Westernization - Southeast Asia - Approaching Westernization In Eurasian History, The Structure Of Westernization In Southeast Asian History, Shaping Westernization In Southeast Asian Studies
societies world transmission european
Westernization in world history can refer to the transmission and reception of European ideas, technology, lifestyles, and institutions throughout the globe. Much of the scholarly attention has tended to concentrate on the intensity and nature of that transmission during the era of European colonialism and its attempts to transform the very consciousness of the peoples it encountered. Although the modes of transfer, the locales of interaction, and the intellectual capital are no longer the sole domain of Europe, the nature of Westernization continues to be relevant as local traditions become more integrated (or subsumed) within supposed "universal" values. Societies that are unable to cope with the blistering pace of technological change, the fluctuations of an interdependent world economy, or the insensitivity of an "international" community often find fault with "Westernization," which is associated with these uncontrollable and unfamiliar pressures on local societies. As a result, the idea of Westernization continues to be a part of twenty-first-century historical discourse, framing the ways in which scholars examine the interactions among cultures, regions, and nations.
Additional Topics
Contemporary ideas of what constitutes "Western culture" reflect its postcolonial origins and twentieth-century politics, just as the idea of the "West" may have had slightly different meanings between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the history of Southeast Asia, Europeans had competing ideas about the cultural values they represented and were attempting to …
Most scholars have approached the structure of Westernization in Southeast Asia as a process that has developed over stages and varying intensities according to location, internal receptiveness, and the circumstances in which the encounter took place. One of the most important mechanisms contributing to the transmission of Western culture to the region was trade. In this context, trade consists of…
Scholarship has addressed the concept of Westernization in Southeast Asia indirectly through alternative themes and interests. That the early histories of Southeast Asia by colonial officials were actually the history of Westerners in Asia and their perspective on the region's culture reveals something about the idea of Westernization. As many early accounts describing this process were inv…
Cooper, Frederick, and Ann Laura Stoler, eds. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. Dirks, Nicholas B., ed. Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. Lieberman, Victor. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, Vol. 1: Integration on the Mainland. New Y…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments