Showing papers on "Westernization published in 1996"

Spread of English and Westernization in Saudi Arabia

Abstract: There is a sense of fear among the Saudis that the use of English entails Westernization, detachment to the country, and a source of corruption to their religious commitment. The present study is an attempt to investigate the validity of such a fear. Moreover, the study aims at examining attitudes of university Saudi students towards the following issues: Westernization; national identity; and religious commitment. An earlier questionnaire developed by the researchers (in press) was used and distributed to 1,176 undergraduate university students representing all universities in KSA. The results of the study reveal that the use of English does not make the participants Westernized, neither their national identity gets weakened, nor their religious commitment becomes corrupted. Learning English is believed to be a religious and a national duty among the Saudis. The study concludes with implications and recommendation to establish a rigid language policy in KSA.

The Westernization of the World: The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive Towards Global Uniformity

Abstract: Preface to the English Edition. Introduction. 1. The Irresistible Rise of the West: The Crusadersa Revenge. 2. Where and What is the West?. 3. Uprooting the Planet. 4. The Limits of World--wide Westernization. 5. Beyond or Elsewhere. 6. Must we Save Babel?. Appendices. Index.

Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change

Abstract: BLExamines the process of Westernization and social change during the 18th and 19th centuries in the Ottoman Empire Using empirical analysis of archival documents and historical chronicles, Gocek questions the prevailing scholarly interpretation that Westernization leads to social change. Rather, she argues that social change precedes and contributes to the process of Westernization.

Megatrends Asia : the eight Asian megatrends that are changing the world

Abstract: While the attention of the West has been fixed on the USSR and Eastern Europe, a quieter, cumulative revolution has been taking place in Asia which may have even more profound consequences for world history. As we move towards 2000, Asia will become the dominant region of the world: economically, politically and culturally. Up until the 1990s, the West set the rules. Now, Asians are creating their own rules and will soon determine the game as well. Even Japan will be left behind as the countries of South East Asia, led by the Overseas Chinese and China, increasingly hold economic sway. In the Asian Renaissance, a new network of nations based on economic symbiosis and the enterprise of the Overseas Chinese is emerging in a global shift of the world's centre of economic and political gravity. The Asian continent, from India to Japan, from below the old Soviet Union down to Indonesia, now accounts for more than half of the world's population. And as many as half a billion will be what the West consider middle class. That market is roughly the size of the United States and Europe combined. This is a consumer miracle holding vast economic consequences. Furthermore, a huge urban shift is moving Asia to the information age as it rushes towards computers and telecommunications. There is an unprecedented increase in women entrepreneurs. Asians believe that not only is the cost of the welfare state a heavy burden on competitiveness, but it is also socially destructive; in Asia, families take care of themselves above all else. This raises central questions for the West, especially for the USA and Europe. The modernization of Asia is best understood not as Westernization, but as the Asianization of Asia as the global axis of influence shifts from West to East. The eight Asian megatrends that are changing the world are: from nation states to networks; from export-led to consumer-driven; from Western influence to the Asian way; from government-controlled to market-driven; from villages to supercities; from labour-intensive to high technology; from male dominance to the emergence of women; and from West to East. John Naisbitt is the author of "Megatrends" and "Global Paradox".

Hegemony and the internationalizing state: A post‐colonial analysis of china's integration into Asian corporatism

Abstract: Gramscian globalists presume that internationalization means external‐ization, modernization, and Westernization, thereby enhancing the world‐hegemony of Western liberal capitalism This paper proposes instead that internationalization mutates the world‐hegemony sometimes into non‐Western, non‐liberal orders of regional‐hegemony As a case study, this paper focuses on China's internationalization into an Asian Corporatist regional‐hegemony in the 1980s‐1990s1

Nationalism: An advocate of, or a barrier to, feminism in South Korea

Abstract: Nationalism was closely linked to issues concerning women's traditional behavioural norms, the status of women, and the emergence of the femininst movement in Korea in the period of Enlightenment and Japanese annexation. Nationalists urged the abolition of the Confucian legacy of sexual discrimination against women to reform society. The struggle for women's emancipation was, thus, an essential and integral part of the national resistance movement against imperialism in Korea. Nationalism and feminism supported each other during the era of Enlightenment and Japanese colonial rule. However, in the 1980s, nationalism functioned in a totally different way. It criticised “westernisation,” advocating support of Korean traditional culture. Feminism was regarded as a western import and, therefore, was suspect to some nationalists. Nationalism could be both an advocate of, and a barrier to, feminism in relation to an evaluation of tradition.

Sephardic Rabbinic Responses to Modernity: Some Central Characteristics

Abstract: One of the major issues of the cultural anthropology of Jewry is to define the details of difference, in social structure and culture, in various Jewish societies. The main categories of societies conceptualized in comparative studies in Jewish societies have mostly been, as in this introductory part of the volume, embarrassingly broad — the dichotomy of Sephardic as against Ashkenazic societies. Also in this introductory section, the chapters so far have mainly explored the major sociological components of differences between clusters of Jewish societies. The contribution of Zvi Zohar, Senior Scholar at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, now thrusts this exploration into the heart of Jewish culture, the legal doings of rabbis. On the base of extensive study of the writings of nineteenth and twentieth century Sephardic sages, he outlines a portrait of the style and content of their religio-legal rulings, which contrast markedly with those of comparable Ashkenazic rabbis. The material on which Zohar bases his conclusions pertains, as he indicates in the title, to the ‘response to modernity.’ Study of the rulings of Sephardic sages of an earlier period, who did not contend with modernity, might have led to a picture not that much different from their Ashkenazic peers. That in fact is the general thesis of this introductory section. But the volume is not devoted exclusively to traditional times, and many of the contributions treat transition to conditions of colonialism, migration and secularism. While Zohar’s work contributes only indirectly to the issue of diversity in traditional Jewish societies, this study illuminates the issue in the context of Westernization.

Multicultural Japan: Indonesia under the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’

Abstract: Introduction In autumn 1991 Emperor Akihito made the first visit by a Japanese emperor to three countries in South-east Asia: Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Although the visit occurred in an atmosphere of tight security precautions, all three countries officially welcomed this epochmaking event as a reflection of their friendly relations with Japan. However, the major Indonesian newspaper Suara Pembaruan marked the occasion with an editorial entitled ‘Wound healed, but scar remains’ – an apt reminder of the three and a half years of the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’, whose memory lingers in the hearts of the peoples of South-east Asia. This chapter aims to elucidate the modern history of Japan in the Asia-Pacific region by analysing Japanese wartime relations with Southeast Asia, and particularly with Indonesia. As an introduction, it may be helpful to survey the process of Japanese identity formation in the context of modern Asian history, and the characteristics of bilateral relations between Japan and Indonesia before the war. Japan in Asia: the Formation of Japan's Self-image The world view of the Japanese before the Meiji era may be represented by the phrase ka-iteki chitsujokan (a world view based on the Chinese model of civilisation and barbarism). In Ka-i tsūshōkō , Nikshikawa Joken, a leading intellectual in the early eighteenth century, divided Asia into two categories; ‘foreign countries’ and ‘outer barbarians’. The former included Korea, the Ryūkyū Islands, Taiwan, Tonkin, Cochin China, which were under the influence of Chinese culture, while the latter included most of South-east Asia except Vietnam.

Consuming modernity: women, food and promotional culture in contemporary Korea

Abstract: The process of modernisation has created tension and confusion in selfidentity in spite of its various new opportunities. This impact of modernity is more intense in a non-western society. Korea is experiencing a unique pattern of the dynamics and dilemmas modernity has presented. Korean women are experiencing clashes between modernity and tradition, capitalism and Confucianism, and Western and Korean cultural values. The gap created from these tensions is widely mediated by the logic of consumerism. This process is clearly revealed in women's values and attitudes towards food and eating. Although rapid economic development and social changes have considerably modified people's eating habits, women's roles and expectations in regard to food and eating are much more ambiguous and confusing than in the past. Korean advertising displays sharp contradictions of these aspects. While advertising reflects and actively reshapes the prevailing images of women, women constantly reconstitute their identities by selecting, rejecting and negotiating with the public messages in their everyday lives. This thesis aims to examine the changing female identities in contemporary Korea in the process of modernisation and Westernisation by exploring the tensions and contradictions in regard to women's values and attitudes towards food and eating, through the examination of the representations of Korean advertising and women's everyday experiences and negotiations.

Ataturkculuk Ve Turkiye'nin Demokratiklesme Sureci

Abstract: Numerous books and articles have been published in English on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk the founder and liberator of Turkey, and his social, political, and economic ideas. However, only a few books have been written and published in the Turkish language by foreign authors. Preston Hughes' Ataturkculuk ve Turkiye'nin Demokratiklesme Sureci (Ataturkism and the Democratization Process in Turkey) is one of them. Hughes was a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) offi-- cer who worked at the Turkish Army Headquarters in Ankara from 1981-85. The book consists of four parts. In the first part, titled "Political Thoughts of Ataturk" Hughes presents a readable summary of Ataturklife and the roots of his political thoughts. Hughes explains that Ataturkwas not only interested in contemporary Turkish writers, such as Ziya Gokalp, Ibrahim Sinasi, and Tevfik Fikret, but he was also influenced by the writings of Western philosophers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Louis de Montesquieu, John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, etc. According to Hughes, as well as others, it was their ideas which made the Turkish revolution possible. Hughes makes an important remark about Ataturk and his political thoughts: "Even though Ataturk was born and lived in a socioeconomic environment in which the dominant ideas were absolutism and theocratism and was not educated in a secular and liberal environment like the American revolutionaries Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, he was able to understand the importance and necessity of popular sovereignty and representative democracy" (p. 64). The second part of the book is titled "From Ataturk to Ataturkism," and explains the birth of Kemalist ideology. Kemalism was a total break with the Ottoman past. It was a new economic, political, and social reform movement. The term "Kemalism" was first used by Western authors. It later became Ataturkculuk (Ataturkism) in Turkish. From the beginning of the Republic in 1923 until Ataturk's death in 1938, the new nation experienced radical changes and reforms. The reforms included (1) abolition of the Sultanate and Caliphate, (2) introduction of the secular state, (3) westernization of the judiciary system, (4) establishment of women's rights, (5) replacement of the Arabic alphabet with a new Latin alphabet, 6) acceptance of Western social and cultural lifestyles, and (7) adoption of Western economic and business standards. After Ataturk established the People's Republican Party in 1930, six principles were accepted and incorporated into the party emblem. These were: republicanism, nationalism, secularization, populism, statism, and reformism. …