Development and Globalization
SOC 0862
Development and Globalization
Midterm Exam
Question 1)
The author first talked about how he disagreed with the critics out there that conclude the rise of the West was due to some unique historical advantage, some special quality of race, culture, and mind which gave the Western community a permanent superiority over other communities. Then he further examines the two aspects of what critics call Eurocentrism. According to the critics, Eurocentrism emphasizes the superiority of Western culture that everything that is good, innovative and creative starts in Europe. Critics says, Eurocentric viewers see the world as being the only active shaper of world history, that only Europe played an important part of the history, that they create history and they are the main actors and the rest of the world are just mere followers. Then the author talked about how the idea of Eurocentrism might have come about. He stressed that the current Western history education is presenting a one sided point of view on how great, pure and with the best expression of how the Western civilization are. In conclusion, the author believes that one should need a broader and global perspective that there might be external factors that one should look into. For example, there could be three possible factors that could prove this idea of Eurocentrism to be seen as a myth and wrong are contingency, accident and conjuncture. For contingency, people should pay attention to other development as certain development is contingent upon other development. For accident, climate/weather change and geographical advantage should be carefully inspected as abundance of coal was deposited in the region of the Westerners which gave them a huge economical advantage. The next idea is conjuncture, where independent development come together to form a larger moving development. For example, the demand of silver in China to use silver as a basis of their monetary system is a conjunction to the
Development and Globalization
Midterm Exam
Question 1)
The author first talked about how he disagreed with the critics out there that conclude the rise of the West was due to some unique historical advantage, some special quality of race, culture, and mind which gave the Western community a permanent superiority over other communities. Then he further examines the two aspects of what critics call Eurocentrism. According to the critics, Eurocentrism emphasizes the superiority of Western culture that everything that is good, innovative and creative starts in Europe. Critics says, Eurocentric viewers see the world as being the only active shaper of world history, that only Europe played an important part of the history, that they create history and they are the main actors and the rest of the world are just mere followers. Then the author talked about how the idea of Eurocentrism might have come about. He stressed that the current Western history education is presenting a one sided point of view on how great, pure and with the best expression of how the Western civilization are. In conclusion, the author believes that one should need a broader and global perspective that there might be external factors that one should look into. For example, there could be three possible factors that could prove this idea of Eurocentrism to be seen as a myth and wrong are contingency, accident and conjuncture. For contingency, people should pay attention to other development as certain development is contingent upon other development. For accident, climate/weather change and geographical advantage should be carefully inspected as abundance of coal was deposited in the region of the Westerners which gave them a huge economical advantage. The next idea is conjuncture, where independent development come together to form a larger moving development. For example, the demand of silver in China to use silver as a basis of their monetary system is a conjunction to the