Westernization

About: Westernization is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1154 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15791 citations. The topic is also known as: occidentalization.

Feminism, Anthropology and the Politics of Excision in Mali: Global and Local Debates in a Postcolonial World

Abstract: This article examines the politics and discourses surrounding female circumcision, and explores ethical approaches to its study for feminist anthropologists. First I present an overview of the international debate on these operations, and review the literature on "female genital mutilation." Unfortunately these writings that are meant to help empower African women can "colonize" them (after Mohanty, 1991). Second, the current debates around the practice in Mali are discussed. The issue has become a metonym for politically, ideologically and economically motivated discussions on gender, age, caste, Islam and Westernization. Resume: Cet article explore les discourset les relations de pouvoir qui entourent et sous-tendent les debats sur la circoncision feminine. L'auteure explore des approches ethiques qui pourraient etre adoptees par les anthropologues feministes. Tout d'abord, un survol historique des debats sur la scene internationale est presente, incluant une revue des publications sur les >. Malheureusement ces ecrits qui se veulent liberateurs pour les femmes africaines peuvent avoir comme consequence de les coloniser a nouveau (cf. Mohanty, 1991). Dans une deuxieme pattie l'auteure presente les resultats de ses recherches sur les debats actuels sur l'excision au Mali. Le debat sur l'excision fonctionne comme une metonymie a travers laquelle sont debattue d'autres grandes questions sociales et politiques sur les rapports sociaux entre les sexes et entre les jeunes et les aine-e-s, sur la stratification sociale par castes, et sur les merites compares de l'Islam et de l'occidentalisation.IntroductionFor a feminist anthropologist, there is no comfortable position from which to study female circumcision. The very decision to write (or not) about the topic becomes a political statement, and so is one's choice of tone and terminology. The issue has become a highly sensitive nexus where converge some of the most difficult ethical debates in feminism and anthropology: the issues of cultural relativism, international human rights, difference, ethnocentrism and Western imperialism.This article examines the politics and the different discourses surrounding the issue of female circumcision, and explores ethical approaches to their study for feminist anthropologists. The first part presents an historical overview of the international debate on these operations, sketching the meanings that they have come to carry for feminists, anthropologists and human-rights activists. A review of the literature on "female genital mutilation" illustrates how most anti-circumcision activists dismiss "tradition" and try to inscribe new meanings onto the practices, categorizing them as "violence against women." Yet writings which are meant to help free women from oppression unfortunately have often been seen to "colonize" (after Mohanty, 1991) African and Muslim women. This predicament suggests a role that anthropologists can play in this debate: helping to both contextualize these operations, discussing their local functions and cultural meanings and to understand why efforts to eradicate what are considered by Western feminists to be such offensive, patriarchal practices, are resisted by women themselves.The specific cultural meanings of female circumcision, however, are multiple and changing. The research I recently completed in southern Mali(f.1) was based on an understanding of culture as a complex "network of perspectives," as "an ongoing debate" (Hannerz, 1992: 262). Malian society is one in which ethnicity has always been fluid and where cultural meanings, as well as individuals, have long and extensively crossed group boundaries (cf. Amselle, 1990), particularly in urban areas where I worked. The current debates and discourses on and around excision in Mali that I survey in the second part of this article reveal that this issue has become a metonym for politically, ideologically and economically motivated discussions on gender, age, caste, Islam, Westernization and the role of the state. …

When East Meets West: Decontextualizing the Quality of East European Higher Education

Abstract: This paper discusses the new quality movement in East European higher education. Over the past decade quality assurance agencies have been established in most of the countries in the region. It has been argued that through quality assurance, East European states continue controlling higher education politically. However, a more complex interpretation of the situation may be appropriate. Analysing the post state-socialist quality assurance practices, it is proposed that the relationship between the political power and orthodox academe allows even in the current public policy vacuum using them primarily in one direction, fighting non-traditional institutions, programmes, and teaching methods. While post state-socialist countries present their quality assurance initiatives as a part of the Westernization programme, they stand in strong contrast to the 'fitness for the purpose' mantra applied in Western Europe. However, there have recently emerged signs, for example, the OECD performance indicators project, s...

Constructing Turkey's "Western" Identity during the Cold War: Discourses of the Intellectuals of Statecraft

Abstract: Throughout the republican era, membership in Euro-Atlantic institutions has provided Turkey's policymakers with the opportunity to assert the country's "western" identity. Indeed, Turkey's "westernness" has been expressed, not only through the adoption of ideas and manners from the west (as happened in Ottoman times), but also through joining western institutions, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This is one of the reasons why the US project of promoting democracy in the greater Middle East is received with enthusiasm by some in Ankara. Notwithstanding the concerns of those who worry that taking an active part in this project would undermine the carefully constructed role Islam plays in shaping political processes in Turkey, others seem to consider this scheme an opportunity to entrench Turkey's position within NATO and (re)assert its western identity.1Leaving aside the somewhat paradoxical nature of seeking to assert western identity through posing as a model for the Middle East, what should be emphasized here is the first premise of this article: that state identity in Turkey and elsewhere "is always potentially precarious, it needs constantly to be stabilized or (re)produced."2 It is through the representational practices of state and nonstate actors (including policymakers, scholars, and journalists) that state identity is produced and/or reproduced. Such representational practices include state officials' discourses on a particular foreign policy issue, scholarly writings on lands far away, writings and speeches of policy makers and journalists, geopolitical discourses of myriad actors, and even popular film.'A second premise of the article is that what makes foreign policy (i.e., relations between states) possible is a political practice that makes certain events and actors "foreign," that is, the politics of exclusion and inclusion, processes of constituting particular objects as part of "them" (foreign), and other objects as part of "us." Viewed as such, representational practices constitute a significant component of the process of making something foreign. Foreign policy practices of states, in turn, "reproduce the constitution of identity made possible by [the foreign policy practices of states] and...contain challenges to the identity which results."4 Stated with reference to Turkey's case, representational practices of various actors have constructed Turkey's identity as western as opposed to eastern. After defining itself and others, Turkey's foreign policy has been conducted upon these specific actors. Such diplomatic conduct, in turn, has helped to (re)produce Turkey's western identity and has sustained a pro-western orientation.The significance of NATO membership to Turkey's claim to belong to the west cannot be overemphasized. The efforts of Turkish policymakers to locate Turkey in the west as opposed to non-west can be traced back to the early republican era when westernization became one of the cornerstones of Kemal Ataturk's foreign and domestic policies. In the aftermath of the second World War, this policy was pursued through the search for US assistance (which came in the form of the Truman doctrine in 1947) and its institutionalization in the form of NATO membership. Later still, Turkey began to pursue membership in the European Economic Community, now the European Union, a goal that is still a keystone of the country's foreign policy.Joining NATO in the early Cold War era proved difficult not least because of considerable suspicion regarding Turkey's commitment to western security-a suspicion that was raised by Ankara's decision to remain outside the second World War. Although that decision had served Turkey's purpose at the time, it was not without ramifications for its postwar relations. Writing in 1947, five years before it acceded to the Atlantic alliance, Ambassador Cevat Acikalm sought to offset such suspicions by reminding the readers of International Affairs, the flagship journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, of the country's contribution to the allied war effort:[A]t a moment when the Allies were in great difficulties, Turkey played the role of a temporary shield behind which the Russians and the British were able to use their forces more freely against the aggressors in various theatres of operations. …

Realizing the potential of management and leadership: toward a synthesis of Western and indigenous perspectives in the modernization of non-Western societies

Abstract: This paper analyses the dilemma of developing countries in the non-Western world in their struggle to achieve economic and social development. The dilemma results from two opposing pulls that accompany the urge for modernization: the application of new knowledge and technologyfromtheWest and thepreservation of cultural identity, enduring traditional values, and wisdom that have held the society together over the centuries. The analysis is focused on India where the dilemma and the tensions inherent in the transition arequite pronounced. Thedebateover tradition and Westernization isexamined against the background of India'sexposure toWestern ideasthrough its system of higher education. To realizethepotential of management, a shift is proposed fromthepredominantly centralized, bureaucratic model of educational administration to a managerial-professional model that would synthesize Western and indigenous perspectives. Attempts to discover the ‘Indianness’ of Indian management are reviewed. The concept of lea...