How has the West represented the non-West, and what are the political implications of such representations?

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How has the West represented the non-West, and what are the political implications of such representations?

The hegemonic control exerted by the West over the non-West has, for hundreds of years, provided the opportunity for the writing of literature, studies and reports about these foreign lands. Controlling what is included in media representation and academic studies, both directly and indirectly, allows governments to exert power over the populations of both the developing countries they remotely rule and their own country. As a result, I believe that most representations of the non-West tend to be inaccurate, unfavourable accounts in turn producing negative political implications for those non-West countries that allow power to be gained and maintained by the West.

Edward Said first defined the idea of Orientalism – “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’” – in 1978. (Said 2003, p. 2) He argued that the West used Orientalism as a political tool (e.g., to justify colonialism) and to define themselves by attributing polarisation to the Orient. As a result, he argues they had created false perceptions of the culture and thought within the Oriental, and specifically the Arabic, world. (ibid, p.203) These ideas can be applied to areas outside of the Arabic world, and I believe apply to the three examples I will be discussing in this essay: the representation and treatment of India during colonial times; the causes of the dependency of African countries on the West today, brought about by exploitation; and the effect on Arabs of recent representation of the ‘global threat of Islam’. In each of these I will describe how they have been represented, and explore the implications of these portrayals.

To identify the implications of such representation it is necessary to study the consequences of these ideas and stereotypes. Representation is, by definition, biased, and the conscious manipulation of opinion through propaganda or other means is a crucial factor in the process of gaining power. I believe that the West used each of these situations for aggrandisement, by exploiting and extracting land, labour or resources. The result of this is the perpetuation of the current balance of power – the West maintains the economic and political power, and thus the control of the dominant discourse Thus, they also retain the ability to represent the non-West in a way most beneficial to them, while the non-West nations remain marginalized and powerless. (Wallerstein in Seligson and Passe-Smith 1998, p.290)

The context of these representations is important to the overall understanding of the situation, so I will begin by discussing the historical roots of the anthropological discipline involved in the study and presentation of information about other cultures, before describing the misrepresentation of the three cultures detailed above and the political implications resulting from this. Examples of these political implications include: racism, and the idea of White supremacy; an economic relationship of dependency between the West and non-West; and the gulf created between “Christian” and “Islamic” nations, emphasised of late after cases of Islamic extremism such as 9/11. Public feeling expresses fear of the “global threat of Islam”: some would argue that Western governments, through the media, exaggerated this fear, in order to rally support for the War on Terror.

Since the Middle AgesFor the best part of 300 years, Britain, and subsequently the United States of America, have considered themselves to be superior to other races, especially those composed of people of colour. Kipling’s writings of his time in India – describing the “White Man’s Burden” - are characteristic of the opinion in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (Said 2003, p. 226) The expansion of the British Empire in the 19th century meant lands were being colonised in Africa, India and the Middle East, and reports were made of primitive, illiterate people. Missionaries travelled to the area in an attempt to convert the people to Christianity, and educate them in modern, British culture. The British government sent anthropologists to the colonies to study the tribes and produce ethnographies, with the theory that the more they knew about these people, the easier it would be to rule them. (Padel in Grove et al 1998, p. 903) Their conclusions – based on phenotypic characteristics such as head size and skin colour – suggested that these “savage” people were incapable of ruling themselves, and it was the duty of the Englishman to civilise them and bring order to their lives. (ibid, p. 894) The Europeans therefore set about transforming their non-European subjects into a life with a more ‘modern’ direction. (Asad 1991, p. 314)

By the 20th century the discipline became institutionalised and anthropologists studied geographically specific areas of which they gained great expertise. (Trouillot 2003, p. 118) However, the anthropological reports produced at this time were mainly the work of “arm-chair anthropologists”, whose experience of the area they were studying was limited to very structured interviews and thus were reliant on sources from missionaries, merchants, and other travellers. Their views were therefore shaped by current public opinion – namely, that their lack of technology proved them ‘savages’, inferior intellectually; that their lack of Christianity meant they were heathens and that their government structure demonstrated irrationality. Not until Bronislaw Malinowski’s work into participant observation did it become normal to live with tribes, learn their languages and observe their customs in order to understand the culture that differed so greatly from the West’s. This allows fairer representation of the non-West, as studies were not undertaken in direct comparison with Western society.

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In the aftermath of World War II, Anthropology became more dependent on fieldwork, and arguably “fairer” to the people it studied. Yet it was not until the 1960s and 1970s, as Western society became more ‘media savvy’ and communications developed, that news programmes became more immediate and average people became more politically aware. Conflicts such as Vietnam and the Gulf War highlighted the suffering of the people who bore the brunt of US imperial ambitions (Trouillot 2003, p.119), associated with anthropological studies. By the 1980s and 1990s fieldwork techniques were being criticised for their limitations – studying small communities ...

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