Lutfi Sunar - Eurocentrism at the Margins: Encounters, Critics and Going Beyond

Eurocentrism remains a prevailing feature of Western-dominated social scientific perspectives, tending to ignore alternative views originating outside the West and thus maintaining a form of scholarly hegemony. As such, there is an urgent need to reconsider Eurocentrism in social science, to ask whether it constitutes an obstacle to understanding social problems and whether it is possible to go beyond Eurocentrism in the construction of reliable, more universal knowledge. At the same time, certain questions persist, particularly with regard to the extent to which recent revisionist challenges have really contributed to the surmounting of Eurocentric domination, and whether the constant repetition of the concept serves to reinforce it.

This book engages with the central problems of Eurocentrism in the social sciences, bringing together the work of scholars from around the world to offer a critique of this perspective from both European and non-European positions, thus shedding light on the binaries that often come into being in debates in this field. Thematically organised and addressing a range of questions, including Eurocentrism in historical studies, in the understanding of religion and civilisation and in the study of international relations, as well as in the institutionalisation and professionalisation of research and discourses on modernisation in the Middle East, Eurocentrism at the Margins will appeal to scholars with interests in knowledge production and circulation, and Eurocentrism and post-colonialism in the social sciences.

Lutfi Sunar is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Istanbul University, Turkey. He is the author of Marx and Weber on Oriental Societies and editor of Debates on Civilization in Muslim World.

Global Connections builds on the multi-dimensional and continuously expanding interest in globalization, focusing on connectedness and providing accessible, concrete studies across a broad range of areas such as social and cultural life, and economic, political and technological activities. Interdisciplinary in approach, the series moves beyond abstract generalities and stereotypes: Global is considered in the broadest sense of the word, embracing connections between different nations, regions and localities, including activities that are trans-national, and trans-local in scope; connections refers to movements of people, ideas, resources, and all forms of communication as well as the opportunities and constraints faced in making, engaging with, and sometimes resisting globalization.

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit http://www.routledge.com/series/ASHSER1306

Titles in the series include:

Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism

Manuela Boatc

Global Exposure in East Asia

A Comparative Study of Microglobalization

Ming-Chang Tsai

Violence and Gender in the Globalized World

The Intimate and the Extimate, 2nd Edition

Sanja Bahun and V.G. Julie Rajan

Global Culture: Consciousness and Connectivity

Roland Robertson and Didem Buhari-Gulmez

Glocal Pharma

International Brands and the Imagination of Local Masculinity

Ericka Johnson, Ebba Sjgren and Cecilia sberg

The Socio-Political Practice of Human Rights

Between the Universal and the Particular

Kiran Kaur Grewal

The Global Repositioning of Japanese Religions

An integrated approach

Ugo Dess

Edited by

Lutfi Sunar

First published 2016

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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

Sunar, Lutfi.

Eurocentrism at the margins : encounters, critics and going beyond / by Lutfi Sunar.

pages cm. (Global connections)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-6644-0 (hardback : alk. paper)1.Eurocentrism. I.Title.

JZ1251.S86 2016

303.48'24dc23

2015035578

ISBN: 9781472466440 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781315580791 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Apex Covantage, LLC

Lutfi Sunar and Firdevs Bulut

Lutfi Sunar

Mustafa Demirci

Yasir Ylmaz

Syed Farid Alatas

Rigas Arvanitis and Sari Hanafi

Cokun Tatan, Bekir S. Gr and Zafer elik

Hasan Basri Yaln

Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast

smail alar

Defne Karaosmanolu and Kerem Karaosmanolu

Lutfi Sunar is currently an Assistant Professor at Istanbul Universitys Department of Sociology. His major research interests are classical sociological theory, orientalism, modernization, social change, and political economy. He has published various articles in international journals around this field. Among his recent books are Marx and Weber on Oriental Societies (Ashgate, 2014), Trkiyede Toplumsal Deiim (trans. as Social Change in Turkey, Nobel, 2014), and Sosyal Bilimlerde Yeni Eilimler (trans. as New Trends in Social Sciences, Nobel, 2015) and Debates on Civilization in the Muslim World (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Firdevs Bulut is currently a research assistant at the Scientific Studies Association, Istanbul. She is an MA student at Fatih Sultan Mehmet Waqf University, in the Department of Civilizational Studies. Among her research interests are comparative civilizational studies and comparative history of thought.

Mustafa Demirci is a Professor of History at Seluk University and head of the Islamic History Department in the same university. His areas of interest are comparative history of civilization, Islamic civilization, history of Muslims, and Turkish-Islamic history of thought. He has several books, mainly in Turkish, on the history, cities, science, and civilization of Seljuks. He has presented many papers at international and national conferences on the issue of civilization and encounters. He is currently mostly working on periodization of history, and he has a book called