization 49–50
Pocock, J. G. A. 125
Poe, Marshall 220
Poincaré, Henri 285–6
political citizenship 150
political economists 115–16
Pollock, S. 34
Pomeranz, K. 62, 63, 65, 87
Popper, Karl 232–3
post-structuralism 290–1
post-Western Europe 1–5
postcolonial thesis 46
postcommunist transition 194–6
Preston, P. 20
Prestowitz, C. 66
proto-globalization 111, 112
public culture, Europe 14–18
Purcell, N. 121, 123, 126, 132
Putin, Vladimir 217–18, 223–4
Putnam, Robert 67, 172
Qichao, Liang 306–7
Quesnay, François 64, 115–16
Rajan, Sundara 297
Ravi, S. 3
reactive modernization 32–4
rebordering, Eurasia 181–91
Reher, D. S. 129
Reid, Anthony 158
Rein, R. 127
religions 81, 138–46; see also Islam
Renaissance 29, 56, 62–3, 113–14, 145;
global consciousness 101–3; and
Ottoman Empire 97–101; reconfiguring
95–7
resistance, culture of 16–17
Rethinking Development (1989) 292–4
revolutions and citizenship: Asia 151,
152–8; Europe 150–1
Riba Mateos, N. 133
Ricouer, Paul 51, 54, 297
Rifkin, J. 19
risk society 87–8, 198
Robbins, B. 53, 162
Robertson, Roland 47, 64, 92–105
Rokkan, Stein 14
Roman Empire 52, 83, 124–5, 143–4, 145
Romanticism 126–7
Rosendorfer, Herbert 262
Rosenzweig, Franz 232
Rougemont, D. de 141
Rousseau, J.-J. 246
Rowbotham, A. H. 115
Rubrouck, G. de 263
Rumford, Chris 3, 181–91
Russia: borders 188, 221–2; Eurasianism
218–20; and Europe 220–4; facets of
identity 216–18; polity and
cosmospolitanism 224–5
Said, Edward 45, 107, 108, 127, 251, 297
Sakamoto, R. 274, 275
Sakwa, Richard 215–26
Sartre, Jean-Paul 290
Sassen, S. 187
Sayyid, B. 207
Schengen model 183–4
Scholte, J. A. 101
Schutte, O. 299
scientific revolution 113–14, 145–6
selective modernities, Middle East 169–72
Sevilla, J. 39, 41
Shelov-Kovedyaev, F. V. 223
Sherrard, P. 110
Shonfield, Andrew 197
Shuming, Liang 307
Siberia 219, 221
Sicily 144
silk: routes 67–70; trade 143
Simonsen, S. G. 225
Skocpol, Theda 152, 157–8
slavery, dependence on 81
Sloterdijk, P. 244, 245
Smith, Adam 64, 115–16
societal transformation, Europe 3–5
Sopiee, Noordin 278
Soucek, S. 36
322 Index
South Asia: road to modernity 34–5;
values 278
Southern, R. W. 221
Spain, Islamic scholarship in 114, 144
Spence, D. 195
Spence, J. 29
Spencer, Herbert 167
spiritual traditions, Asia 270–3, 277
state-centric modernity, Turkey 209–11
statelessness 229–32
Strube de Piermont, F.-H. 265
Suarez-Navaz, L. 185
Subaltern Studies movement, India 296–7
Sugiyama, J. 68
Sunar, I. 208, 209
Sznaider, Natan 228–38
Tagore, Rabindranath 270–3, 276–7,
278, 280–1, 296
Tai, H. 277
Tanaka, Stefan 31, 274
Taylor, Charles 205, 290
Taylor, P. J. 166, 172
technologies 80, 116–18
Teik, Khoo Boo 277
terrorism, war on 174–5, 203
theory of alternative modernities 205–6
theory–praxis connection 284–5, 300–1
Therborn, Göran 4, 24–42, 164, 172, 173
Theunissen, Michael 252
tian xia 305–10, 313–15
Tingyang, Zhao 305, 307, 308–10,
313–15
Tocqueville, A. de 156
Tolz, Vera 217
Tomlin, E. W. F. 168
tourism 132–3
Toynbee, A. 269
trans-civilizational constellations 82–3
trade routes 61–4, 67–70, 111–13
trading networks 98, 99–100, 102, 124,
142–4
traditional theory 285–91
transnationalism 12–14, 39
Tsarist Russia 216, 221
Tsoukalas, C. 127, 134
Tsygankov, A. P. 219, 220
Turkey 11, 15, 16, 169–72, 175;
accession to EU 198, 199; institutional
system 142; modernity 203–13; postWesternization 189
Turner, Bryan S. 64, 148–59, 167, 168,
169, 173
Ukraine 189–90
UN (United Nations) 307
universalism 30–1, 150, 232–3; Chinese
vs. Western thought 305–15; limited
51–2; of modernity 162–4
US: imperialism 307; occupation of Japan
154–5; relation of Europe to 18–19,
41–2; relation with Turkey 213; war on
terrorism 26–8
US War of Independence 151, 159
Valério, N. 128
value orientation 139–42
values, Asia 276–80
Veliz, C. 81
Venice, trading networks 98, 99–100,
102, 112, 143, 144
Vertovec, S. 53
voyages of discovery 102–3, 111–13,
116–17
Wagner, P. 244
Wakabayashi, B. T. 33
Walters, W. 185
War of Independence (1922–1936),
Turkey 170
Weber, Max 63–4, 79–80, 108, 150, 153,
167, 247–8
Weggel, O. 32
Weiner, M. 154
Weiss, L. 67
welfare capitalism 151
West: Asian images of 270–80;
fragmentation of 19, 24–6; relation
with Russia 223; rise of 77–90; versus
the rest 1–2
West Asia, road to modernity 32–3
Western: decadence 276–80; idea of the
world 305–9; model of citizenship 148,
149, 150; pursuit of power 85–6
Western Christendom 79–84
Westernization: Israel 237; Japan 273–6;
Russian resistance to 218–20, 221, 222,
223–4; Turkey 203–4, 206–7, 208–9;
world revolution of 85–7
Whitfield, S. 65, 68
Wieming, Tu 67
Williams, G. 63, 64
Wolf, E. R. 64
Wolff, J. 100
Wood, F. 67, 261
work ethic 276–7
world history, theory of 47
World Wars 30, 34, 166, 170, 174
Yamashita, S. 68
Zhdanov, A. A. 220
Zielonka, J. 2, 58, 183
Zionism 230, 229–32, 235, 238
Zolberg, A. 83