The Idea of the West: Politics, Culture and History

ISBN-13: 9781403900357 / Angielski / Miękka / 2004 / 201 str.

Alastair Bonnett

Opis

This book provides a clear, topical and wide-ranging introduction to the idea of "the West." It engages with both Western and non-Western representations and demonstrates that "the West" is not merely a Western idea, but something that many people around the world have long been creating, stereotyping and deploying. Bonnett offers an accessible but provocative portrait of the ambiguities and diverse connotations of "the West," teasing out questions of race, politics and power from the late nineteenth-century to the present day.

Spis treści

INTRODUCTION.- The West: Ancient and Modern.- Knowing the West.- Geography and the World.- Chapters in a Global History.- FROM WHITE TO WESTERN: 'RACIAL DECLINE' AND THE IDEA OF THE WEST IN BRITAIN, 1890-1930.- Introduction.- White Decay.- The West's West: Beginnings.- The Western Path Out of White Crisis.- Conclusions.- COMMUNISTS LIKE US: THE IDEA OF THE WEST IN THE SOVIET UNION.- Introduction.- The West Versus Communism.- Russia's West.- The Revolutionary West.- The Western Enemy.- The 'Kidnapped West' and Russia's 'Return'.- Conclusions.- GOOD-BYE ASIA: THE WESTERNISERS WEST, FUKUZAWA AND GOKALP.- Introduction.- The Uses of the West.- Fukuzawa Yukichi: Occidentalism and Nationalism in Japan.- Ziya Gokalp: Finding Turkey, Inventing the West.- Conclusions.- SOULLESS OCCIDENT.- SPIRITUAL ASIA: TAGORE'S WEST.- Introduction.- Asia is One: The West as Spiritual Void.- Who Wants to be Asian?: The Failure of Tagore's Mission to the East.- Asian Spirituality: Transcending the West.- Conclusions: Tagore and Modernity.- FROM SOULLESS TO SLACKER: THE IDEA OF THE WEST FROM PAN-ASIANISM TO ASIAN VALUES.- Introduction: Forget Tagore.- Pan-Asianism: Eastern Redemption, Western Nationalism.- The Slacker West and Asian Values.- Conclusions.- OCCIDENTAL UTOPIA:THE NEO-LIBERAL WEST.- Introduction.- Social Democracy: The Unproclaimed West.- Westernisation: Victory in Defeat.- Neo-liberal Democracy: Western Triumph and Western Blue-print.- Conclusions: The Vulnerability of the Neo-liberal Model.- WESTERN DYSTOPIA: RADICAL ISLAMISM AND ANTI-WESTERNISM.- Introduction.- The Clash of Utopias?.- The Islamisation of Anti-Westernism.- Conclusions: Islamism and Neo-liberal Globalisation.- Conclusion.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.

O autorze

ALASTAIR BONNETT is Professor of Social Geography at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is author of four books, including Anti-Racism (Routledge, 2000) and White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives (Pearson Education 2000). He has contributed papers to Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Historical Sociology, Sociology, New Community and many other leading journals. He has also written for History Today, The New Internationalist, The Scotsman, the Observer and New Statesman.

Blurb

The West is on everyone's lips: it is defended, celebrated, hated. But how and why did it emerge? And whose idea is it? This book is about representations of the West. Drawing on sources from across the world - from Russia to Japan, Iran to Britain - it argues that the West is not merely a Western idea but something that many people around the world have long been creating and stereotyping. The Idea of the West looks at how the great political and ethnic forces of the last century defined themselves in relation to the West, addresses how Soviet communism, 'Asian spirituality', 'Asian values' and radical Islamism used and deployed images of the West. Both topical and wide-ranging, it offers an accessible but provocative portrait of a fascinating subject and it charts the complex relationship between whiteness and the West.