Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism is a worldview that treats Europe and its history, culture, or institutions as central or superior, often using them as standards for interpreting other societies.

Orientalism: A way of representing the East as exotic, backward, or inferior to a supposedly rational and advanced West. It shows how a Europe-centered viewpoint constructs non-European societies as its opposite.
European colonialism: The expansion of European states into overseas territories through conquest, settlement, and political or economic control. Colonial rule spread European institutions and categories across societies.
Samir Amin: An Egyptian-French economist who analyzed global capitalism and criticized Eurocentrism in historical thought. His book Eurocentrism directly examined Europe-centered accounts of world history.
Afrocentrism: An intellectual perspective that centers African histories, cultures, and contributions in interpreting the world. It shifts the historical center away from Europe, though its aims and methods vary.
Decolonization: The process by which colonial rule ends and formerly colonized societies pursue political independence and self-determination. Its intellectual dimensions include challenging inherited European standards of knowledge and authority.
Great Divergence: The historical period when parts of Western Europe pulled ahead of other major economies in income and industrialization. Its explanations can frame European development as the default measure of global history.
Enlightenment: An intellectual movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries associated with reason, natural rights, and critiques of inherited authority. Its universal claims were sometimes intertwined with European hierarchies and imperial projects.
Aníbal Quijano: A Peruvian sociologist who developed the concept of the coloniality of power. His account links colonial rule to lasting hierarchies in knowledge and social organization.
Sinocentrism: A worldview that treats China as the central or exemplary civilization in regional or global order. It offers a distinct civilization-centered framework rather than a European one.
Decolonizing the curriculum: The effort to revise educational content and methods shaped by colonial histories and exclusions. It addresses which histories and thinkers education treats as central or authoritative.

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