Eurocentric Worldview Research Articles

Aníbal Quijano: “Rejecting the Shackles of the Eurocentric Worldview”

Aníbal Quijano: “Rejecting the Shackles of the Eurocentric Worldview”

Women of colour and somatic movement: an emerging narrative

Throughout the 20th century, somatic and dance-making pioneers have given rise to narratives of body. The dominant voice, however, within somatic literature, has historically emphasised a Eurocentric worldview - the legacy of which has left women of colour underrepresented. This article aims to substantiate female voices of colour by addressing what progress has already been made in the academic sphere. Further, this article puts forth a qualitative study examining eight women of colour and their experiences participating in a somatic movement intervention. The design model for this research involved two six-hour somatic workshops comprised of: Authentic Movement, embodied writing, and embodied presence. Methodology includes: Narrative Inquiry, Autoethnography, Practice-Led Research, and Organic inquiry. Findings were examined through thematic analysis and body-based reflection, themes discovered were: “Communality, Home, Solidarity, Sisterhood”, “Ancestry-Ritual Space”, and “Womanhood, Healing”. This research is a contribution to the emerging non-Eurocentric narrative in somatic movement.

The role of the Africentric worldview in the Liberatory process.

As the Black Lives Matter movement brings increasing awareness to systemic racism in American society, the Eurocentric worldview and intellectual racism nonetheless remain prevalent. However, opportunity to engage with Africentric knowledge that could help counter the focus on Eurocentric worldview among adults remains limited in graduate courses. When such opportunities do arise, however, they are powerful and transformative. This paper conducts a case study of four students of African descent enrolled in graduate programs that engaged with Africentric knowledge. The results demonstrate that such experiences can create a powerful Liberatory transformation. The five step Liberatory process is a cognitive awakening and a discussion of the implications for practice and research are presented as well.

(Mis)educating England: eurocentric narratives in secondary school history textbooks

ABSTRACT The shortcomings of the current English secondary school history curriculum have been widely discussed since its inception in 2013. Less widely explored, however, are the narratives underpinning a key classroom resource: textbooks. In this paper, I review nine history textbooks currently in use in schools across the country, drawing on post-colonial theories in order to assess the extent to which the narratives of these textbooks are fundamentally rooted in Eurocentric discourses of superiority. Findings demonstrate that textbooks across the sample draw on outdated tropes when discussing Others in a global and historical context, ultimately reifying notions of ‘Oriental’ barbarism, despotism, and religious fanaticism, ‘African’ servility and submissiveness, and ‘native’ savagery and backwardness, whilst also emphasising ideas around European civility and advanced development. Accordingly, with few exceptions, the ‘master narratives’ of these textbooks wholly conform to the model I identify for Eurocentric worldviews, being (i) totalistic; (ii) oppositional; and (iii) teleological.

“Sharing a Husband”: The Representation of Polygamy in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979)

In approaching the topic of polygamy and how it is discussed in Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood (1979), this article uses two central concepts: firstly, María Lugones's idea of "world travelling," which emphasizes the need to understand the plurality of women's perspectives, enabling the decentering of feminist debates; and secondly, Marilyn Frye's idea of the "loving eye," closely connected to Lugones's concept, which calls for us to see other worlds and see other women from within their worlds—that is, from within their specific sociocultural contexts. Using these two concepts to analyze Emecheta's novel and its representation of polygamy, I argue that polygamy is as valid as monogamy and posit that no useful discussion of polygamy can take place from within a Eurocentric worldview. I also highlight the role of empire more generally in denigrating unfamiliar customs and traditions in various parts of Africa by framing them as illegitimate. This illegitimacy still affects representations and perceptions of polygamy today, as a form of marriage that (it is implied) has no place in a "civilized" world.

Dismantling the master's house: Decolonizing “Rigor” in psychological scholarship

AbstractThe purported goal of social science research is to develop approaches and applications to the psychological study of social issues that allow us to know, accurately and inclusively, the lived experiences of all human beings. However, our current theoretical and methodological tools, while perceived as “objective,” were founded on ahistorical and context‐eliminating perspectives that privilege research designs and analytic strategies that reflect biased racial reasoning with roots in European colonial knowledge formations. By analyzing how the language of “rigor” is deployed within specific instances of social science research, we assert that it is conceptualized and operationalized to maintain a Eurocentric worldview and conception of the “human.” In exploring the ways that the language of “rigor” furthers a European conception of knowledge production as normative, this manuscript provides a critical analysis that seeks to redress ongoing epistemic colonial violence by decolonizing a key term in psychological scholarship.

Unspoken

Unspoken Sara K. Day "Children should be seen and not heard." This old proverb may not be asserted frequently today, but the underlying assumptions—that well-behaved children will be quiet and obedient, that children have more to learn from adults than vice versa, that children must wait for an adult to acknowledge them—continue to shape power dynamics between adults and children in many ways. At the same time, silences surround children in terms of what adults believe should be said to (or written for) them; some topics are considered dangerous; some language is considered inappropriate; some information is considered indoctrination. As we have seen an increasing number of attempts to ban books in schools and libraries across the United States, especially those by and about BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, it is useful to consider the specific ways in which demands that children not speak intersect with ideas about what should not be said to children. This issue opens with Sarah Selden's "Harlem Renaissance or Momentary Aberration?: An Analysis of the Newbery's Progress toward Racial Inclusivity," an examination of two key moments in the history of children's literature's most visible prize. The first moment is 1975, when Virginia Hamilton was the first Black author to win the Newbery, followed two years later by Mildred D. Taylor. The second is forty years later, when in 2015 the prize was awarded to Kwame Alexander, with Jacqueline Woodson being awarded a Newbery Honor. Selden examines both the contexts surrounding these key moments—including, among other elements, the changing make-up of Newbery committees—but also the ways in which Black authors' treatment of race and racism has potentially influenced prizing. In turn, she looks to the lack of critical conversation about most of these texts as a reflection of a larger, often unspoken assumption that they are more useful in elementary school classrooms than literary scholarship. The question of what goes unspoken also affects what messages are embraced in children's literature, especially in times of political discord. Like Selden, Saffyre Falkenberg focuses on a specific chronological moment in her article "All Are Welcome: Picture Books and Liberal Multiculturalism Post Trump." [End Page 131] Using Jodi Melamed's work on liberal multiculturalism and official antiracisms as a framework, Falkenberg examines the ways in which four picture books by white authors published after the 2016 election of former president Donald Trump emphasize diversity and inclusion without working to disrupt oppressive systems. Falkenberg's analysis emphasizes the distinction between attitude and action, especially in terms of the assumption that increasing diverse representation in children's books is enough to make needed changes rather than a starting point that requires further engagement and work. In "'Infinite Others': Mythpunk and Middle-Eastern Folklore in Catherynne M. Valente's Young Adult Novels," Teresa Michals and Fizza Fatima illustrate how Valente attempts to disrupt fantasy conventions that code the racialized Other as evil while uplifting Western figures and values. Comparing Valente's novels to those of C. S. Lewis—whose Narnia series perhaps best encapsulates this tendency to binarize West vs. East, good vs. evil—Michals and Fatima point to the ways in which modern authors can resist the stereotypes and xenophobia in classic children's fantasy literature. In her Fairyland series as well as her novel The Glass Town Games, Valente casts a wide net, drawing on figures and symbols from a variety of traditions and complicating the straightforward binary that so frequently works to uphold Eurocentric worldviews as superior to those from other cultures. "A Girl Verses the World: The Poetics of Asian American Childhood in Thanhha Lai's Inside Out & Back Again" by Stephen Dudas likewise investigates the intersection of cultures—in this case, through the figure of narrator Hà, a young refugee who chronicles her experience as her family flees Vietnam for the United States. Lai's verse novel attends in important ways to the role of speech in Hà's journey, particularly as she grapples with the sounds of the English language and the challenges of navigating her new neighborhood and school; her literal efforts to speak up and speak out are clearly tied to the development of her...

Land Is Life: Indigenous Relationships to Territory and Navigating Settler Colonial Property Regimes in Canada

Respectful and reciprocal relationships with land are at the heart of many Indigenous cultures and societies. Land is also at the core of settler colonialism. Indigenous peoples have not only been dispossessed of land for settler occupation and resource extraction, but the transformation of land into property has created myriad challenges to ongoing struggles of land repatriation and renewal. We introduce several perspectives on land rooted in diverse Indigenous worldviews and contrast them with settler colonial perspectives rooted in Eurocentric worldviews. We then examine several examples in Canada where Indigenous nations attempt to reconnect with their homelands, protect them, and/or engage with them for economic development. We look at land relationships rooted in historical treaties, contemporary comprehensive claims/self-government agreements, the Indian Act, and the defence of unceded territories. The Indigenous communities we look at include the Six Nations of the Grand River, the Nisga’a Lisims Government, the Westbank First Nation, and the Wet’suwet’en. We contend that a complex configuration of settler colonial institutions challenges long-term efforts for Indigenous land reclamation, protection, and sustainable development, however, Indigenous nations remain steadfast in asserting their self-determination in diverse relational ways inside and outside of settler state systems.

Decolonising the Coloniser: Indigenous Education Practices in Mainstream Teacher Education Programmes (TEPs) in Hawaiʻi and Aotearoa

This research project is intent on identifying opportunities for Teacher Education Programs (TEPs) in Hawaiʻi and Aotearoa to further normalise and integrate Indigenous education in mainstream contexts, and to support mainstream kumu/kaiako (educators) to deconstruct Eurocentric worldviews and build a kahua/kapupapa (foundation) in Indigenous knowedge systems (IK). Despite decades of advancement in the Indigenous education space, we are still confronted with a predominantly neo-colonial context for aʻo/ako (teaching and learning) where Indigenous education is viewed as a ‘side dish’ primarily for Indigenous students or as a ‘token’, but not as a kahua/kaupapa for all who reside in Hawaiʻi and Aotearoa. This research will provide critical guidance to transform the education system to support Indigenous resurgence and context and strategies for more effective collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. This presentation will share the process that I, a non-Indigenous researcher, am using to implement an Indigenous Research Paradigm (IRP) incorporating Indigenous and Western traditions including kaupapa Māori, Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) methodologies, and critical pedagogy. Phase 1 of the research will use methods of oral storytelling to gather moʻolelo/kōrero (stories, narratives, history), ʻike/mātauranga (knowledge, wisdom), and manaʻo/whakaaro (opinions, ideas) from Indigenous leaders on: 1) a future vision for mainstream TEPs grounded in IK, and 2) how they see non-Indigenous kumu/kaiako being involved in the decolonization and Indigenization of education spaces. The moʻolelo/kōrero will be analyzed to develop an interview framework for Phase 2 of the research where select mainstream TEPs will be reviewed to determine how Indigenous education is currently presented. This will include interviews of staff and participants and content analysis. The findings will be organized into a guiding framework tailored to a mainstream audience in efforts to ‘decolonize the colonizer’ and advance goals to build authentic bicultural/multicultural models that uplift IK for all.

Bridging the Gap of the Afri-Eurocentric Worldview Divide in a Postcolonial South Africa.

Background: This paper is an attempt to bridge the gap between Africentric and Eurocentric worldviews through the lens of positive psychology’s second wave of attaining pathways to well-being. Methods: The overcoming of existential suffering with indigenous understandings has been addressed through photo-elicitation in retrospective timelines with students Lihile+, Tanaka+, and Diana+, +Pseudonyms to protect identity Thematic analysis with semi-structured virtual interviews has also been utilized to gain insights into Africentric and Eurocentric worldviews. All students come from different contexts of cultural complexity. Lihile was raised by her maternal Xhosa family, with a traditional Sotho father. Tanaka is Shona, born and schooled in Zimbabwe, studying in South Africa. Diana was born in England and is now living in rural KwaZulu-Natal. Findings: Students’ worldviews were shaped by their primary caregivers’ multicultural influences, as well as their exposure to educational and religious contact zones. Despite having to survive the traumatic legacy of social injustices, the students managed to pursue positive goals and transcend challenges and achieve well-being. Conclusions: This study attempted to transcend the divide of Afri–Eurocentric worldviews towards a shared responsibility to develop an improved social science in Africa. Positive psychology offered a space to accommodate well-being as a healing process, not only for the oppressed but also the oppressors of past social injustices.

The Kyoto School’s Wartime Philosophy of a Multipolar World

During the early twentieth century, the Eurocentric worldview was beginning to be challenged, initiating its apparent decentering.1 With the rise of Japan as a non-European power challenging the West by waging what the Japanese called “the Greater East Asia War” (大東亜戦争) (World War II), the Eurocentric worldview, for the first time, came under threat by a non-European power. Japan claimed to fight for Asia’s defense and preservation against the hegemony of Western imperialism in order to establish a new, pluralistic world order of Asian nations.2 During this time, a circle of philosophers, called the Kyoto School (京都学派),3 felt it their duty to philosophically contribute to what they believed to be the unfolding of a new world order.

Critiquing the Canadian Model of Client-Centered Enablement (CMCE) for Indigenous Contexts.

Background. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada outlines the need for health care professionals to create more welcoming spaces for Indigenous Peoples. The scope of occupational therapy is continually expanding—yet the profession itself is grounded in and derived from a dominant Eurocentric worldview, and practice is designed to serve a homogenous Western populace. Purpose. To critically examine the Canadian Model of Client-Centered Enablement (CMCE) for its value within Indigenous contexts. Key Issues. The CMCE is positioned as a client-centered model, however there is a clear hierarchical client-professional relationship threaded throughout. Concepts such as enable, advocate, educate, coach, and coordinate demonstrate paternalistic authority, lacking reciprocity, knowledge-sharing, and power redistribution. Implications. Reimagining health care relationships as entrenched in social interconnectedness demands critical reflection and action. A model of practice that endorses social change and actively addresses colonial power inequities must root its paradigmatic foundations in postcolonial views of health care as a social relationship.

Hindistan’daki İngiliz Kulüpleri ve Millî/Emperyalist Kimliğin Pekiştirilmesi: Tom Stoppard’ın Indian Ink Adlı Oyunu

Throughout the British Raj, British colonisers built many clubs in India. These clubs functioned as socialising areas for the British where they met, danced, listened to music, played polo/cricket, read newspapers and magazines, and held conversa-tions. They were also race-selective; they accepted particularly the British (and some of them accepted Europeans, as well) as members or guests, and excluded indigenous Indians. Moreover, they had been instruments for the British to enforce their national and imperial identities in India. In this sense, the British club in India was a microcosm of Britain, the representation of the British Empire’s ideologies and a symbol of racism. British colonisation in India, power relations and hegemonic struggles between the coloniser and the colonised in this colony had been significant issues that have attracted the attentions of many literary and historical figures, and have been topics for many literary works. Within the light of these points, and in relation to Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, this article aims to discuss the function of the British club in India as an imperial institution that reflects the Eurocentric worldview, East-West dichotomy, and British national and imperial ideologies during the British Raj.

Islamic and local knowledge on social work in Malaysia and Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Professional social work emerged on the basis of secular and Eurocentric worldview in the West in the late 19th century. As emerging nations in the 1940s, Asian Muslims were not spared being colonized in ways more than just physical presence by foreign powers. This article describes briefly how professional social work entered Malaysia and Bangladesh. The focus is to show how Western-based social work knowledge influenced the respective curriculums in the two mentioned countries. Muslims, in terms of knowledge and their religion of Islam have not made an imprint on the body of knowledge in social work. With the current ongoing discourses on the definition of social work, this article presents how Islam and local knowledge can play a mainstream role in questioning the colonial assumptions inherent in much accepted social work knowledge. While there are similarities between Western and Islamic values in reference to helping, there are also differences in which the latter is more suitable for the local population. Therefore, this article is also an initiative to start a dialog and a determined effort toward putting Islamic and local knowledge as a part of social work curricula and practice in Malaysia and Bangladesh.

Reciprocal Mentorship as Trans-Systemic Knowledge: A Story of an Indigenous Student and a Non-Indigenous Academic Supervisor Navigating Graduate Research in a Canadian University


 Reciprocal mentorship is how Indigenous students and non-Indigenous supervisors can supportively navigate their way through graduate research in higher education. Reciprocal mentorship as trans-systemic knowledge values both Indigenous and Eurocentric worldviews, whereby the student has the expertise from Indigenous community and the academic supervisor has the expertise in the academic world. Through sharing stories of their research journey within a Canadian University, Webster and Bishop offer key insights around engaging in reciprocal mentorship, navigating the two-worlds, finding a common language, and having shared values. As a result, Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and supervisors may see themselves within the stories and seek reciprocal mentorship to be successful in the academic research and educational journey and make an impact in their university and beyond.

Confronting the contradictions between Western and Indigenous science: a critical perspective onTwo-Eyed Seeing

In the mid-2000s, the term Two-Eyed Seeing was introduced by Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall to suggest the complementarity of Western and Indigenous sciences. The concept has since been adopted and applied in a diverse range of research. This article examines the latent tension in Two-Eyed Seeing between a desire to foster dialogue—in order, ideally, to generate a trans-cultural “third space” of understanding—and the denial or suppression of major contradictions between predominantly wholistic Indigenous and predominantly reductionist Eurocentric worldviews. Examples are considered of both fruitful Two-Eyed Seeing collaborations and areas where antithetical approaches cannot be combined, for reasons that a more critical application of the Two-Eyed Seeing concept could help make clear. Conversely, revisioned in this way, Two-Eyed Seeing can deepen appreciation of those areas of Western science, such as the delicate empiricism of Goethean science, authentically resonant with Indigenous approaches.

Turbante e identidade negra: uma análise pela semiótica discursiva aplicada a um post do Facebook

O presente artigo teve como objetivo compreender a participação do vestuário na construção da identidade negra/africana na contemporaneidade. Para tal, utilizamos a semiótica discursiva, que foi aplicada a um post do Facebook de uma mulher negra, no qual ela usava o turbante e falava sobre ele. A análise efetuada nos permitiu compreender que o uso do turbante implica uma questão identitária, na qual a construção da identidade negra/africana se dá numa oposição à identidade branca/europeia, e ocorre dentro de uma narrativa em que, no presente, repete-se performaticamente uma prática vestimentária considerada originada pela ancestralidade africana. O uso do turbante apresenta-se, no post, como uma forma de conceder uma valorização eufórica à identidade negra/africana. De modo geral, o discurso constrói um tema de libertação, pois o uso do turbante enquanto algo eufórico se manifesta como uma maneira de se libertar do padrão de beleza e da visão de mundo eurocêntrica que constrói o turbante como símbolo do outro e manipula os negros e negras a erradicarem-no do uso cotidiano em prol de uma tentativa de entrar em conjunção com a alteridade branca/europeia.

VATSONGA PEOPLE’S PERCEPTIONS OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS

This article is based on the findings of a qualitative study that explored the Vatsonga people’s perceptions of children’s rights to protection. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 community-based participants and 11child protection social workers who were familiar with the Vatsonga people's cultural heritage. Key informant and snowball sampling techniques were employed to select the community-based participants and availability sampling for selecting the social work participants. The study established that the Vatsonga people recognise the provision, protection and participation rights of children. Child participation is perceived as comprised of childhood responsibilities, not the right to be heard perse. The paper argues that some of the purported violations of child rights in Africa emanate from the universal application of a Eurocentric worldview of children’s rights. We conclude that to understand child rights in Africa, African people should be allowed to contribute to the construction of an indigenised and contextualised perspective on child rights.

Beyond Onto-theology and Metaphysics: the Cases of Heidegger and Nietzsche

AbstractTwo recent works will be considered that discuss Heidegger and Nietzsche in the context of the problem of overcoming metaphysics and the onto-theological tradition. A common criticism will be that these works in their attempt to retrieve a conception of religion, politics or faith beyond onto-theology and metaphysics tend to justify or idealize particular historically and culturally conditioned perspectives, which are not immune from further philosophical critique. Simon Oliai’s approach to countering the burgeoning fundamentalisms in our global age is ultimately not very convincing, representing as it does, a Western, liberal, Eurocentric worldview. The author’s use of Nietzsche or Heidegger for this purpose is also not very compelling. The remainder of this review essay appraises the volume edited by Cimino and van der Heiden, which attempts to rethink faith beyond onto-theology in several interesting ways. Although meant to be a comparative study, several contributions subscribe to a general Heideggerian (or Heidegger-inspired phenomenological-hermeneutical) theoretical framework, which itself is not rigorously scrutinized. A problematic implication is that Nietzsche’s own critical and constructive views of philosophy, his critique of religion and history, and his positive appraisal of faith and divinity are not seriously considered on their own terms: they are either mostly ignored, or they are selectively interpreted through a Heideggerian lens, with the result that this volume puts forward a mostly unfavorable view of Nietzsche. Some of the conceptual moves credited to Heidegger in the volume have their equivalents in Nietzsche’s philosophy, which a comparative and evaluative study such as this one must seriously take into account by resisting the uncritical acceptance of Heidegger’s own view of Nietzsche.

What’s There to Mourn? Decolonial Reflections on (the End of) Liberal Humanitarianism

This paper questions the extent to which the (arguable) end of the liberal humanitarian order is something to be mourned. Suggesting that current laments for the decline of humanitarianism reflect a Eurocentric worldview, it calls for a fundamental revision of the assumptions informing humanitarian scholarship. Decoloniality and anti-colonialism should be taken seriously so as to not reproduce the same by a different name after the end of the liberal order.