{"id":8,"date":"2016-04-29T16:41:23","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T16:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/?page_id=8"},"modified":"2016-05-18T19:19:28","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T19:19:28","slug":"8-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/","title":{"rendered":"June 3, 2016 – University of St Andrews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the home for the June, 2016 workshop Nation, Culture and Civilisation: Talking about and beyond \u2018the West\u2019 (1860-1940)<\/em>. A handful of studies have shed light on the conceptual origins and shifting meanings of \u2018the West\u2019, but historians are still in the dark about many facets of its discursive construction. Building on the recently published volume Germany and \u2018the West\u2019: The History of a Modern Concept<\/em>, this workshop seeks to explore the transnational discourse on \u2018the West\u2019 from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century (1860-1940). Placing special emphasis on cultural transfers and the role of translation, it investigates the meanings of this concept in both European and non-European contexts. The first leg of the workshop (which took place in Munich last December) focussed on France, Britain, Russia, Germany and the United States; the second leg (to take place in St Andrews) will focus on China, Japan, Korea, India, and the Muslim world. More specifically, it examines (1) the relationship between different scales of spatial identities: national, European \/ Asian \/ Islamic, Western \/ non-Western, and civilizational, (2) the repercussions of social Darwinism, racism, and imperialism on semantics of \u2018the West\u2019, and (3) the significance of notions of a \u2018German cultural mission\u2019, a French mission civilisatrice and a British (and American) mission to spread \u2018Western civilization\u2019.<\/p>\n

In addition, the workshop sets out to test two hypotheses: (1) The literary critic Christopher GoGwilt claims that, between the 1880s and the 1920s, the concept of the West eclipsed the concept of Europe as the pivotal ideological term in the register of British imperialist rhetoric, and that this came about through a complex \u2018double-mapping\u2019 of Europe and the Empire. (2) The geographer Alastair Bonnett argues that the idea of the West came to displace the idea of \u2018whiteness\u2019 in political and academic discourse: Since it avoided untenable assumptions about racial homogeneity without precluding racist overtones, the notion \u2018Western\u2019 trumped the idea of \u2018white civilization\u2019. It is hoped that an engagement with hypotheses such as these, which are focussed on the identification of problem-solving rhetorical innovations, will generate new answers to the question as to what people were doing in using the concept of the West.<\/p>\n

What still needs to be examined on a more global scale, moreover, is the entanglement of European concepts of the West with notions of Westernization and the Occident discussed in non-European areas. From the mid-19th century onward, China, Japan, India, Korea, and the Muslim world became the place of intense debates on national identity which were based on competing images of \u2018the West\u2019. There is a growing literature on this, and the term \u2018Occidentalism\u2019 has become the watchword of this blossoming field of research. Much quoted but less typical of the field is the polemical essay by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit who, in the wake of 9\/11, took an impressionistic journey through the history of anti-\u2018Western\u2019 stereotypes \u2013 those depicting a shallow, rootless, materialist society \u2013 and tried to constrict \u2018Occidentalism\u2019 to \u2018the dehumanising picture of the West painted by its enemies\u2019. More typical of the field is a collection of essays edited by James Carrier which features British and American anthropologists investigating a variety of \u2018stylized images of the West\u2019. For example, they examine constructions of \u2018the other\u2019 in Japanese advertising campaigns and the \u2018uses of the West\u2019 in the politics and anthropology of South Asia.<\/p>\n

Research on Occidentalism counteracts the Eurocentric perspective of a \u2018world revolution of Westernization\u2019 and focuses on processes of non-Western self-assertion. It shows the deployment of conceptions of \u2018the West\u2019 to shape national identities in non-Western regions that have become increasingly incorporated into the communicative networks of Europe and America. A good example of the process of non-Western \u2018Othering\u2019 is provided in Cemil Aydin\u2019s study of \u2018visions of world order\u2019 in pan-Islamic and pan-Asian thought around the turn of the century. Aydin argues that Ottoman and Japanese educated elites imagined a \u2018universal West\u2019 in the 1860s and 1870s but turned to pan-Islamic and pan-Asian ideas afterwards \u2013 in reaction to a \u2018legitimacy crisis\u2019 of a \u2018Eurocentric international order\u2019. In the late nineteenth century, he claims, Orientalism and racism increasingly undermined the moral justification for European imperialism and, by extension, that for \u2018liberal civilizationism\u2019 as well. The concept of a \u2018single universal civilization\u2019 therefore gave way to a \u2018revolt against the West\u2019.<\/p>\n

The context of globalization, imperialism, and non-Western self-assertion around the turn of the century most certainly furthered the evolution and circulation of powerful notions of Western civilization. The role of Western European orientalists, however, as mediators who disseminated these notions at home yet remains to be explored. This is but one example for the need to further explore the entanglement of European and non-European concepts of the West \u2013 something that this workshop seeks to achieve.<\/p>\n

University of St Andrews and Institute of Contemporary History, Munich<\/em><\/p>\n

Header image source:\u00a0<\/em>\u1e2aay\u0101l<\/em>, 1:23, 9 K\u0101n\u016bn-u <\/span>s\u0331<\/span>\u0101n\u012b \u00a01289 [21 January 1874].<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the home for the June, 2016 workshop Nation, Culture and Civilisation: Talking about and beyond \u2018the West\u2019 (1860-1940). A handful of studies have shed light on the conceptual origins and shifting meanings of \u2018the West\u2019, but historians are still in the dark about many facets of its discursive construction. Building on the recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spatialhistory.net\/west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}