Eurocentrism

Definitions of Eurocentrism

There are three interrelated definitions of Eurocentrism. However, it is the third and last definition that reflects by far the most common usage of the term.

Definition 1. In Britain, a Eurocentric or Eurocentrist is a person who supports European integration or the concept or workings of the European Union. The opposite of a Eurocentric is a Eurosceptic.

Definition 2. The term Eurocentrism is sometimes used to convey the perspective of North Americans (the United States and Canada) and may occasionally be defined as the viewpoint of North Americans of European origin. Some scholars have begun using the specific term Euro-Americocentrism or simply Americocentrism in this context.

Definition 3. Eurocentrism is a view of the world from a perspective that places Europe and its cultures, concerns, and sociopolitical attitudes at the center of the world. This may be done consciously or subconsciously, but it is always to the detriment of non-Europeans. It can be argued that true Eurocentrism has existed only since World War II and the development of first the European Economic Community (EEC) in Western Europe, followed by the European Union (EU), which has been expanded by the accession of the former Eastern European states. The same argument suggests that prior to World War II there were only national policies and national centrisms.

Since the 16th century there has been a growing socioeconomic and political hegemony of European nations (principally, in chronological order, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Italy, and Germany) over large areas of the world. This status has led to Western European thought permeating many disciplines.

Perhaps the most common form of Eurocentrism is the division of the Eurasian landmass into the “continents” of Europe and Asia at the Ural Mountains—although there is no objective basis for this separation. Indeed, this long-accepted division was the invention of Vasilli Tatischev, an 18th-century geographer for Peter the Great, who used it as part of the Russian elite's attempt to differentiate Europe from Asia as meaningful entities. By this definition, Europe becomes the only “continent” or major world cultural region that is not separated by water from other so-called continents (although what exactly constitutes a continent is arguable).

In the same vein, within cartography, the Mercator projection distorts the equatorial regions and exaggerates the sizes of polar regions. This projection gives the impression that European nations are larger in areal size (and therefore more important) than countries located nearer the equator.

Toponyms or place names also show a particularly strong Eurocentric resilience. For example, the use of the term Middle East (French: Moyen Orient) is acceptable only if one assumes that the user of the term is located to the west of this region. Such a term makes the Far East (French: L'extrême-Orient) another Eurocentric toponym; a region is in the Far East only if one is located in the “West.” In contrast, Arab geography divides Western Asia into distinct geographical and cultural areas and has never viewed the entire region as a culturally homogeneous region. Within political geography, the application of the terms the West or the Western world is Eurocentric in that they imply a certain political and cultural territorial construct rather than the physical reality. The chronologically and spatially fluid terms the West and the Western world are often perceived as referring to North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

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