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.

The Japanese Experience: A Short History of Japan

Abstract: "The Japanese Experience" is an authoritative history of Japan from the sixth century to the present day. Only a writer of W.G. Beasley's stature could render Japan's complicated past so concisely and elegantly. This is the history of a society and a culture with a distinct sense of itself, one of the few nations never conquered by a foreign power in historic times (until the twentieth century) and the home of the longest-reigning imperial dynasty that still survives. The Japanese have always occupied part or all of the same territory, its borders defined by the sea. They have spoken and written a common language, (once it had taken firm shape in about the tenth century) and their population has been largely homogeneous, little touched by immigration except in very early periods. Yet Japanese society and culture have changed more through time than these statements seem to imply. Developments within Japan have been greatly influenced by ideas and institutions, art and literature, imported from elsewhere. In this work Beasley, a leading authority on Japan and the author of a number of acclaimed works on Japanese history, examines the changing society and culture of Japan and considers what, apart from the land and the people, is specifically Japanese about the history of Japan. The arrival of Buddhism in the sixth century brought a substantially Chinese-style society to Japan, not only in religion but in political institutions, writing system, and the lifestyle of the ruling class. By the eleventh century the Chinese element was waning and the country was entering a long and essentially 'Japanese' feudal period - with two rulers, an emperor and a Shogun - which was to last until the nineteenth century. Under the Togukawa shogunate (1600-1868), Chinese culture enjoyed something of a renaissance, though popular culture owed more to Japanese urban taste and urban wealth. In 1868 the Meiji Restoration brought to power rulers dedicated to the pursuit of national wealth and strength, and Japan became a world power. Although a bid for empire ended in disaster, the years after 1945 saw an economic miracle that brought spectacular wealth to Japan and the Japanese people, as well as the westernization of much of Japanese life.

Kemalism on the Catwalk: The Turkish Hat Law of 1925

Abstract: In Turkey today, the issue of what to wear or not to wear is once more on top of the political agenda. On June 5, 2008, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Turkish Parliament had violated the constitutional principle of secularism by lifting the headscarf ban in universities. This article, however, is concerned with an earlier chapter in the biography of headgear. Considered an important tool by Mustafa Kemal in his attempts to modernize Turkish society, a new dress code was enacted in 1925 that required traditional headgear be replaced by the western hat. In subsequent days, 808 people were arrested for violating the law, 57 of whom were executed. By this legislation of sartorial westernization the individual head became a political site, fusing social and political history in terms of identity construction. The motivations behind, reactions to, and consequences of the Hat Law were recorded in a variety of contemporary sources generated in different social areas. By integrating these images, it is possible to analyze and map the main tendencies of identity formation, a process that went beyond and above a dichotomous Orientalist discourse of East vs. West, revealing lines of conflict that continue to scar the face of modern Turkey.

Forgotten brigade of the forgotten war: Turkey's participation in the Korean War

Abstract: The Korean War has been called America's forgotten war, a vaguely remembered and unpopular police action that took place between the glorious victories of the Second World War and the ignominious defeat of Viet Nam. But if the Korean War occupies only a small place in the popular memory, the role played by Turkey in the war has been almost entirely forgotten. In the United States, few who did not fight in Korea seem to remember the Turks were there at all. This really becomes apparent if you happen to be up at three in the morning watching M*A *S*H reruns hoping to go to sleep. Turkish soldiers rarely figure in the scripts of M*A *S*H, and when they do, their image is ambiguous. It is not entirely clear whose side they are on. Turkey's involvement in the Korean War is not seen by Turks as being a major event in their recent history. A few blocks from the Ankara train station there is a monument to those who died in the Korean War. The monument is unobtrusive, a fact of life, but not a major feature of the landscape. Yet Turkey's participation in the Korean War was a crucial point in recent Turkish history. Indeed, the decision to participate in the Korean War was an important aspect of a re-evaluation of Turkey's place in international politics and economics that emerged at the end of the Second World War. It came along with reconsideration of the meaning of westernization, democracy, civil-military relations, secularization and the role of Islam in society, the role of the state in the economy and state interference in social and cultural affairs. Participation in the war ended nearly 30 years of a policy of non-involvement in international conflicts, while this period laid the foundation of debates within Turkey, not only on domestic but also on foreign affairs, that continue even in the 1990s. This article concentrates on Turkey's participation in the Korean War in terms of three questions: 1. Why did Turkey participate in the Korean War, especially after

East is east, except when it's west: the Easternisation thesis and the Western habitus.

Abstract: An exercise in hermeneutical suspicion, this article engages the extent to which the burgeoning appearance of ostensibly Eastern concepts and practices within everyday late-modern discourse and practice can actually be said to represent a thoroughgoing “Easternization” of Western culture. Using insights from Pierre Bourdieu, this article argues that Eastern themes have been appropriated by successive generations in the West relative to a range of hermeneutical dynamics, most relevant of which are technologized conceptualizations of the self, a depersonalized view of the cosmos, and the metaphorization of the modern cultural field. Holding that appropriated Eastern concepts and practices have been tailored to the contours of the Western habitus, the article concludes that what we have is more of a westernization of eastern themes than an Easternization of the western paradigm. The hermeneutics of suspicion detailed in the article thereby raises doubts concerning the extent to which purportedly eastern-looking “counter cultural” movements such as theosophy, the new age, and contemporary mysticisms/spiritualities actually run “counter” to the Western culture they purport to reject.

The Westernization of a Russian Province: The Case of Novgorod

Abstract: A team of American researchers, headed by a noted Sovietologist specializing in urban affairs, describes and analyzes the Westernization of a Russian oblast of roughly 750,000 population in 1997. T...