Michael:
I am tense, as you may have noticed though I try to hide it...
Sorry about giving you aggravation. And sorry about the crtuches.
"James M. Blaut" wrote:
> EITHER europe was more advanced, more progressive,
> more graced with environmental qualities, etc., than the rest of the
world,
> OR it was not. You cannot have it both ways. It would be like being half
> pregnant.
I was asking something different. Can't you have two different societies
each
with the near possibility of becoming capitalist, where relatively small
accidents can determine which actually becomes capitalist -- without
attributing some special qualities to the Europeans."
YES, YES, YES! You're right. People castigate my theory by saying "he's
calling it just an accident!" To a geographer, geography doesn't seem like
an accident, but that aside, in terms of cultural evolution per se,
something external to culture that impinges on culture, like a matter of
distance and sailing conditions, can readily be thought of accidental. So
what you're saying makes sense to me.
"
"I do not deny that you might be correct in some of your rejections of my
suggestions -- I do not pretend to be an expert in that area."
Who's an expewrt?. I'm a geographer, who worked for many years on peasant
agriculture and works pert=time on environmental cognition in prerschool
children, and then works part time on world history. A lot of time put into
it but I''m hardly an expert. Lets talk about this sometime.
"Then you wrote:
this, you'll forgive me for saying, is bullshit. Eurocentrism -- as the
term is now universally used -- is one or both of the followuing two
things: prejudice, ignorance. It is the false attribution of positive
qualities to Europe at whatever period down to the present, or denial of
thesee qualities to non-Europe. It is ugly and dangerous and is not always
distinguishable from racism. "Thirdworldism" is a term that was invented by
Brenner or his confreres simply as a curse word. They mean by it anyone who
refuses to acknowledge the superiority or priority of Europe in history and
anyone who claims that in the present the workers and peasants of the
non-European world -- make a difference in the struggle for socialism.
Some of us who fight against Eurocentrism will on occasion call ourselves
thirdworldists to throw the term backin the face of those who sneer at
Third World sturggles.
"Look Jim. I agree that Thirdworldism is a curseword, but the way you
define
Eurcentrism also sounds like a curse word for people. As you know, I am
trying
to calm things down."
But you said: "Third Worldism and Eurocentrism seem to be hollow slogans
bandied about to bludgeon those with whom we disagree."
Eurocentrism is not a hollow slogan. It is very serious issue in most
social sciences and humanities and the fact that a critique of eurocentrism
is vitally needed is not controversial although everyone disagrees about
what particular doctrines are Euroencric and not emirically valid. I
overreated to your wording which seemed to suggest (which it apparently
didn't) that eurocentrism is jutst a theoretical point of view like others,
such as "thirdworldism. But today there is a huge cross-disciplinary
critique of eurocentrism: Edward Said, Eric Wolf, Sa mir Amin, Jack Gloody,
Gunder Frank, Janet Abu-Lughod, many, many others. It is quite simply a
campaign to elimnate those false beliefs from science and the humanities
which wrongly elevate Europe. Michael, not very many people in history,
geography, sociplogy, many other fields disagree with the need to get rid
of Eurocentrism -- which by definition is false and bad science -- nor is
there much confusion about what it is. And there is agreement that much it
is inherited beliefs that many scholars accept without knowing that the
validation of a particular Eurocentric belief originaslly lay in prejudice
(or racism), not in evidence. Given this, I must tell you I was dismayed to
get the kinds of reactions I did from progressive economnists. Howe can
they be ignorant of this fact and call it thirdworldism., a cult, a
laughable ideosycra
Anyway, looking forward to seeing you.
Cheers, Jim
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
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