The Gaze of The West and Framings of The East by Shanta Nair-Venugopal (Eds.)

The Gaze of the West and Framings of the East
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SECRECY AND SAPPHIC MODERNISM
Writing Romans à Clef Between the Wars
Shanta Nair-Venugopal (editor)
THE GAZE OF THE WEST AND FRAMINGS OF THE EAST
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The Gaze of the West and
Framings of the East
Edited by
Shanta Nair-Venugopal
Institute of Occidental Studies,
National University of Malaysia/ Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Selection and editorial matter © Shanta Nair-Venugopal 2012
Individual chapters © their respective authors 2012
Foreword © Alastair Bonnett 2012
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-30292-1
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Contents
List of Photographs vii

Acknowledgements viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Foreword xiv
Part I Sighting the Terrain

1 Introduction 3
Part II Negotiating Territory
2 Defining Parameters 29
3 Beyond Boundedness: Imagining the Post-colonial Dislocation 45
Ahmad Murad Merican
4 Easternization: Encroachments in the West 60
Shanta Nair-Venugopal and Lim Kim Hui
Part III The Gaze of the West
5 Representations of Philosophy: The Western Gaze Observed 79
Ahmad Murad Merican
6 Framings of the East: Rebranding Beliefs and Religions 93
Lim Kim Hui
7 When Knowledge Invents Boundaries: From Colonial
Knowledge to Multiculturalism 107
Shamsul A.B.
8 Historical Narratives of the Colonized: The Noble
Savage of Sarawak 123
Bromeley Philip
9 The Mutual Gaze: Japan, the West and Management Training 139
Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini and Hiromasa Tanaka
10 Indian Collectivism Revisited: Unpacking the Western Gaze 156
Shamala Paramasivam and Shanta Nair-Venugopal
11 Framings of the East: The Case of Borneo and
the Rungus Community 170
Ong Puay Liu
v
vi Contents
12 Interpreting Mosque Architecture in the Twentieth Century:

Trapped between Two Worlds 184
Mohamad Tajuddin Mohamad Rasdi
13 Global Hybrids? ‘Eastern Traditions’ of Health and Wellness
in the West 202
Suzanne Newcombe
14 The Sociology of Gastronomic Decolonization 218
Jean-Pierre Poulain
Part IV Observations
15 Conclusion 235
Index 251
List of Photographs
1 Kampung Laut Mosque, Kelantan, circa seventeenth century 190

2 Kampung Tuan Mosque, Terengganu, 1830 190
3 Papan mosque, Perak, 1888 191
4 Kampung Hulu Mosque, Melaka, 1728 192
5 Kampong Keling Mosque, Melaka, 1748 193
6 Jamek Mosque, Kuala Lumpur, 1909 194
7 The National Mosque or Masjid Negara, Kuala Lumpur, 1965 195
8 Putra Mosque, Putrajaya, 1999 197
9 Shah Alam Mosque, Selangor, 1988 197
10 Al-Azim State Mosque, Melaka, 1984 198
vii
Acknowledgements
This book owes as much to its contributors as it does to a University

Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) research grant that funded it as a project. The
grant enabled contributors to Part III of the volume to present their chapters
as work in progress to a select group of discussants and commentators at the
symposium, The Gaze of the West: Framings of the East, held in UKM from
19–20 August, 2009.
I am indebted to Phillipa Grand from Palgrave who believed enough in
the project to move it forward as a publication, and I thank Andrew James
for keeping a close watch over my engagement with it. My very grateful
thanks are due to Francesca White for ensuring the consistent quality of
the text.
I am also grateful to the independent reader of Chapter 1 and the review-
ers of Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of Part IV of the volume, and the discussants and
commentators for their feedback on Chapters 5–14 of Part III, which were
presented at the symposium held in 2009. I wish to thank in particular the
late Lim Chee Seng, who is sadly missed.
I have been fully supported in this project by the Institute of Occidental
Studies (IKON), UKM, which provided the impetus for it. Commonly
referred to by its Malay acronym of IKON (Institut Kajian Oksidental), the
Institute is carving a niche for itself in studies on peace and security, inter-
national relations, history and political economy, gender, and language and
intercultural communication. This volume was conceived to support the
aim of producing original work in Occidental Studies as the Institute’s field
of discourse.
Each and every one of the contributors, friends and colleagues, deserve
my unreserved thanks. I learnt from all and I remain grateful to all especially
Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini and Lim Kim Hui who went beyond the call of
contributing to this volume. Thanks again.
viii
Notes on Contributors
Shanta Nair-Venugopal is Professor and Principal Fellow at the Institute of

Occidental Studies (IKON) at the National University of Malaysia/Universiti
Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). She was previously a full professor in the School
of Language Studies and Linguistics, UKM, where she taught and examined at
the undergraduate and graduate levels for more than 30 years. She obtained
her PhD from the Centre for Language and Communication Research,
University of Wales, Cardiff. Author of Language Choice and Communication
in Malaysian Business (selected for a launch to commemorate 30 years of
UKM’s establishment in 2000), two edited books, book chapters, reviews
and articles in a range of international journals, she sits on the editorial
boards of Language and Intercultural Communication, Journal of International
Communication, Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, English for Specific
Purposes Across Cultures and is Honoured Regional Advisor to the Asian EFL
Journal. Her current research interests are mainly interdisciplinary with regard
to Occidental studies and the discourse of language and intercultural com-
munication in local and global contexts.
Ahmad Murad Merican is Professor of Humanities at the Department of
Management and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP), Bandar
Seri Iskandar, Tronoh, Perak. He obtained his PhD in History and Philosophy
of Science from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are history of
social science, Malay intellectual history and journalism and media studies,
and he has published books and monographs including Media History: World
Views and Communication Futures (2005), journal articles and book chapters
in these areas of interest. Prior to his present position at UTP, he was
teaching at the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, Universiti
Teknologi MARA (UiTM), was founding fellow of the Institute of Knowledge
Advancement and founding chairman of the Centre for Intellectual History
and Malay Thought, UiTM and is working on Malay Occidental discourses
of the West. He is co-author of the proposal for a Malaysian Media Council.
Ahmad Murad sits on a number of editorial boards of journals, and also on
the Armenian-Acheen Street Conservation Committee of Penang.
Lim Kim Hui was born in the state of Kedah, Malaysia and obtained
a Bachelor of Arts Degree with distinction in Creative and Descriptive
Writing (Media Studies now) from University of Malaya in 1988. In 1994
he received his MA from University of Malaya, specializing in Informal
Logic/Critical Thinking. In 2002, he completed his PhD at the University
of Hamburg, Germany under the full scholarship of Deutscher Akademischer
ix
x Notes on Contributors
Austausch Dienst (DAAD). His PhD thesis, entitled Budi as the Malay Mind:
A Philosophical Study of Malay Ways of Reasoning and Emotion in Peribahasa,
was awarded Preis der Deustch-Malaysischen Gesellschaft (2003) by the
German-Malaysian Society for his contribution in promoting a better under-
standing between Germany and Malaysia. Lim has published books, namely
Kembara Fikir di Tanah Senja (2007, anthology of poems), Globalisasi, Media
dan Budaya: Antara Hegemoni Barat dengan Kebangkitan Asia (co-authored
with Har Wai Mun, 2007), Pemikiran Retorik Barat: Sebuah Pengantar Sejarah
(2007) and Seni Pemikiran Kritis: Suatu Pendekatan Logik Tak Formal (2009). He
worked as a lecturer and research fellow at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
from 1994 to 2010. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of
Malay-Indonesian, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea.
Shamsul A.B. is Professor of Social Anthropology and Founding Director,

Institute of Ethnic Studies (KITA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM),
Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia. He has researched, written and lectured exten-
sively, over the last 25 years, on the themes of politics, culture and economic
development with a focus on Malaysia and the South East Asian region. His
award-winning monograph From British to Bumiputera Rule (1986, reprinted
1990, 2nd edition 2004) is a study on the phenomenology of class and
ethnic relations in a Malaysian rural community. His academic activism
takes many forms: conferences and lecture tours in Asia, Europe, North
and South America and Oceania; public policy formulation in Malaysian
higher education; museum re-conceptualization projects; political analysis
on Malaysia current affairs in the local and international media (Channel
News Asia, Al-Jazeera, Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC). In
2008, he was awarded the prestigious Academic Prize of the Fukuoka Asian
Culture Prize, Japan. In 2010 he was elevated to Distinguished Professor by the
Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia.
Bromeley Philip is Associate Professor at the Academy of Language Studies,

MARA University of Technology (UiTM), Sarawak Campus. He has an MSc
in TESOL and MSc in Training & HRM, from the University of Stirling,
Scotland, and the University of Leicester, England, respectively. In 2000, he
was awarded the distinguished Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) Scholarship by
the Sarawak Foundation to pursue a PhD at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
(UKM). He received the Best PhD Thesis Award 2005 for his doctoral thesis
in the area of metacognition in language learning with distinction from the
School of Language Studies, Linguistics and Literature, UKM. Philip heads
several research projects at UiTM Sarawak, one of which is financed by the
Fundamental Research Grants Scheme of the Ministry of Higher Education.
His specialisation and research interest includes ethnolinguistics with a
specific focus on the development of the Sarawak Iban system of writing. He
has worked closely with Linguist Software, a US company, in developing the
Notes on Contributors xi
Iban Alphabet into digitised fonts for word-processing purposes. His current
passion for Borneo Studies ranges from dialectology to history.
Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini was previously Senior Research Fellow in lin-
guistics at the University of Nottingham Trent, UK and is currently Associate
Professor at the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick.
Graduating summa cum laude in Modern Languages from the University
of Bergamo, she has a Masters (distinction) and PhD in Linguistics from
Nottingham University, UK. Her research career reflects multi-disciplinary
and collaborative work that has extended into Asian scholarship resulting
in the publication of an edited volume with M. Gotti (2005) and a double
special issue of the Journal of Asian Pacific Communication (2005/6) on Asian
Business Discourse(s). Her other notable publications include Business Discourse
(2006), Managing Language: the Discourse of Corporate Meetings (1997), The
Handbook of Business Discourse (2009) and Politeness across Cultures (2010).
A founding member of LiPs (Language in the Professions) group, UK, the
cross-institutional LPRG (Linguistic Politeness Research Group) and ELAB
(English as a Language of Asian Business), she has established research
partnerships with Meisei University, Tokyo and IKON, UKM.
Hiromasa Tanaka is Professor at Meisei University, Tokyo and an indepen-
dent consultant and trainer for various business corporations. He received
his BA in Economics from the Rikkyo (St. Paul) University of Tokyo, his
MEd, and EdD in Curriculum, Instruction and Technology in Education
from the Temple University and was previously a business practitioner for
11 years as a managing consultant of SNNO Institute of Management, one of
the largest consultation firms based in Tokyo. He has participated in several
corporate change initiatives and training curriculum development projects
in Japanese and non-Japanese companies in Japan, Korea, China and the
United States. His research interests are in the area of business discourse
analysis and critical pedagogy with a special focus on English as lingua
franca in Asia. Recently he organized an educational project funded by the
Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
In the project he applied a socio-cultural approach to pre-service teacher
development.
Shamala Paramasivam is Associate Professor at the Department of English,
Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra
Malaysia (UPM). She has taught English language at the university since
1991 and in 2004 completed a PhD in Applied Linguistics at the Centre for
Language and Linguistic Studies at University Kebangsaan Malaysia. She has
a specialization in language use in intercultural communication, English for
Specific Purposes (ESP), and Teaching English as a Second language (TESL).
Her research interests lie in discourse, communication, and culture in edu-
cational and professional settings, especially in business and workplace
xii Notes on Contributors
communication. She has researched and published about language use in

cross-cultural business negotiations mainly between Malays and Japanese
in the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, Journal of Universal
Language, and Asian EFL. She also sits on the editorial team for the interna-
tional journals Asian EFL, Asian ESP, and Iranian EFL.
Ong Puay Liu, Professor in the Anthropology of Development, and
currently Deputy Director at the Institute of Ethnic Studies (KITA), Universiti
Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), was previously a lecturer with the Development
Science Programme, School of Social Development and Environmental
Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, UKM. Ong’s research
interests include ethnic studies and community development. Specializing
in the field of ethnic studies, she looks at ethnic-related issues from the
perspective of the anthropology of development. Her book Packaging Myths
for Tourism: The Rungus of Kudat (2008) won the UKM Book Prize in the Social
Sciences and Humanities Category, in 2009. Current research projects include
Education beyond the 3Rs (3R + 1R project); Participation and Empowerment
in the context of Rural Community Development in Indonesia and
Malaysia; Dyslexia among Undergraduates in Institutions of Higher Learning,
Malaysia; Citizenry and Identity among Secondary School Students in
Kelantan, Selangor and Sarawak; Governance & Public Education for Heritage
Conservation: The Case of Langkawi Geopark; Study on the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Mohamad Tajuddin bin Haji Mohamad Rasdi is Professor at the Department
of Architecture, Faculty of Built Environment at Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia. He specializes in the theory and history of architecture with an
emphasis on the ideas of Islamic Architecture from the perspectives of the
Prophet Muhammad’s Sunnah (traditions) and the framework of early west-
ern modernist thoughts. He has published widely on the subject of mosque
designs and community curriculum and given numerous lectures to reli-
gious leaders, academics and the general public, many interviews to the local
media, written books, articles and popular pieces to educate the Malaysian
public on these issues, and is involved in work on the academic infrastruc-
ture of theories on national identity. Currently, Director of KALAM (Center
for the Study of Built Environment in the Malay World), he is also the
Advisor and founder of MASSA, Center for the Study of Modern Architecture
in South East Asia, based at Taylors University College. His mission is to
bring changes to public policies and perceptions on cultural and value based
design ideas in the realm of community architecture. He writes for the
monthly column ‘Architecture Inside Out’ in the local daily, The Star.
Suzanne Newcombe is a Research Officer at Inform, based at the London
School of Economics and Political Science, where she researches a variety
of alternative and minority religions and spiritual movements. Her research
Notes on Contributors xiii
primarily focuses on the social history and sociology of yoga and Ayurveda in
modern Britain. She is also an Associate Lecturer with the Open University.
Having published articles in the Journal of Contemporary Religion, Asian
Medicine and in edited volumes, her forthcoming book will focuses on the
popularisation of yoga and Ayurveda in Britain. She holds a BA in Religion
from Amherst College, USA an MSc in Sociology (Religion in Contemporary
Society) from the London School of Economics and Political Science and
a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge.
Jean-Pierre Poulain was born in the South of France and began his
academic career in the renowned Toulouse Hotel School as he was passion-
ate about food. After completing his PhD in Sociology in 1985, he joined the
University of Toulouse in 1993. A few years later he was elected Dean of the
Centre for Tourism, Hospitality and Food Studies, a position he holds until
today and became a full professor in Sociology in 2004. He has edited and
written several books, some of which have been translated into Portuguese,
Spanish, Italian and Japanese. He has won awards for his books, such as the
Jean Trémolières Award for Manger aujourd’hui (Eating today) and Sociologies
de l’alimentation (Sociology of Food) and the Research Award in Nutrition
from the French National Institute for Nutrition. His latest book Sociologie
de l’obesite (The sociology of obesity) was published in May 2009. He is
Senior Research Fellow in many research teams in France and overseas. His
main research interests revolve around the social and cultural dimensions of
human eating practices, as well as the social and cultural dimensions of the
phenomenon of tourism. He is currently working on a global dictionary of
cultures and eating patterns.
Foreword
This new collection of chapters provides a welcome and significant addition

to the literature on Westernization and Easternization. The critical interro-
gation of these two processes remains an important task for contemporary
thinkers. However, in an unfortunate and ironic twist of history, over
recent years the field of post-colonial studies has become associated with
the Western academy. When a set of authors of the calibre assembled in
The Gaze of the West and Framings of the East intervenes in these debates
new windows are opened and the possibility of genuine post-Eurocentric
collaboration becomes real.
The Malaysian context shared by many of the contributors to this book
provides a particularly dynamic location for the examination of the way ideas
of the East are fashioned in the ‘Western gaze’. Shanta Nair-Venugopal’s ini-
tial definition of ‘Occidental studies as the study of Europe and Europeans’
(p.5) is developed into a comprehensive vision of how Easternization acts to
change and challenge Westernization. Hence, the focus of the book is upon
both ‘the ways in which an Anglo-American West imbibes and partakes of
material and transcendental cultural influences and other flows emanating
from the East’ and on how influences and flows ‘reflect and represent atti-
tudes towards the East as exemplified in ‘the gaze of the West’ (p.19). The
study of the West’s self-transformation through the East (and vice versa) is
offered here as something achieved not only by, and understood through,
ideology but also by practice. Thus, we see the ‘gaze of the West’ unpacked
not only as a set of ideas but also in material social forms, such as architec-
ture, food and health.
Some claim that today a ‘post-Western’ era is dawning. Perhaps it is only
after the power of the West has begun to fade that it becomes visible to us.
Only then can the West be turned into something that can be studied and
understood rather than something to be defended against or lauded. It cer-
tainly seems very prescient and necessary that many of the contributors to
The Gaze of the West and Framings of the East push towards an examination
of the mutual constitution of East and West. The ‘mutual gaze’ discussed
by Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini and Hiromasa Tanaka suggests the con-
tinued relevance of these geographical categories, but also the ways they
connect and, in part, destabilize each other. This destabilizing capacity may
be witnessed in a number of ways. One of the most interesting is the way
supposedly Eastern and Western cultural forms, such as, respectively, spiritu-
ality and materialism, turn out to have multiple points of origin.
One of the most rewarding aspects of The Gaze of the West and Framings of
the East is the way points of connection and ambivalence are brought into
xiv
Foreword xv
view. The Easternization thesis that threads its way through the book pro-
vides one of the principal vectors for this analysis. As described by Shanta
Nair-Venugopal, ‘Easternization refers to the process of perceived, mainly
cultural, change from the East’. But it is also a process of exchange or, at
least, connection, for it leads to ‘the cultural refashioning of the West as a
corollary to the intellectual refashioning of the East by the West’ (p.39).
Yet I also find the authors collected in The Gaze of the West and Framings
of the East echoing some of Tagore’s wisdom. I am thinking, specifi-
cally, of Tagore’s wish to see the association between modernization and
Westernization broken. It was an aspiration based not on anti-Westernism
but on the conviction that other modernities were possible. ‘Modernism is
not in the dress of the Europeans; or in the hideous structures, where their
children are interned to take lessons’, he argued: ‘These are not modern but
merely European’ (Tagore cited by Hay, 1970: 70). ‘True modernism’, he
continued, ‘is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of
thought and action, not tutelage under European schoolmasters’.
Alastair Bonnett
Professor of Social Geography
School of Geography, Politics and Sociology,
Newcastle University, UK.
Part I
Sighting the Terrain
1
Introduction
Sighting the terrain
We intend to show in this volume how the East (as locatable in Asia) perceives
the ways in which the West (Anglo-American for our purposes) presents or
represents, and reproduces or reconfigures, its material and transcendental
cultural influences and other flows as impacts on civilization or as aspects
of contemporary culture in discursive constructions about the East. We con-
tend that the ways in which the West imbibes and partakes of these material
and cultural influences of the East reflects and represents Western attitudes
towards the East that may be exemplified as ‘the gaze of the West’; a gaze
with a historical resonance, a prescient presence, a pragmatic disposition
and a utilitarian philosophy of profitable enterprise. The last is more than
evident in the repackaging of the products of the praxis of Easternization as
deliverable, saleable and consumable goods and services in life spheres,
such as those of leisure and recreation, management and training, fashion
and iconography, architecture and design, gastronomy and the culinary
arts and alternative therapies, to name some of the most apparent. Islam,
Taoism and Hinduism, Krishna Consciousness, Zen Buddhism and Sufism,
Judo, Tai Chi Chuan and Yoga, Ayurveda, Reiki and acupuncture, Feng
Shui, chakras and numerology, curry, sushi and kebabs have all invaded the
‘discursive, practical and aesthetic spheres’ (Dawson, 2006, p. 1) of human
life and experience in the West and the world at large: a world in which Al
Jazeera competes ceaselessly with CNN and BBC World for our seemingly
insatiable attention, while Bollywood and Hollywood offer competing
Eastern and Western celluloid fares for consumption.
Attending to Eastern perspectives of Western discourses has as much to
do with historicity as with present reality. Orientalism1 already exists as
the academic and discursive products of Western perspectives. So does the
re-orientation of Orientalism (see Niyogi, 2006) in a plethora of Eastern dis-
courses of the West, either as deconstructionist literary texts in re-orientating
Orientalism or as work in Oriental studies. By interrogating the cultural and
S. Nair-Venugopal (ed.), The Gaze of the West and Framings of the East
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2012
4 The Gaze of the West and Framings of the East
intellectual discourses in the West on the praxis of Easternization, we intend

to expose attitudes to them and in the process claim some epistemological
space, subjugate others and complement existing ones. By praxis we refer to
the action, activity or practice that is indulged in as part of a process, which
does not preclude customary or established practices. Thus, the praxis of
Easternization refers to the mainly cultural ‘consumption’ of the East, which
includes the practical application of a synthesis of ideas in the production
of goods and services for the consumer markets of modern life styles (see
Turner, 2008), as well as the acquisition of historical artefacts, either through
bona fide auctions or illegal means.
As these arguments emanate principally from Malaysia, as part of the
East, we need a voice that echoes an endogenous view of current spheres
of life, experience and activity and yet resonates with the past. Subject to
the civilizational influences of Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism,
before the dominance and domicile of Islam, and subsequent influences
of Christianity, the material and transcendental imprints of some of these
antecedents still survive, perceptibly or otherwise in Malaysia. They serve as
subtle reminders of the inherent capacity of Malaysians for such dialogue,
despite the cultural politics, political jingoism and scepticism that have
marked more recent times. As the indigenous population is mainly Malay
and Muslim, our interrogation of discourses will, perforce, include Muslim
viewpoints.
Muslim viewpoints are generally averse to deconstruction. While Young
(2004, p. 51) makes the point that deconstruction is a ‘deconstruction … of
the concept, authority, and assumed primacy of, the category of “the West”’,
Zawiah Yahya (2010) avers that post-modern theories of literary criticism,
like deconstructionism, are a ‘nightmare’ for Malay scholars who as Muslims
are traditionally averse to challenging the reverence accorded to the
authoritarian voice of the Quran as a non-contestable text, and by exten-
sion the absolute truth. We can briefly summarize the problematic nature
of constructing Malay critical theory (Zawiah Yahya, 2010) as follows: social
construction versus fixedness, relativism versus absolutism, interpretation as
a function of the interaction with the text versus autonomy, and interactive
meaning-making versus immutability.
So what are the implications of an authorial voice for the interpretation
of texts and artefacts as a function of the interaction between the text or
artefact and reader or examiner? How do we arrive at an understanding
of the writer’s or creator’s intent? How do we know how to read what? Can
there be a point of view other than that intended by the creator of either the
text or the artefact? Do we privilege objectivity over subjectivity? In order to
bypass such narrow and restrictive points of view, we applied multiple
methods of inquiry as an analytically plural approach to embrace a multi-
plicity of voices that will allow for a catholicity of divergent, convergent and
neutral perspectives as critique, commentary or appreciation of the Western
Introduction 5
narratives of the praxis of Easternization as the objects of our interrogation.

Our intention is not to be tame or to defame but to say it as we see it in
our scrutiny of these narratives and establish a degree of autonomy for our
voices as the conscious unmuted subjects of the discourse.
This volume, thus, does not set out to ‘engage’, seek to ‘contest’, nor
aim to ‘fix’ anything. We believe these are the more fashionable and fre-
quently travelled literary routes. What this volume does is to present our
understandings of the presentations, representations and reproductions
of a phenomenon that we presume as the starting point of our reference,
that is, the praxis of Easternization, mainly as cultural change (Campbell,
2007). Assumed to be elusive and superficial in some spheres of human life
and activity, yet pervasive and concrete in others, we have identified for
scrutiny some of the more apparent forms of the praxis, dealing with them
as Western narratives about it from the vantage position of the East as the
non-West. We accept that ‘controversy is inevitable for those who wish to
study the West’ (Bonnet, 2004, p. 4) and, we might add, any of the conse-
quences of its view of the Other. We also accept the uncontroversial view
that there ‘remains a need for explorations of the West that neither celebrate
nor defame it but are unsentimental and wide-ranging’ (ibid.), although
the angst of colonization or the anguish of decolonization might mitigate
against it. We intend to offer the kind of discourse that simultaneously
moves away not only from the polarities of much global political discourse
and literary polemics but also from the self-conceit of being situated in the
East, or especially Asia today, in its resurrection as the repository of much
ancient wisdom, by becoming conscious subjects of that discourse. As such
we do not seek to idolize or valourize the East. Nor do we intend to privilege
it more than the West. Yet the East could become the centre from which to
advocate such discourse if ‘in regions like Asia there is the will to find new
vitality in its inherited traditions and show that their moral and spiritual
strengths can be more relevant to a troubled world’ (Wang Gungwu, 2008).
Or, as Alistair Bonnet suggests, that we can still somehow see and under-
stand in what Rabindranath Tagore2 (the first Asian Nobel laureate and
Bengali poet, writer and philosopher) tried to do; show that Asia was once
‘testament to the unsatisfying nature of the technological visions and con-
sumerist blueprints of the early twenty-first century’ (2004, p. 105).
The impetus
The actual impetus for this volume comes from a specific interest in
Occidental studies as the study of Europe and Europeans, who, in the last
millennia at least, have settled in North and South America, Australia and
New Zealand. Not only have Europeans left imprints of their civilization
and cultural traditions in these places of domicile, they have also impacted
global order as world powers. Given its geopolitical impact and significance,
the West as the Occident, clearly merits study, especially from the outsider
perspective of the non-European.
This perspective offers the potential for a deeper understanding of the
Other in relation to the Occident as the Self, which ‘is necessarily a political
construct, forged in public discourse, located in history and carved in
debate’ as Ashis Nandy (1983) claims (Appadurai, 1986, p. 749). The trope
of the Stranger contra the frequently demonized cultural Other in intercul-
tural relations (Nair-Venugopal, 2003) also needs to be incorporated into
the discourse, given the effects of globalization and migration. Not only
are all participants ‘likely to be strangers’ in ‘the global village’ (Harman,
1988, in Turner, 1997, p. 111), differentiation is also inevitable in a world
dominated by market forces and the global flows of people, cultures, tech-
nologies, diseases, arms, drugs, finance, risks, ideas and ideologies, media
and marketing, rights and justice; popular and contemporary cultures being
particularly endemic in an increasingly porous world of cheap travel and
seductive marketing.
This volume intends to add to the growing literature that is re-examining
and reviewing the historical and literary bases of the effects of cultural and
other flows from the East and the civilizational impact on the West in an
evolving multipolar world. It hopes to create a discursive space for us who
are located in the East (and elsewhere as the non-West) to evaluate the gaze
of the West as evident in its narratives on the praxis of Easterrnization. In
evaluating these narratives, our objective is to forge and maintain a degree
of autonomy from the hegemonic crush of the literature emanating from
Western sites by pointing to new directions in Occidental studies that go
beyond merely informing the West on how it is imagined, to how it is
understood in its interactions with the East, and perhaps the rest of the
non-Western world.
The first task ahead of us is what to make of the binary terms, the East and
the West, as the objects of our discourse. Both are complex and unstable,
even as shorthand terms. Quite obviously, we need to renegotiate the
terrain of extant literature to understand and accept what constitutes the
idea of the West and an apparently antipodal East and what if anything
Westernization and Easternization might be. Is, in moving away from
a binominal and boundary notion of East and West, the East to be defined
geopolitically while the West is seen as unified by common religio-cultural
traditions? Campbell (2007) argues that the dual pillars of secularity and
religio-cultural traditions tagged ‘materialistic dualism’, should be the
defining characteristics of any current articulation of the West vis-à-vis the
‘metaphysical monism’ of a religious East (ibid.).
But why is the West defined primarily as a rational entity in relation to
a religio-historical reality? Why is it presented in a chronologically linear yet
cumulatively traceable manner, while the East is described either in relation
to the West, its geographical locality or in geohistorical terms within the
Introduction 7
context of its ‘discovery’ by the West and by its ‘absence of history’? For
many in the Middle East, which includes Iran and Turkey, Pakistan and
Afghanistan, the ‘East was never the East, it came to be so only together
and in contact with the West. As the subject invents the object, it is the
West which constructed the East … The subject, observing the object from
a distance called it “the East”’ (Hoodashtian, 1998, p. 73, in Behnam, 2002,
p. 178). Antonio Gramsci (1971) observed, in the early 1930s, that the East
and West were the ‘historico-cultural constructions’ of the ‘European cultural
classes’ whose ‘world-wide hegemony … caused them to be accepted every-
where’. Because ‘the historical content’ became ‘attached to the geographical
terms, the expressions East and West have finished up indicating specific
relations between different cultural complexes’ (Behnam, 2002, p. 447).
As the provenance of the world’s significant yet largely incompatible
religious doctrines of, namely Hinduism and Jainism, Buddhism and
Shintoism, Christianity and Islam, the East is marked by geo-historical,
religio-philosophical and socio-cultural diversity. The sheer size and hetero-
geneity of Asia as the East quite clearly defies facile categorizations. The
search for a unified characterization, implodes in its face as socio-political
events continue to demonstrate.
Marking the terrain
Thus, the East has always been juxtaposed against a more powerful
West that has conventionally been identified as mainly Judeo-Christian,
white Caucasian and sharing common socio-cultural values inclusive of
secularism. In comparison, the East is not only made up of diverse peoples
but more significantly diverse cultures and civilizations with hardly any glo-
bal influence today, notwithstanding the economic might and rise of China
and India respectively. In short, while the West can be viewed as an entity
that shares common civilizational influences, the East cannot. A huge geo-
graphical entity inhabited by peoples of incompatible civilizations, the East
has been unified in more modern times only by a sense of its manifest dif-
ferences with the more culturally identifiable and powerful West. The West,
born of the common cultural and religious traditions of Christendom and
the Europe of the Enlightenment nurtured a common ideology and world
view that was carried to the New World of the Americas and other places of
conquest and domicile. For European settler societies in lands and climes far
removed from their original homelands, the West was a link to an emotional
heartland and an imagined history. The emergence of Eurocentrism in
the fluorescence of the Enlightenment stratified the West and East into
distinct, separate polarities. Maligned for its qualitative difference, the
East was thus justifiably contained by the forces of Western imperialism
triumphant in an imagined superiority. Latouche (1996) contends that
the supremacy or might of the West ultimately lay in the effectiveness of
a form of organization that reached its apogee in the development of the

‘megamachine’ and the metropolis, in the apotheosis of Westernization as
the result of a type of consciousness which made the individual ‘capable of
separating himself from the rest of the world and rediscovering it via inte-
rior activity’ (Castoriadis, 1988, p. 121, in Latouche, 1996, p. 18).
John Hobson (2004, p. 112) argues that Europe came to be known as
‘Christendom’ only because its identity was imagined or invented as
Catholic Christian in contrast to the Islamic Middle East. The idea of Europe
as Christendom originates from its Romanization. When Christianity was
transferred from Jerusalem to Rome in the second century AD, the Romans
provided much of the impetus for the fusion of Christianity with Europe
as ‘Christendom’. Although, Europe owes much to the Greeks (from whom
they learned epistemology, ethics and aesthetics), and also to the Latin,
Germanic and Celtic peoples and the Slavs, it was from the Romans that
Europe learnt the elements of law, statecraft and government. That Europe-
as-Christendom was an ‘idea’, Hobson argues, was reflected in the fact
that although Christianity was an Oriental religion in origin (from today’s
Middle East), Europe was presented as ‘the representational birthplace or
“defender” of the Christian faith’. This ‘required some major intellectual
acrobatics to make the linking of Europe and Christianity appear a seamless
and natural fit’ (ibid.), which was appropriated by powerful elements within
the emerging West, as part of its own distinctive way of life with Europe
as its source. This was so successful that it became the bulwark of ‘Western
civilisation’ against Islam in the Crusades (Holton, 1998).
According to Alistair Bonnet (2004, p. 23), the historical lineage of the
West is traditionally charted from the breakup of the Roman Empire,
and the sacking of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern church, in
1204. However, the Protestant Reformation ‘created a new schism in the
Christian world’ that suggested the use of the secular term ‘“West” as a non-
contentious category for what was once called “Christendom”’ (ibid.). With
North and West Europe firmly associated with Protestantism, and the South
with Catholicism, ‘the West’ became associated with the land and peoples of
the North and West. However, with the emergence of the colonial projects of
the European powers facing the Atlantic, ‘Columbus replaced Charlemagne
as the harbinger of the new age’ (Delanty, 1995) and the notion of an
imperial and colonial West arose out of the Enlightenment and the age of
discovery that captured the imagination. However, it remained a peripheral
idea, because it was Europe and not ‘the West’ that replaced Christendom
(Bonnet, 2004).
So if ‘the West’ is metonymic of Europe and refers primarily to it and the
lands settled by Europeans elsewhere in which their civilization has had
the primary impact on the cultural and religious landscapes of domicile, do
we then define the West, the Occidental world, as we know it, in terms of the
religio-cultural traditions of Europe because of the historical background of the
Introduction 9
development of Europe as Christendom? If the West can be defined in such

a manner can the East also be defined similarly? This does not seem to be the
case at all, as mentioned earlier. Furthermore, if the West is to be defined on
the basis of historical reality, what then of Islam? Shouldn’t the West include
Islam as the East in the West since, as several scholars have argued, Islam,
Judaism and Christianity jointly comprise the Abrahamic religious tradi-
tions? But if Islam belongs to the West, and is not ambiguously ‘Oriental’ as it
shares common historical roots and traditions with Judaism and Christianity
(despite Islam’s and Judaism’s segregation from Europe-as-Christendom),
does Islam have to be abstracted from any discussion of what constitutes the
East? After all, isn’t Islam both Eastern and Western, given its provenance,
because it straddles the geographic fault line between the civilizations of the
East and West? These questions alone give us an idea of the problematics of
dividing the world into the polarities of East and West. In attempting to deal
with some of this difficulty, we move away, in Chapter 2, from provenance
to praxis and from universalism to localism by situating Islam as part of the
lived traditions in the East. We thus align the discourse on localized spheres
of Islamic life and activity with Eastern/non-Western perspectives, since Islam
has produced ‘new social and cultural hybrid forms which while undeniably
Islamic were also unquestionably Arab, Indian, Chinese, Turkish and African’
(Sardar, 1999, p. 66).
The West in Asia
Japan is an integral part of the discussion on the interface of the East with
the idea of the West. There is the issue of the West in Japan and the Japanese
mimetic pursuit of popular Western life worlds and appetite for contem-
porary forms of Western, mainly American, culture, from hamburgers to
Halloween. Yet Japan remains quintessentially the mysterious Orient of the
Far East. How are these seemingly disjunctive aspects of Japanese cultural
life to be understood?
The most north-western of all the Asian countries, barring the northern-
most part of China, Japan only ‘opened up’ to the Western world in the
second half of the nineteenth century. American Commodore Matthew
Perry of the United States Navy is often credited with opening up Japan to
the West when he lead his four ships into the harbour at Tokyo Bay on 8 July
1853, and the history of Japan was subsequently subjected to ‘American
Orientalism’ (Sardar, 1999, p. 109). However, Perry was not the first Western
visitor. Portuguese, Spanish, British and Dutch traders were already engaged
in trading activities with Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
although most were expelled for unfair trading practices in 1639. William
Adams, the English navigator, is believed to be the first traveller to Japan
who had some influence because of an intimate relationship with the
shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, becoming his key advisor and later the major
player in the establishment of Dutch and English trading houses. He also

built Japan’s first Western-style ships and was highly involved in Japan’s
trade to Southeast Asian ports in the ‘red seal’ ships, armed Japanese
merchant ships issued with a red-seal patent by the early Tokugawa shogu-
nate in the first half of the seventeenth century. As a Protestant who helped
shape the Tokugawas’ concern about Portuguese and Spanish Christian
missionary work, Adams was seen as a rival by the European Catholics in
Japan. Influenced by Adams’ counsel and troubled by the social ‘unrest’
caused by the numerous Catholic converts, Ieyasu expelled the Jesuits from
Japan in 1614, demanding that Japanese Catholics abandon their faith.
Disturbed by the missionary invasion of Japanese culture, the Edo shogu-
nate introduced a foreign relations policy known as sakoku (literally ‘locked
country’ or ‘seclusion’) between 1639 and 1853, banning foreign travel by the
Japanese, trade with the Portuguese and Spaniards, and Christian missionary
work, with limited access to Chinese and Dutch traders. The sakoku policy
was also a way of controlling commerce between Japan and other nations
and the main safeguard against the predatory depletion of Japanese mineral
resources. Japan’s isolationist policy of two and half centuries caused by
Western expansionism ended in 1868 during the period known as the ‘Meiji
Restoration’ and Japan was pushed into trading with America.
Despite claims that Japan has been strongly influenced by the West, with
its apparent emulation of Western institutions in the form of ‘Protestant’
capitalism, the Japanese have been able to sustain their culture despite
huge external pressures. The policy of wakon yosai (Japanese spirit, Western
techniques), which allowed Japan to learn from the West while simultane-
ously sustaining its spiritual and cultural traditions, was coined by Sakuma
Shōzan (1811–64), a politician and scholar during the Edo or Tokugawa era
from 1603 to 1868. As a pragmatic and utilitarian way in which Japan could
handle modernization, it was consciously adopted during the Meiji period
(1868–1912). Meaning ‘enlightened rule’ the Meiji goal was to combine
Western advancements in science and technology with the traditional,
Eastern values of Japan; and it was during the Meiji period that Japan
defeated Russia in the Russo–Japanese War (1904–5). A first in modern times
by an Asian nation, this victory bolstered Japanese belief in its superiority
over a Western power, and greatly boosted Japanese confidence against a
diminished West.
Despite the Occidentalism of the Meiji Restoration and its early Western
style military prowess, the West hardly managed to encroach into the spheres
of Japanese spirituality and values. In the last 450 years, Christianity has
failed to emerge as a dominant religion in Japan because it did not engage
well with the Japanese religions, especially Shinto and Buddhism, and the
rulers of the time saw it as an increasingly threatening Western influence in
Japanese life. Instead Japan has adapted Western technologies to rebrand
and export its own high end quality products, which have ‘re-colonized’
Introduction 11
the West and the rest of the world. Yet it has managed to preserve the old
while partaking of the new without destroying the essential character of
what it is to be Japanese. In fact, many aspects of Japan’s traditional culture
(e.g. hibachi, sushi, sashimi, sukiyaki, haiku, ikebana and kabuki) have now
become familiar and palatable to many Westerners while its contemporary
forms of popular culture like anime and manga have also become very
popular in the West.
So enamoured was Malaysia’s fourth Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad
with Japan’s economic success that his disagreement with the United
Kingdom over university tuition fees early during his tenure sparked off
his famous ‘look East policy’, as the converse of what became a ‘buy British
last’ campaign. Although the specific dispute was later resolved, Mahathir
continued to emphasize Asian development models over contemporary
Western ones, favouring the Japanese model most because of admiration
for its ethics and attitude to labour, morale building capacity and manage-
ment capability. Indeed it is a testament to its economic might that Japan
is the only Asian country in the economically powerful Group of Eight
(G8) nations, notwithstanding the rise of China. Yet issues of racism and
discrimination against historically marginalized groups and communities
closely related to the internal structure of a feudal and rigidly hierarchi-
cal society exist while historical conflicts and ethnonationalistic ideology
have fuelled antagonisms against other Asian communities, particularly
the Korean. Such xenophobic attitudes, toward both China and Korea,
have been revealed in ‘the writing and teaching of the history of relations’
(United Nations, 2004).
Carved by the historic division of Korea into the North and South after the
Second World War (WWII), South Korea was conquered and colonized by
Japan for part of its modern history from 1910 to WWII. Yet within a span
of hardly fifty years, it has become a global economic power and competitor
to Japan while the popularity and impact of South Korea’s contemporary
culture, referred to as the Korean Wave, has also spread beyond Asia. The
Japanese gaze of Korea today may, thus, be more complex than a simple
reading will allow and probably coloured by the current economic compe-
tition that South Korea poses to Japan, whereas the South Korean gaze of
Japan continues to remain heavily anti-Japanese for the alleged crimes
of forced service and sexual slavery committed during WWII. The almost
wholly ethnically homogeneous and fiercely nationalistic South Koreans
are also intrepid, with extensive migration, particularly to the West, and the
embracing of Christianity as the fasted growing religion in South Korea.
In its rush to join the international trade in tourism and hospitality,
Malaysia’s potential lure has been captured in a commercial epiphany that
refers to it somewhat eponymously as ‘truly Asia’. Although it has been
socio-politically contested, and even maligned, for the claims that are at best
only tenable at face-value, in many ways the Malaysia that it can become
is epitomized in the potential it embodies for the promise of a vision that

was brokered by history. Since time immemorial, the Malaya peninsula has
been referred to in a variety of texts ranging from the Sanskrit description
of Swarna Dwipa or ‘golden land’ (literally) to Ptolemy’s Aurea Chersonesus
(circa 150 AD). Its strategic geographical location in the East–West pathway
made it a natural point of intersection for cultural flows from various
world civilizations (Indian, Chinese, Arab and European) and the conflu-
ence of the world’s great religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam
and Christianity with Islam eventually replacing the historical nexus of
Hinduism and Buddhism in the Malay world. Since independence in 1957,
however, the task of nation building has ruptured some of the resonances
of the civilizational antecedents by culminating in the New Economic
Policy (NEP) of 1971 in response to race riots in 1969. A socio-economic
affirmative action programme, the NEP was aimed at reconstituting the
demographic composition of the Malaysian workplace to reflect ethnic
population ratios and erode stereotypes of occupations with race. The effects
of the NEP, however, in restructuring society have been the ascendancy of
more racialized and culturally dominant politics and less intellectual focus
on the common socio-history of the multiethnic peoples of Malaysia.
Fifty years of independence has, nevertheless also nurtured the desire, and
a conscious effort, to co-exist and avoid the dangers of open conflict. As some
Malaysian scholars argue (Abdul Rahman Embong, 2001; Shamsul, A.B.,
2005; Abraham, 2008), Malaysia’s detractors and critics are only too quick
to point to Malaysia’s vulnerabilities without acknowledging the successful
record of her people’s attempts (since 1969 and earlier) to live together peace-
fully at least as a composite, if not ‘plural’, society (Furnivall, 1948. See also
Ratnam, 1965; Milner, 2003). This is a feat in itself, considering that early
Malaysian society was forged from the ruptured and discontinuous immigra-
tions and subsequent settlement of diverse and ‘incompatible’ (Mahathir,
1970) peoples who either flocked to a land imagined to be one of plenty or
who were shipped in as indentured labourers to work in the plantations and
mines to provide the raw materials, particularly rubber and tin, that were
shipped out to feed the burgeoning industries of imperialist Britain and to
sustain the empire. The legacy of the colonial policy of immigrant labour
combined with the ideologies of exclusion advocated by ethnolinguistic and
fundamentalist groups has generated ethnocentrism and discrimination. Yet
the people of Malaysia have largely managed to maintain peace and har-
mony, despite intrinsic cultural differences and the difficulties of containing
politically generated dissonance. This is as important an example of acquired
peace as that of people who have fought and won it. As part of a salubrious
East, Malaysia could well become the place from which to advocate such
discourse if it can ‘revitalize’, to echo Wang Gungwu (2008), its inherited
traditions too, namely those of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam
and Christianity, despite the recurrent politics of race and religion.
Introduction 13
Revisiting boundaries
While the Orient refers to the East contra the Occident, or the West, in
Europe, most of the Eastern Roman Empire from the eastern Balkans
eastwards was referred to as the East or ‘the Orient’ as well. Meanwhile,
more ‘Orients’ were discovered relative to the gaze of Europe, such as the
‘Muslim Orient’ and the Orients of the Far and Near Easts. In time, the
common understanding of ‘the Orient’ continually shifted eastwards, as
Western explorers travelled farther into Asia. As Europe learned of countries
even farther east, the defined limit of the Orient shifted eastwards, finally
reaching those nations bordering the Pacific Ocean that are now referred to
as the Far East. These shifts in time and identification lent some confusion
to the historical and geographical scope of Orientalism as Oriental studies.
In any case, stereotypical perceptions of the East as the Orient have
always existed. A generalized and romantic, even sympathetic, view and
depiction of what was understood to be the East and all things Eastern,
was already referred to as Orientalism in pro-Eastern attitudes. This was
augmented in similar and other ways by Europeans who took an academic
or literary interest in the Orients of their colonies and reconstructed these
‘Orients’ as colonial knowledge aided, as they were, by the full weight of
the bureaucratic systems of colonial governments with superior methods
of classification and documentation. For Edward Said, Orientalism
referred to at least three interdependent meanings. Firstly, (and perhaps in
a neutral sense) it was the academic and scholarly study of the known East
as the Orient. Secondly, it was a style of thought based on an ontological
and epistemological distinction made between the ‘Orient’ and (most of
the time) the ‘Occident’.Lastly, it was seen as ‘a Western style for domi-
nating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’ (Said, 1979,
pp. 2–3). Orientalism thus came to refer to the subjugation of knowledge
and modes of knowing of the non-European, the peoples of the Orient,
as the Other.
Now received wisdom, Said’s work Orientalism (1978) focused on the Middle
East and helped to change and shape the direction of several disciplines by
exposing the intricately intertwined links between Western Enlightenment
and colonialism and the complicity between Orientalism as a system of
uncritical essentialist thought and the enterprise of imperial power. Said’s
aim was to ‘challenge the notion that difference implies hostility, a frozen
reified set of opposed essences and a whole adversarial knowledge built out
of those things’ (1978, p. 350). Not the first to use the term, Said choose to
focus on the Middle East, Islam and the Arabs, as literary critic, social activist
and Palestinian nationalist, ignoring China, Japan and South East Asia. He
did not say much about India either, although by his own admission, ‘the
Orient, ... until the early nineteenth century had really meant only India
and the Bible lands’ (1978, p. 4).
Since Said’s Orientalism highlighted colonial methods of knowledge

making, it has become increasingly difficult to refer to a neutral view of
Orientalism and simultaneously easy to forget the scholarly and humanistic
contributions of, among others, Italian, Dutch and, particularly, German
scholars. Critics charge that Said ignored such contributions. Bernard Lewis
(1993) argues that the French and the English had pursued the study of Islam
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even if not in an organized way,
long before they had any hope of control in the Middle East, and that much
Orientalist scholarship hardly advanced the cause of imperialism (see Lewis,
1993, p. 126). However, both groups treated the Orient as the object of the
study of Otherness, either benignly or otherwise.
Orientalism stands almost invariably today for a Western tradition, both
academic and artistic, of particular, essentialist and prejudiced world views,
attitudes and interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples, or specific ide-
ologies of Western imperialism. As ‘a discourse of difference’ Orientalism ‘…
represents the exotic, erotic, strange Orient as a comprehensible, intelligible
phenomenon within a network of categories, tables and concepts’ by which
it is ‘simultaneously defined and controlled’ (Turner, 1997, p. 21). In contrast,
Occidentalism was not even available, according to Said (1978), as a set of
equivalent discourses in difference. However, it is now and it is viewed as ‘the
institution of a particular imaginary, established in specific representations
and tropes, in images, metaphors, symbols and signs which construct
the frame of intelligibility of the West’ (Venn, 2000, p. 147). Both the obverse
and converse of Orientalism, minus the subjugation, Occidentalism is one
of many ideological positions and attitudes held about the West as the privi-
leged intellectual, spiritual, moral and economic locus of the world.
Occidentalism has also come to refer to a specific attitude held against
the West as exemplified by a cluster of dehumanizing notions and preju-
dices. Although this type of Occidentalism appears to be the stereotypes of
hate and heroism more frequently associated with the Jihadists of today,
the roots of such cynicism and anger can actually be traced to the reli-
gious and literary traditions and socio-political class struggles in the West
as Europe (Buruma and Margalit, 2004). However, in tracing their ideas
through strands of European thought and tradition from St. Augustine to
Husserl and Heidegger, and right up to McLuhan, Ahmad Merican (2008)
suggests that Buruma and Margalit’s contention that Occidentalism is
a ‘cross-contamination, the spread of bad ideas’ (2004, p. 149) is analogous
with Homi Bhabha’s (1994) notion of a ‘contamination of cultures’ and can
be challenged.
Additionally, while mindful of the disciplinary ambit of Occidental
studies, we should also resist the lure of academic territorialism and move
beyond the boundedness of post-colonial theory to review progress and
development within these three areas of concern, i.e. East and West,
Orientalism and Occidentalism, and Occidentalism in relation to Occidental
Introduction 15
studies. This concern is addressed in Chapter 3. A priority in this volume

is to move beyond Said’s Orientalism (the book and the meaning) to review
other theorists and philosophers, mainly, but not exclusively, from the
East, in order to flesh out further our concerns and to contest others as we
encounter them in a cross- and multidisciplinary approach to scholarship.
The contributions of these intellectuals have to be written into a scholarship
of Occidental studies in order to remap and realign a more contemporary
landscape.
Even as Said remains a giant among post-colonialists, it becomes incum-
bent on us to highlight that Syed Hussein Alatas (1977) preceded many
other post-colonial scholars ‘in questioning the discourse of Orientalism
and its representation of Asia, the East, Islam and “the native”’, as Terenjit
Sevea (2007) argues. In The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977), written well
before Said’s thesis caught the attention of the world and described as
‘startlingly original’ (Said, 1994, p. 245), Syed Hussein Alatas was perhaps
the ‘original’ Oriental Occidentalist in situ although Franz Fanon (1963,
1967) and others, in the non-West, such as Walter Rodney (1974), had
already drawn the attention of the world to the angst against colonialism.
The dehumanizing portrayal of the native is a recurrent anguish in post-
colonial scholarship from the Americas to Africa, the Indian Ocean to the
Pacific. There is also a need to commemorate the scholars in our midst and
from other backyards in the East, some of whom were martyrs such as the
Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal. Forerunner of Mahatma Gandhi and the
contemporary of both Rabindranath Tagore and the Chinese nationalist
Sun Yat Sen, Rizal’s advocacy of institutional reforms by peaceful means
rather than by violent revolution, makes him Asia’s first modern pacifist
proponent of political reforms. He was also unique in the neglect his work
received, despite being acknowledged as the national hero of the Philippines
(Ocampo, 20003). In defending Rizal’s explanation of indolence as the effect,
rather than the cause, of the backwardness of the Filipino, Syed Hussein
Alatas (1977) commends Rizal’s intellectual expose of the Orientalism of the
Spanish rulers. He draws a parallel between the ‘indolent’ Filipino and the
‘lazy native’ of the Malayan Peninsula, by laying bare the unwillingness of
the British to accept that the Malay’s refusal to work was a strategy of resist-
ance to British rule rather than laziness or inertia, as the objective reality
of the dynamic. Syed Hussein Alatas’ sharpest attack, however, is reserved
for the Malay politburo, the equivalent of Fanon’s ‘nationalist bourgeoisie’
(1967) that inherited the administration of the land from the British after
independence and retained the ideological mindset of the colonizers. Syed
Hussein Alatas argues that since there had been no struggle for independ-
ence and no bloodletting, there was, in effect, no intellectual break with the
previous rulers either; a claim that has not been vigorously refuted.
Finally, while the effects of Westernization cannot presumably be viewed
as benign, the effects of Easternization, which refers to a process of cultural
change in the West, is examined in relation to its praxis, not only to describe
it more fully, but also to understand the underlying motivations of the chal-
lenges to it, as a perceived phenomenon of cultural change (see Campbell,
1999, 2007; Hamilton, 2002; Dawson, 2006). Easternization is examined as
a process of perceived cultural change in the West that is exemplified by
‘the gaze’ of the West. The main consequences of ‘the gaze’, it is argued,
will be the prevalence of a praxis of Easternization, as evidence of the ways
in which the West imbibes and partakes of these influences, which may
be likened to global flows (Appadurai, 1996) that induce cultural change.
The main ramification of such praxis, it is posited, would be the cultural
refashioning of the West as a corollary to the intellectual fashioning of the
East, now known more famously as Orientalism (Said, 1978).
The gaze of the West
The gaze (also Le regard in French) is the leitmotif underlying the chapters
in this volume. As a concept of social power relations, the French intellec-
tuals Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan popularized usage of ‘the gaze’ as
a term, as in ‘the medical gaze’ (Foucault, 1973) and ‘the mirror stage gaze’
(Lacan, 1949/2000) respectively. Other variations of ‘the gaze’ developed
from the same concept. The French sociologist Bourdieu, for instance, used
the metaphor of the ‘gaze’ in relation to that of the ‘spectacle’, as in the
gaze of the spectator (Bourdieu, 1993). Basically about ‘the act of seeing’
(Foucault, 1973), it is how the viewer gazes upon the people presented and
represented.
The ‘normative gaze’, used by the critical theorist Cornel West (1982)
refers to ‘an ideal from which to order and compare observations. This ideal
was drawn primarily from classical aesthetic values of beauty, proportion
and human form and classical cultural standards of moderation, self-control
and harmony’ (pp. 53–4). It implicates phrenology and physiognomy as it is
derived from a distortion of classical Greek ideals of beauty. It argues, as in
African-American studies, that Eurocentric racial identity provided the lens
through which other races were viewed and socially constructed.
The notion of signifying a psychological relationship of power, in which
the gazer, the agent of the gaze, is superior to the object of the gaze, might
also be suggestive of dominance and the perceptions of unequal power
relations between East and West. Additionally, if the purchase of Eastern ideas
is clearly selective, as in the ‘exploitative gaze’ it implicates Western domi-
nance even if the cultural differences are respected. We refer to ‘the gaze’ to
describe the ways in which the West presents or represents, and reproduces
or reconfigures, material and transcendental Eastern cultural influences and
other flows as civilizational impacts or aspects of contemporary culture in
discursive constructions as narratives about the East. The following ques-
tions anticipate the potentially manifold nature of ‘the gaze’.
Introduction 17
• Is it looking at something with interest and curiosity from a particular

perspective as in the tourist context (Urry, 1990)?
• Does it signify a psychological relationship of power, in which the
gazer is superior to the object of the gaze, as feminist and post-colonial
discourse implies in the dominance versus difference stance?
• Is it the result of a voluntarily mutual interaction of ‘giving and taking’
or conversely that of ‘looking and taking away’?
• Is it the indirect gaze offered by the spectator who initiates the gaze while
the subject is not aware of it – or the direct gaze of the subject, who
demands it by looking at the spectator? Is there a power relationship in
favour of either the spectator or the subject?
• Is it the ‘normative gaze’ of Eurocentric racial identity providing the lens
through which others are viewed and socially constructed?
• Is it benign or benevolent or adulatory?
• Is it motivated purely by self-interest?
• Is it exploitative?
What will the nature of ‘the gaze of the West’ prove to be? Will it only be
that of the aficionado, dilettanti or even voyeur? Or will it be that of a cultural
convert, carrier or purveyor? Will ‘the gaze’ be salutary of the East as a
repository of ancient knowledge and wisdom or exploitative as a lucrative
cultural market place for new ideas?
Consequences and ramifications
The main ramification of the Easternization of the West, that we posit, is the
cultural refashioning of the West as a corollary to the intellectual refashioning
of the East by the West as Orientalism. This is contingent on the consequences
of the consumption of Eastern cultural influences. We contend that these
influences are free flows like the other global flows of ideas, media, finance,
technologies, people and risks (Appadurai, 1996). With a growing number of
converts, practitioners and aficionados as well, it is moot to ask if they are merely
free-flows of heterodoxical New Age phenomena that the West partakes of
selectively or both material and transcendental influences that have permeated
mainstream ‘Western’ societies as cultural change in an Easternization of the
West as Campbell (1999, 2007) argues. We suggest that the ways in which the
West imbibes and partakes of these influences as the praxis of Easternization
also reflect and represent attitudes towards the East that exemplify the ‘gaze’
of the West. This is quite evident in the profitable retail trade for the products
and services related to life style choices in the spheres of spirituality, leisure
and recreation, fitness and health, training and personal development, music,
fashion, food, design and complementary and alternative therapies.
Hobson (2004) argues that the West has, in fact, absorbed the cultural
innovations of the East since antiquity in imperceptible ways; that the rise of
the West would have been inconceivable without the inventions and other
contributions from the East; that the transfer of Asian, particularly Chinese,
technology to Europe underwrote its world hegemony, thus diminishing
the assumptions of a triumphant West in the grand narratives of world
history. For Goody (1996) the East was already on par with the West in its
mercantile activity, because of its ‘rational bookkeeping’ practices. Neither
does he consider strong family ties as being inimical to the development of
capitalism, contra the individualism championed by Weber (1905/2003).
Said (1978) has argued that the West, as the Occident, has intellectu-
ally refashioned the East, the Orient, because of the appropriation of the
knowledge acquired and documented invariably during long periods of
colonization. This claim has also been taken up quite assiduously (Shamsul,
A.B., 2001) with reference to Malaysia. In apposition, Campbell (2007)
makes the strong claim that the East has culturally refashioned the West.
The evidence for such refashioning was more explicitly visible in the waves
of the New Age movement that accompanied the counter-culture of the
1960s. Indeed, Campbell avers that ‘it is not possible to comprehend how
the West has become Easternised without an understanding of ... [the]
1960s’ and that ‘it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Easternisation
of the West has its roots in the cultural revolution of the 1960s’ (pp. 184–6);
and that the former can only be explained by a good understanding of the
latter. It was a liberal and rebellious cultural epoch with an eclectic taste for
the mystical, occult and magical that was marked by music made famous by
the Beatles, the cultural mores of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (sought out by the
Beatles as their guru), the ‘flower power’ of the hippies and mind-expanding
psychedelic drugs. The legacy of the counterculture, despite the backlash to
its excesses and its demise at the end of the Vietnam War, one of its rallying
causes, and the victory of the civil rights movement, yet another cause,
has been one of idealism, change and tolerance; although it is still debated
across both sides of the Atlantic.
Finally, there is the question of whether or not the West has even
‘allowed’ for Easternization to take place; whether or not it is a hegemonical
gate-keeping West that rules. Has it reinvented and repackaged the cultural
influences or flows from the East as Western innovations leaving the East
at its behest? Arguably, it is the imprint of Westernization that is every-
where from urban lifestyles to economic models as forms of development
in the name of modernization in an era in which Latouche (1996) contends
decolonization begets deculturation as industrialization, urbanization and
nationalitarianism. Yet all this only begs the question of whether or not
post-modernity and globalization may already have refashioned the West
culturally despite the contestations and disclaimers. Campbell (2007) argues
that the traditional cultural paradigms of the West no longer dominate
its cultural landscape; that the civilization of the West is undergoing
a process of cultural change that is demonstrably associated with cultural
Introduction 19
influences from the civilizations of the East and assailed by new paradigms
and interpretations of thought and practice, emanating largely from the
East. The thesis (articulated in an earlier incarnation in Campbell (1999) is
criticized by Hamilton (2002) and Dawson (2006) who, nevertheless, admit
to the prevalence of the praxis.
Western ‘attitudes’ to Easternization can conversely be compared not
only with how the East copes with the juggernaut of contemporary Western
culture, but has, almost unconsciously for more than three hundred years,
as the result of the pervasive and pernicious effects of Western colonial
rule virtually all over the world and particularly in Asia and Africa. In the
related spheres of music, food, fashion and design, Westernization involves
not only the acquisition of material goods and objects as marks of popular
contemporary culture, but the acceptance of ideas as well. Cultural crossing
and ‘carrying’ can be due to acculturation or cultural osmosis, interest,
imitation or even hegemony.
Our intention in this volume is to demonstrate through a set of per-
spectives how the ways in which an Anglo-American West imbibes and
partakes of material and transcendental cultural influences and other flows
emanating from the East (as locatable in Asia) reflect and represent attitudes
towards that East as exemplified in ‘the gaze of the West’. We are particularly
interested in the valency of ‘the gaze’ in order to determine its nature. Is
it ambivalent, or a case of Westernization rules, or is Easternization under
siege by the Orientalism of the West?
Eastern perspectives of Western discourses
It is these perspectives that we turn to in Chapters 5–14, in Part III of this

volume, which examine the evidence for the praxis of Easternization with
regard to specific spheres of human life, experience and activity that have
been selected for scrutiny from a range of possibilities. Each chapter will
attend to a particular life sphere with regard to its praxis. Seven apply an
Eastern lens to the discursive constructions on the praxis, two provide
Western viewpoints and one a mutually interactive position between East
and West.
In Chapter 5, ‘Representations of Philosophy: The Western Gaze Observed’,
Ahmad Murad critiques the reductionist view of Eastern/non-Western phi-
losophies by highlighting how Western epistemology has come to dominate
the discourse of philosophy as a ‘universal’ sphere of thought and wisdom.
In interrogating the discourse, he argues that philosophy as we ‘know’ it, has
been predicated largely on the use of what he posits are essentially Western
terms such as ‘god’ and ‘religion’ and Western modes of periodization. The
chapter distinguishes and traces the use and effects of such nomenclature
and modes, and argues that, in dominating the discourse of philosophy in
general, they subjugate Eastern/non-Western philosophies.
In Chapter 6, ‘Framings of the East: Rebranding Beliefs and Religions’,

Lim Kim Hui Lim contends that Easternization only occurs as acculturation,
while Westernization exists as acculturation and as hegemony in the
power relations of domination. As acculturation, both Easternization
and Westernization occur as global flows of reciprocal and asymmetrical
cultural influences with elements that are absorbed and adapted to suit
local and individual preferences. With regard to religion, Lim focuses
on the three dimensions of belief, culture and product. As belief, the
focus is on the numbers of believers and their interpretation of religious
meanings, as culture, on the difference between routine and fashionable
practices and as product, on the commoditization and commodification of
Eastern religions as ideologies that are quite removed from their original
philosophical contexts and belief systems.
In Chapter 7, ‘When Knowledge Invents Boundaries: From Colonial
Knowledge to Multiculturalism’, Shamsul A.B. revisits colonial knowledge
and methodology within the context of modern and contemporary defini-
tions of types of societies. Shamsul notes that Europeans contributed to
different experiential forms of knowledge in establishing themselves in
various parts of the globe as an integral component of their societies.
Theories of ‘multiculturalism’ came from settler societies; the ‘plural society’
and ‘consociationalism’ from host societies; and the ‘civilizational canopy’
emerged as a system of governance inherent in the indigenous social
systems of host societies in Africa, South and West Asia and the Malay
archipelago. In this chapter Shamsul analyses the implications of the impact
these theories have had in these societies, and argues for the application of
the ‘civilizational canopy’ as a system of government in host societies.
In Chapter 8, Historical Narratives of the Colonized: the Nobel savage
of Sarawak’, Bromeley Philip argues that the histories of colonies demand
more than a critical gaze because extant historical narratives privilege the
supremacy of the European agents of the process, who effectively elided
records of events significant to the colonized while appropriating information
and recreating narratives. Philip examines the ‘white rajah’ rule of the Brooke
regime (1842–1941) in Sarawak to illustrate how Western historiography not
only privileged Western imperialism but also denied the indigene Dayak any
central representation in any account of that period in the history of Sarawak.
Arguably, however, it is only when the Dayaks tell their own stories, rewriting
their ‘history’ as ‘conscious’ subjects, that they can reclaim it for themselves.
In engaging fully with the discursive potential of the notion of the ‘gaze’
Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini and Hiromasa Tanaka suggest four intercon-
nected discourses to shed light on the nature of the ‘mutual gaze’ between
Japan and the West in Chapter 9, The Mutual Gaze: Japan, the West and
Management Training’. They build conceptually on their ‘situatedness’ as
authors in a specific socio-historical context and at discrete points in their expe-
riential trajectories, both interpretatively and reflexively. Bargiela-Chiappini
Introduction 21
begins with the debate around the ‘idea of Europe’ as an example of the
longevity of the discourses of geographic place, as in the West gazing on itself.
The western gaze is then directed to the East where some of the ideological and
philosophical discourses claimed to underlie Japanese management such as
Bushidō or the ‘culture of strategy’ is teased out. Subsequently Hiromasa Tanaka
introduces a set of Eastern discourses that revolve around the Japanese revo-
lution of the 1980s and 1990s in management philosophies and practice by
gazing on Japan as the East, followed by gazing on the West again to recount
Japan’s perceptions of the West’s adoption of the Japanese praxis of manage-
ment and training.
In Chapter 10, ‘Indian Collectivism Revisited: Unpacking the Western
Gaze’, Shamala Paramasivam and Shanta Nair-Venugopal refract ‘the gaze’
to illustrate that while the West discursively constructs the social praxis of
work and business in the East to be both unique and different, it continues
to essentialize it as collectivism. The emanating discourse does not show
sufficient appreciation of the different ways of thinking and reasoning that
underlie the communicative and social praxis of contextually dependent
cultural differences within the broad spectrum of collectivism. In focusing
on the Indian Hindu, the authors argue that although collectivism is valued,
individuality lies at the core of the sense of self for the Indian Hindu. The
chapter examines the Indian Hindu mindset from the perspective of religion
and culture to show how it governs Indian Hindu individuality as a feature
of its collectivity. It draws on the social practices of the Indian Hindu in
business and the globalized workplace to illustrate this.
In Chapter 11, ‘Framings of the East: The Case of Borneo and the Rungus
Community’, Ong Puay Liu confronts the tourist gaze. Ong argues that
historical depictions of the East by the West, especially by travel writers, histo-
rians and colonial administrations, have greatly influenced the representation
of the East in contemporary tourism media that has appropriated them.
The peoples and cultures of the East are presented as ‘primitive’, ‘living at
the edge of modernity’, ‘exquisite’ and ‘exotic’, and the landscape described
as ‘untouched by time. Focusing on Borneo and how the West created markers
about Borneo, the discussion is premised on two major themes of the ‘West’ as
representations of Borneo: eternal paradise and wild people of the forest. Our
view is informed by the ‘tourist gaze’, ‘socially organised and systematized.
We just do not see or look but we see and look from a perspective, socially
constructed through time and space’ (Urry, 1990, p.1). So while tourists,
assisted by the media, pay to experience something in particular, what they
actually encounter could be quite different from what they anticipate.
In ‘Interpreting Mosque Architecture in the Twentieth Century: Trapped
between Two Worlds’, Chapter 12, Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi summarizes
some of the discourse related to the interpretation of Islamic architecture,
namely that of the mosque, which he argues is trapped between the two
worlds of academia and practice. The first is bounded by the intellectual
framework of the West and the other by that of architectural ‘practice’. He

avers that there is a serious lack of commitment and professionalism to
design mosques within the true spirit of what practice should be. Rather,
the more popular approach is that of Revivalism. The result, he observes,
is a confused state of architectural language that at one end is difficult to
use, while at the other presents Islam as an extravagant religion. Thus, most
architectural issues are object-centred rather than value-centred. The chapter
first examines the historical documentation of buildings deemed to be
Islamic architecture within the intellectual framework of the West; the view
that ‘architecture’ is awe-inspiring and evokes beauty, the methodology of
description and sampling, the idea of ‘religion’ and the perception of Islam,
and the reading of religious texts and other sources to explain architecture.
The second part deals with design approaches to mosques that are reflective
of popular contemporary practice.
In ‘Global Hybrids? ‘Eastern Traditions’ of Health and Wellness in the
West’, Chapter 13, Suzanne Newcombe argues that the fundamental
power imbalance in favour of ‘Western’ biomedicine remains intact, but
that biomedicine has been changing in the face of an increasingly plural-
istic medical marketplace. Although such a position could be considered
a type of Easterization, she argues that it is perhaps better understood as
a feature of contemporary globalization where both East and West continue
to be transformed by intercultural exchange. She also explores a variety of
popular Western ‘gazes upon Eastern healing traditions’. Although it might
be tempting to view the spectrum of Western ‘gazes’ in this praxis as exploit-
ative, the reality appears to be more complex. For instance, the traditions of
yoga and Ayurveda apparently incorporated European ideas and influences
before their ‘exportation’ to the West. Moreover, adroit cultural actors (both
Eastern and Western) anticipate the desires of a Western market and often
reinforce romanticized, Orientalist assumptions of Eastern traditions.
In Chapter 14, ‘The Sociology of Gastronomic Decolonization’, Jean Pierre
Poulain explains that it is the inclusion of local food cultures that has led to the
decolonization of haute cuisine and to the development of creative cuisines of
local inspiration such as the birth of Japanese, Malaysian or Australian nou-
velle cuisine, which is being promoted today by brilliant chiefs globally. The
East has influenced French cuisine in the use of new products and techniques
in the presentation of contemporary French cuisine, the most visible being
the art of decoration, in particular, Japanese. One of the many transforma-
tions is the wide range of spices used from that at a quasi homeopathic level
in the traditional kitchen, to one of culinary importance in French cuisine.
Another is the diversification of cooking techniques. ‘Fusion cuisine’ has also
emerged to redefine culinary creativity with the focus on local food cultures in
new cuisines creating the conditions for the decolonization of gastronomies.
Poulain suggests that what is most interesting to see is how various forms of
autonomization are located behind these sets of reciprocal influences.
Introduction 23
Lastly, in the ‘Conclusion’, Chapter 15, we draw conclusions from the

evidence that we present in the ten chapters in Part III of this volume,
to position the discourse on ‘the gaze’ as the exemplification of Western
attitudes to the East that are inherent in the praxis of Easternization. Our pri-
mary concern is to establish what ‘the gaze’ will be; a case of the voluntarily
mutual interaction of ‘giving and taking’ or conversely that of ‘looking and
taking away’, with its implications of a psychological relationship of power
in favour of the Western spectator; that it is multivalent rather than singular.
We anticipate that there may be no congruence on how the East is viewed.
What we have done, however, is to put forth in some measured way, a set of
cross-disciplinary discourses about the East and by the West as ideas; mindful
of the way people see and confront each other in an increasingly intercon-
nected world where differences are constantly being fudged through contact
and acculturation despite the effects of hegemony and orthodoxy. Hence, by
moving away from the divisive polemics and the discursive polarities of the
‘West and the rest’, this volume can contribute towards the development of
scholarship in Occidental studies. It can point to new directions by going
beyond informing the West on how it is inevitably imagined or understood,
to how it is perceived in specific contexts of contact, interaction and change,
such as in the specific life spheres examined here. As specific contexts of
contact, reception, consumption and reproduction of the phenomenon of
Easternization, they demonstrate how the cultural refashioning of the West
may be taking place in relation to the discourse on them.
Notes
1. Said’s (1978) Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient (New York: Pantheon)
is the seminal work on Orientalism. See also Varisco (2007) Reading Orientalism:
Said and the Unsaid. Seattle, WA: WU Press.
2. See Khrisna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (1995) The Myriad-Minded Man, London:
Bloomsbury.
3. According to Ocampo (2000, p. 253), ‘All Rizal manuscripts known to the Jose
Rizal Centennial Commission in 1961 were compiled, transcribed, published, and
translated into both English and Pilipino in the Escritos de Jose Rizal series’. These
consist of 13 volumes, some comprising two or more books.
There are also five volumes of correspondence by Jose Rizal from 1877 to 1896,
the Epistolario Rizalino, chronologically arranged and edited by Teodore M. Kalaw.
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Part II
Negotiating Territory
2
Defining Parameters
Boundaries and borders
Derived from the Latin word oriens meaning ‘east’, literally as in ‘rising’,
the term Orient refers today to the Far East in particular, and Asia in
general, while Oriental describes people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean
descent and Indo-Chinese South East Asian groups such as the Vietnamese.
However, the Orient, ‘until the early nineteenth century had really meant
only India and the Bible lands’ (Said, 1978, p. 4). The Occident, on the other
hand, from the Latin word occidens or ‘sunset’, refers to the West, as distinct
from the East, which has almost invariably evoked both mythical and geo-
graphical Orients in the Western mind. Even as such perceptions of the East
as the Orient existed, more and new ‘Orients’ were discovered (or shifted)
relative to the gaze of Europe, such as the ‘Muslim Orient’ of the Near East
(subsequently, the Middle East) and the Orient of the Far East. The Far East
referred not only to China, Japan and the Koreas, but also to the lands and
islands to the east of British India along the Eastern Indian Ocean and the
Western Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile the Indian sub-continent (South Asia),
South Eastern Asia and the islands of Oceania, including the Philippines and
the Malay Archipelago, were referred to as the East Indies from the sixteenth
century onwards. Associated with the spice trade (and the wars to gain its
control) the Malay Archipelago (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006) refers to the
archipelago between mainland South East Asia and Australia, comprising
Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, the East Malaysian states of
Sabah and Sarawak, on the large island of Borneo, and East Timor or Timor
Leste. Geographically closer to the Far East than to Europe and America,
Australia and New Zealand are considered part of the Asia-Pacific region.
Quite apart from its geographical dispersal, it is also quite clear that the
East cannot be viewed as a unified or collective entity either. Its religious
traditions and belief systems are not only inhomogeneous, but some are
even incompatible in core beliefs. If compatibility can be evoked at all,
it is the general belief in an imminent divine force or deity rather than
29
a personal god that rewards and punishes. The claim is that monism is the
distinguishing quality of the East vis-à-vis the monotheism of the West
(Campbell, 2007). However, while it may be possible to differentiate Eastern
religious traditions from those of the West, it is difficult to speak of a
singular or overarching tradition that defines the Eastern religious character.
The ‘Eastern’ spiritual traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism,
Confucianism, Taoism and Shintoism, do not all share metaphysical or phil-
osophical traditions, ethos or historical roots, although all are indigenous to
the East. It appears that while the West may be defined as an entity largely
in terms of its religio-cultural traditions, the diverse spiritual traditions of
the East cannot be homogenized, even if they are collectively quite distin-
guishable from those of the West.
It is the same absence of cultural uniformity that beset the ‘Asian Values’
debate, during the heydays of the Asian economic upturn of the 1990s.
Based on a shared East Asian value system, it was touted as superior to the
cultural values of the West and invariably presented in the context of an
East–West dichotomy (Inoguchi and Newman, 1997). However, quite apart
from charges that the essential communitarian principle of finding a balance
between the needs of the individual and that of an orderly society sanctioned
the curtailment of civil liberties for the larger good of that orderliness, it was
also of limited application. Although based on the general common charac-
ter of group orientation or collectivism in East Asian countries, the mainly
Confucian derived ethics did not find the same resonance in mainly Muslim
Indonesia or Malaysia, or even Singapore with its non-Chinese minorities.
East Asia is far from being an undifferentiated monolith, although Japan,
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China are generally considered homogenous
societies despite China’s ethnic diversity.
The Judeo-Christian traditions of an Anglophone-American West may
be found in such geographically distant places as Europe, America (inclu-
sive of Canada, Mexico and Latin America), Australia and New Zealand. Yet
the Philippines and Timor Leste are not culturally part of this West despite
the majority of the population being Catholic Christian. Christianity is
a major and the fastest growing religion in South Korea, while Japan has
been substantially influenced by the modernity of Westernization, yet both
maintain largely different and distinctive languages, religions, cultures,
customs and world views that are products of their own indigenous devel-
opment. It thus appears that Christianity, or Westernization, alone is not
sufficient condition for being considered part of the Occidental world. In
contrast, both Australia and New Zealand, although located far away from
Western Europe, are ‘Occidental’ nations. Originally white settler societies,
their core cultural values and mainstream practices remain Anglophone.
These have also been assimilated by the indigenous Australians and the
Maoris of New Zealand, despite adherence to native ceremonial customs
and beliefs and resistance to perceived threats of cultural marginalization.
Defining Parameters 31
The white majority’s mainstream cultural practices are the crucial markers
of identity and membership in settler communities although biculturalism
as rapprochement between whites (Pakeha) and Maori in New Zealand, and
between mainly white and indigenous Australians, is evident within the
margins of the dominant Anglophone culture. A similar template of cultural
osmosis is also evident in the more racially mixed and radical politics of
Latin American nations.
Lastly, although Asians (as the main representatives of an iconic East)
have transacted, interacted with and challenged the ideas inherent in
Orientalism as both demeaning and hegemonic, Asia has frequently been
less than salubrious in its gaze of itself. Indeed Asia, with its diversity of
cultures, religions and civilizations, has been beset by racism, ethnocentrism
and xenophobia intertwined with the problems involved in the process of
nation-building in a post-colonial era (see United Nations Report, 2004).
The world has also witnessed xenophobia between Korea and Japan, China
and Japan, India and China, Pakistan and India; and antagonisms between
Taiwan and China, Malaysia and Indonesia, even Malaysia and Singapore.
Some of the most discriminatory behaviour recorded, however, has been
directed at Asia’s indigenous populations. The infliction of violence defined
along ideologies of race, ethnicity, caste and religion continues, along-
side various other permutations of strife and tension. Asia has also been
guilty of some of the most unfair, even abusive male practices inflicted
on women, such as the keeping of concubines, polygamy, infanticide and
filicide, sati, foot-binding, bondage and enslavement. Historically Asia has
also been painted as despotic, backward and even infantile by the West
(Hobson, 2004) despite its own convoluted history of war, bloodshed and
massacre. Yet some of the more notable exemplars of humankind, for exam-
ple, Confucius, Buddha and Gandhi, were Asians while the emancipation
of Asian women produced some of the worlds more memorable leaders,
such as Indira Gandhi, Cory Aquino, Benazir Butto and, most notably today,
Aung San Suu Kyi. Again, although a militarized Japan and a communisti-
cally inclined China repudiated Tagore’s philosophy of pacifism in the early
1990s (Bonnet, 2004), Asia, as a purported repository of ancient wisdom,
can begin to revitalize its inherited religious and philosophical traditions to
demonstrate the relevance of its inherent moral and spiritual strengths; an
‘Asian essence’ that both Tagore and Okakura1 claimed to detect in Asian
spiritual traditions (p. 81).
Islam in the East
All the world’s major religions, in fact, emerged from within the East; Islam
and Christianity specifically from the Near East. Islam is one of the many
living religious traditions of the East. Millions in South East Asia, South Asia
and West Asia are Muslims. Despite the Abrahamic nexus in Islam, Judaism
and Christianity, Islam has not been embraced by the prevailing institutions
and traditions of the West in spite of a fast growing Muslim population in
Europe of 38,112,000 or 5.2 per cent of the total population (Wikipedia,
2009). The divide between Islam and Judeo-Christianity, as Eastern and
Western religions, appears to be located in the power relations between
Muslims and Judeo-Christians in the West. Its long history of contest and
conflict in the West has relegated Islam to a religion of the non-West.
Locating Islam in the non-West is to infer that the power relations between
Islam and Judeo-Christianity are those between the powerful and the weak,
the oppressor and the victim, white and non-white. The Orient, as the non-
West, is an ambiguous reference for an Anglo-American West, because it is
very much embedded in the dynamics of power relations. The underlying
difficulties with Islam are also related to colour and culture, which are some
of the more salient markers of identity between the West, the East and the
non-West. Despite being grounded in the Abrahamic trinity of faiths, Islam’s
Arabic roots signify its Otherness with the largest numbers of believers
found in Asia and Africa. Additionally its rootedness in the Orient of the
Near and Middle East Easternizes it.
Theologically, Islam does not subscribe to any of the beliefs of the other
religions of the East. There is a sharp contrast between Islam, a monothe-
istic religion, and the main religions of the East, namely, Hinduism and
Buddhism, in which a transcendental personal god of supplication, com-
passion and retribution is not integral to belief or practice. The ‘Eastern’
religions are pantheistic and/or panentheistic. In the latter, ‘God’ pervades
the world, but is also beyond it; immanent and transcendent, relative and
absolute. These beliefs allow for the worship of a variety of forms and attri-
butions of ‘God’. Additionally many Eastern religions developed as forms of
syncretism and are distinguishable from the religions of proclaimed revela-
tion and prophesy (which includes Islam) of the mainly Occidental West.
Yet, in some parts of the East, as in Java, forms of syncretism, such as the
Javanese beliefs of kebatinan or kejawen, have developed and exist alongside
Islam. These beliefs combine occultism, metaphysics, mysticism and other
esoteric doctrines in the Javanese search for harmony or a synthesis in life as
exemplified by the attainment of peace of mind by the inner self.
Nevertheless, most Indonesian and Malaysian Muslims embrace more
‘sanitized’ versions of Islam, rejecting residual elements and vestiges of
Hinduism, Buddhism, animism and other indigenous beliefs, consonant
with the fundamental teachings of Islam and in tandem with its global
resurgence. In many ways Sikhism, also a religion of syncretism, emerged as
a reaction to both the Islamic and Hindu beliefs and practices of sixteenth-
century India, in an attempt to synthesize the best elements of both religions
(Hume, 1959, pp. 102–3). Although it emphasizes the unity and oneness of
a supreme being as in Islam, it accepts the Hindu beliefs of Karma, the trans-
migration of souls and salvation in the merging of the individual self with
an ultimate supreme reality. Sikhs live mainly in Punjab, India but a global
diaspora was mobilized for a separate Sikh homeland (Khalistan) in the late
1990s. The movement has petered out.
The East for our purposes is, thus, Asia both as a continent ranging from
Japan in the Far East to the Middle East and as a locality and location that sub-
sumes a mix of cultural traditions and philosophies. It is not an East that can or
should be culturally defined on the basis of monistic pantheism alone, merely
in order to differentiate it from a preponderantly monotheistic Judeo-Christian
West. It includes Islam as one of its many religions. By situating Islam as part of
the living traditions of many localized communities in the East, both ‘Oriental’
and Asian discourses of Islam can be aligned as Eastern perspectives by includ-
ing the faith-based practices of these communities as localized spheres of
Islamic life (see Sardar, 1999). While millions of Muslims in Asia and elsewhere
remain essentially Islamic in the fundamental belief in a transcendental non-
attributable God, they have accommodated and adapted to mainstream ways
of life as well: witness India, China, Indonesia and Malaysia. As we reconsider
the binary yet complex notions of East and West, we should be fairly sceptical
of the polemics of a clash of civilizations (Huntington, 1996), and of men-
talities (Nisbett, 2003), despite salient differences of geographies, histories,
traditions and philosophies and the vagaries of political destiny.
Russia in the West
If the West has never truly embraced Islam as a faith within the Judeo-
Christian nexus of the Abrahamic traditions, then it has been ambivalent
about the position of Russia in Europe too. Many historians and other com-
mentators have, in fact, been ambiguous about Russia’s European credentials
and by extension her Western roots. Russia has been seen and represented
as both within and yet outside the traditional West of Christendom and
later Europe. According to the European historian Norman Jones (1996),
for more than 500 years from 1500AD, the cardinal problem in defining
Europe centred on the inclusion or exclusion of an Orthodox, autocratic,
economically backward but expanding Russia that was already deemed a
bad fit by her Western neighbours. Russians themselves were ambiguous
about wanting to be in or out of Europe. Although the Empress Catherine
categorically vouched in 1767 that ‘Russia is a European state’, a century
later the rift between Russian intellectuals as Westerners and Slavophiles fur-
ther contributed to the uncertainty about Russia’s degree of Europeanness.
While Dostoevsky, a ‘Westerner’, eulogized in 1880 that Europe was dear
to the Russian people, Slavophile detractors claimed that Russia possessed
a distinctive Slavic civilization that was neither European nor Asiatic. It lay
midway between both continents (Davies, 1996, pp. 10–11).
According to Bonnet (2002, 2004), the concept of the West was developed
in Russia from the mid-nineteenth century onwards and became an
indispensable tool in an ongoing debate around the country’s destiny and

identity about whether Russia should be Europeanized. Russia during Soviet
communism even likened itself to the East vis-à-vis the rest of Europe as
the West. When the Russian dictator, Stalin, installed communist govern-
ments in most of Eastern Europe, he formed what came to be known as the
Eastern bloc. Closed to the rest of the free world, Soviet rule of these Eastern
European countries was referred to as the Iron Curtain. This launched a long
period of antagonism, known as the Cold War, which was mainly a struggle
for global dominance with the USA. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union chose
to distance itself ideologically from Europe as the West. However, the idea
of ‘the West’ was fundamental to the Soviet Union in developing a negative
ideology against Western Europe as a non-communist and anti-Soviet entity.
From the early 1920s onwards, ‘the West’ was targeted as a repository of
social ills. Soviet leaders claimed that racial and ethnic discrimination were
ailments of the Western, capitalist world and it was counter-revolutionary
to identify such problems within the USSR. During the 1920s, the Soviet
Union established, recognized and incorporated non-Russian nationalities
in order to assimilate diverse societies into a single recognizable nation that
would contain, neutralize and eradicate any form of dissent. For Stalin, it
was not about pitting the East against the West, but Russia versus the West.
Anti-Westernism became the foundation of communist identity. Indeed,
although Gorbachev revived the slogan of ‘Europe is our common home’
in 1987 (Bonnet, 2002), Soviet communism saw the West as its ideological
enemy since it was believed to be led by the USA. Until the dissolution of the
USSR, Russia remained ideologically non-Western. Nevertheless, Asia viewed
Russia, although ‘territorially predominantly Asian’ (ibid.), as European,
even if not part of the ‘Western’ Bloc, in relation to the Asiatic ‘otherness’
of the former states of the Soviet Bloc of the USSR, now the CIS.
The West as the West and in the West
The idea of the West according to Norman Jones is as old as the Greeks ‘who
saw free Hellas as the antithesis to the Persian-ruled despotisms to the East’
(1996, p. 22). Nonetheless, there are many real and important lines on the
map of Europe that have divided it into West and East; the most durable
being that between Catholic (Latin) Christianity and Orthodox (Greek)
Christianity. In place for centuries, it may still be a powerful determinant
in regional affairs as shown by events during the collapse of Yugoslavia in
the 1990s. There is also the division of Europe into areas with and without
a Roman past and between the Western and the Eastern Roman Empires.
In more modern times the Ottoman line marked off the Balkan lands of
centuries of Muslim rule. The most recent was the Iron Curtain of Soviet rule
during the period known as the Cold War between the USSR and Western
Europe (Jones, 1996, p. 27).
These lines are augmented by others imposed by social scientists according

to their disciplinary preoccupations. There are lines separating the industrial-
ized Europe of the West from the peasant societies of the East, areas of nuclear
families from extended ones, lands that adopted forms of Roman law from
those that did not, countries with a liberal, democratic tradition from those
without, and Western from non-Western forms of nationalism. Yet, Jones
argues that the West as an entity shares many common distinctions of a cul-
tural and geopolitical kind despite the differences within Western and Eastern
Europe. First, the peoples of Europe are Indo-Europeans who are the ‘co-heirs
of Christendom’ and, second, they are connected politically, economically
and culturally. They are also united by their fears and anxieties about influ-
ences from the outside – whether from America, Africa or Asia. In its many
guises, Europe, Jones avers has always possessed a central core and a series of
expanding peripheries. With its peoples settling far and wide, Europe’s periph-
ery now stretches in a grand sweep from the North American coastlines to
those of South America, Africa and northernmost Asia (1996, pp. 27–8).
The USA became the last stand for a European West that lost its empires,
vitality and influence in international relations. Virtually the last outpost
for Western civilization close to the heels of the loss of European power
and domination, it maintains a ‘special relationship’ with the UK. The
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of European empire
building and the USA became the sole heir to European imperialism, but in
an increasingly multipolar world that it has struggled to police, with two
wars to its discredit in its self-proclaimed ‘war on terror’. More recently, the
USA, bearer of ‘the white man’s burden’ and the civilizational standard for
the iconic West, received a revitalization of its lagging spirits at home and
abroad with the historic election of the first African-American president
of the USA, Barak Obama, in 2009. A global economic crisis that exposed
unbelievable corporate greed and the phenomenal costs of fighting wars,
both human and monetary, brought a nation of rabid consumerists and
jaded voters from the brink of despair to vote ironically for a new but black
president as leader of the Western world who offered the seemingly simple
yet potently invigorating message of hope in change. Some of that hope was
captured in the new President receiving the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace.
A contingent perspective of the West is as a partial construct of ‘those bits
of Western society and culture that get shipped out to the colonies’ (Carrier,
2003, p. ix). These ‘bits’ become representative of the West although they
may not be objective reflections of it. Nevertheless, this image of the West
built up from kaleidoscopic images frozen in time and by the medium in
which they are conveyed in celluloid films, printed and, more increasing,
digital matter has become a fairly developed, albeit perforated, version
(more imagined than real) of the West. It has taken root in many post colo-
nial societies where distance has invariably lent enchantment to the view
of the colonial white ‘master’ as the true copy of Western civilization. One
such version is the representation of early American settlers as the ‘good

guys’ fighting native American Indians, the ‘bad guys’, and stage-coach
robbers to ‘defend’ both land and money. In a now infamous statement
uttered on 17 September 2001, President George W. Bush immortalized the
legendary American Wild West when issuing the order for the capture or
death of Osama bin Laden, the alleged architect of the 9/11 disaster in 2001
by alluding to its iconic posters of ‘wanted dead or alive!’ (Nair-Venugopal,
2003, p. 21). America is a very important, if not the main, constituent of this
imagined West. Much of it has been built up over time to a very large extent
by Hollywood, and more recently by MTV and voyeuristic reality TV shows
that offer iterative menus of sex and thrills, action and glory, fame and for-
tune. The global outpouring of grief following the death of the entertainer
Michael Jackson in 2009 demonstrated just how much a version of this
imagined West, enabled by cable network television, captured the imagina-
tion of the world. The memorial service was ‘lifted out’ from its location in
California, America and beamed ‘across wide spans of time-space’ (Giddens,
1991) to almost every corner of the world. The West is an indelible imprint
in the collective imagination of a globalized humanity.
Globalization, migration and mobility have also changed mental and social
landscapes in the West in many cases with far reaching consequences for both
early settler descendants and new immigrants. Migrant workers and diasporas
have changed ‘ethnoscapes’ (Appadurai, 1996) and the discourse of race and
rights not only in the settler nations of the USA, Australia, New Zealand and
Latin America but also in the traditional heartland of the West in Europe.
Histories intertwine with colonization and decolonization; geographies, nar-
ratives and identities overlap with globalization, migration and mobility. New
immigrants have coloured, shaped and changed the landscape of Europe.
New trajectories of ethnic identities have surfaced – from white to non-white,
mixed and multicultural – alongside newly empowered voices demanding
the right to be heard, and to be seen to be heard. Also emerging are new fears
and anxieties, such as Eurabia (Bat Ye’or, 2005), that Muslims will become
the majority in Europe if immigration continues because of high birth rates,
while old concerns remain disquieting as triggers for conflict. In fact, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel remarked, famously now, on 17 October 2010, that
German multiculturalism has ‘utterly failed’, while the British Prime Minister
David Cameron, in a speech delivered at the Munich Security Conference on
9 February 2011, sought to dispel Islamophobia in Europe by reiterating that
the origins of terrorist attacks are the ideology of Islamist extremism and not
the Islamic faith. Yet as this volume goes to press, Anders Behring Breivik,
a 32 year-old Norwegian right-wing extremist, went on a deadly rampage on
22 July 2011, killing 77 individuals, the highest number in recorded history.
His targets were non-Christians and those he deemed to be inimical to a
Christian Europe. Singlehandedly he smashed the stereotype of a ‘terrorist’ as
a fanatical Muslim.
The West is, in sum, all these representations – an idea, an essentialism,

a set of images, attitudes, a frame of reference, a cultural metaphor, a discursive
polarity, as well as a spread of geographically locatable regions, central,
peripheral and mobile. It is this West that we confront in relation to Asia as the
differentiated East with regard to ‘the gaze’ as a leitmotif in this volume. Indeed
as an idea alone the West is everywhere, both far and near (Bonnet, 2004). As
Turner (1997, p. 9) points out, globalization ‘makes it very difficult to carry
on talking about oriental and occidental cultures as separate, autonomous
or independent cultural regimes’. And it is equally important to connect
globalization with post-modernity as ‘the extension of the processes of com-
modification to everyday life and the impact of mass consumer cultures on
cultural systems, blurring the distinction between high and low culture’. The
impact of globalization and capitalism in the transposability of the American
suburban dream is evident even in the ‘proper Islamic consumption’ of the
Malaysian Muslim middle class, which is constituted through consumer
practices and Islamic revivalism in the distinction between pragmatic and
purist halal consumerism (see Fischer, 2008).
The preoccupation of post-modernity with the local, embedded and con-
textual quality of knowledge and the problems of universalizing ‘religion’ or
‘human nature’ also means that ‘postmodern methodologies are sensitive to
the richness and complexity of local meanings of folk practices and beliefs’
(Turner, 1997, p. 9). Where post-modernity generally refers to the economic
and/or cultural state or condition of society said to exist after ‘modernity’
ended in the late twentieth century, post-modernism refers to a set of
perspectives. It can offer alternatives to the global consumption of com-
modities and forms of knowledge by focusing on local action as necessary,
even if limited, for effectiveness.
As such, post-modernism has found important allies in feminism and anti-
colonialism. For example, in challenging the dominant bases of research
methods in knowledge production and representation, Linda Tuhiwai Smith
(1999), the Moari scholar, offers indigenous alternatives to the hegemony of
the white colonial methodologies of the West. By exposing the inadequacy
of the inter-relationships of the constructions of time, space, distance and
language on which Western scholarship has depended for the study of the
native, Smith has reclaimed the epistemological space occupied by it with its
inextricable links to European imperialism and colonialism and the making
of the Other. In reconstituting the image of the native, Smith has also
restored the native’s voice. It is no longer muted. It is localized, embedded,
contextualized and particularized in the resonating call for the decoloniza-
tion of research methods.
Tuhiwai Smith’s work also validates our own frustrations with extant gen-
res and the focus that this book, it seemed, perforce has had to assume. The
most predictable genre seemed to be postcolonial studies and the most appro-
priate focus, or so it appeared, had to be deconstruction. Post-colonialism
appears destined to haunt any work that takes up any position of looking at
the West through the lens of the Other, regardless of the original motivation.
The ghost is evoked and challenged in the very act of gazing upon the object
itself, only to disappear and re-emerge as a sighting at the very next men-
tion of the West. Additionally, it seemed that the omission of literature as a
sphere of activity was a mistake of a certain order although it was a deliber-
ate omission to liberate us from the most certain crush of the discourses of
post-colonial hegemonies in literature. As we have argued in Chapter 1, we
did not set out a priori to ‘engage’, seek to ‘contest’ or aim to ‘fix’ anything.
What we have done is present a set of understandings of the narratives of a
phenomenon, the praxis of Easternization, mainly as cultural change, as the
starting point of our reference. In applying multiple methods of inquiry as
a plural analytic to embrace a multiplicity of voices, we allow for divergent,
convergent and neutral perspectives as critique, appreciation or commentary
of Western discourses of the praxis of Easternization, free from a prescribed
focus and the trappings of a predictive bias, approach and methodology. Our
intention is neither to tame nor to defame, but to present these narratives as
we read them with a certain degree of autonomy in unmuted voice as posi-
tions or attitudes about the East as we have observed and understood them.
In presenting this set of perspectives as framings of the East in response to
these narratives, the volume although eclectic in approach is focused in its
aim of uncovering attitudes towards the East without privileging the dis-
course of any particular perspective.
Comparing Easternization with Orientalism
Drawing comparisons between East and West are tendentiousness to say

the least and illustrate their ontological instability. Yet Western academia
has inherited the view that ‘everything “Western” is civilized, and that eve-
rything civilized is Western’ (Davies, 1996, p. 19). By extension, therefore,
or simply by default, the East or the Orient stands for backwardness and
inferiority, and is thus unworthy of attention. Although the configurations
of such perceptions have already been ably exposed with regard to European
attitudes towards Islam and the Arab world, within the tradition of studies
in Orientalism, as exemplified in Orientalism (Said 1978), the East continues
to evoke such attitudes even in an era of Asian economic dynamism. Some
of Europe’s own regions in the East, where Western civilization was not tra-
ditionally seen to prevail, have also been subjected to the same inferior gaze.
Nevertheless, almost invariably, Orientalism refers today to the supercilious
Occidental gaze of the East.
As alluded to in Chapter 1, Orientalism, the book and the meaning, has
forever changed studies of the Orient as the East. We take on board some of the
ramifications of that discourse in relation to Occidentalism and Occidental
studies to explain Easternization. While Easternization and Westernization
may be viewed as discourses opposed to each other, or as different trajectories

of related discourses, Westernization is linked to Orientalism. Easternization
is related to but different from Globalization, also viewed as Westernization.
Commonly viewed as acculturation, Easternization refers to the process of
perceived, mainly cultural, change from the East. We posit that the main
ramification of the Easternization of the West is the cultural refashioning
of the West as a corollary to the intellectual refashioning of the East by the
West as Orientalism. Orientalism, Occidentalism and Occidental studies are
discussed together in the following.
In the impressive and persuasive scholarly publication, The Easternisation
of the West, Colin Campbell (2007) systematically traces the impact of
Easternization as a phenomenon of cultural influence blowing strongly in
the West. Campbell claims that the phenomenon is neither accidental nor
incidental but the result of a host of factors that underwrote it in tandem
with specific movements and events in the West that converged to enable
the processes of change, such as those of the Counter Culture Revolution
and the New Age Movement to actualize the phenomenon. There is a miss-
ing piece, however, in Campbell’s culturally defined East – that is, the Near
or Middle East. It may well have been left out because of the intractability
of reconciling the monotheism of the Islamic God of the Middle East with
the premise of monism for the East, presumably Asia. Campbell admits that
‘some measure of uncertainty concerns the religions of the Near East, and
especially Islam’ and that ‘on some occasions Islam is simply omitted from
an East–West religious categorization altogether’ (2007, p. 61). The thesis
is otherwise carefully couched in relation to Weber’s (1922/1963) view of
culture as world view with the terms East and West explained as ‘cultural
rather than as social or geographical meanings that have been assigned
to them’ (p. 48). Campbell is thus able to justify the omission of what is
‘messy’ to account for by drawing rather neat lines between the materialistic
dualism (or rational monotheism) of the West and the metaphysical mon-
ism of the East. Finally, in making a strong case for the thesis, Campbell
concludes rather emphatically that the West ‘turns East’ mainly because
there is nowhere else to go (p. 375). This radical stand (Campbell, 1999) has
attracted its detractors. As mentioned in Chapter 1, an earlier incarnation of
this thesis was criticized by Hamilton (2002) and Dawson (2006). Although
they do not dispute evidence of the phenomenon, both claim Western own-
ership for it from different positions. Hamilton (2002, p. 243), for instance,
disputes four aspects of the thesis; three of them with great perception.
Firstly, it tends to stereotype Eastern religions in a somewhat misleading

way. Secondly, it is insensitive to the marked differences between vari-
ous Eastern religious traditions. Thirdly, it characterises those trends in
Western culture which it sees as constituting Easternisation too readily
and unequivocally as specifically religious developments.
However, his final claim that the thesis tends to ignore or diminish the
‘quintessentially’ this-worldly Western character of the Easternization trend is
contestable as it seeks to negate any vestige of the effects of Eastern cultural
influences in the ‘lifeworlds’ of the West. Dawson evokes Bourdieu (1984, p. 2),
to claim that Eastern concepts and practices correspond to the ‘cultural com-
petence’ of the modern Western ‘aesthetic’. In effect, their arguments, seek to
nullify the Easternization of the West paradigm as cultural change. It may be
deduced that they posit that either Westernization still rules or Easternization
is under siege in the West.
Turner (1997, p. 17), in suggesting that the post-modernism of culture
erodes faith, explains that the diversity and global character of commodi-
ties transform in covert and indirect ways the everyday beliefs of the mass
of the population. He argues that Western forms of consumerism have a far
more significant impact on the nature of traditional beliefs, at the level of
the village, for example, than the intellectual beliefs of religious leaders and
other intellectual church elites. A change in belief is, thus, brought about
through the medium of cultural change, which in turn brings about social
change in everyday life through ‘the hedonistic consumption of commodities
in which … there is a profound sense of the simulation and inauthentica-
tion of cultures through the endless production of commodities’. Turner
sees the nostalgia of Western intellectuals for past cultural heritage or for
primitive forms of culture, in relation to these social changes, as an escape
from the assault of modern forms of culture. The need to escape from the
fudging of high and low cultures as part of the process of globalization,
the rise of mass cultures and the post-modernization of lifestyles may well
explain some of the detraction that the Easternization thesis has received.
More significantly, post-modernism can help to explain how the more
covert and indirect presence of the praxis of Easternization is neither
accepted nor acknowledged as cultural change; as, for example, in the con-
stant monitoring by the biomedical industry in the West of what is practiced
as ‘traditional’ or ‘Eastern’ alternative medicine. In combating or neutral-
izing the praxis of Easternization, the origins of such cultural influence and
the communities associated with it are also being resisted and neutralized,
thereby negating their potential power to change. Nostalgia, if not hegem-
ony, seems to be at work if the very presence of any praxis of Easternization
has to be sanctioned; as, for example, in the sphere of complementary and
alternative medicine. It is this policing that we posit as ‘Easternization being
under siege’. Central to this phenomenon is the prevalence of Western
hegemony even in the era of decolonization and post-colonization (see
Latouche, 1996). Westernization is such a pervasive global phenomenon
that it is accepted as fait accompli and its forms absorbed as the very essence
in some cases of modern life, ranging from fashions to technology, and from
food to music. On the other hand, Easternization viewed largely as cultural
influence, is contested even when prevalent as different from the culture
and values of the social mileau. A similar contemporary reaction is that

of Eurabia or the fear of the spread of Arabic cultural influence in Europe.
Easternization only appears to find acceptance if it is sanctioned as being in
tune with the tone and narrative of mainstream culture and, even then, it is
viewed more as acculturation or fashion than anything else.
Nostalgia becomes an attitude of supremacy or hegemony if it acts as a gate-
keeping force even within those spheres of human life, experience and activity
that have already undergone cultural change. These in turn bring about social
change in seemingly innocuous ways in everyday life, as in the consumption
of the products of profitable enterprise in cultural change; from yoga togs
for exercise to sushi for lunch and from incense for meditation to good luck
charms for improving Feng Shui. In invading the ‘discursive, practical and
aesthetic spheres’ (Dawson, 2006, p. 1) in the West the praxis of Easternization
as the ‘cultural consumption’ of the East has not only transformed everyday
beliefs in covert and indirect ways, it has also transformed everyday life as
social change through the ‘hedonistic consumption’ (Turner, 1997) of the
commodification of the praxis of Easternization in modern life style choices.
Orientalism, Occidentalism and Occidental studies
Contrasts are invariably drawn between Orientalism and Occidentalism with

the former standing for the products of specific ideologies of Western impe-
rialism or those of ‘a particular, suspect anthropological thought’ (Carrier,
2003, p. 1) and representation. Occidentalism, on the other hand, is evoked
in at least two main ways: a) as stereotyped and sometimes dehumanizing
views of the so-called Western world (Baruma and Margalit, 2004), and b) as
ideologies, attitudes, visions or images of the West developed in either the
West or the non-West with reference to specific tropes, metaphors, symbols
and signs (Venn, 2000).
Referring to Occidentalism as ‘stylized images of the West’ Carrier (2003,
p. 1) argues that a different sort of Occidentalism is emerging ‘in studies
of the ways that people outside the West imagine themselves, for their
self-image often develops in contrast to their stylized image of the West’.
He uses the Melanesian concept of kastom or ‘the concern to preserve and
perhaps recreate what people see as their traditional ways’, that is, culture as
a ‘thing’ to illustrate this self-imagining (2003, p. 6). Carrier sees this form
of Occidentalism as an alternative to and critique of the ways in which
Orientalist (anthropologists mainly), both white and non-white, have
studied native ideologies, customs and practices, social forms and beliefs,
whether in Melanesia, the Pacific Islands or Africa, from a similar homog-
enized Western cultural position of perceived superiority.
Bonnet (2004) sees an Occidentalism emerging from the interconnection
of non-Western and Western intellectual traditions and argues that both
Occidentalism and the West can be understood as non-Western inventions.
Images of the West are employed and deployed, he says, sometimes with
very positive connotations, to develop distinct, non-Western traditions of
modernity. Bonnett’s approach stresses the importance of visions of the
Occident in developing pan-national and ethnic identities around the
world. According to Bonnet, Buruma and Margalit’s (2004) more specific
association of the West with secularity today demands attention because it
illustrates the ‘strategic’ yet ‘mobile’ definition of the West in contrast to an
earlier entrenched image of Christianity as being integral to its characteriza-
tion (Bonnet, 2004, p. 3).
The locus of Occidental studies is the civilization and culture of Europeans,
both in Europe and in what were originally settlements in Oceania and the
Americas, and elsewhere, and the influence they have come to have and
continue to wield on global order as world powers – and in other matters as
agents of change – inclusive of their attitudes to the East. It should include
a consideration of the cultural landscape of a changing world: that it is ‘flat’
(Friedman, 2005) and that one can ‘see’ as far as anyone else from anywhere;
that ‘international standards’ in many spheres of human life and activity
have introduced us to landscapes of similarity and familiarity, and that the
internet has redefined the world (Castells, 2000) and rendered it borderless.
There are no more safe havens or secret places to hide as despots, arms deal-
ers and drug barons, genocidal and serial killers, paedophiles and human
traffickers, and terrorists and extremists now know. Or, as Salman Rushdie
(1991) observes, this world is ‘without quiet corners’; there are ‘no easy
escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss’ (p. 92).
In further embracing the modern reality of this world, Occidental studies
should also look at communities across borders and at transnational, state,
inter-governmental, civil society, diasporic and individual players. Finally it
should critically review the trope of the Other. The Other is not inevitably
the exotic other on another side of a cultural divide. The Other is also a social
actor amidst us, ‘the stranger’ (Harman, 1988). In a porous world of seep-
ages and leakages, the tropes of the Occidentalist and the Orientalist may
have become irrelevant but attitudes remain and need to be re-examined if
a school of scholarship in Occidental studies is to emerge and develop.
Note
1. Kakuzo Okakura is the author of The Ideals of the East, first published in 1904:
available now as The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (2000)
(New York and Tokyo: ICG Muse).
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3
Beyond Boundedness: Imagining
the Post-colonial Dislocation
Ahmad Murad Merican
Introduction
Alternative discourse in its various forms informs us simultaneously on

collective disparate, mainstream and marginalized histories and identities.
The various manifestations of these larger problems and their sources are
identified as, namely, the critique of colonialism, academic imperialism,
de-colonization (of knowledge), critical pedagogy, imitation and the captive
mind, de-schooling, academic dependency, Orientlism and Eurocentrism
(see Alatas, S.F., 2003). These are captured in the larger contexts of political,
cultural and power relations between the former Western colonial powers
and the ex-colonies.
The subsequent nexus between these former colonial powers, transformed
into world capitalists and advocates of cultural globalization has furthered
the problems of identity, the self and consciousness – of always becoming,
and of being, out and within. We hereby live within the parameters of
expansion, bounded by the history of imperialism. We are subject to
interpretations by the colonial past and the remnants of colonialism in
all its ramifications. Non-Western societies mainly understand themselves
and are understood through the problems of Western soceities and, by
extension, Western civilization. One instance of the outcome of the debate
about Orientalism is the new approach to decolonization and the writing
of history. For example, in the writing of Indian history, categorized as
‘subaltern studies’ (Guha, 1981), we witness a new praxis for decolonization
at various levels. The tradition came to be eventually known as ‘cultural
discourse studies’ (Bhabha, 1983), a problem induced by multiculturalism
reflecting the experience of globalization, and necessitating the creation of
a post-colonial space.
This chapter thus seeks to explore the various modes of post-colonial
imaginations with a view to transcending the boundaries of the post-
colonial. This is because it assumes that the framings of the East on the
gaze of the West is located in post-coloniality. But is post-coloniality caught
45
in a time warp? With that in mind this chapter begins by outlining the
presupposition of the post-colonial space as discussed by Couze Venn in
his Occidentalism (2000). Venn’s arguments resonate with what he terms
a ‘post-Occidentalist, post-colonialist and a transmodern future’ (p. 236).
This chapter hightlights specific features in the project of Occidentalism set
against the ambivalance of the subject. It then moves on to discuss some of
the earliest enocunters in analysing Orientalism and the Western gaze. Even
before Edward Said’s Orientalism (1979) appeared, A.L. Tibawi, Syed Hussein
Alatas and Anouar Abdel Malek had tackled the question of Orientalism and
Western biases of the Other. The intervention of cultures by colonialism also
led to Homi Bhabha’s assessment of ambivalance and mimicry (1994, p. 121)
and to Alatas’ conceptualization of the captive mind (1972). The chapter
undertakes to identify the problems of representation, suggesting several
modes of transcending the post-colonial space, and concludes in a re-reading
of Said and his Orientalism.
Post-colonial space
The traditional dominant cultures of nation-states has been challenged by

the marginalized (Turner, 1994, p.183) and, to use Edward Said’s term, ‘the
dispossessed’. These groups, bringing themselves as emergent forces in the
process of decolonization coupled with globalization, rendered much of
the discussion of East and West in orientalism redundant (Turner, p. 183).
Indeed, from the seventeenth century onwards, Orientalism had constituted
a profound sense of otherness with respect to alien cultures. Moving on to
the period that we call post-colonial, the ‘Other’, described by the domi-
nant culture as ‘alien cultures’, alienates its conscious self, struggling in the
terrain of the gaze of the West.
Ahmad (2008) perhaps most lucidly provides the geography, and thence
the ideology, of the origins of the post-colonial space. He suggests exam-
ining the relationship between imperialism, decolonilzation and socialism
(p. 17). This is seen in the dynamics of decolonization (p. 18), which has
both centripetal and centrifugal effects and the emergence of and struggle for
socialism (p. 19). Departing from these dynamics, can we presuppose that
the post-colonial is an imagined space, ‘the space for imagining the “post” of
modernity, a space beyond Occidentalism and, thus, the space for the emer-
gence of futurity?’, asks Venn in Occidentalism (2000, p. 43–4). He asserts
that it is clearly not a reference to the state of affairs after the formal ending
of colonialism, that is to say, it does not mark a periodization, it is not the
same as post-independence. Venn uses the year ‘1492’ as the benchmark
although it is difficult to envisage that the ending of the old imperial order
put an end to the relations of power and to the forms of oppression that had
been in place since 1492. ‘The reality of the world after the age of empire
is one of continuing exploitation and inequalities in more complex forms,
Beyond Boundedness 47
indeed their intensification’ (p. 44). Venn’s analysis, instead of appropriating

trajectories and genealogies regarding the economy, the political sphere
and ideological mechanism – for which the terms ‘post-independence’ or
‘neo-imperialism’ are more relevant – establishes ‘a different problematic of
culture, specifically the culture of modernity and the question of subjecti-
fication/subjection. In that sense, the year 1492 can function as both limit
and point of origin, if we bear in mind that the origin is only retroactively
named, acting as the myth of the beginning’ (p.45). That year too, ‘marks
the violence of the birth of the West; the New world paying for its newness
and the becoming-West of “Europe”’(p. 45). The events since 1492 have
produced the post-colonial world.
This chapter regards ‘the question of the post-colonial to refer to the analy-
sis of the becoming – West of Europe and the becoming – modern of the
world’ (Venn, 1985, p. 45); and the ‘swing’ past that period. Venn proposes
that the post-colonial becomes the critical space that is itself modified, as
intervened by the framing of the East by the Western gaze. This can be
strategized by, as Venn suggests following Stuart Hall, challenging the binary
form of representation of the colonial encounter. Hall talks about the need
to ‘re-read the binaries as forms of transculturation, of cultural translation
destined to trouble the here/there of cultural binaries forever’ (Hall, 1996,
p. 247, in Venn 2000, p. 47). We read ‘colonization’ as part of an essentially
transnational and transcultural ‘global’ process – and it produces a decen-
tred, diasporic or ‘global’ rewriting of earlier, nation-centred imperial grand
narratives. Thus, the rewriting of the Eastern gaze is part of post-colonial
thinking. The post-colonial scholar must recognize that colonialism is not
peripheral but a ‘ruptural world-historical event’ (Hall, 1996, p. 249, in
Venn, 2000, p. 47): it is the total subjugation of the subject.
Post-coloniality, having interrogated the Eurocentric temporality, is a
way of moving beyond the colonial and eschewing the disavowals of the
presence of Western categories of thought. For instance, the work of Trinh
Minh-ha (1989) crosses ‘the conventional lines of demarcation between
theory and expressive modes of exploration like photography and film,
allowing the one to disrupt and inform the other so that a new way of
writing the post-colonial may appear, subverting the effects of power for
subjectification’ (Venn 2000, p. 47), realizing that ‘language is one of the
most complex ‘forms of subjugation being at the same time the focus of
power and unconscious servility’ (Trin Minh-ha, 1989, p. 52, in Venn, 2000,
p. 48). According to Trin Minh-ha, although ‘the postcolonial intellectual,
belonging to hyphenated cultures, gets tired of hearing terms like hybridity,
border, in-betweenness, terms that are ever open to being coopted, s/he
must nevetherless rely on them, bending and redefining their meaning
so that they may function as tools in the mobile struggle for the counter-
appropriation of one’s history and identity from the appropriative grasp of
what she calls “master discourses”’ (Venn, 2000, p. 48).
The works of Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha and Syed Hussein Alatas have
prepared the way for moving beyond simply oppositional discourses.
Marginalized, alienated and dispossessed memories are continually being
reclaimed and legitimized, but not always at the expense of accuracy and
objectivity.
The West as representing the East: Critiques of Orientalism
The West tends to see the rest of the world as an idealized or distorted image
of their civilization. Even European images of America are no different. In
his study of European images of America (1976, p. 3), Honor remarks that
Europe has the tendency to project its own aspirations, fear, self-confidence,
guilt and despair. We live in a Eurocentric world and America is the same.
But what are the West or the East? These are not primarily ideas about
place and geography. As Hall (1996) suggests, they represent very complex
ideas and have no simple or single meaning.
According to Hall, the West is a historical not a geographical construct. It
is a society that is seen to be developed, industrialized, urbanized, capitalist,
secular and modern. Such societies arose at a particular historical period –
roughly during the sixteenth century after the breakup of feudalism. They
were a result of a specific historical process – economic, political, social
and cultural. In present times, any society that shares those characteristics,
where ever it exists on the geographical map, can be said to belong to the
‘West’. The West is, therefore, also an idea – a concept.
Comprehending how the concept or the idea of the West functions sheds
much light on its location in the production of knowledge. Hall (1996) outlines
four ways in which the West functions. First, it allows us to characterize and
classify societies into difference categories, that is, ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’.
It is a tool to think with: it sets a certain structure of thought and knowledge
in motion. Second, it is an image or set of images. It condenses a number of
different characteristics into one picture. It functions as part of a language and
represents that language verbally and visually. The West then becomes a sys-
tem of representation. Hall (1996) justifies that it is a ‘system’ because it does
not stand on its own. What is critical here is that post-coloniality must depart
from the conjunctions of other images and ideas with which it forms a set: for
example, ‘Western’ ⫽ urban ⫽ developed or ‘non-Western’ ⫽ non-industrial ⫽
rural ⫽ agricultural ⫽ underdeveloped. Third, it provides a standard or model
of comparison. It allows us to compare to what extent societies differ from
one another. Non-Western societies can accordingly be said to be ‘close to’, ‘far
away from’ or ‘catching up with’ the West. It helps to explain differences. The
fourth function is that it provides criteria of evaluation against which other
societies are ranked and around which powerful positive and negative feelings
cluster. For example, ‘the West’ ⫽ developed ⫽ good ⫽ desirable; or the ‘non-
West’ ⫽ underdeveloped ⫽ bad ⫽ undesirable. It produces a certain kind of
knowledge about a subject and certain attitudes toward it. Hall identifies this
as the ideological function.
On the last function, we see A.L. Tibawi, in his classic English-Speaking
Orientalists (1964), taking a swipe at historians pretending to produce
Orientalist discourse. Writing in the context of the encounter of Europe
with Islam, Tibawi notes that:
It is of course one thing to be skilful in deciphering documents in Arabic

(or Persian or Turkish) and quite another to be able to integrate the
material culled therefrom into an historical contribution in the accepted
professional sense. History in general is one of the most vulnerable
disciplines to the invasion of people from outside; it is often assumed
that anyone who wields a pen can write history. In Islamic sources, the
linguistic, literary, and historical materials are so intertwined that schol-
ars are prone to attempt too much and find themselves writing history,
almost unconsciously, with scant qualification for the task (1964, p. 8).
Tibawi was against (mis)interpretations of classical works on Arabs and the

Muslims because these were used to justify the ‘alleged inferiority of the
Arabs’ (Sardar, 1999, p. 58). The three basic conclusions to Tibawai’s analysis
are as follows:
1. Modern Orientalism, despite its academic advances, continues to rely

substantially on the medieval images of Islam; ‘it has only discarded
old-fashioned clothes in favour of modern attire’. Illustrations of the
persistence of the old ideas abound, not only concerning the Qur’an and
Muhammad but also quite logically concerning Islamic theology, law and
history.
2. Orientalist scholarship lacks clear thinking, objective standards and basic
courtesy, tolerance and moderation towards Muslim points of view. In
most cases, the religious and political affiliation of the Orientalists gets
the better of their scholarly judgements.
3. There is no concrete or conclusive proof in the voluminous output of
Orientalist scholars on the origins of Islam that Islam borrowed from
the Bible or the Jewish scriptures. In this regard, Orientalist assertions
are unproven ‘vague generalizations’: and Orientalist scholarship is little
more than a learned process of producing ‘speculative discourses on the
obvious’ (Sardar, p. 58).
But works of scholars, almost always described as Orientalists, who have

pushed the boundaries of (historic) knowledge and pursued in neither
‘Eastern’ nor ‘Western’ terms must also be acknowledged. Sardar (p. 59)
notes that in the classical paper ‘Orientalism in Crisis’ Abdel-Malek (1981)
also begins by identifying the positive elements in Orientalist studies
of Islam and Arabs. ‘“The study of ancient civilizations; the gathering of

Arab manuscripts into European libraries; the compilation of catalogues of
manuscripts; the publication of a number of important works;” and “the
editing of studies, often deficient and erroneous from the linguistic point
of view, yet rigorous in their method” have all increased our understanding
of the past’ (1981, p. 75–6, in Sardar, p. 59). Abdel-Malek argues that those
aspects do not represent the ‘“dominant vision of traditional Orientalism”,
which is deeply embedded in assumptions, postulates, and philosophical
and historical concepts that undermine the alleged objectivity of Orientalist
scholarship’ (Sardar, p. 59).
The main objective of the Orientalists, according to Abdel-Malek, ‘was to
examine and open up the “ground they were to occupy, and to penetrate
the consciousness of the peoples, the better to ensure their subjection by the
European powers”. He distinguished between “traditional Orientalism” –
consisting of an amalgam of academics, businessmen, military men and
colonial functionaries, missionaries, publicists and adventurers – and “neo-
Orientalists”’ (Sardar, p. 59). However, it is important to note that both
groups treat the Orient and Orientals as an ‘object’ of study inscribed by
Otherness. And this object is generally described as passive, non-participant
and ‘endowed with an “historical” subjectivity that is above all non-active,
non-autonomous, with no sovereignty over itself’ (Sardar, p. 59).
The Western gaze of the nations, peoples and cultures of the Orient were
in essentialist terms translated into ‘“a characteristic ethnist typology”. This
typology ... often converted into racism, was “based on a real specificity
but detached from history, and thus conceived as intangible and essential”.
Thus European man, from Greek antiquity onwards, becomes the measure
of all men everywhere’ (Sardar, 1999, p. 59).
In seeking to expose the methodology of Orientalism Abdel-Malek identi-
fies four main components, according to Sardar, as follows:
1. Orientalism focused on studying the past of the Oriental nations and

cultures. By positing that the most brilliant periods of the Oriental coun-
tries were located firmly in history, they made the decline of the Orient
a natural and inevitable phenomenon.
2. The past of the Orient was studied in its cultural (linguistic and religious)
aspect and divorced from any social evolution; thus, Arabic, for example,
was studied as though it was a dead language.
3. Such a reading of history made living or resurgent history appear only
as ‘a continuation of a great but limited past’. As such, the history of
the Orient ceases to be a life-enhancing force and is reduced to mere
exoticism.
4. The achievements of the Orient, their contributions to science and
learning, were deliberately ignored or suppressed. On the whole, they
were deemed to be of little or no value and denigrated. This was used to
attribute the ‘backwardness’ of the Orient to its unproductive history and

the alleged unproductive nature of Oriental history was then projected
as ‘a specific constituent characteristic of the Oriental reality’ (Sardar,
1999, p. 60).
Because the methodology of Orientalism was ‘tainted with ethnism and

racism in all its variant’ (Abdul-Malek, 1963, p. 80, in Sardar, 1999, p. 60),
non-Western scholars are left with secondary sources (depending on one’s
subject/object premise) ‘consisting of reports of colonial administrators, reli-
gious missions, as well as the accounts and reports of societies, travelogues
and literary fabrications’ (Sardar, 1999, p. 60). These may not necessarily be
intended as such. Nevertheless, Western scholarship on the non-Western
world has indeed been tainted by the negative perceptions of the Orient,
perhaps revealing a deep-seated mistrust of the Other who does not share
their cultural values, and could, therefore, pose a threat to the very fibre of
their civilizations’ existence. There are many examples to illustrate this sus-
picion. One such example is in an article published in 1916 on ‘The Attitude
of Orthodox Islam toward the “Ancient Sciences”’ by the Hungarian
Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher, who wrote:
Al-Ghazali complained that religious persons felt an ingrained sense

of reserve even toward such sciences as arithmetic and logic simply
because they were told that these disciplines belonged to fields of study
cultivated by heretical philosophers, and that in spite of the fact that
these disciplines did not in any way interfere with religious doctrine
either negatively or positively. The very term ‘philosophy’ frightened
them away from these disciplines connected with it like someone who
discontinues courting a beautiful girl when he learns that she has an ugly
Indian or Sudanese name (Goldziher, 1981, p. 186, cited in Mohd. Hazim
Shah, 2005, pp. 463–78).
Such was the intensity of the gaze of the West.
The challenge of the marginalized
The East has responded to one conscious appropriation: segregating the

corpus and tenor in which knowledge was issued forth and the object rep-
resented. A sociological analysis of Orientalism identifies such a response.
A profound example can be seen in the work of Syed Hussein Alatas in the
notion of the ‘lazy native’ (1977). In both the epistemological and ontologi-
cal instances, The Myth of the Lazy Native captures our concerns about the
production of scholarship described as colonial knowledge and its underly-
ing ramifications on the ‘native’ through the concept of the ‘captive mind’
(Alatas, S.H., 1972).
Colonial knowledge and the captive mind are twin concepts that inform
each other. Before we deliberate on colonial knowledge, let us delve into
what Syed Hussein means by the ‘captive mind’. To Syed Hussein Alatas,
the captive mind is a victim of Orientalism and Eurocentricism – hence the
mode of knowing termed as colonial knowledge. It is characterized by a
way of thinking that is dominated by Western thought in an imitative and
uncritical manner. Uncritical imitation permeates all levels of scholarly
activities, affecting problem setting, analysis, abstraction, generalization,
conceptualization, description, explanation and interpretation (Alatas, S.H.,
1972, pp. 11–12).
Syed Hussein first expounded the concept in 1972 and this led to conceptu-
alization on the nature of scholarship in the non-Western world, particularly
with regard to Western dominance in the social sciences and humanities.
But the problem of mental captivity was first raised in the 1950s when he
referred to the ‘“wholesale importation of ideas from the Western world to
eastern societies” without due consideration to their socio-historical con-
text, as a fundamental problem of colonialism’ (Alatas, S.H., 1956, in Alatas,
S.F., 2006, p. 48). According to Syed Hussein, the captive mind is defined as
an ‘uncritical and imitative mind dominated by an external source, whose
thinking is deflected from an independent perspective’ (Alatas, S.H., 1972).
Among its characteristics are the inability to be creative and to raise original
problems, the inability to devise original analytical methods and an aliena-
tion from the main issues of indigenous society. The captive mind is trained
almost entirely in the Western sciences, read the works of Western authors,
and is taught predominantly by Western teachers, whether in the West itself
or through their works available in local centres of education. The problem
of the captive mind is unique to the non-Western world.1
The captive mind resonates with the concepts of mimicry and repetition,
which emerge as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial
power and knowledge. In his address to the Colonial Office in 1839, Sir
Edward Cust said:
It is out of season to question at this time of day, the original policy of

a conferring on every colony of the British Empire a mimic representation
of the British Constitution. But if the creature so endowed has sometimes
forgotten its real significance and under the fancied importance of speak-
ers and maces, and all the paraphernalia and ceremonies of the imperial
legislature, has dared to defy the mother country, she has to thank herself
for the folly of conferring such privileges on a condition of society that
has no earthly claim to so exalted a position. A fundamental principle
appears to have been forgotten or overlooked in our system of colonial
policy – that of colonial dependence. To give to a colony the forms of
independence is a mockery; she would not be a colony for a single hour if
she could maintain an independent station (Sir Edward Cust, ‘Reflectons
on West African affairs ... addressed to the Colonial Office’, Hatchard,

London, 1839 and cited in Bhabha, 1994, pp. 121–2).
Bhabha argues that mimicry is a sign of double articulation: a complex

strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the Other
as it visualizes power. ‘Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, ... which
coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies sur-
veillance, and poses an imminent threat to both “normalized” knowledges
and disciplinary powers’ (Bhabha, 1994, pp. 122–3). Mimicry displays the
authority of the colonial discourse. Can the framings of the East on the gaze
of the West not be ambivalent? How could we not articulate in truthful
fashion how the West frames the East outside of the framework of colonial-
ism? Bhabha (1994, p. 125) writes of Macaulay’s conception of a ‘reformed’
colonial subject; that ‘Macaulay can conceive of nothing other than “a class
of interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern – a class of per-
sons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals
and in intellect “ ... a mimic man raised “through our English School”’.
Bhabha posits that ‘the figure of mimicry’ – the Orientalized being – ‘is
locatable within what Anderson describes as “the inner compatibility of
empire and nation”’ (Anderson, 1983, pp. 88–9, in Bhabha, 1994, p.125).
The national is no longer naturalizable; the autonomous being is no longer
autonomous. So the non-Western being takes on the mode of representa-
tion, misrepresenting and repeatedly re-representing ad nauseum.
And the ‘lazy native’, subscribed to by the native him/herself, is a fine
example of the mimicry of how the captive mind has conceived itself.
The notion of the ‘lazy native’ was the most common description of
the people of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. What S.H. Alatas
(1972) discovered was that colonial scholar-administrators and travellers in
Southeast Asia ‘were unanimous in seeing the “leading characteristics” of
the people in the region as “a disinclination to work” and how the literature
from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries represented the Malay native
as “indolent” and offered a sociological explanation for the emergence and
persistence of the myth’ (see Sardar, 1995, p. 61). Such ramifications on the
entire concept of humanity derived from the interest in colonial capitalism.
S.H. Alatas reveals that the ideological denigration of the native and of his
history and society ranged from vulgar fantasy and untruth to refined schol-
arship. This can be seen in
the persistence and repetition over at least two centuries in thousands

of books and reports written by administrator, scholars, travellers and
journalists (which) reveal their ideological roots.2
According to Sardar, The Myth of the Lazy Native was a groundbreaking work
that had a profound influence on the scholarship of Orientalism. While this
offered the first sociological analysis of Orientalism, Sardar identifies Hichem

Djait’s Europe and Islam, published in French a year after S.H. Alatas’ study,
as presenting the first philosophical interpretation. ‘Djait suggested, rather
paradoxically, that “the uniqueness” of Europe’s history made it “incom-
mensurable with (or opposite to) all other societies”’(Sardar, 1999, p. 62).
For Djait, ‘modernity’s attempts to bring non-Western cultures into the
ambit of its own notion of humanity is both a continuation of the project
of Orientalism and a reflection of the crisis in Western consciousness. Like
Orientalism, modernity enables Homo Occidentalis to continue to act out his
Promethean vision’ (Sardar, 1999, p. 64).
Another instance of the projection of modernity is advocating for indig-
enous knowledge systems. This dimension has captured the attention of
scholars as a sudden realization on the part of the international community
that indigenous peoples themselves have brought, and continue to bring,
forth their knowledge to the global system. Mapara (2009), in citing the
example of such an emergence in Zimbabwe, argues that these are forms of
responses in extending post-colonial theory.
Beyond the gaze: Dislocating post-colonial space
The crux of the problem is not merely in the omission or the distortion
of matters of facts of our society and being, but of the dominance of a
Eurocentric (also read American) world view for the continued maintenance
and expansion, even survival, of a certain way for the production and
reproduction of knowledge. It is the perpetuation of its own intellectual
paradigm. And we succumb, in our thinking, areas of research and intel-
lectual foci, to an approved way of seeing, understanding and being – at the
expense of excluding ourselves, making our existence irrelevant, marginal-
izing and alienating our being. Thus far, there is no shadow, not even a faint
one (and how can there be any), of a viable conceptual structure, other than
the object that casts the larger shadow.
In a paper (Merican, 2006) delivered a few years ago pertaining to the
location of media studies, I observed that South East Asian and Malaysian
scholars of media and identity studies do not usually display a comprehen-
sion of ‘society’ and ‘societies’ in the region, the notion of the past and
the present, the intertwining and overlapping territorial space and time,
and the complexities of the ramifications of identity construction and
the multiplicities of existence. A similar argument can be made for what
we may call post-colonial studies taking on the mode of the Orientalist or
Occidentalist discourse. Despite attempts to address the larger problems with
regard to the colonized and the colonizer,3 the post-colonial is in many ways
an extension and, at the same time, a reaction to the colonial. As a result, we
have swallowed hook, line and sinker not only the content (a cursory look at
the papers written, journal articles and books published, and syllabi taught
will suffice) but the conceptual framework, theorization and periodization of

our society and the world. Tragically, we credit it with universality.
The basic structure of the Malaysian academia and that of South East Asia
today is, if anything, a reflection of a Eurocentric social science. It is the
same with the rest of Asia, and Africa and other areas outside the Occident
(see Progler, 2004). Our problem lies in not being conscious of the object
and subject of study. In coming to terms with the construction of identity
at the conceptual and practical levels, there are basically three options for
colonized peoples in relation to being subject to a colonial discourse. The
first is that we can remain ‘good subjects’ to the colonial and the imperial
system and not question any of its precepts or how it is distributed. A good
subject plays by all the rules, treats them with respect and reverence, does
what we are supposed to do, works within the hierarchy and follows all the
procedures, protocol and parameters of the system. This observably is the
norm among us, going by the nature of our disciplines and areas, method-
ologies employed and journals and books locally published, as well as other
literature and discourses in the social and the human sciences.
The second option is that we can become ‘bad subjects’ of the post-
colonial system by accepting most of its precepts but questioning its
distribution. This means that we merely engage ourselves in quibbling over
its details, arguing and perhaps even trying to wrestle some control of the
state away from the colonialists. Bad subjects cannot really change much,
despite complaining and arguing. Bad subjects do not get at the root of the
problem; they do not alter the terms of reference but more or less perpetuate
and perhaps reproduce the same discourse and thought believing that it is
their very own; as in mimicry induced by the captive mind. We see a lot of
this in attempts by the Malaysian intellectual community beginning in the
1980s, for example, in the indigenization and Islamization approaches in
the social and human sciences.
The third option rests on becoming a non-subject – to abandon the discourse
completely, to ‘vacate the space’. This implies liberating ourselves from the
post-colonial space that we have harvested. That space itself is an entity – an
epistemological and political space subject to the impulse of re-colonization.
Hence, the third option means escaping from that particular mode of intel-
lectual production and operating as ‘non-subjects’ by thinking and acting in
ways beyond the reach of the parochial set of assumptions embedded in the
epistemological model that has come to dominate us.4
A vibrant intellectual community does not mean reproducing in our way
of thinking what we have hitherto learnt from our teachers embedded in
their own knowledge systems. A vibrant intellectual community is question-
ing and subverting the very scholarship itself. As Smith (1999) articulates so
powerfully in her classic Decolonizing Methodologies, theories, research and
paradigms are charged with emotion, are biased and ideological. History
informs our consciousness and our state of mind within the colonial order
and imperialistic arrangements. For example, what has happened to the

study of history, media and identities manifests the deep complicity of
academic forms of knowledge with institutions of power.
To move forward we have to make reference to Edward Said’s Orientalism
(1979). Orientalism makes it clear that the mode of operation and the detailed
texture of the cultural domination of an academic discipline, as Said argues,
constitute nothing less than a science of imperialism. Said’s analyses force
us to accept the recognition that all knowledge may be contaminated, impli-
cated even in its very formal or ‘objective’ structures. To the extent that all
knowledge is produced within institutions of various sorts, there is always
a determined relation to the state and to its political practices.
But what is equally profound is Said’s own formulation – of himself in
relation to Orientalism. Ahmad (2008, p.171) takes exception to the phrase
‘inventory of traces upon me’, used by Said in summarizing what Orientalism
is about: it is about Said’s ambivalent relationship with the corpus in
Orientalism. According to Ahmad, Said sees himself as the Oriental subject.
This idea sees non-Western societies as constituted by the experience of
colonialism and imperialism. Now the notion of a ‘colonial subject’ – or
‘post-colonial subject’ for that matter – presumes that we are indeed consti-
tuted by colonialism; then, in quick succession, by post-coloniality (Ahmad,
2008). There is a (cultural) location to coloniality and post-coloniality.
In an earlier essay (Merican, 2004) , I discussed how history forms our
consciousness – and how the formation of the nation-state produces and
provides a particular form of knowledge that informs us on our notions of
patriotism, nationalism and identity. I suggested that these are problematic
and have to be recognized as such. I was mindful of that locality. All human
knowledge is historical. The social and human sciences cannot be studied in
the present tense. Sociology, anthropology and certainly media and identity
studies are historical sciences. One cannot understand sociology without
understanding the forces of history and society. The forces of history have
constructed the media as an intellectual inquiry. The same forces have also
constructed non-Western identity. In a sense, post-colonialism has played
a McLuhanian role in constructing knowledge and modes of knowing. Our
idea of ourselves is an extension of the colonial world view, and subsequently
of the Euro–American world view. The social is an outcome of the historical.
Measured against the epistemological concerns on the construction of
(colonial) knowledge and our modes of knowing about ourselves, there is an
‘absent discourse’ despite our observations on how the West has framed us.
It begs its existence on equal terms. It laments the continued relationship of
power, of a subservient subject to its other. In the collusion with imperialism
and colonialism, history affects our collective consciousness. The knowledge
produced and accumulated is constructed in the past, leading to the effect of
framing our collective consciousness, which in turn, manifests our knowl-
edge of history. We do not want to be a society of lost narratives.
By way of a conclusion
This brings us to the relationship between the Occident and the Orient,
between power and knowledge, which lies at the heart of both colonial
rule in particular and ‘Orientalism’ in general. How do we conceptualize
colonial knowledge, the captive mind, mimicry as different forms of
responses and representations? Colonial knowledge is about power, control
and dominance. The essential process in colonial knowledge is what Cohn
(1996) describes as the invasion of epistemological space by first of all
dismantling that very space. He conceptualizes, from his study of colonial
India, that colonial knowledge is ‘the natural embodiment of history, terri-
tory and society’ (1996) of a post-colonial nation. For Syed Hussein Alatas
(1972), the construction of the Malay world, and of Malay identity, by the
colonialist, or by Raffles, is not natural. What we can observe is that the
fluidity of the unifying premise of the Nusantara in the Malay archipelago
submerged under the guise of ‘South East Asia’ was induced by colonial
knowledge. When Syed Hussein Alatas (ibid.) describes Western dominance
in the social and human sciences, what he refers to is its omnipotent power
and hegemonic intent, culminating in the captive mind – and that captive
mind in the end classifies, reproduces, conserves and imitates that knowl-
edge uncritically.
Beginning with the occupation of physical space, Europe then colonized
epistemological space. Hence, mimicry as a strategy bounded colonial
knowledge. The corpus comprises a certain methodology, conceptualization
and categorization acting as the foundation in the strategic perpetuation
of colonialism. Hence ‘new nations’ such as Indonesia, the Philippines and
Malaysia feel the need to construct and reconstruct history and society. This
may be seen also as Occident’s formation of its sense of self.
The Orientalized, both in epistemological and political terms, is not
the direct binary opposite of the European. This is where Hall (1996) sug-
gests the notion of ‘discourse’ as a way of talking about or representing
something; producing knowledge that shapes perceptions and practices
and in turn is being shaped by these. This is how power operates. In this
chapter we have traced how the development of such a discourse is mired in
ambivalence. The Orientalist too, like its subject, may just be an invention
in the overture of Edward Said’s Orientalism.
Notes
1. While similar uncreative, imitative minds are found in the West as well, the context
in which they occur is not the same. See Syed Farid Alatas (2006) Alternative Discourses
in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentricism, New Delhi, p. 49.
2. See comments derived from an interview with Alatas, S.F. in Faezah Ismail (2003).
‘Revisiting “The Myth of the Lazy Native”’ New Sunday Times/Learning Curve,
21 September, p. 10.
3. Apart from Said and numerous other scholars, see Bhabha (1994) and Tuhiwai
Smith (1999).
4. For further arguments in advocating this position, see Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999)
Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Systems, Dunedin: University of
Otago Press.
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4
Easternization: Encroachments
in the West
Shanta Nair-Venugopal and Lim Kim Hui
Global flows from the East
The notion of ‘flows’ as a concept has been used by anthropologists such as

Frederick L. Dunn (1970) and Arjun Appadurai (1990, 1996). Dunn refers to
the transmission of cultural features from one generation to the next within
a definite cultural environment. Appadurai argues persuasively for global
flows that create network landscapes and identifies five global flows together
with their disjunctures, namely, ‘ethnoscapes’, ‘mediascapes’, ‘technoscapes’,
‘finanscapes’ and ‘ideoscapes’. Hence, the term ‘flows’ can be used as a cover
term to refer to ideas and information, institutions and practices carried by
technology, the media and human beings (through migration, tourism, war
and/or trade) and retailed goods and services. Amartya Sen (2005, p. 345)
observes that it is through the global movements of ideas, people, goods and
technology that different regions of the world have tended, in general, to
benefit from the progress and development in other regions and that it would
be ‘a serious error’ to ‘identify the phenomenon of the global spread of ideas
with an ideological imperialism’ (p. 346). Latouche (1996) and Campbell
(2007) attest that the global flows of cultural influences crossover and pull in
different directions as Westernization or Easternization. It is also quite appar-
ent that Chinese exports are flooding Western markets today as an invasive
form of economic Easternization. The world appears to have become econom-
ically swamped by ‘Made in China’ products (Bongiorni, 2007). Observing
that ‘Easternization is, at least to some degree, another process that can be
differentiated from, but related to, globalization’, Ritzer (2010, p. 77) points
out that equating globalization with Westernization, if not Americanization,
as it often is, is a narrow and rather outdated view. It ignores the impact of the
role of the regional powers of East Asia, namely Japan and China, as counter
flows, that is, flows to rather than from the West, as invariably perceived.
Some importance has to be accorded to these flows as they not only impinge
culturally on the West, as in the Easternization of the West (Campbell, 2007),
but also, increasingly, economically and politically.
60
Easternization 61
So quite apart from the presence and popularity of various Asian ethnic
restaurants and cuisines in the West, especially those of Chinese, Indian,
Thai and Japanese origin, and a wide range of other cultural phenomena
and paraphernalia of Eastern origin that impact life styles in the West, the
impact of the consequences of the economic rise of Asia cannot be ignored
either. Pointing to the success especially of the Japanese and the Koreans in
the world market for cars and electronic goods, Ritzer also sees the economic
impact of the East Asian automobile and electronics industry on the Anglo-
American world as a type of Easternization. Although there is nothing Eastern
about the products, distinctive innovations pioneered in the East have
enhanced global competitive capability. Ritzer lists Toyata’s development of
‘quality control groups’ and the ringi system of collective decision making
as ways in which Toyota and other Japanese manufacturers were able not
only to catch up with but streak ahead of the Western, especially American,
manufacturers and capture a major portion of American and European mar-
kets. These innovations, Ritzer argues, should be viewed as Easternizations
because American automobile manufacturers have incorporated these tech-
niques into their corporate culture. Another ‘Easternization’ cited is the
Japanese ‘just-in-time’ (JIT) delivery of required components rather than the
costly American ‘just-in-case’ system of holding large quantities of compo-
nents in stock, which appealed to other industries as well. Notwithstanding
Toyota’s widely publicized problem of malfunctioning accelerators in some
of its models (in late 2009 and early 2010), it is still a premier automobile
manufacturer acknowledged as the leading global model for American
manufacturers, such as Ford. Again it is the Korean manufacturer Hyundai
that is expected to pose a challenge to Japan’s lead in the world’s automobile
industry and its market share. As for China, Ritzer points out that with its
imminence as a global economic power ‘we can expect its influence to grow,
ushering in a new and expanded form of Easternization’ (2010, p. 78). Since
China also has very large Western currency reserves, especially in American
dollars because of its extremely favourable balance of trade with America
(and the rest of the world), it can choose to either invest these reserves or not
in the West, or more crucially to ‘dump’ America by abandoning American
currency in favour of others, such as the Euro, for example. Consequently,
if the value of the dollar goes into free fall, it will leave America in a vulner-
able economic position. Currently China ‘owns’ the US’s debt substantially.
It can, thus, leverage its financial capacity and economic might to become
a global power broker.
The emergence of East Asia, notably China, Japan and, more increas-
ingly, Korea, as a centre of economic prosperity has also generated both
popular and academic arguments that behind the economic miracle of the
East Asian tigers is Confucianism, the core of what has been referred to as
Asian values. However, the essential communitarian principle of finding a
balance between the needs of the individual and that of an orderly society,
seen as intrinsic to Asian values, it is argued has been evoked to curtail civil
liberties for the larger good of ensuring the orderliness of society instead; as
is notably evident in China’s house-keeping and Singapore’s gate-keeping
policies. As Sen notes, the ‘invoking of Asian values has sometimes occurred
in rather dubious circumstances. For example, it has been used to justify
authoritarianism (and harsh penalties for alleged transgressions) in some
East Asian countries’ (2005, p. 123). Nevertheless, he rejects the claim that
‘basic ideas underlying freedom and tolerance have been central to Western
culture over the millennia and are somehow alien to Asia’, which, he avers,
is based on ‘very poor history’ (p. 136) and insufficient grounds to nullify the
importance of freedom and tolerance in contemporary Asia. Wang Gungwu
(n.d.) argues there is nothing substantive in Asian values as the political
references to them represent merely new versions of an older dichotomy of
ideas concerning the Occident and the Orient, and East and West, with the
Japanese making an early contribution to this dichotomy. Wang sees their
manifestation as ‘a reply to American-led pressure on some Asian govern-
ments following the end of the Cold War, during which another dichotomy,
that of (Western) capitalism and (Eastern) communism, had supported the
notion of a “central balance” in world politics’. The pressure was accompa-
nied by ‘a note of triumphalism that seemed to underlie a new mission to
civilise the world in secular terms, for example, the focus on democracy,
human rights and a free global market economy’ (ibid.). In any case, it is now
evident that the triumphalism in Asian values, which was stridently trum-
peted during the Asian economic upturn of the 1990s, has waned.
In tandem with China’s emergent economic might, is Islam’s global
rise and the phenomenon of ‘globalized Islam’ (Roy, 2004). Because of
the simultaneous efflorescence of Islamic civilizational influences with
the threat of militant Islamic terrorism, the West has perforce had to include
Islam in its mental map in dealing with issues of international relations. The
political discourse on Islam and the West has, however, generated so much
concern that it has led to scare mongering and xenophobia, such as Eurabia
in the West. So too has the discourse on Confucianism and the West. In
his controversial thesis, Huntington (1996) argues that there is also a clash
of civilizations between Confucianism and the West. Yu (2005) points out
(relying on the work of Confucian scholars) that Huntington’s position is
flawed because the Chinese Communists are categorized as Confucians too.
Wang Gungwu (n.d.) finds Huntington not only ‘misleading’ in his use of
the word civilization, but ‘even more so, in suggesting some sort of collabo-
ration between Islam and Confucianism’. Wang predicts that the struggle
envisaged by Huntington would instead be driven, as far as the West is
concerned, by ‘secular power’ that would be ‘governed by a scientific and
humanist spirit’ (ibid.). These arguments illustrate that within the global
stream of consciousness, the cultural and intellectual traditions of Asia are
already contesting the Western dominance of ideas.
Easternization 63
Easternization as cultural change in the West
Although there have always been flows between regions and countries
throughout human history, these have become more evident and prolific in
a globalized era of rapid developments in communications technology and
transport systems. Cultural flows, whether of ideas, beliefs and practices,
or of material goods and artefacts, are ‘carried’ further today by scholars
and students, migrant workers and expatriates, performers and sportsmen,
preachers and tourists than adventurers, missionaries and traders of the
past. And when two different cultural groups come into direct or indirect
but continuous contact, acculturation invariably takes place with the poten-
tial for hybridization as well.
As the West continues to control most of the international institutions
such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
United Nations (UN), numerous global brands such as Coca-Cola, Google,
Microsoft, GE, Intel, Nokia, IBM and McDonald’s, and media conglomerates,
for example, CNN and BBC, as well as epistemological frameworks and mod-
els (evident in scientific and academic publications), it is not incorrect to
say that the cultural influences from the East remain subordinate to Western
preferences and ideals. Alternatively they may be reframed or sanitized by
international (‘universal’) standards that are inspired and defined, to begin
with, by the West itself. Christianity is also the most dominant religion
in the world today, even if Islam is the fastest growing. So does the West
determine access to East–West flows and limit them as the West continues
to remain powerful vis-à-vis the East. Is Easternization under siege (see
Lim, 2008)? While Westernization and its consequences have been widely
discussed and criticized (see Latouche, 1996), Easternization, that is, the
consequences and ramifications of the cultural (and other) flows emanat-
ing from the East, have not been taken up seriously for study or discussion
(apart from Campbell’s landmark book and related work on the New Age
movement). There is a paucity of research on whether Eastern cultural
influences as free flows, like the other global flows of ideas, media, finance,
technologies, people and risks (Appadurai, 1996), inclusive of information
and innovations, have impacted cultural spaces in the West, materially or
transcendentally. Have they as life style choices in specific spheres of life,
experience and activity attracted converts and a following of practitioners?
Or are we to view them merely as free flows of heterodoxical New Age
phenomena that only attract aficionados and those who partake of these
influences selectively?
There are at least three issues to be addressed in relation to this
phenomenon of Easternization as cultural change in the West. The first
is about the prevalence and nature of these Eastern cultural influences in
the West; whether Eastern cultural influences are mere heterodoxical New
Age phenomena or have the capacity to transform. The second is whether
Easternization is refashioning the West or whether it is more of the same;

that the West is reframing the East. The third, which is related to the
relationship of the West with the East, is whether Easternization is, in fact,
under siege, that is, whether it is Westernization that still rules. The main
ramification in relation to the phenomenon of Easternization posited here is
the argument that the cultural refashioning of the West is a corollary to the
intellectual refashioning of the East, known more famously as Orientalism
(Said, 1978). Despite the academic arguments against the Easternization
thesis (Hamilton, 2002; Dawson, 2006), Campbell (1999, 2007) argues quite
cogently that the West is undergoing a process of cultural change in being
confronted by new cultural paradigms and interpretations of thought and
practice that emanate largely from the East.
Issues regarding Easternization as cultural change

in the West
Eastern cultural flows: new age phenomena or material influence?

Despite foundational differences, most established or formalized religions
employ narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that are usually identifiable
through forms of prayer and ritual, music and art, to give meaning and
expression to adherents through reference to a higher authority or super-
natural being, deities or an ultimate truth or reality. In contrast, the New
Age Movement, a wave of spiritual and religious enthusiasm that emerged
in a distinct form in the late 1960s and 1970s based on and adopting ideas
originally present in the counterculture of the 1960s, swept over the West
through the 1980s. It was characterized by an individual approach to spiritual
practices and philosophies, and the rejection of religious doctrine and dogma.
The New Age Movement gained momentum in the 1980s although its roots
can be traced back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its fol-
lowers must, however, be distinguished from adherents of the New Religions,
mainly new cults or sectarian variations of older major religious traditions
such as the Hare Krishna, the Divine Light Mission and the AUM Shinrikyo.
The New Age Movement began as an idea that was spread by a group of
theosophical organizations. A loosely-structured network of organizations
and groups with diverse affiliations, goals and strategies, the Movement was
united by common convictions and hope in the advent of a new era and
personal transformation. However, it was also viewed as being linked to the
older world of the occult, which historically has been denounced in the West
where scholarship has been shaped by rationalism and the eschewal of magic
and occultism. The New Age is also denounced as a competing supernatural
world view by the Christian counter-cult movement (see Cowan, 2003).
Historically linked to Western esotericism the New Age has continu-
ally reappeared under various guises, generation by generation in Western
Easternization 65
culture as a religious alternative that can be traced to various Gnostic groups

of the second century (CE) and other groups that emerged through the first
millennia of the Christian era such as the Manicheans and Bogomils (Melton,
2000). The decline of Christianity allowed for various (and divergent) eso-
teric perspectives to emerge as alternatives to orthodox Christianity but
there was agreement on points of difference with orthodox Christians. For
instance, it was believed that the realms located between the lower physical
world and that of the ultimate divine reality were inhabited by beings that
ranged from gods and goddesses to angels and spirits to ascended masters.
Humans could visit these realms through astral travel, communicate with
their inhabitants through channelling or mediumship and meditation, or
control them through magic.
Through the 1880s and 1890s, Western esotericism was spread by a
relatively small number of organizations, representing different aspects of
esoteric thinking, who opened up the space in Western culture for occult
thought. During the first seven decades of the twentieth century, various
aspects of esotericism spread across North America and Western Europe.
Spiritualism enjoyed notable success in Great Britain and France; Theosophy,
with its headquarters in India, had centres in all major European cities;
and Rosicrucianism became possibly the largest esoteric grouping in the
world. Western esotericism was present in all major Western urban centres,
particularly in Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Milan and Geneva by
the 1970s. The Esoterics believed that their teachings would replace the
Christianity that had been displaced in the religious life of the West in the
twentieth century with the movement evolving from those who first broad-
cast their message to the community of Western Esoterics. When it first
emerged in the mid 1970s, the New Age was seen as a vision of the coming
of a new era defined by the transformation of a society destroyed by the likes
of poverty, war and racism into a united community of abundance, peace,
brotherly love and so on. Its vision gave the larger occult community the
hope that, early in this century, a new society dominated by occult wisdom
would arise. It is this single idea (Melton, 2000) that gave the movement its
name and proved to be powerful enough to energize adherents from other
allied spiritual groups to work together and attract large numbers of people
to the cause.
The heart of the New Age has been the interaction around different
tools of spiritual transformation. These tools ranged from the ingestion
of psychedelic substances, at one end of the spectrum, to kundalini yoga,
intense breathing exercises and chanting, to the most popular single tool
of all, meditation. In effect it gave occultism an entirely new and positive
image away from popular notions linking it to Satanism and black magic.
Significantly, the movement became another competing religious system
rather than anti-Christian activity (Melton, 2000). However, by the end
of the 1980s, the New Age died out as the vision upon which it had been
built dissolved. By 1990 it was noticeable in the United States that the
disenchanted were looking for a new direction and the Movement changed
from being the pre-millennial vision of an imminent golden age of peace
and light to a post-millennial vision for the future evolution or ascension of
humanity into a higher life with former New Agers reorienting around the
new symbol of Ascension.
The effect of the New Age Movement was to create a rather positive image
for occultism in Western culture. In the wake of the disappointment that
the New Age had failed to emerge, the older occult community established a
set of alternative communities under a variety of names. The common hope
was for their own prosperity in the future as well as a meaningful role for
themselves in the evolutionary progress of humanity. They have continued
to grow as one of the most important minority faith communities in the
West reclaiming and resacralizing a small part of the secularized world
even without religious dominance. Melton (2000) predicts that in the
future, New Age communities will strengthen the causes they share with
other faith communities, such as peace and environmentalism, and as they
become ever-more pluralistic, participate more in inter-religious dialogue
and cooperation.
All vestiges of the New Age Movement will be referred to collectively and
generally as New Ageism because of their amorphous, residual, faddishly
on the fringe and, in many ways, atavistic affiliations and avatars. This is
to distinguish them from the New Age Movement itself, which embraced
many specific Eastern traditional and cultural practices such as medita-
tion, Yoga, Tantra, Chinese medicine, acupuncture and Qigong, Ayurveda,
reflexology and Reiki and Chinese and Japanese martial arts like Tai Chi
Chuan, Aikido and Jujutsu. Indeed, Campbell (2007) finds support for the
Easternization thesis, not only in ‘the dramatic change in popular beliefs
and attitudes towards nature that has occurred in the past thirty to forty
years’ (p. 90) but also in ‘the emergence of a New Age movement’ (p. 112).
The evidence for the rehabilitation of nature, for instance, he suggests is
found in the movements for animal rights, vegetarianism and whole food
diets, the environment, human potential development and holistic health,
alongside spiritual beliefs in a life force, reincarnation, and astrology and
divination. As for the New Age Movement, Campbell argues that it replaced
Christian teachings with a belief in a diffuse spirituality, one centred on
the self and nature. The notion of sin was replaced by the more redeemable
ones of ignorance and error, salvation by the search for self-knowledge and
enlightenment, and history and progress by cosmic destiny and rebirth.
Meanwhile, rational thought and scientific analysis was challenged by
intuition; and mysticism and self-mastery by self-expression. Lastly, man’s
control over nature has been replaced by cooperative harmony with the nat-
ural world. In short, the traditional dualisms of the Western world view have
been rejected in favour of the generally holistic assumptions of another.
Easternization 67
The influence of religion and spirituality as New Age phenomena has

been pervasive. In a globalized world, in which the globalized economy
is preeminent, religious beliefs and practices are being commoditized, and
commodified in tandem with the exploitation of religion to peddle political
ideology as well. Buddhism, increasingly popular in the West, is being
commercially exploited: while the Dalai Lama’s smiling face promotes Apple
computers, Tibetan monasteries appear as backdrops for perfume advertise-
ments in glossy magazines (Shakya, 1998). Buddhism has also penetrated
contemporary Western life worlds through Hollywood movies like Kundun,
Little Buddha and Seven Years in Tibet, in the ideological wars being waged
against China’s record of human rights.
Lopez (1998a) argues that the romantic fascination of the West with
Tibetan Buddhism is Western in origin; that for several centuries Westerners
got Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism wrong. Myths endured partly because
of fantasy and partly because of misinterpretation. The most common
Western name for Tibetan Buddhism, ‘Lamaism’, for instance, can be con-
sidered disparaging by the Tibetans (Lopez, 1998b). Tibet was depicted as
an irrational place with superstitious people living under the yoke of cor-
rupt and evil priests whose practices Western scholars claimed were not
an authentic form of Buddhism. So they called it ‘Lamaism’ in contrast to
‘true’ Buddhism, which was depicted as a religion of reason and restraint,
deep philosophy and free from the confines of ritual. Lopez avers that such
a ‘pure’ form of Buddhism has never existed in Asia; that reference to it
is only to be found in European and American libraries and lecture halls.
Refashioned to suit Western cultural tastes and political preferences through
the lens of Western rationality and philosophy, many Eastern religions have
been repackaged as new spiritualities or more attractive options to the older
traditions. Spirituality has become a powerful commodity in the global
marketplace and a form of ‘cultural addiction’ in the West (Carrette and
King, 2005).
Given that Easternization has been spreading, becoming part of the
undeniable reality of a globalized world, it is moot to ask whether Eastern
influences are only imbibed as forms of popular culture in the West, such
as faddish forms of New Age phenomena. Are the core philosophical values
that the East wants to be associated with of any cultural significance? The
basis of modern Western civilization has always been its scientific strength
and technological advancement. For Eastern civilizations, it has been
embedded, in Asia for example, in its spiritual traditions, philosophies and
values. When Japan embraced Westernization, it tapped systematically
into the strengths of the West, that is, its sciences and technologies, not
its popular culture and it emerged as a strong nation by combining what
it perceived to be the best of both worlds, that is, adopting the wakon yōsai
(Japanese spirit and Western techniques) approach. The Japanese model of
Westernization propelled Japan into a developed nation. While it embraced
internationalization, it simultaneously protected its Japanese core, thus

creating a dualistic society (Goldstein-Gidoni, 2001). Despite being a
leading player in the globalized economy, Japan has retained its spiritual
and national identity. The Thais have similarly maintained Buddhism as
fundamental to theirs.
A former Tokyo bureau chief for the Washington Post, Reid (1999), points
to Asia’s ‘social miracle’, alongside the economic ‘miracles’ achieved by
countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore in more
recent times. Reid observes that some East Asian countries have built modern
industrial societies characterized by the safest streets with low rates of crime,
the best schools and the most stable families in the world, with enviably low
rates of divorce, unwed motherhood, drug abuse and vandalism. British poli-
tician David Howell (1995) credits ‘Easternization’, or Asia’s values, policies,
priorities and attitudes to education, for Asia’s power and economic impact.
Nonetheless, it is aspects of Asian popular culture, such as Japanese popular
culture (Kelts, 2007), that are more readily imbibed, although Japanese tech-
niques of business management and Korean technology are valued. While
Japanese and Korean automobiles and electronics products are sold across
Europe, the USA and elsewhere, Chinese manufactured products are ubiqui-
tous. The more popular aspects of Eastern culture may capture the Western
imagination more than its core values but the economic impact of Asia, espe-
cially of China, Japan and Korea, on consumption in the West is significant
and cannot be ignored.
Eastern cultural influences: Refashioning the West or

reframing the East?
The East–West distinction has frequently been cast in the form of a dichotomy
between two sets of images, the so-called romanticized ‘mystical, spiritual
and irrational East’ versus the ‘material and rational West’ or ‘images’ of
the power and authority of the ‘rational’ West over the ‘irrational’ East and
the ‘right’ to impose this rationality (Clarke, 1997; Said, 1978). The sell-
ing point of the East is that it is ‘exotic’; ‘that which is introduced from or
originating in a foreign (especially tropical) country or as something which
is attractively strange or remarkably unusual’ (Boyd n.d.). Eastern cultures
are perceived to be exotic in contrast to the quotidian customs of the West.
While the concept can be traced back to seventeenth-century Europe, the
construction of the nineteenth-century notion of exoticism was the result
of increased travel to and exploration of the East (facilitated by coloniza-
tion), which led to the discovery of new plants, minerals, objects, places and
peoples. The differences that were encountered excited many in the West
and were termed ‘exotic’. Additionally, the differences between the peoples
of the conquered colonies were not only portrayed as exotic but also as
erotic. Huggan (2001) explains that ‘If exoticism has arrived in the “centre”,
it still derives from the cultural margins or, perhaps more accurately, from
Easternization 69
a commodified discourse of cultural marginality’ (p. 20). The Europeans saw

themselves, on their own terms, as the centre of human civilization, their
culture and religion natural effluences, and the rest of the world strange
and exotic.
The concept of exoticism was originally restricted to Europe and her
peoples, but with time the peoples of the colonized world themselves
began to regard their own domestic surroundings as exotic as a result of
‘civilizing’ missions from the West, especially those shaped by Christian
beliefs and as a consequence of the ‘captive mind’ (Alatas, 1974). Before
the arrival of Christian missionaries or the advent of colonization, women
in the Austronesian islands bared their breasts. This was viewed as ‘erotic’
because modesty in Western cultures was prescribed by Christian morals and
adhered to with appropriate forms of dress and behaviour. However, with
the decline of Christianity, ‘naturism’ emerged and appearing ‘topless’ or
nude is becoming an acceptable cultural phenomenon in the West, albeit
restricted to adult entertainment outlets, clubs and bars, some restaurants,
designated beaches and nudist colonies. What was previously perceived
as ‘exotic’ has become permissible in certain contexts. Nonetheless, many
peoples of former (and extant) colonies of Western imperial powers, espe-
cially converts to Christianity, have abandoned their ‘natural’ states of
appearance for contemporary forms of Western dress. Meanwhile, the
notion of the ‘exotic’ is used to appeal to the Western tourist’s curiosity and
an interest in the indigene’s cultural life and its marketability is exploited
(see Ong, Chapter 11, this volume). A curious and inverse analogy applies
to early romanticized Orientalist views of Islam. Often painted as a religion
redolent with licentious sensuality in the imagery of lascivious sheiks and
their harems in stark contrast to puritanical Victorian mores, Islam, is
now viewed by some as a religion of social repression, contra Western civil
liberties of speech, expression and life style choices.
As previously discussed, the division between ‘East’ and ‘West’, as the prod-
uct of European cultural history is strongly related to the distinction between
European Christendom and other religious beliefs and cultures beyond the
pale of the West. These were viewed as alien, uncivilized or exotic and not
only evoked geographical separation but also cultural difference. The Far
East (for East Asia) comprising China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia, for
instance, is not just geographically distant to the West, it is also culturally
exotic, just like the Orient was. Paul Shin, a Washington state senator, found
the word ‘oriental’ so derogatory and politically incorrect that he backed a
bill in 2001 to ban its use from all government documents and legislations,
state and local, in the USA. Passed in 2002, the bill stipulated that the word
‘Asian’ be used instead to describe people of similar descent. Shin declared,
in an interview with The Korea Times, that ‘“Oriental” is a juvenile word
that’s linked to an era when Asians had a subordinate status’ (Han, 2010).
So, if the Orient was a Western invention, is Easternization being reframed
to suit Western tastes and preferences, such as Eastern spiritualities? Or is the

West being refashioned through a quiet process of Eastern cultural osmosis
contra the more spectacular and ostensible global diffusion of Western fast
foods, fashion, music and sports?
An elucidation of the semantics of the words ‘fashion’ and ‘frame’ using
WordNet,1 may be useful at this point. As a noun, the word fashion is
associated with the manner, mode, style or way in which something is
done or how it happens. It is related to characteristic or habitual practice,
the latest and most admired style in clothes and cosmetics, behaviour and
consumer goods. As a verb, ‘fashion’ can mean to forge or make something
out of components, often in an improvising manner (Princeton University,
2011). Hence refashioning can be seen as a reinvention or an act of refash-
ioning or remaking the image, style, manner and mode, or the way in which
something is done or happens. The word ‘frame’, as a noun, refers to many
things, like the framework for a pair of eyeglasses, a single drawing in a
comic strip and so on. It can also denote the human, physical and material
body. As a verb, ‘frame’ can mean to enclose in, as in ‘frame a picture’, or to
set up, to compose or draw up, as in ‘frame a policy’ or to frame up (ibid.).
Thus, to reframe can mean to recompose or redefine something tangibly
from a different perspective. It is, therefore, argued that while the West may
have reframed the East, Easternization may be refashioning the West.
But how does the West reframe the East? With regard to Eastern spir-
itualities, Buddhism and Taoism, for example, are being reframed to suit
modern lifestyles and tastes in order to appeal to followers in the West.
American practitioners, for instance, tend to overemphasize the universality
of Buddhism and Taoism, and de-emphasize association with any contem-
porary Chinese cultural practice that is viewed as tainted or adulterated by
communist ideology or that implicates human rights issues. So too have
complementary or alternative (also referred to as Eastern or traditional)
remedies and therapies, such as Ayurveda, for example, been modernized,
or rather Westernized, to suit globalized consumption practices; and more
crucially for affirmation and acceptance within contemporary Western
biomedical training and practice models. This denotes a basic power imbal-
ance, between traditional Eastern and modern Western medical practices,
with particular regard to the acceptance and development of the former
in the West. Likewise, even while being promoted as an ancient Hindu
spiritual practice, yoga has also more recently been influenced not only
by the dictates of Western biomedicine, but also by culture (cf. ‘Christian’
yoga) for promotional purposes. Lastly, the contemporary Western practice
of Reiki, while operating within the parameters of an ostensibly Japanese
technique, conflates a number of specific cultures and traditions, although
mainly Eastern. Practitioners may engage, for instance, with a Tibetan
Buddhist definition of the five Reiki symbols, or place their faith in a
goddess cosmology and actively invoke particular goddess spiritualities,
or even call on guardian angels and spirits from the Christian tradition
Easternization 71
(see Newcombe, Chapter 13, this volume) in an eclectic version of a

traditional Eastern healing practice.
More recent work on the impact of Eastern cultural influences, specifically
the practice of Eastern movement forms (Brown and Leledaki, 2010), such as
East Asian martial arts, dance forms, meditation, Yoga, Tai Chi Chuan and
Qigong, hints at a refashioning of the West, viewed from the standpoint
of the three Western social forces of Orientalism, reflexive modernization
and commodification. Evidence for the praxis of Easternization in Britain
includes the categorization of yoga as ‘a “keep fit”, leisure activity together
with aerobics and dance exercise’. Also significant ‘is the extent to which
these Eastern movement forms increasingly occupy legitimate socio-cultural
spaces in Western institutions including the armed forces, schools, univer-
sities, prisons, hospitals, businesses, leisure centres and community halls’
and that ‘a number of these forms are slowly moving from extracurricular
to curricular activities in UK schools’ (2010, p. 2). Yet, Brown and Leledaki
note that ‘there remains a palpable paucity of research literature … that has
attempted to make sense of this phenomenon and … its impact on the lives,
identities, and social practices of its practitioners in the West’. So, although
the process of Easternization may have been taking place without much fan-
fare or resistance, conclusive evidence for it ‘refashioning’ the West, which
may include the reinvention and transformation of some forms of Eastern
cultural traditions and their praxis, seems to be lacking. The reinvented
and transformed traditions may or may not be able to trace their changes
to the East itself, compounded as these are by cross-cultural exchanges
and intercultural interactions between East and West. The dynamics ‘con-
tinue to draw on Orientalism as one point of reference and motivation for
(re)inventing East/West identities’ (Brown and Leledaki, 2010, p. 9).
Reflexive modernization, on the other hand, monitors traditional Eastern
cultural forms in relation to the quest for Western scientific validation yield-
ing some Western re-appropriations of Eastern forms of self-cultivation as
therapies. The shift from self-correction to corrective therapy, in the transfor-
mation of the self, has been part of the New Age movement’s adoption and
invention of Eastern cultural traditions according to Campbell too (Brown
and Leledaki, 2010, p. 13). Since Western science is a powerful legitimizing
tool, scientific research evidence for or against Eastern cultural traditions
can appeal to a mundalized audience, and replace traditional cultural
authority with that of Western scientific validation, as the praxis becomes
subject to the gaze of the West, through its scientific paradigms. Thus
‘“Eastern” spirituality, “alternative” holistic mind–body relationships … are
subtly overwritten or ignored to accommodate investigation by Cartesian
dominated frameworks used by such science for processes of validation’
(2010, p. 16). This amounts to an admission of the effects of the presence
and impact of Easternization and its praxis. Brown and Leledaki note
that commodification, as one of the consequences of Western scientific
validation, authorizes consumption through rationalization and aesthetic
commodification. For example, commercialized packages, complete with

assessments and competitions, are now available for East Asian martial arts,
yoga and even meditation. Arguably then, the ‘hedonistic consumption’
(Turner, 1997) of the commodification of the praxis of Easternization in
the West marks a change in cultural beliefs too, which in turn brings about
social change without fuss or fanfare as lifestyle choices.
Is Easternization under siege or does Westernization rule?

Related to the issue of Western scientific validation as a feature of reflexive
modernization, is the question of whether the West has repackaged (or even
reinvented) the material and cultural influences of the East as Western brands
throughout the world, because of its cultural, economic and political clout
leaving the East virtually effete rather than empowered by these cultural flows
to the West. Do the ways in which the West imbibes Eastern cultural influ-
ences then reflect the gaze of the West? Basically, non-hegemonical, the praxis
of Easternization remains largely as acculturation within the realm of popular
culture and spiritualities. Increasingly, however, it is beginning to implicate epis-
temologies, religious fundamentalisms and philosophies, while Westernization
clearly implicates power through political, economic, scientific and media
domination supported by established belief systems, ideologies and networks.
The concept of the gaze originated from the spatial arrangement of Jeremy
Bentham’s (1791) Panopticon, an architectural model in eighteenth-century
prison design, where people knew they were being watched at all times.
It can explain the concept of the siege as it is a design that instilled social
discipline in the prisoners while the gaze is about ‘the act of seeing’ (Foucault
1973), which has always flowed from the powerful to the powerless.
Thus, if we use power as the parameter of the gaze, both Westernization
and Easternization are very much shaped by Western hegemony. In the
context of East–West relations, as the East has almost invariably ‘purchased’
everything the West has had to offer, the West has invariably determined
the price of the values of the East. Western hegemony has penetrated into
various spheres of quotidian life, experience and activity in the East. For
instance, although Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Indian cuisine have become
popular in the West, Western nutritional diets and regimes for weight loss
(promoted even by reality shows) are now prevalent in the East at both the
popular and scientific level. Popular fast foods available at the globally ubiq-
uitous McDonald’s, and at pizza and fried chicken outlets, have also become
everyday lifestyle choices for many people in the East, even as they under-
mine traditional regimes of health. Numerous products of the globalized
food industry have also developed on the back of Western dietary habits,
climatic conditions and life styles, and are less than ideal for consumption
in the tropics. For instance, vitamin D, derived naturally from sunshine, is
plentiful in the East, yet numerous food products are enriched and forti-
fied with vitamin D because of the deficit in temperate climates. Many
Easternization 73
pharmaceutical products are also developed with larger-bodied Europeans

and Americans in mind, and the intake of these can be toxic for relatively
smaller sized Asians (The Star, 2009). Lastly, although the West is the centre
for the dissemination of scientific information, science as we have observed
is not as neutral as we are led to believe. It is frequently value-laden and
embedded, as we see in relation to the scientific validation of forms of
Eastern cultural traditions in the West and with regard to the global food
and pharmaceutical industry.
Through the control of globalized capital, transportation systems, media
and communications networks, the West has invaded almost every sphere
of human life, from education to sports and fitness, and from health and
wellness to religion. Historically, the East has not been very successful at
countering Western dominance and hegemony. However, in more recent
times, it has been able to ‘strike back’, particularly as evinced in the rise of
China as a world economic (and rising political) power. Additionally, Japan’s
quintessential but modern ways of doing business, training and managing
large corporations successfully have been copied by the West for some time
now, while contemporary India lures the West with its information technol-
ogy as well as its spiritualities. Indeed, Sen (2005) observes that while the
mysticism and religious initiatives in India, plentiful as they are, have been
recognized, all the other abundant intellectual activities have been over-
looked. He argues that even the French philosopher Voltaire’s catalogue of
important things to come from India, namely, her numbers, backgammon,
chess, first principles of geometry and fables, would not fit the mainstream
Western image of Indian tradition, focused as it has been on India’s religion
or spirituality (p. 160). It does appear now, however, that India’s intellectual
legacy is being acknowledged, even if only prompted by India’s economic
ascendency and the benefits of enjoying third world economies of scale in
its burgeoning IT, allied and other industries.
Concluding remarks
The East–West divide and the Easternization–Westernization thesis have

attracted much polemic and debate amongst intellectuals, academicians
and policy makers, either constructively or in rather controversial terms, as
in the case of Huntington’s 1996 thesis on the clash of civilizations. Our
intention has been to come face to face with some of the more apparent
issues that confront Easternization; that Easternization is changing the cul-
tural template of the West but research and even anecdotal literature seems
to be reluctant or slow to admit to it or to record the phenomena as cultural
change that is symptomatic and revealing of attitudes to the East. Apart
from Campbell (1999, 2007), who has presented a well developed theory
of cultural change on the phenomena, and more recent work by Brown
and Leledaki (2010) who accept that there is movement on the ground,
its detractors (Hamilton, 2002; Dawson, 2006) view it as the obverse of

Westernization, rather than as a countervailing force that compels attention
in its own right.
We might say then that the demons of Westernization constantly hijack or
obstruct Easternization to suit national and military interests or, under the
guise of scientific validation, to consequently commodify and subsequently
even transform Eastern cultural traditions into Western forms of contempo-
rary or popular culture. For instance, under the guise of scientific validation,
Eastern forms of complementary or alternative medicine, such as Ayurveda
and acupuncture, have been modernized and absorbed into contemporary
Western biomedical models as legitimate paradigms. Although Ayurveda
may not be applied with much ease to a biomedical model, acupuncture is
used as an alternative to medication or surgical intervention (Rubens, 2004).
Such monitoring, lends some credence to the view that Easternization is
under siege by the West. Nevertheless, notwithstanding such interventions,
much of the praxis of Easternization has already crept into the very social
fabric of quotidian life in the West, and has been embraced and consumed
not merely for purported novelty and exoticism, but also its value in the
transformative quality of the self-cultivation of the human potential.
There are many romanticized Orientalists and successful Eastern players
in the arena of commodified Easternization in the West. One of the best
known, and perhaps most astute, is Deepak Chopra, viewed as the foremost
advocate of Ayurvedic medicine in America. Born and medically trained in
India, he relocated to the United States. Described by Time Magazine in 1999
as the ‘poet-prophet of alternative medicine’, Chopra promotes a variety of
complementary and alternative medical therapies using his own name as a
brand. Initially, a leader in the Transcendental Meditation movement, he
later promoted the Maharisihi Mahesh Yogi’s form of Ayurvedic medicine.
Although continuing to work within an Ayurvedic-based model of health
and healing, he distanced himself from the Maharishi’s organization in the
early 1990s and launched himself as the guru of New Age spirituality and
alternative medicine by prolifically publishing self-help books that advocate
an amalgam of therapies for wellness and inner peace.
Western narratives and discursive representations of the cultural
‘consumption’ of the East that are available to us, invite both curiosity
and heurism. For instance, why is Westernization, although globally perva-
sive, seemingly uncontroversial as a perceived and received phenomenon
while Easternization, although far less intrusive, invites more notice, resist-
ance and debate? To put it somewhat metaphorically, there have been more
circumnavigations around the West by the East than there have been actual
disembarkations. We have been more content to sight rather than alight
as travellers. In Part III, we examine the praxis of Easternization as cultural
change in ten specific spheres of human life, experience and activity for
evidence of attitudes towards the phenomenon of Easternization in the
Easternization 75
social life of the West and the ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1973)
of the East as accumulated knowledge, both symbolic and material. Cultural
change is examined for both acculturation and hegemony.
Note
1. WordNet is a large English lexical database, developed under the direction of George
A. Miller. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive
synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are interlinked by
means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations (see http://wordnet.princeton.
edu/). To search for a word, go to: http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn.
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Part III
The Gaze of the West
5
Representations of Philosophy:
The Western Gaze Observed
Ahmad Murad Merican
Introduction
The way in which philosophy was introduced and transmitted to the modern
world is seen as problematic. It is both an epistemological and a sociological
problem. The aim of this chapter is to described the representation of philos-
ophy and identify the problems as such within the Orientalist–Occidentalist
mode. In this context, pertinent observations are made on the representa-
tions of philosophy from the vantage point of the non-Occidental world
view. The chapter begins with a background on the state of theorizing and
narrating philosophy. It then focuses on the Western view of philosophy
with specific reference to the phenomenon of ‘endism’, especially in
describing Western philosophy over the last three centuries and how those
developments configure upon our knowledge of non-Western philosophies.
This chapter shows an absence of approaches on the subject of inquiry.
It demonstrates that, in studying the location of philosophy as a corpus
within the social and human sciences one can see parallels to the study of
sociology. Philosophy as an epistemological problem can, therefore, also be
studied along the lines of scrutinizing intellectual production in sociology.
This in turn brings us to an example by focusing on the construction of
religion induced by the process of secularization. The chapter concludes that
Western philosophy is unique to Europe and the Occidental world, and not
necessarily universal.
The discourse developed over centuries can be observed, especially from
the modern period (taken to mean seventeenth century onwards), in
how the West has produced and reproduced philosophy and, to that end,
the thought and logic that dominate and inform us about ourselves and our
existence. The significance of this chapter is in its view of periodization as
a transcendent mechanism framing narratives and conditioning history and
reality. It poses a series of questions, such as: Was there ever a single Oriental
philosophy? Can we assume that both the Occident and the Orient have
a similar conceptualization of difference and experience so as to warrant the
79
thinking about philosophy comparable, even thinkable? Is being a common

experience on both sides of the divide?
It traces how the West has produced and reproduced philosophy and,
to that end, the dominant thought processes and reasoning that shape
our understanding about human nature and existence. In the process,
knowledge was secularized, politics desacralized and values deconsecrated.
We see this in the view that the following of religions is a cultural universal
arising from the Occidental belief that religion is a constitutive element
of Western culture in ways that are not so significant in Asian culture(s),
precisely because religion is inherently integrated, and is a transcendent
element. This is also the case with aesthetics and ethics. Both are embed-
ded in the consciousness of the system emanating from the divine as the
manifestation of beauty and virtue. In Eastern philosophies aesthetics and
ethics are not necessary separate categories to religion and the religious.
Overall this chapter argues that because the West regards religion as one of
the constitutive elements of culture, its very manifestation of Eastern/non-
Western philosophy has a ‘religious face’, and classified under a god and
religion. In that sense, it explores the entities such as ‘Islam’, ‘Buddhism’
and ‘Hinduism’ as religions. The invention of ‘Western philosophy’, meant
to be distinct from ‘Eastern’ or ‘Oriental’ philosophy, resonates Occidental
superiority of thought, logic and reason over the rest of the world.
Background to the representation of philosophy
‘Philosophy’, as it is known to the world and introduced to the non-Western

world in both its epistemological and ontological orientations, is Occidental
in origin and, thus, configured upon how Western views influence the
world. Truth is always the primary concern.
The state of theorizing and narrating the philosophy of the Other has
major issues regarding the framing of Eastern philosophy: and this is the
category of periodization. This is because the history of philosophical
thought has always been discussed and dominated by the Western tradition
through early Greek philosophers, and their ideas have since become the
foundation for the study of philosophy today (see Copleston, 1961). Much
of the discourse on philosophy has associated the domain of philosophy
to logic, and much of the discourse on logic is Aristotelian, relegating
non-Aristotelian thinking on logic (and philosophy) as irrational or even
omitting it all together.
For example, in philosophizing the Other by the West, Lim Kim Hui
(2003), on Malay thought, observes that even though many works on the
logic of the East can be quoted, despite its deficiency as compared to the
Western logical tradition, it is, however, ‘quite unfortunate that efforts so far
have left the ways of thinking, idea of logical thought and its philosophical
roots in Malay tradition relatively unexplored, neglected and never [having]
Representations of Philosophy 81
been [given] … serious attention by scholars of philosophy’ from either East

or West. Solomon and Higgin, in From Africa to Zen: An Invitation to World
Philosophy (1993), do not include the Malay world and their philosophy.
Malay philosophy and the Malay world view as such exist outside the frame
of Western consciousness.
It is quite normal to conceive of philosophy as being ‘Western’ (and
inherently Christianized) so much so that any scholar (in Malaysia, for
example) who indulged an interest in the subject, and promoted it in the
appropriate arena, was seen as imbibing a Western value and subscribing to
an Occidental ethic. Search the word ‘philosophy’ through the ‘universal-
ized’ search engine Google and we are given a list of 142 million entries;
and ‘Eastern philosophy’ 3.660 million. For both searches, the internet
encyclopaedia Wikipedia has the most entries.1
Terms like ‘ancient’, ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’ are now used almost univer-
sally, regardless of their appropriateness. Islamic and Indian philosophies
as categories would almost always reside under the Medieval period. An
example is given in the 2004 book One Hundred Philosophers by Peter J. King,
an academic philosopher at Pembroke College Oxford. King’s book is divided
into five sections, namely: Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, Nineteenth
Century and Twentieth Century. Under ‘Medieval’, the book identifies such
figures as Adi Samkara, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ramanuja, al-Ghazali and Ibn
Rushd; together with Occidental philosophers inlcuding Pierre Abelard,
Thomas Aquinas, William of Okham, Machiavelli and Franscisco Suarez.
Another classification can be found in Wikipedia’s entry on the history of
‘Western Philosophy’. Here we see an example of the periodization used
according to Western philosophy as in ‘Ancient’, ‘Medieval’, ‘Modern’ and
‘Contemporary’. For example, the ‘ancient’ is associated with the Buddhist,
Chinese, Hindu, Jain and Persian, not forgetting the Greek and Hellenistic.
The ‘contemporary’ with the Occident and Western civilization, described
as ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy.
Thus, for a long time history and philosophy were divided into such
categorizations. Bernard Lewis, a scholar of Islam, who has been most of
the time dubbed an Orientalist, argues that the term ‘Medieval Islam’ does
not mean Medieval Islam as such but the period in Islamic history that
corresponds to the Medieval period in European history and philosophy
(see Lewis, 2009). We are aware that the periodization of the world and
periods of philosophy and intellectual history were invented by Europeans
in Europe to classify the different phases of European history, which is then
imposed, or self-imposed, upon the rest of the world.
When we pursue the line of thinking that posits Islamic or Indian phi-
losophy under the Medieval period, we assume a premise beginning with
a certain event or process, usually happening in Europe – for example, the
date for the fall of Rome, the advent of Christianity or the beginning of the
(Gregorian) Calendar, which in our consciousness is known as AD – Anno
Domini, the Year of the Lord. Periodization also forms the basis of several
popular philosophies of history. Lewis suggests that this might be called
the biological metaphor – the history of civilization, which begins with
conception and grows through infancy, childhood, adolescence and matu-
rity, including mating and procreation, decay and death (Lewis, 2009, ibid.).
The mode of periodization, for example, has implications on the study
of Islamic philosophy. Much of that falls under what was mentioned as
‘Medieval’ or that period in Islamic literature and scholarship known as the
‘Golden Age’ of Islam, roughly corresponding to circa 800–1200. As such,
Orientalist discourse implies the decay of Muslim society and Islam after
that period and as such erases any form of ‘enlightenment’ among Muslim
societies after that period. Such a periodization neglects and erases the
growth of philosophy and theological debates, as in the case of the Malay
Archipelago circa 1400, especially in Acheh and Melaka. Al-Attas strongly
argues that there has not been in Islam historical periods
That can be characterized as ‘classical’, then ‘medieval’, then ‘modern’

and now purportedly shifting again to ‘post-modern’; nor critical events
between the medieval and the modern experienced as a ‘renaissance’ and
an ‘enlightenment’. (Al-Attas, 2005, pp. 11–43).
The same can be argued on the Western world view toward Indian culture
and philosophy. It is precisely because of the complexity of Indian philoso-
phy that it defies Western attempts to explain it rationally, the only way the
West knows how, by connecting it to historical periods (Osborne and Van
Loon, 1996, p. 32). To the West, to be spiritual is to reject reason. To the East,
being spiritual is beyond reason.
The Western gaze: a non-Western observation on a crisis

of philosophy
The phenomenon of ‘endism’ is endemic to modern2 sociological and

philosophical discourse. We have seen Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History
and the Last Man (1992). Following Fukuyama was John Horgan with The
End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age
(1996). Richard Rorty (1979), the American philosopher who proclaimed
‘the end of epistemology’ in his address to the American Philosophical
Association, was preceded by Martin Heidegger’s announcement of the
‘end of metaphysics’ (see Schirmacher, 1984, pp. 603–9). Philosophy,
which purportedly represents universal civilization and today dominates
the world, is a product of Western idealism, science and technology; and
without the tradition of metaphysical thought it would simply not exist. We
cannot understand the modern age if we do not admit the part played in its
creation by metaphysics from Plato to Nietzsche; and we cannot, according
to Schirmacher in his address to the 17th World Congress of Philosophy in

1983, sensibly discuss post-modernism without a radical and critical grasp
of the basic categories, contributed by metaphysics, of existence, time,
foundation, contradiction and identity.
Martin Heidegger began this discussion in his works, and reduced the
problem of modernity to the notion of the ‘end of metaphysics’. What
does this mean? (Schirmacher, 1984).
Philosophy is itself facing an identity crisis. Rorty, in the plenary address

delivered at the 11th Inter-American Congress of Philosophy in Mexico
City, captured the crisis by proposing that if nineteenth-century philosophy
began with Romantic Idealism and ended by worshipping the positive
sciences, twentieth-century philosophy began by revolting against a
narrowly empiricist positivism and is ending by returning
to something reminiscent of Hegel’s sense of humanity as an essentially

historical being, one whose activities in all spheres are to be judged not by
its relation to non-human reality but by comparison and contrast with its
earlier achievements with utopian futures. This return will be seen as having
been brought about by philosophers as various as Heidegger, Wittgenstein,
Quine, Gadamer, Derrida, Putnam and Davidson (Rorty, 1986).
The crisis in philosophy, as Huston Smith (1989) argues, saw Western

philosophy being thrown back and forth over time. The last 300 years saw
it as a reaction against the scientism of the European Enlightenment3 pro-
testing its claim that mathematical demonstration provides the model for
inquiry and positive science the model for culture. It ended by swinging back
to ‘Enlightenment’ predilections and shunting off into literature the counter-
Enlightenment sentiments that had given rise to the Romantic Movement
and German Idealism. So philosophy entered the twentieth century allied to
science. Experimental science moved into mathematics and logic, but soon
the Husserlian approach to philosophy brought phenomenology.
Yet, philosophy took another turn. Western philosophers argue that the
world does not require anything of us either. Their way of doing this is to
reconcile Plato and Aristotle – the essences of the former and the substance
of the latter. Still, the fixity of logic rules, fortified by advances in linguis-
tic analyses, the positivistic version gives celebration to the Vienna Circle
with its ‘unification scientific conception of the world’ characterized by
two features: the empiricist and the positivist, marked by the application of
a certain method, namely logical analysis (Al-Attas, 1978, p. 7; Smith, 1989).
This has been central to Western philosophy: and that philosophy goes after
a single, unequivocal world view – hence a single philosophy where all other
philosophies subsume and reside within. Metaphysics is renounced.
This crisis called secularization was already envisaged by French philosopher

and sociologist Auguste Comte in the earlier half of the nineteenth century.
Comte saw the rise of science and the overthrow of religion, and believed,
according to the secular logic in the development of Western philosophy
and science, that society was ‘evolving’ and ‘developing’ from the primitive
to the modern stages. He observed that, taken in its developmental aspect,
metaphysics is a transition from theology to science. Later that century
the German philosopher-poet, Friedrich Nietzsche, through the mouth of
Zarathustra, prophesized, at least for the Western world, that God is dead.
So when Western philosophy prepared for its emancipation with no ‘God’
and no ‘religion’,4 which is still ringing in the Western world, the dirge
that ‘Christianity is dead’ came to be accepted (see Al-Attas, 1978, p. 2).
Interestingly that view was expressed at the popular level by John Lennon –
expressing a Nietzchean world view and at the same time manifesting the
gaze of the West in resonating Eastern religions and philosophies. Eastern
philosophy and spirituality brought inspiration to many of his lyrics – the
law of Karma, for example, and of sustaining one’s soul, as in the song
Imagine.
Is Lennon’s gaze on the state of Western philosophy viewed from within
itself and externally? The phrases ‘no religion too’, ‘living in peace’ and
‘a brotherhood of man’ – and the opening verse beginning ‘Imagine
there’s no heaven’ – depict world views of the Occident resonating at
that time. Eastern thought gave Lennon that escape from ‘provincial,
Western-European-British-Liverpudlian thought’, and the ability to pen-
etrate deeper areas of the soul (see Gentile, 1999). With the ‘death’ of ‘God’
and ‘Christianity’, the world view adopted by the West is inclined toward
change – changing with the times. The dominant philosophical system was
formed by gathering together various cultural objects, values and phenom-
ena into artificial coherence – meaning subject to change with the change of
circumstances. It is a historical and developmental process of philosophical
speculation and scientific discovery. Al-Attas (2005, pp. 11–43), in giving a
precise comparison between Western and non-Western philosophies (with
reference to Islam), describes (Islamic) the vision of reality and truth being
a world view that undergoes a dialectical process of transformation repeated
through the ages, from thesis to antithesis then synthesis, with elements of
each of these stages in the process being assimilated into the other: such as a
world view based upon a system of thought that was originally God-centred,
then gradually became God-world centred and is now world-centred and
perhaps shifting again to form a new thesis in the dialectical process.
Such a world view changes in line with ideological ages characterized
by a predominance of the influence of particular and opposing systems
of thought advocating different interpretations of world view and value
systems like that which have occurred and will continue to occur in the
history of the cultural, religious and intellectual traditions of the West.
In the history of the cultural, religious and intellectual tradition of Islam

there have not been distinct ages characterized by a preponderance of a
system of thought upon materialism or idealism, supported by attendant
methodological approaches and positions like empiricism, rationalism, real-
ism, nominalism, pragmatism, positivism, logical positivism and criticism,
oscillating between centuries and emerging one after another right down to
our time (Al-Attas, 2005).
The world-centred, manifesting the constant and ever changing ‘centres’,
can be argued in absolute terms as the loss of the ‘centre’ in Western phi-
losophy and civilization. When the centre is lost, as seen in post-modernist
discourses, certainty in knowledge is denied. And when certainty of knowl-
edge is denied, the world of meaning and tradition are deconstructed. To
(Western) philosophy, this implied not only the segmentation of various
branches of knowledge but also a divorce between contemplation and
action. At another level, this loss has led to disconnect between science,
ethics and aesthetics due to the reduction of religious truths to consequences
of a social situation – socially and culturally determined (Norton, 2004).
To non-Occidental philosophies, revelation is not subject to sociological
explanations. Western philosophy denies revelation and, even when it does
pay some attention to it, reduces it to culture.
Approaches to theorizing the discourse
As such, it would be useful to attempt a meta-analysis of the area of inquiry.

The study on the state of scholarship in philosophy in the non-Western world
is generally viewed as being peripheral. Part of the reason for the peripheral
status of such studies is the dominant narrative conception that they are
highly rhetorical and polemical in nature, as well as their being based on
inadequate foundations.5 Take, for example, the entries ‘Philosophy’ and
‘Eastern Philosophy’ in the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia – very much
capturing the essence of how contemporary culture captures the rhetoric
on philosophy.
Under ‘Philosophy’, the object (of study) is referred to as the study of
general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence,
knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind and language. A critical
feature that distinguishes it from other ways of addressing the questions (such
as Eastern/Non-Western philosophy) is its ‘generally systematic approach
and its reliance on reasoned argument’. If we compare the entry ‘Eastern
philosophy’, which includes the various philosophies of Asia, it states that
Eastern thought, at least since the rise of European influence in Asia, is
often associated with philosophy in the Western sense. ‘Eastern philosophy’
and the idea of philosophy from the non-Western sense, the entry says,
lacks rigorous science, where ethics and aesthetics are not necessarily
categories separate from religion. Consciousness transcends the face of
Eastern philosophies, going beyond what reason and rationality measure as

religious and mythical. Traditional Eastern writings, Wikipedia observes, are
for the most part, exactly seen as religious and mythical.
One definition of meta-analysis comes from Ritzer (1988, p. 188, cited
in Alatas, 2006, p. 41), in which he defines it as the reflexive study of the
underlying structure of a discipline that involves not only the study of its
theory and concepts (metatheory) but also the methods (meta-methods),
data (meta-data analysis) and substantive fields within a discipline. Ritzer’s
paper makes the distinction between meta-analyses that aim to work out
the structures and principles in developing the various modes of alternative
discourses as opposed to Orientalism and Eurocentrism, for instance;
and meta-analyses that take developed bodies of work, in this regard, the
corpus about philosophy (and non-Western philosophy), in relation to
theories, concepts and methods within that area as inform by mainstream
scholarship, as the subject matter (see Alatas, 2006, especially chapter 2).
Alatas’ (2006, pp. 41–2) discussion on theorizing the state of social sciences
is very much applicable to philosophy, as well as to sociology and the study
of non-Western social sciences in general. He identifies two approaches
that can be used, internal–external and cognitive–institutional. The internal
refers to factors which relate to research, theory construction, methodology,
empirical studies and applied social science. By external, he means factors
that are external to discourse but nevertheless influence the social science.
Alatas then relates the cognitive to the ideal aspects of the social sciences,
such as ideas, theories, concepts and values; while institutional refers to the
structural components both within and without the social sciences, which
determine social scientific activities. Hence under internal–external we iden-
tify the following approaches: Orientalism, Eurocentricism, post-colonial
criticism and rhetorical theories. The external–cognitive6 approaches
are identified as the theory of the captive mind, pedagogical theories of
modernization and modern colonial critique. The internal–institutional7
approaches are represented by the theory of intellectual imperialism and
academic dependency theory. What these have in common is the critique
of ideas and concepts internal and external to philosophical and social
scientific discourse, such as notions of progress, change and civilization, the
sacred and the profane.
Works and writings on philosophy, vis-á-vis Western narrations on the
philosophy(ies) of the Other is not merely of historical or civilizational
interest, but must be further developed as a theory of non-Western social
and human sciences. Edward Said’s Orientalism (1979) certainly provides a
broad framework for such pursuits. Several others have also discussed the
problem independently of Orientalism. An example is Abdel-Malek (1963,
pp. 103–40), who discussed how non-Europeans were portrayed as unheard
objects whose points of view were communicated only when the narra-
tors saw fit. These objects are passive, non-participating and non-active,
non-autonomous and non-sovereign beings. An example is the classification

of philosophy into the conventional periodization on how the Occident
sees history. Another is shown in Ahmad Ahsraf’s description in what he
calls Orientology, that corpus of work produced by Western scholars that
attempts to ‘comprehend and delineate the Asian communities and history,
as well as constructing models for its directed economic, social and political
change’. One of Ashraf’s categories of his Orientology is that of historical
and historiographical works undertaken during the period of Western
penetration into Asia in the nineteenth century (1976, p. 113). A central
feature of Orientalist narrations on philosophy is the positional superiority
to Eastern/non-Western philosophies, whereby the writings imply a style of
thought projecting an epistemological distinction between ‘the Orient’ and
‘the Occident’, subsuming and integrating the Other and at the same time
disregarding, essentializing and denuding the humanity of another culture
or geographical region (Said, 1979, p. 108).
The fallacy of logic and the construction of religion

as philosophy
Hence, Eastern/non-Western philosophy is seen as static and not rational

and, therefore, cannot be divided into the various branches of logic, meta-
physics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of
mind and philosophy of language.
Take, for example, logic as the mainstay of the dominant discourse.
One may realise that there is not one logic but many logics. Discourses on
Indian, Buddhist or Zen philosophy, for example, assume that there is only
one logic and one rationality. To put it another way in a certain context:
At the beginning of the chapter on the Roman religio, I reflected upon

the fact that we all share a Christian world. ‘Our (intellectual) world
happens to be a Christian world,’ I wrote there, ‘whether a Jew, a Dinka
or a Brahmin; whether a theist, an atheist or a Muslim, our questions
have a common origin.’ It must be obvious what I had in mind then,
and how true it is. In the name of science and ethnology, the Biblical
themes have become our regular stock-in-trade; that God gave religion
to humankind has become a cultural universal in the guise that all
cultures have a religion; the theme that God gave one religion to human-
ity has taken the form and belief that all religions have something in
common; that God implanted a sense of divinity is now a secular truth
in the form of an anthropological, specifically human ability to have
a religious experience . . . One has become a Christian precisely to the
degree Christianity ceases being specifically Christian in the process of
secularization (Balagangadhara, 1994, pp. 246–7).
S.N. Balagangadhara, through his 1994 ‘The Heathen in His Blindness’: Asia,
the West and the Dynamic of Religion, aptly comments on the discourse on
philosophy. To him, the reason for the Western belief that having religions
is a cultural universal arises from the Occidental belief that religion is a
constitutive element of Western culture in a way that it is not so signifi-
cant in Asian culture(s): ‘The belief that religion is one of the constitutive
elements of culture is true only because the culture which believes in this is
constituted by religion . . . The west is a culture partly through the very story
of religion itself’ (p. 438). Thus, to the west, Eastern/non-Western philoso-
phy possesses a ‘religious face’, one that is classified under God and religion.
Balagangadhara makes a pertinent point in relation to our argument on how
the philosophies of the Other are projected, and that is on the imaginary
constructions of the entities such as ‘Buddhism’, ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Taoism’
by the West as religions. This means that entities such as Buddhism were not
floating in some ethereal limbo awaiting their discovery.
It has been argued that from the latter part of the eighteenth century
to the middle of the 1830s we witnessed the creation of Hinduism and
Buddhism. During that period, in the West, Buddhism and Hinduism take
form as entities that ‘exist’ in various cultures that can now be perceived
as demonstrating them in an enormous variety of ways. The creation of
Buddhism, for example, after which Buddhist philosophy was constructed,
allows it to be systematically defined, described and classified from the
cultural ‘facts’, manifesting itself in a number of Asian societies.
In the metamorphosis into philosophy, the erstwhile Hinduism and
Buddhism had merely been chaotic and unclassified aspects of that which
was not Judaic, Christian or Muslim. But the arrival of Sanskrit texts in
Europe, their subsequent decipherment and the analysis of them independ-
ently of Biblical chronology and classical points of reference allowed for
the creation of previously unknown entities on the basis of their textual
past, entities the shape of which was determined by the social, political,
intellectual and religious needs of the West. In their 1996 (reprinted in
2000 and 2001) book Introducing Eastern Philosophy Osborne and Van Loon
ask the question ‘Is Eastern philosophy just religion?’ (p. 13). Obviously,
either rightfully or otherwise, in conforming to the curiosity of their readers
they answer that the East does not attempt to distinguish clearly between
philosophy and religion. And that, to the West, is problematic. They want
to see that distinction, as in the case of Western philosophy.
One of the excellent expositions thus far on the nature of knowledge is
found in Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas’ Islam and Secularism (1978). The
book, among others, deliberates on the contemporary Western Christian
background, the meaning of the secular, secularization and secularism, and
the de-Westernization of knowledge. Al-Attas makes a strong statement on
secularization – the fundamental and conceptual premise in comprehending
how the Occident views the world and itself. It was the Christian philosopher
Jacques Maritain who described how Christianity and the Western world
were going through a grave crisis brought about by contemporary events
arising out of the experience, understanding and interpretation of life in
the urban civilization as manifested in the trend of neo-modernist thought,
which emerged from among the Christians themselves and intellectuals
including philosophers, theologians, poets, writers and artists who represent
Western culture and civilization.8 Since the European Enlightenment,
European philosophers, mostly from the Anglo-Saxon West, have foreshad-
owed in their writings the crisis that Maritain described, though not quite in
the same manner and dimension. This crisis is called secularization.
Already in the earlier half of the nineteenth century the French philoso-
pher and sociologist Auguste Comte envisaged the rise of science and the
overthrow of religion, and believed, according to the secular logic in the
development of Western philosophy and science, that society was ‘evolving’
and ‘developing’ from the primitive to the modern stages. He observed that,
taken in its developmental aspects, Western philosophy is a transition from
theology to science.9
At the same time, the Nietzschean cry that ‘God is dead’, can be visualized
in the contemporary experience of secularization as part of the ‘evolution-
ary’ process of human history and as part of the irreversible process of
the ‘coming of age’ and of ‘growing up’ to maturity. Thus, the European
consciousness on philosophy and science has been often defined as the
deliverance of man ‘first from religion and then from metaphysical control
over his reason and his language’.10 It is also the breaking up of all super-
natural myths and sacred symbols.
Al-Attas, deriving his argument from Dutch theologian Cornelis van
Peursen who occupied the chair of philosophy in the University of Leiden
and Harvard theologian Harvey Cox, defines secularization as the loosing
of the world from religious and quasi-religious understandings of itself,
the dispelling of all closed world views, the breaking of all supernatural
myths and the sacred symbols. Fused in the conception of secularization
is the ‘fatalization of history’, in that man has been left with the world on
his hands, he can no longer blame fortune or the furies for what he does
with it.
Concluding remarks
Secularization encompasses not only the political and social aspects of life,
but also inevitably the cultural and the historical. According to the Occidental
philosophers, history is a process of secularization. Eastern philosophy, begin-
ning with the encounter and later the rise of Europe in the non-Occidental
world, is often associated with philosophy in the Western sense. ‘(I)f one
thinks of philosophy in terms of Kant and Hegel, then there is no philosophy
taking place in Japan’, writes Masao Abe, one of the members of the Kyoto
School of Philosophy, in his introduction to a new English translation of work

by Kitaro Nishida, the ‘founder’ of the Kyoto School. But:
if it is instead thought of in terms of the tradition carried out by

Augustine and Kierkegaard, then Japan has a rich philosophical history,
composed of the great thinkers Kukai, Shinran, Dogen and others (see
‘Kyoto School’ in Wikipedia).
Kant and Hegel were advocates of historical relativism resulting from

the liberal ideology and development. They represent philosophers from
the European Enlightenment period whose orientations were induced
by the historical process of secularization, in which its integral compo-
nents are disenchantment of nature, the de-sacralization of politics and the
de-consecration of values. Borrowing from Max Weber, the disenchant-
ment of nature means the freeing of nature of its religious overtones.
Nature is no longer regarded as a divine entity. This allows the West to act
freely upon nature, to make use of it according to human needs and plans,
and hence create historical change and ‘development’. Subsequently, by
the de-sacralization of politics, it is taken to mean the abolition of sacral
legitimation of political power and authority, which is the prerequisite for
both political and social change and, hence, allows for the merging of the
historical process. Finally, the de-consecration of values refers to the render-
ing transient and relative of all cultural creations and every value system,
which for the West includes religion and world views having ultimate and
final significance, so that in this way history and the future are open to
change, and man is free to create that change and immerse humankind in
the evolutionary process.
Even to the much subjugated ‘Eastern philosopher’, seeing philosophy as
complex has been externally induced and measured.11 S. Radhakrishnan and
Moore, for instance, argue that Indian philosophy is extremely complex:
Throughout the ages, the Indian philosophical mind has probed deeply
into the many aspects of human experience and the external world . . . The
variety of the Indian perspective is unquestionable. Accordingly, it is very
difficult to cite any specific doctrines or methods as characteristic of Indian
philosophy as a whole, and applicable to all the multitudinous systems
and subsystems developed through nearly four millenniums of Indian
philosophical speculation (Radhakrishnan and Moore, 1973, p. xxii).
The values of Occidental thought and philosophy even assume the similarity
of experience and the meaning of difference. What this means is that Europe,
and all its projections to the world, thinks that it is universal. But these are
unique to the European experience and civilization. European philosophy
is unique but not universal. The same can also be said of non-Western
philosophy. One cannot expect the notion of philosophy that dominates the
world to exercise the same kind of logic for all civilizations. Nevertheless, it
has to be noted that non-Occidental philosophies are based on scriptures and
regard scripture as a source of philosophical knowledge (Norton, 2004). One
cannot conceive of Western philosophy as embedded in an inner, esoteric
dimension. Even if that was so, it would only be at the level of ethics, not
metaphysics.
Notes
1. The use of Google and Wikipedia is for the purpose of illustrating in itself how
the West has come to dominate the various discourses on knowledge production
and philosophy. The Internet and Google in particular are classic examples of
Occidental technologies also representing the non-Occidental world.
2. By ‘modern’, in this context, I mean the period after the Second World War.
3. This chapter uses the term ‘European Enlightenment’ to denote that the episode is
unique to Europe. The ‘Enlightenment’ is not used to essentialize the Occident.
4. John Lennon (of the Beatles fame) through Imagine (early 1970s) echoed the
philosophy.
5. The inquiry on the representation of philosophy falls within the framework
of the social and human sciences, and that body of work on the state of social
sciences in the non-Western world. For a more elaborate discussion on the
subject, see Alatas (2006, pp. 40–51).
6. The set of approaches examining the manner in which ideas, attitudes, values
and mentalities from outside the social sciences impinge upon their activities.
This mainly refers to Western science and philosophy. For example, non-Western
scholars believe that social and human science knowledge that comes from the
West is superior. See Alatas (2006, p. 47).
7. This refers to the structural components of the social sciences as conceived and
practiced in non-Western societies. Ibid. p. 52.
8. See Jacques Maritain (1966) Le Paysan de la Garonne. Paris; cited in Al-Attas (1993).
9. See his General View of Positivism (1880). Trans. J. H. Bridges. London.
10. See Harvard theologian Harvey Cox in his 1965 The Secular City (New York:
Macmillan), p. 2.
11. I have also discussed this subject with regard to the meaning of communication
from the non-Western perspective. See Merican (2005), especially chapter 3
titled ‘Communication and Transcendence: Technologies of Literacy and Sacred
traditions’.
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6
Framings of the East: Rebranding
Beliefs and Religions1
Lim Kim Hui
Introduction
The discourse on East–West relations was always, until quite recently,

dominated by the ‘Westernization thesis’ with the emergence of the
‘Easternization thesis’. The Westernization thesis is derived from the under-
standing that the West has developed for itself a collection of universal
values that control the whole world (Latouche, 1996). The Easternization
thesis suggests that Eastern concepts and practices have shaped the Western
mindset in its discursive, practical and aesthetic spheres of existence
(Dawson, 2006, p. 1). As early as 1995, Howell saw the rise of Asian power
as a kind of Easternization that has affected the West socio-economically.
A more thorough analysis on the ‘Easternization of the West’, however,
comes from Campbell (1999, 2007). Drawing evidence from Yogaization,
the rehabilitation of nature and the emergence of the New Age Movement,
Campbell (2007), has produced a detailed study on how Western civiliza-
tion has gone through cultural change in the modern era with ideas and
values derived from Asia.2 From the perspective of power, however, has the
Easternization thesis materially overthrown the Westernization thesis, or is
it indeed the West that has reshaped, refashioned and rebranded the East
under its ‘gaze’, which Foucault defined as ‘the act of seeing’ in The Birth of
the Clinic (1973).
Background: Westernization, its hexagon of power and

how the East fails
There are many ways of addressing East–West relations, but, as I observe it,
two are pertinent, namely, power relations and cultural relations. Let us look
at the East–West power relations first, before going into East–West cultural
relations.3 East–West power relations in general have been viewed as a ‘one-
way ticket’; the West is seen as the supplier and the East as the recipient
of ideas and beliefs. In order to explain how the West has conquered the
93
world, this web of Western power can be generalized as six Cs: Colonialism,
Capitalism, Christianity, Concept, Culture and Colour. The hegemony of
the West via colonialism has been much studied and discussed. Western
capitalism controls the world through many transnational and multina-
tional corporations (TNCs/MNCs), for example, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM,
GE, Intel, Nokia and McDonald’s, and media conglomerates such as CNN
and the BBC. As for religion, Christianity has become the most dominant
religion in the world. In Asia, the Philippines and Timor Leste are the two
examples of the Westernization of religion in the East. However, the West
has not only ‘conquered and colonised the whole world’ via these three
components, ‘it has also defined almost everything, every concept and
every notion which is claimed to have universal applicability’ (Li, 2002, p.
415). Generally concepts can be divided along the lines of epistemology and
ideology. By an epistemological concept, I mean the episteme. The episteme
is used to measure human understanding, world view and how a keyword
(for example, religion, mind or beauty) is defined. Ideological concepts refer
to political terms like communism, socialism and democracy. By means of
the Western yardstick, the episteme is applied to the Eastern psyche and
political terms like communism, socialism and democracy have divided the
political landscape of the world into blocs.
In addition to Western concepts, Western culture and civilization4 have
also spread to every part of the world. Western culture is heavily shaping
our thinking, from tastes and language use to technology, as in the way
we dress, the use of Christian names by non Christians, the dominance
of European languages in former colonies, and the emergence of English
as the global language of the world. In addition, Western culture and
civilization have also produced modern technology through scientific
inventions that have changed our daily life. Although the notion of
ethnicity, race or colour remained an international issue until the abol-
ishment of the apartheid policy in South Africa in 1994, the thought
that Westerners are superior still lingers in the subconscious mindset of
the East.
East–West relations, however, can also be viewed as part of the dynamics
of the cultural flows that are moving asymmetrically in both directions
between the cultures of Asia and Europe (or their variants as the ‘East’
and the ‘West’) in the global context. In this chapter, I look at East–West
relations from this aspect of cultural change; how the West was first influ-
enced by Eastern beliefs and religions, and how the East has been reframed
under the influence of Western capitalist hegemony.
Objective
The influence that Eastern religions have had on modern Western society,
as is evident in such practices as meditation, vegetarianism and yoga,
Framings of the East 95
cannot be denied. Here it is argued that, whereas Westernization exists as

both hegemony and acculturation, Easternization, exists only as a form
of acculturation. As a type of hegemony, Westernization is undoubtedly
dominant. A similar status, however, cannot be posited for Easternization.
Taking these power relations as its departure point, this chapter focuses on
acculturation and argues that Easternization or Westernization is evident in
the form of cultural flows that are reciprocal and asymmetrical as part of
glocalization, where appropriate foreign cultural elements are imbibed and
adapted to suit the local tastes, cultures and psyche. For instance, the influ-
ence of Buddhist culture in the West, as part of the praxis of Easternization of
the West, is just as prevalent as American Buddhism is in the Westernization
of Eastern beliefs and practices and can be compared in principle to the
Japanese slogan of ‘Wakon Yo¯sai’ meaning Japanese in spirit, but Western in
techniques (Verhoeven, 2003). Dividing religious discourse into three differ-
ent domains, namely, ‘Religion as Belief’, ‘Religion as Culture’ and ‘Religion
as Product’, in this chapter I will explore, identify and argue how the praxis
of Eastern religions and beliefs is framed, re-branded (or reframed) and then
reproduced as representations of Western hegemony. As a version of cultural
flows, glocalization, emanating from either the East or the West, is not
seen as an issue. What is an issue is the hegemonic nature of the Western
framings of the East that tends to ‘belittle’ or ‘mystify’ Eastern beliefs for
political or economic reasons, shaped as they are by the first domain of
Westernization as hegemony.
Shifting religious paradigms in the West: Religion as belief,

culture and product
Religion in the West has gone through many phases. First, there was a sky-God
that was directly involved in human activities in the public domain.
However, after the Christian Reformation, and with the rise of scientific
rationalism, humanism and modern liberal democratic models of nation
state, religion became a personal choice, normally referred to as the secu-
larization of the West. Under the influence of the global spread of corporate
capitalism, the religious landscape has reached another phase, where almost
everything has become a saleable and purchasable product. Religion and
God have been privatized as an industry. On the well-known Brandchannel
(2011) website, there is even a forum entitled: ‘Does God Need a Rebrand?’
In matters of religion, under the influence of Western capitalism, faiths have
been rebranded as ‘spirituality’. Faiths have had to become brands in a world
of commerce, argues Einstein (2008). Under such religious commercialism,
repackaging religion by updating music and creating teen-targeted bibles
has become justifiable and necessary. Carrette and King (2005) describe
these two phases as the ‘privatization of religion’ (p. 13), which relegates
religion to a private matter (the secularization of belief) and private sector
(the corporatization of belief). But what makes concepts, institutions or

practices flow in between cultures in matters related to religions? There
are several answers to this. Sometimes there is either a political or religious
power centre, but sometimes it is a religious, cultural or economic field of
gravitation with subsequent centre-periphery structures and a number of
push-and-pull factors. To analyse Western framings of the East, I will first
distinguish between the three ‘fields of gravitation’ of religion, namely,
religion as belief, religion as culture and religion as product. Later I will
argue that Eastern religions are treated less as religions, and more as popular
culture and products, which are sometimes even belittled or demeaned due
to the Western hexagon of power.
Eastern religions in the West: Religion as belief
All major ‘religions’ originally came from the ‘East.’ However, academically,
they have been divided into ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ religions. This
separation can be explained theologically and culturally. By theology,
I mean ‘religion’ as ‘religion’ per se and in terms of culture I refer to
how religion has been localized into local cultures or even syncretized
with the earlier religions or belief systems and viewed as less ‘pure’ than
theological beliefs. Theologically, Western religions are those rooted in
the Abrahamic tradition, which is monotheistic in the belief in a sin-
gle sky-God. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all fall into this category
without much polemic. Other religions, mainly from India and China,
are theologically non-monotheistic and mostly polytheistic. These have
been termed ‘Eastern’ religions. However, despite its ‘Western’ theological
origin, Islam as the religion of diverse peoples in Asia is also one of the
cultural traditions of Asia.
I divide my discussion on ‘religion as belief’ into two. Firstly, I identify the
adherents of Eastern religions as those who profess to be part of a religious
community and do not select piecemeal – or ‘cut and paste’ – practices from
Eastern belief systems as part of popular culture. Secondly, I compare Eastern
religions as practised in Asia with the New Age praxis of Eastern religions
in the West.
As observed, although it is true that there is an increase in the number
of adherents of Eastern religions in the West, their increased influence is,
however, mostly due to the increased numbers of Buddhists and Hindu
diasporas in the West. Westerners are generally not attracted to Eastern
religions as systems in their entirety, but are drawn more to the specific
praxes of, for example, meditation, yoga/taichi/qiqong or vegetarianism. If
we look at the percentage of believers in the world in the year 2000, we see
that Christianity had the highest group of believers (33 per cent), followed
by Muslims (19.6 per cent) and Hindus (13.4 per cent) respectively (see
Robinson, 2009).
In Europe itself, the percentage of Buddhists is less than 1 per cent and
most of these were migrants (Baumann, 2001, table 1). In comparison, most
countries in Asia have Christian converts at more than 1 per cent of their
population. Even Japan, where Christians were said to be tortured during
the Samurai Era, now has 0.7 per cent Christians, higher than the number
of Buddhists in almost all European countries. The Philippines, Timor Leste
and South Korea, for example, are Asian countries where there have been
very successful rates of conversion to Christian religious beliefs. According
to the 2000 Philippine Census (Pew Research Center, 2007, p. 87), 92.6 per
cent of its population of 80 million is Christian, which includes Catholics
(81 per cent), Protestants (7.3 per cent), Iglesia ni Kristos (2.3 per cent) and
Aglipayans (2 per cent). The next largest group is Muslim (5.1 per cent).
Other groups include those who practise tribal religions (0.2 per cent) and
Buddhists (0.1 per cent). Upon becoming a sovereign state on May 20, 2002,
Timor Leste became another Roman Catholic country in Asia, with the pre-
dominant Roman Catholic population identified to be as high as 97 per cent.
In South Korea, according to the most recent Korean Census (Pew Research
Center, 2007, p. 91) that includes data on religion, even though 49.3 per cent
of the population claim no religion, as high as 26.3 per cent of the popula-
tion is Christian, higher than for Buddhism at 23.2 per cent. We cannot find
similar examples of conversion to ‘Eastern’ religions in Western countries.
According to Baumann (2001), the highest estimated numbers of Buddhists
in European countries in 2000 was 350,000 in France (0.6 per cent), of which
around 300,000 were actually Buddhists from Asian countries. If the Russian
Federation is taken into consideration as part of the Western countries, there
were about one million (0.7 per cent) Buddhists in the Federation, but the
vast majority was actually Buddhists from Asia (Baumann, 2001).
Furthermore, most of the Christians in the West and elsewhere, do not
renounce Christianity even when they choose to practice certain aspects
of Buddhism, Hinduism or Taoism as part of their spirituality (such as
meditation, yoga and traditional Eastern forms of healing) in addition to
their belief in Christianity. In an address delivered to the International
Buddhist Youth Conference in Auckland, New Zealand on 30 May 2002, His
Holiness the Dalai Lama even said:
As I mentioned earlier all religious traditions have a role, and I think

we should be grateful we can share, to help humanity, to change, to
transform human emotions. I’m quite sure this can happen without
people changing religions. For example, a Christian can remain a Christian
but at the same time adopt some aspects of the Buddhist ways of
approach. Among my Christian friends, there are some who are already
doing this without losing their faith in the Christian tradition. They
adopt some Buddhist techniques or methods to improve their inner spir-
itual qualities. In fact one of my Christian brothers actually describes me
as an excellent fellow Christian (laughter). So it is possible to take that

kind of approach (Dalai Lama, 2002).
Moreover, many New Agers have, indeed, in many ways reinterpreted

and represented Buddhism in their own ways. For example, the goal of
Buddhism (the first of Four Noble Truths) is to escape the suffering of
this world, while stricter disciplines of self-denial are demanded in both
Buddhism and Hinduism to lead a really spiritual life. However; Western
pantheism as practiced by the New Agers has been interpreted as ‘life-
affirming’. Hence every aspect of life is to be enjoyed rather than endured,
and this difference is clearest in matters related to sexuality and sexual
freedom (Boa, 2006, pp. 118–19). New Agers view sex in rather permissive
ways in contrast to all major mainstream religions, which generally believe
that sex is for procreation within marriage. Due to such an interpretation,
the image of God and the world that can be found in the New Agers’ art
and literature has always been presented in a rather sensual and erotic
manner. New Agers in general also indulge more in Tantra, for instance, as
‘counterculture’. Although Tantra originally began as a religious movement,
it was more than that. It was a ‘spiritual “counterculture” among the siddha
who rejected the monastic establishment of the Sangha as having become
scholastic and hierarchical’ (Trainor, 2004, p. 162). Practicing Tantra, there-
fore, can be viewed as using Eastern methodology as ‘counterculture’ against
the domination of Christian absolutism. As for Taoism (or Daoism), there
are two types, Philosophical Taoism (Daojia) and Religious Taoism (Daojiao).
Popular New Age books, however, have completely ignored the role of
religious Taoism as ‘a ritualistic, communal and festival religion’ (Carrette
and King, 2005, p. 92).
Eastern religions in the West: Counterculture and

mere fashion
When God died in the West, there was a vacuum within the Western soul
that needed to be filled with a ‘spirituality’ not found in the standard
version of Christianity. The New Agers hence absorbed almost every belief.
New Age practices and philosophies sometimes draw inspiration from ‘the
whole-sale (“new age”) appropriation of the other religious systems and
rituals, particularly from the Orient’ (Lambert, 2004, p. 123; emphasis
added). Picking and mixing from almost all major world religions, the New
Age Movement can also be referred to as an ‘All is One’ (Allaboutworldview,
2011) movement.
In order to see a religion as culture, we have to differentiate between
culture as everyday practices (routine) and not as matters of fashion. Using
clothing as a concrete example to elaborate on culture, one will generally
wear certain types of clothes as everyday practice and other types for special
occasions like festivals, and not be dictated to purely by popular or current

fashion. If ‘religion as culture’ is part of the daily practices of believers,
then ‘religion as fashion’ is not. Hence, a believer will not adhere to a belief
merely because it is also practised by an idolized singer or a film star, or
choose an activity within a particular tradition (for example, yoga) only to
switch to another at another time (for example, qigong) because of its greater
popularity amongst the masses at that time. It appears that Eastern beliefs
are used more often as countercultural tools or followed as part of popular
culture.
Unhappy with the dominant authority of the church, certain cultural or
sub-cultural groups emerged with their own values and different norms. This
trend can be traced to the pop culture of the 1960s when a large number
of the Western youth and some intellectuals turned away from traditional
Christianity. Hinduism and Buddhism were very popular in the countercul-
ture during the 1960s and became the religious fashion of the time. John
Lennon used Buddhist mantras in his song Across the Universe, while the late
George Harrison, also of the Beatles, declared that he had become a Hindu,
with a composition dedicated to Krishna, entitled My Sweet Lord, and fans
became adherents too. Buddhist hymns, styles of dress and artworks were
very popular among hippies in the 1960s and 1970s (Harun, 2003). Many
people got involved in the rock music of that period, not because of an
interest in Eastern religions and mysticism per se but rather because of the
trend setting Beatles, who were fascinated with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
and associated closely with him. In the United States, Sufi teachings also
attracted ‘a wide swath of followers’ (Smith, 2009). A famous singer who has
been creatively influenced by the music and poetry of Sufism is Madonna.
The music video to her 1994 song Bedtime Story shows Sufi rituals with many
dancing dervishes, Arabic calligraphy and other Sufi elements, like the Sufi-
inspired verse, ‘let’s get unconscious’. Later, in 1998, Madonna recorded the
song Bittersweet in which she recites Rumi’s (1207–73) poem by the same
name. In 2001, Madonna sang Secret during her ‘Drowned World Tour’ in
which rituals from many religions were depicted, including a Sufi dance.
Like Madonna, most non Muslims who embrace Sufism are merely ‘spiritual
tourists’ who view it as a generic form of ‘spirituality’ (Spengler, 2008).
Eastern religions as product: Capitalism and the

commodification of religion
The relation between religion and capitalism has been intimate in the West
for quite some time (Tawney, 1938) and it has a very big market, including
books, music videos, software, jewellery and other gifts and accessories. The
$7.5 billion religious publishing market in the United States has experienced
remarkable growth in recent years, as faith and spirituality, from Christianity
to Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and New Age movements, have
gained increasing importance in American life and now compete with

secular society. Religious publications have generated profit for companies
like Zondervan, Thomas Nelson, Tyndale House, Time Warner and many
other publishers or media conglomerates (Packaged Facts, 2006). It is the era
of ‘New Age capitalism’ (Lau, 2000). Spirituality has been transformed into
big business in the West, which undermines and colonizes Eastern beliefs,
from Chinese feng shui to holistic medicine, from aromatherapy candles to
yoga weekends (Lau, 2000). Carrette and King in Selling Spirituality (2005)
show us that spirituality has indeed become a powerful commodity in the
global marketplace. According to them, it has become a ‘cultural addiction’
that reflects orthodox politics, curbs self-expression and colonizes Eastern
beliefs. Yoga, for instance, as practised in the West today, has become more
of an exercise for the body or the mind, and less of a religious practice. It
is in a way similar to the transformation of the Olympic Games; games
without religious meaning. That the Olympic Games are rooted in religion
is undisputable, as they were originally a religious festival to honour Zeus,
supreme among the Greek gods residing on Mount Olympus. In the mod-
ern era, the Games has been secularized. In ancient times, ‘there was no
such thing as secular athletics,’ said David Gilman Romano, the author
of The Ancient Olympics: Athletes, Games & Heroes (1996), to Peggy Fletcher
Stack (2001). In order to honour their gods, namely, Zeus, Apollo and
Poseidon, the Games were held at several sacred spots in the Greek city
states, including Nemea, Delphi and Corinth. The Games soon become
very popular. However, fearful of the popularity of the pagan festivals,
the Holy Roman Emperor Theodosius came out with an edict to abolish
the Olympic Games. Hence, the competition between Christianity and
paganism put an end to the Games in 393 AD after more than 1000 years
(Stack, 2001). Today, the Olympic Games have become an economic entity.
Barney, Wenn and Martyn (2004) in Selling the Five Rings point out that the
rise of the Olympic movement, which is supposed to be an instrument of
peace and brotherhood with a sporting spirit, has been transformed into a
transnational commercial body of imposing power and influence with the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) as a corporate entity.
New Age spirituality has no doubt also led to an active niche market for
books, music, crafts and services in alternative medicine that can be seen at
New Age stores, fairs, expositions and festivals. People who embrace New Age
life styles or beliefs are included in the Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability
(LOHAS), a demographic market segment related to sustainable, green
ecological initiatives, and generally composed of relatively wealthy and well-
educated individuals. The Worldwatch Institute reported that the market
segment for LOHAS in 2006 was estimated at $300 billion, approximately 30
per cent of the United States consumer market. According to Cortese (2003),
a study by the Natural Marketing Institute showed that in 2000, 68 million
Americans were included within the LOHAS demographic.
Framings of the East: Selling ideology and Western heroism
Cultural flows are part of the global dynamics not only between two regions
but also cultures. These shifting asymmetrical flows between cultural areas
reject politically correct assumptions that one culture is greater than the
other. However, when two cultures meet, power sometimes encroaches into
the realm of culture, making the hegemony obvious, and the blasphemy
of religion has sometimes been carried out via capitalist tools. The com-
mercialization of religion in itself is not only happening in, nor is it shaped
only by, the West. In the East itself, Eastern religions are branded to suit the
needs of the market and the taste of the consumers as well. Vegetarianism
in general, as practiced by Hindus or Buddhists, simply means that meat
is verboten. But to satisfy the human desire for eating meat, various types
of mock or simulated meat is produced in Chinese dominant Buddhist
countries like Taiwan to make vegetarian foods more saleable. Across the
globe, religious sites are also branded as tourist spots and religious festivals
registered as tourist attractions as part of capitalistic marketing strategies.
Such a rebranding of religions has not really become very controversial.
Nevertheless, the over commodification of Eastern religions in the West,
shaped by Western hegemony, can be offensive to some adherents of Eastern
religions as it is used to serve certain political or ideological purposes.
‘One reason why Buddhism has come to the world’s attention’, accord-
ing to Harun (2003), is due to the ‘propaganda spread in the West’ with the
involvement of Hollywood and its movie stars. Popular American films like
Seven Years in Tibet, Kundun and Little Buddha present us with particular views
of Tibetan Buddhism and culture. These views are often either misleading or
politically-motivated in representing Western heroism, as in championing
the Tibetan cause for independence, for instance. The well known American
actor Richard Gere, in addition to writing books promoting Buddhism,
founded ‘Tibet House’ in New York with Richard Thurman, father of the
American actress Uma Thurman. Other well-known Buddhists include
Tina Turner, Harrison Ford, Oliver Stone, Herbie Hancock and Courtney
Love. Through films, Hollywood not only portrays itself as a champion and
saviour of the East, but also perpetuates ideas of counterculture, such as the
Buddhist belief in reincarnation, that are contrary to the Christian belief in
salvation.
The West has portrayed itself invariably as the saviour of the rest of the
world. In this respect, it has claimed for itself the rights to civilizing the East
through an indoctrination of its beliefs. The 1903 Census of the Philippines,
for instance, divided the population into ‘civilized’ (91.5 per cent) and ‘wild’
(8.5 per cent). According to the National Statistics Office of the Philippines,
‘Civilized people, with the exception of those of foreign birth, were
practically all adherents of the Catholic Church by 1903 Census definitions’
(National Statistics Office, 2005). Such a Christian approach, however, in
this modern time has not been very successful. Today the concept of the
Westerner as the ‘saviour’ in Christianity has been transformed. The issue of
Tibet is the most typical example of how a modern version of the concept
of ‘saviour’ or ‘hero’ is depicted in the movies. Images of Tibet have always
been constructed and projected as pure, original and unpolluted (Bishop,
1993), but Western colonial representations are of the other exotic side to
Tibet (Anand, 2007). According to Mahbubani (2008), the West’s posturing
over Tibet serves only to harm Tibetans.
The tragedy here is that the real victims of this European posturing will
be the Tibetans. So far, even though the Chinese record of rule over Tibet is less
than perfect, the Chinese leaders have tried to preserve autonomy for Tibet.
Indeed, in theory there is no fundamental disagreement between the position
of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government (Mahbubani, 2008).
In ‘New Age Orientalism: The Case of Tibet’ written for Tibetan Review
in May 1994, the prominent Tibetologist Donald Lopez pointed out the
elements of Orientalism persisting in the field of Tibetology (pp. 16–20). In
order to identify New Age Orientalism in the American Hollywood movies
of which Lopez speaks, Mullen (1998) argues Lopez has clearly defined
four essential characteristics of Orientalism in scholarly writings. First,
it is the classic Orientalist play of opposites, in which Tibet and Tibetan
Buddhism, emerging as objects of European and American fantasy, are
treated as polluted, derivative and even demonic in opposition to an origi-
nal root tradition; in this case the ancient Sanskrit texts of India, which
are pure, pristine, authentic and holy. Second, it is the self-aggrandizing of
the Western ‘rescuers’. With such a characteristic, the Tibetans themselves
become voiceless non agents in their own survival and struggle for inde-
pendence. Instead, the Western ‘rescuers’ are allowed to be the heroes of
the Tibetan cause, edifying the American self-portrait as one of a strong,
moral champion nation in which equality and justice are forever upheld.
We are shown perfect Tibetan heroes and despicable Chinese villains
(Mullen, 1998). For Lopez, the exaggeration of the rescuers facilitates
the third and fourth characteristics of Orientalism, that is, the gaining
of authority or control over Tibet, and the justification of that authority
(Mullen, 1998).
Hindu deities have even been depicted on consumer items displayed by
the United States-based online shopping place www.cafepress.com. While it
might not be an issue with most Hindu practitioners, it has, however, sparked
protest from some Hindu activists in Puri, India with its selling of undergar-
ments embossed with the images of the Hindu deities, Jagannath, Krishna,
Rama, Siva and Mahalaxmi, among others (Dasa, 2007). Such a blasphemy
of religion can also be seen in the use of names for entertainment outlets like
the Buddha Bar. According to the Antara news agency report (2009), Buddhist
protestors sealed the premises of the up-market bar in Jakarta urging the
Indonesian authorities to close the Paris-based entertainment franchise for
blasphemy. According to protest coordinator Eko Nugroho, ‘For us, Buddha

is our revered teacher. But for them, Buddha is a decoration and the worst
thing is the statues are in such an indecent place.’
Conclusion
I see that all the practices that are termed part of the Easternization of
the West can also be viewed as the Westernization of Eastern beliefs and
religions as they are part and parcel of the hybridization and glocaliza-
tion of cultural flows. The praxis of Easternization is not as evident in the
material transformation of Western culture as it is in the commodification
and commoditization of the themes, practices and traditions of Eastern
religious beliefs consonant with the rise of soft Western capitalism in
order to capture the huge commercial potential of global markets. The
commodification of religion would not be offensive if it were not that
exploitative of the East as a lucrative cultural market place for new ideas.
However, it is also evident in the East itself, as part of the cultural economy
of the globalized markets of the twenty-first century. The problem is that
Western framings of the East in the sphere of religion and spirituality have
gone overboard with Western capitalist power and ideological hegemony
encroaching realms of Eastern beliefs and religions, ignoring the sensibili-
ties of the East without much circumspection for the sacred, as forms of
religious blasphemy.
Notes
1. This chapter is a revised edition of a paper presented at the Symposium on The
Gaze of the West: Framings of the East, 19–20 August 2009, Bangi, Malaysia. I am
grateful to the late Professor Lim Chee Seng for his comments as a discussant
during the symposium.
2. For a counter argument on Campbell’s Easternization thesis, see Hamilton (2002)
and Dawson (2006).
3. In Lim (2008), I divide ‘Easternization/Westernization’ into two domains, namely,
‘Easternization/Westernization as acculturation’, which looks at East–West cultural
relations, and ‘Easternization/Westernization as hegemony’, which refers to
the power relations. I argue that as a form of acculturation, there are cultural
flows from the East to the West and vice versa, but as a form of hegemony,
Westernization is dominant, hence it has been viewed as ‘Westoxification’.
4. However, there is always confusion between what is to be defined as culture and
what is to be defined as civilization, as they sometimes overlap, penetrate into each
other’s territory and are used interchangeably in the course of arguments due to
power struggles, as in the case of Germany and France. When the Latin cultura came
into the German language – via French – in the seventeenth century, it retained
very little of its original referential meaning to agriculture and referred more to
intellectual activity and arts. In English, ‘culture’ normally does not distinguish
between spiritual manifestation and technological manifestation. In German,
‘culture’ – kultur – refers to intellectual, spiritual or artistic creative activity, which

contributes to an individual’s, group’s or country’s self-advancement, and differ-
entiates itself from anything social, political, economy or technical. In English,
‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ have been assumed as complimentary aspects to social
organization and development. In German, kultur and zivilisation, however, are
typically divided into contrastive meanings. Where kultur denotes the manifesta-
tion of spiritual creativity, zivilisation denotes the manifestation of political and
social organization, which is assumed to have a lower hierarchical order (Kolinsky
and van der Will, 1998, p. 2).
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7
When Knowledge Invents
Boundaries: From Colonial
Knowledge to Multiculturalism
Shamsul A.B.
Introduction
It is a general belief that rational knowledge empowered humans not only

to understand how the world works but also how to progress. The European
pre-modern dependence on virtues of tradition and continuity gave way
to a commitment to reason-inspired change, innovation and progress. The
rapid economic development in Europe in the nineteenth century depended
crucially on easy access to raw materials, cheap labour, and new markets
around the globe. Therefore, to the Europeans, colonialism was imperative
and it became the most effective ‘rational’ political economic instrument at
their disposal.
When they established themselves in various parts of the globe and
became an integral component of the ‘local communities’, Europeans,
directly and indirectly, contributed towards or helped to establish two major
forms of society, both of which have not only survived and thrived to this
day but have also created their own historical–structural trajectories. Each is
quite different from the other in its present-day organization and function.
The first type of societies that the Europeans created, were ‘settler socie-
ties’. Indigenes, indigenity and indigenousness were not recognized as an
integral part of these societies (Veracini, 2010; Lubin, 2008). In fact, many of
the indigenous peoples, in the early part of European arrival, were ruthlessly
massacred, for example, in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada and
South Africa. Small groups of Europeans became rulers of the much larger
indigenous populations, who, unfortunately, were highly fragmented into
small exclusive groups. As the migration of the organized Europeans
increased, they formed powerful and relatively united entities ignoring,
indeed alienating, the indigenous peoples. More arrived from Western and
Eastern Europe as well as from the Mediterranean. They were followed in the
post-Second World War era by settlers from Asia and Africa.
The second type of societies that the Europeans came into contact with
and embedded themselves within were ‘host societies’, where Europeans
107
recognized and accepted indigenous socio-political systems and vice versa.

Through ‘indirect rule’ the Europeans were able to insert themselves into
the social, cultural and political moulds of these societies. Applying Berger’s
analysis of religion as the ‘sacred canopy’ (1990) of society, the integration
of the European society into the local situation and the host’s acceptance of
the Europeans was only possible through a series of dialectical relationships,
namely externalization, objectification and internalization, that took place
at the point of contact and thereafter. In my opinion this was how what
can be termed as the ‘civilizational canopy’ in host societies was invented,
which the well-known anthropologist Hefner (2001) prefers to call, in its
contemporary form, the ‘ethnic canopy’. Africa, India, the Middle East
and the Malay archipelago demonstrate the success of the Europeans in
obtaining the cooperation of the established traditional elites to agree to
be the symbolic umbrella of the European colonial system of government
(Firmin-Sellers, 1996, pp. 21–32).
The colonial rulers delegated symbolic authority to the traditional rulers
upon whose shoulders were entrusted, in name, the task of maintaining
peace and prosperity in their respective states or provinces, while the
colonialists provided security and armed support. As such, in host societies,
the traditional rulers managed to officially maintain an image of power and
authority while the real power rested with the European colonialists. This
socio-political arrangement, under the civilizational canopy, worked well
for the Europeans who, for centuries, successfully dominated such societies
and exploited their economies. Subsequently other groups of people from
different cultural and civilizational traditions were brought into these
societies mainly to serve European economic interests. They could either
return to their places of origin or remain as settlers in their new places of
economic activity with little or no choice at all but to recognize and accept
the colonialist-sponsored civilizational canopy.
Undoubtedly, the construction of both settler and host societies had been
made possible largely through the creation and application of ‘colonial
knowledge’. Although the type of colonial knowledge developed in these
societies involved different ontological components, they shared similar
epistemological bases and methodological approaches. Eventually, how-
ever, each developed separate historical–structural trajectories. Over time,
and especially during the post-colonial period, different forms of knowledge
seemed to develop out of the experience of each of these societies, but the
exchange of ideas and knowledge between them, conducted mainly through
their respective colonial rulers, continued for centuries.
From the settler societies emerged ‘multicultural theories’ or ‘multicultural-
ism’, which encouraged some form of assimilationist orientation as a tool of
unity and integration. These theories have been critically examined by Charles
Taylor in a seminal essay on multiculturalism and the ‘politics of recognition’
(Taylor, 1992). It has also been argued by some scholars (Lyons, 2005; Adam,
When Knowledge Invents Boundaries 109
2007; Ferguson, 2011) that the success of multiculturalism in settler societies,

has been mainly due to the magnanimity of the dominant first settlers, nearly
all of whom were Europeans from Western Europe (Dutch, French, Belgian,
British, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian), towards the subsequent groups of
settlers. Yet the dominant first settlers were clearly detrimental to the so-called
‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’ in the mid fifteenth century.
The success of the first settlers in dominating and assimilating later
settlers, in a very subtle and hegemonic manner compounded by highly
coercive and uncivil approaches at times, enabled multiculturalism to
flourish, but at the expense of the exploited, subjugated and neglected
indigenous groups, an experience best narrated by the Australian Aborigines
in relation to numerous white Australians (Sutton, 2009). In spite of the
apology offered to them by Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister of
the day, in February 2008, on behalf of white Australians for all the suffer-
ing inflicted upon them, the United Nations found it necessary to rebuke
the Australian government over its treatment of the Aboriginals, namely,
the unacceptably high levels of disadvantage and social dislocation (The Age,
28 August, 2010). In other words, the application of multiculturalism
as a form of public policy, in general, and in Australia in particular, in a
historical-structural framework of white dominance, may be advantageous
to all the settlers but clearly not to the indigenous groups.
From the experience of formerly colonized host societies in the East,
a number of theories by European scholars have also emerged, such as that
of the ‘plural society’ by Furnivall (1948) or ‘consociationalism’ developed
by Lijphart (1999) and colleagues (Horowitz, 1985), in their earnest effort
to explain the dominant persistence of non-assimilationist trajectories of
multi-ethnicity, which, in turn, helped to encourage the positive practice of
inter-ethnic accommodation, cultural borrowing or amalgamation through
mixed marriages. They also highlighted the significance of negotiation,
compromise, consensus and conflict, and the inter-connections between
these social activities and behaviour within host societies that have enabled
them to maintain a certain level of social sustainability. Sections of the
intelligentsia from host societies have even suggested, in a populist manner,
that multiculturalism could be the most suitable model for such societies.
What is equally significant is the fact that, host societies in the West,
such as Britain, Germany and France, for a certain period, in the early 1980s
and the first decade of the twenty-first century, embraced and adopted
multiculturalism as a tool for the formulation of public policy to create
integration and maintain some form of social sustainability. However, it was
clear in the year 2010 that, both in theory and practice, multiculturalism
had had adverse effects on their societies as a whole, with inter-ethnic and
communal violence breaking out in major cities in Great Britain, Germany
and France. This has led to the public rejection of multiculturalism by top
political leaders in these countries.
This chapter is, thus, an attempt to capture the twists and turns of
knowledge-making and the transformative impact it has had on social reality
and the lives of millions, often hardly attracting any attention or the reac-
tion it deserves. The discussion and analysis here is based on evidence from
selected settler societies and host societies to demonstrate the importance
of identifying the nature, identity and state of knowledge about the socie-
ties concerned, which represents only part of their social reality because, by
definition, there is always a gap between social reality (of a society) and (its)
knowledge (about it). Knowledge has to be up-dated, refined, even redefined
as often as possible to provide fresh perspectives for interpreting the changes
and transformative impact they have on social reality. Knowledge is neces-
sary, as an analytical tool, to make sense of social reality, however limited it
may be at a particular point in time.
Therefore, it is imperative, at the outset, to examine the knowledge process
involved in the invention of identity boundaries in formerly colonized
countries, both settler and host, namely, through colonial knowledge. The
experience of Malaysia, which I am more familiar with, will be presented as
an entry point to the discussion on how different and identifiable trajec-
tories of knowledge emerged from the (colonial) knowledge promoted by
imperialist authority. One is associated with settler societies and the other
with host societies. Each impacted the other.
Colonial knowledge and the construction of identity

boundaries
In Malaysia, not unlike most former colonies, a number of historians and

other scholars in the social sciences and the humanities accept ‘colonial
knowledge’ as the basis of Malaysian and Malay history; moreover in an
almost unproblematized manner. This is in spite of politico-academic
attempts to ‘indigenize’ Malaysian history and to privilege the ‘Malay’
viewpoint. While the emphasis on the Malay perspective is admirable, it
is worthwhile to realize that the attempt to ‘indigenize’ has been primarily
motivated by a ‘nationalistic’ need to re-interpret history, and not by the
urge to question the ways in which historical knowledge per se has been
constructed. As such, historical knowledge in Malaysia, a crucial element in
identity formation, is still based on colonial knowledge.
The silence about the basis of colonial knowledge and its power in
shaping Malay and Malaysian historiography is a cause for intellectual and
ideological concern, especially in the context of present day developments
in Malaysian studies. Although there has been much discussion among
historians about ‘Western elements’ and ‘colonial influence’ in the writing
of ‘local history’, these discussions generally adopt either a ‘foreigner versus
local’ or a ‘Malay versus non-Malay’ stance rather than problematizing
the construction and definition of historical knowledge itself. It appears
that the ‘foreigner versus local’ debate is informed by the conflict between
‘Eurocentredness’ and ‘indigenousness’. In the ‘Malay versus non-Malay’
debates, the arguments revolve around ‘ethnic histories’, such as the enthu-
siasm to emphasize ‘Malay history’ as the basis of ‘national history’, on the
one hand, and that for the contribution of the ‘Chinese’ and ‘Indians’ on
the other, which are all driven by strong ‘ethnicized’ tendencies.
Clearly, Malaysian historiography is a kind of ideological struggle
involving different interest groups (ethnic, foreign, academic, political and
so on), as an articulation of the ‘unfinished’ cultural/ethnic nationalist
project in Malaysia. This is reminiscent of Ernest Renan’s famous essay
‘What is a Nation?’, which places history at the centre of the ‘nationalist
project’. Because the past requires a careful and selective interpretation,
Renan argues that ‘getting history wrong’ is inevitable in the construction of
nationalist history since it entails not only a collective remembering but also
a collective forgetting (intentionally or unknowingly), which ‘is a crucial
factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies
often constitutes a danger for [the principle of ] nationality’ (Renan, 1990,
p. 11). Renan’s essay points not only to contradictions in the creation of
the historical substance of a ‘nation’ but also to the need to take note of the
‘identity’ of a particular form of historical knowledge and its construction.
These issues seem to have escaped many scholars and analysts involved in
the study of social and ethnic identity in Malaysia.
Following the discourse on Malay identity in Malaysia, one could argue
that colonial methods of accumulating facts and insights and the resultant
corpus of knowledge have been critical in providing not only substance but
also sustenance to the endeavour of writing about ‘Malayness’. The sheer
volume of ‘facts’ that have been accumulated and amassed by the British, for
instance, on traditional Malay literature and the modern history of Malaya/
Malaysia, has established the hegemony of colonial knowledge in Malaysia’s
intellectual realm, where discussions about ‘Malay identity’ are taking place
(Shamsul, 2001). Milner (1996) has demonstrated in a very convincing
manner that even the ‘political’ discourse (one might say: ‘discussions
about identity’) among pre-war Malay writers-cum-nationalists was mainly
informed by or conducted within the framework of colonial knowledge.
Relevant here are the methods of accumulating facts that have resulted in
the formation and organization of the corpus of colonial knowledge. The
approach developed by anthropologist Cohn (1996) to make British rule
in India more understandable is extremely useful. The British managed to
classify, categorize and connect the vast social world that was India so that
it could be controlled through so-called ‘investigative modalities’, devices
to collect and organize ‘facts’ that, together with translation works, enabled
the British to conquer the ‘epistemological space’ (1996, p. 3).
An investigative modality includes the definition of a body of information
that is needed and the procedures by which appropriate knowledge is
gathered, ordered and classified, and then transformed into usable forms
such as published reports, statistical returns, histories, gazetteers, legal
codes and encyclopaedias (Cohn, 1996, p. 5). Some of these investigative
modalities, such as historiography and museology, are of a general nature,
whereas the survey and census modalities are more precisely defined and
closely related to administrative needs. Some of them were transformed into
‘sciences’ or ‘disciplines’, such as economics, ethnology, tropical medicine,
comparative law and cartography. Their practitioners became professionals.
Each modality was tailored to suit specific elements and needs on the
administrative agenda of British rule and each became institutionalized and
routinized in the day-to-day practice of colonial bureaucracy.
The ‘historiographic modality’, the most relevant one for this brief chapter,
had three important components. First, the production of settlement reports
were prefaced on a district-by-district basis; usually consisting of a descrip-
tion of local customs, histories and land tenure systems and a detailed
account of how revenues were assessed and collected by local, indigenous
regimes. The second was the descriptions of indigenous civilizations, which
eventually provided the space for the formation of the discourse that legiti-
mized the British civilizing mission in the colony. The third was the history
of the British presence in the colony, which evoked ‘emblematic heroes and
villains’ and led to the erection of memorials and other ‘sacred spaces’ in the
colony (and in the motherland as well).
The ‘survey modality’ encompassed a wide range of practices, from
mapping areas to collecting botanical specimens, from the recording of
architectural and archaeological sites of historic significance to the minute
measuring of peasant fields. When the British came to India, and later to
Malaya, they sought to describe and classify every aspect of life and learning,
for instance, zoology, geology, botany, ethnography, economic products,
history and sociology, by way of systematic surveys. They also created a
colony-wide grid in which every site could be located for economic, social
and political purposes. ‘Surveys’ covered every systematic and official inves-
tigation of the natural and social features of indigenous society through
which vast amounts of knowledge were transformed into textual forms such
as encyclopaedias and archives.
The ‘enumerative modality’ enabled the British to categorize the indigenous
society for administrative purposes, particularly by means of censuses that
were to reflect basic sociological facts such as race, ethnic groups, culture
and language. The various forms of enumeration that were developed
objectified and stultified social, cultural and linguistic differences among
the indigenous peoples and the migrant population. These differences were
of great use to the colonial bureaucracy and its army to explain and control
conflicts and tensions.
Control was primarily implemented by way of the ‘surveillance modality’.
Detailed information was collected on ‘peripheral’ or ‘minority’ groups and
categories of people whose activities were perceived as a threat to social

order and who were, therefore, closely observed. For surveillance reasons,
methods such as anthropometry and fingerprinting systems were developed
in order to be able to describe, classify and identify individuals rather
accurately for ‘security’ and other general purposes.
The ‘museological modality’ started out from the idea that a colony was a
vast museum; its countryside, filled with ruins, was a source of collectibles,
curiosities and artefacts that could fill local as well as European museums,
botanical gardens and zoos. This modality became an exercise in presenting
the indigenous culture, history and society to both the local and wider
European public.
The ‘travel modality’ complemented the museological. If the latter
provided the colonial administration with concrete representations of the
natives, the former helped to create a repertoire of images and typifications,
if not stereotypes, that determined what was significant to European eyes;
architecture, costumes, cuisine, ritual performances and historical sites were
presented in ‘romantic’, ‘exotic’ and ‘picturesque’ terms. These aesthetic
images and typifications were often expressed in paintings and prints as well
as in novels and short stories, many of which were created by the colonial
scholar-administrators, their wives and their friends.
These modalities represented, according to Cohn, a set of ‘officialising
procedures’ which the British used to establish and extend their authority
in numerous areas:
control by defining and classifying space, making separations between

public and private spheres, by recording transactions such as sale of
property, by counting and classifying populations, replacing religious
institutions as the registrar of births, marriages, and deaths, and by stand-
ardizing languages and scripts (1996, p. 1).
The colonial state introduced policies and rules that were organized through
these investigative modalities. Thus, the locals’ minds and actions were
framed in an epistemological and practical grid.
It is obvious that Cohn’s approach could be just as relevant in analysing
developments in Malaya. The Malay Reservation Enactment 1913, for
instance, could be a very revealing illustration of this relevance. The
Enactment defined, firstly, who ‘a Malay’ is; secondly, it determined the
legal category of those who were allowed to grow only rice or rubber;
and, lastly, it was bound to exert a direct influence on the commercial
value of the land. The Enactment was instituted in the state constitution
of each of the 11 negeri (states) on the Malay Peninsula (Malaya then)
separately, and in each it offered a slightly different definition of who a
‘Malay’ was. For instance, a person of Arab descent was Malay in the state
of Kedah but not in Johor, while a person of Siamese descent was Malay in
Kelantan but not in Negeri Sembilan. It could be argued, then, that ‘Malay’
and ‘Malayness’ were created and confirmed by the Malay Reservation
Enactment. However, the Enactment also made ‘Malay’ and ‘Malayness’
contested categories (Shamsul, 2001).
In different ways, the growth of public education and its rituals fos-
tered beliefs in how things were and how they ought to be. Schools were
(and still are) crucial ‘civilizing’ institutions, seeking to produce good and
productive citizens. Many ‘facts’ amassed through investigative modalities,
and resultant officializing procedures, were (and are) channelled to the
younger population. In the process, the people’s perception of how social
reality is organized was directed by the government. Moreover, with the
creation of Chinese, Malay, Tamil and English schools, ethnic boundaries
and identities became stultified and essentialized through language and
cultural practices.
The most powerful and most pervasive by-product of colonial knowledge
on the colonized has been the idea that the modern ‘nation-state’ is the
natural embodiment of history, territory and society (Cohn, 1996, p. 5). In
other words, the nation-state has become dependent on colonial knowledge
and its ways of determining, codifying, controlling and representing the
past as well as documenting and standardizing the information that has
formed the basis of government. Modern Malaysians have become familiar
with the ‘facts’ that appear in reports and statistical data on commerce
and trade, health, demography, crime, transportation, industry and so on.
These facts and their accumulation, conducted in the modalities that were
designed to shape colonial knowledge, lie at the foundation of the mod-
ern, post-colonial nation-state of Malaysia. The citizens of Malaysia rarely
question these facts as the fine and often invisible manifestations of the
process of Westernization.
What has been briefly sketched here is the ‘identity of a history’ since
these ‘facts’, rooted in European social theories, philosophical ideas and
classificatory schemes, form the basis of Malaysian historiography. It is
within this history that modern identity boundaries in Malaysia, such
as ‘Malay’ and ‘Malayness’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Chineseness’, ‘Indian’ and
‘Indianness’ have been described and consolidated.
In a similar vein, but within the different historical contexts of settler
societies in Australia (Lyons, 2005), New Zealand (King, 2003), the United
States of America (USA) (Mauk and Oakland, 2009), South Africa (Thompson,
2001) and in most of the Latin American countries (Eakin, 2007), colonial
knowledge has contributed very significantly to shaping their territories,
histories and societies. If the settlers of European descent dominated in these
countries, it was the indigenous society and social system that provided the
‘civilizational canopy’ in host societies, into which both the Europeans and
subsequent settlers including those brought in as indentured labourers were
embedded, woven and welded together thereafter.
The most significant boundary-creating knowledge that emerged from

the settler societies is what is known today as multiculturalism. There have
been attempts to introduce multiculturalism in host societies, both in the
West and the East, but with little success. In the former, it was first accepted
and became part of public policy, but with adverse results that has led to
multiculturalism being openly rejected by the leaders of Great Britain,
France and Germany, and by a number of prominent academics, such as
Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Laureate for Economics. In the East, especially
in former colonies, multiculturalism has been entertained as a concept/
theory by some sections of the academia, but resisted by the state and
majority of society, which have proclaimed that multiculturalism, deemed
suitable for settler societies, is antithetical to the civilizational canopy that
has worked well in maintaining a level of social cohesion within diverse
and multi-ethnic societies. These interesting arguments for and against
multiculturalism are elaborated in the following pages.
Multiculturalism: The ‘new knowledge’ after colonialism
Historically, the conceptualization of the notion of multiculturalism is

derived from the empirical experience of settler societies, such as Australia,
Canada, New Zealand and the USA. As a policy tool in such circumstances,
it has been adopted and employed by a demographically dominant settler
community, such as the Anglo-Celtic community of Australia, Canada,
New Zealand and the USA, to accommodate and eventually assimilate, in a
magnanimous manner, the ‘new settlers’.
Therefore, multiculturalism, as ideology, is integral and critical to the
integration of old and new migrants within settler societies, particularly, in
the politico-cultural mould of the former. The spirit and concept of multi-
culturalism informs and guides the way in which public policies have been
promulgated in settler societies on education, social welfare, immigration,
mass media and a host of other policies; not only to assist new settlers to
anchor their social lives in the local context but also to integrate them into
the mainstream society. It is acknowledged that the efforts of the dominant
Anglo-Celtic population in Australia have produced some admirable results
(Chow, 2008). However, attempts to apply a policy of multiculturalism
in ‘host societies’, such as Great Britain, Germany and France, have not
produced the desired results and, on the contrary, have generated adverse
outcomes (West, 2005; Hewitt, 2005). The presidents of Germany, Angela
Merkel, and of France, Nikolas Sakorzy, and the British Prime Minister,
David Cameron, all declared in press statements in late 2010 that, as a policy
in their respective countries, multiculturalism had failed to bring about
desired results even after more than two decades of implementation.
This is best demonstrated in the case of Britain where the absence of
magnanimity on the part of the members of ‘host society’ towards new
migrants has been cited as the key problem. Equally problematic in the
British case is the fact that multiculturalism as an ideology celebrates the
right of every culture to exist but, according to British journalist Alibhai-
Brown (2000), there is no over-arching thread holding them together. Some
have suggested that ‘Britishness’ could be the much needed over-arching
thread. But, in the early 1950s the notion of ‘Britishness’ was a racist one,
based on white supremacist ideology, where the increased presence of col-
oured communities was perceived as weakening the concept of a ‘white’
Britain. That notion of Britishness has since been rejected and abandoned,
but nothing has been found to replace it yet.
Multiculturalism has not provided the integrative thread nor has it
created ‘neo-Britishness’. This seems to be the recurrent theme in a debate
on multiculturalism in Britain between a group of well-known scholars,
such as Bernard Crick, Amitai Etzioni, Nathan Glazer, Nigel Harris, Bhikku
Parekh, Saskia Sassen, Kenan Malek and others, in the March 2004 issue
of the British magazine Prospect. According to Malek ‘Britishness came to
be defined simply as a toleration of difference. Multiculturalism, in other
words, did not cause the fraying of a common set of values, but is itself the
product of such frayed values’ (2004, p. 2).
Alibhai-Brown notes that
The old debate about multiculturalism cannot meet the challenge of

reinventing identity and participation in a devolved Britain, a plural
Europe and an increasingly interdependent world. We need to leave
behind a debate which has too often only engaged blacks, Asians and
‘ethnic minorities’ rather than whites as well (2000, p. 19).
Alibhai-Brown opines that the theoretical debate about multiculturalism

in Great Britain only benefits those involved in the discourse and not the
general public. She is disappointed that
while the subject of multiculturalism has generated an enormous number

of books, papers and conferences and inspired some of our greatest
thinkers – Bhikhu Parekh, Stuart Hall, Homi Babha and Paul Gilroy – this
has largely been a confab between friends. There has been much less
infiltration of the best of these ideas into public policy (2000, p. 20).
A more damning statement on British multiculturalism comes from the

1998 Nobel Prize Winner for Economics, Amartya Sen, who received the
award for his contribution to social choice theory. Having lived and worked
for at least two decades in Britain he says,
I am not opposed to multiculturalism … But I am opposed to the way

it has been interpreted. There are two basically distinct approaches
to multiculturalism. One concentrates on the promotion of diversity

as a value in itself. The other focuses on the freedom of reasoning
and decision-making, and celebrates cultural diversity to the extent
that it is freely chosen. The way that British authorities have inter-
preted multiculturalism has very much undermined individual freedom.
A British Muslim is not asked to act within the civil society or the
political arena but as a Muslim. His British identity has to be mediated
by his community (Sen, in Malik, 2006, p. 2).
By implication, any attempt to apply the notion of multiculturalism in a

host society, such as India, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, to
name a few, promises to be an interesting theoretic-conceptual trip for the
analysts, if not for academic exercise and promotion. To employ it as the ba-
sis of public policy formulation in such host societies can only produce
results that will generate the same consequences that have been experienced
by Britain, Germany and France, who, in turn, have rejected it.
It may be beneficial to analytically understand the breadth and depth of
intra- and inter-ethnic relations in host societies and the social cohesion
they enjoy, however imperfect, through the lenses of multiculturalism.
However, to apply it as a basis of public policy formulation will be to invite
adverse effects. The articulation, including the rupture and disjuncture,
between the official state rhetoric and understanding of cultural diversity
with that of the people on the ground has to be understood using a different
conceptual–analytic paradigm, namely, the ‘civilizational canopy’ approach,
in order to provide new insights into what has happened in host societies,
and how a certain level of social cohesion has been sustained for decades.
The ‘civilizational canopy’ as an over-arching thread:

The Malaysian experience
The experience of Malaysia is worthy of closer examination. As a multi-

ethnic host society, Malaysia evolved historically within the embrace of a
full-fledged civilization, namely, that of the Malay world, which underpins
its subsequent social formation. Malaysia, therefore, inherits a civilizational
canopy as an integral part of the regional historical heritage, not dissimilar
to that of indigenous Chinese and Indian civilizations. Thus, in the context
of Malaysia, the Malay world is the mould within which the social life of
settler communities from other civilizations, inevitably, became embedded.
This is particularly well demonstrated by the colonial period, during which
the British decided to adopt an ‘indirect rule’ approach embedding modern
European-based governance within the embrace of indigenous features
of governance, namely, retaining the Sultan at the top and the Penghulu
(village headman) at the bottom, while shaping the important middle
stratum of the governance with British-trained Malay administrative civil
servants beholden to British Residents and other colonial officers (Andaya

and Andaya, 2001). The eventual arrival and relatively peaceful entry of
labourers and other types of settler communities into British Malaya, mainly
of Chinese and Indian origins, was made possible by the colonial divide-
and-rule policy, the impact of which created what Furnivall had labelled
as a ‘plural society’ in which the different communities, indigenous and
settlers, lived side by side but never mixed, because each occupied a specific
economic and geo-physical space and educational realm. However, the
economic links between them remained, connected by supply and demand,
but without the need to know more about one another beyond the demands
of functional utility.
Meanwhile, through the ‘indirect rule’ system, the sovereignty of the
host society, namely, indigenous Malay polities and their Malay subjects
known as kerajaan, remained both the all-important civilizational canopy
that functioned as the over-arching thread holding the different ethnic
groups together and the basis of the political legitimacy of colonial rule.
Sociologically speaking, the major method adopted by the colonial state to
tackle and manage the challenge of ethnic diversity was to encourage an
ethnicized system of division of labour. The settler communities comprising
various ethnic groups were initially temporary residents within this newly-
established colonial social formation. When the British left, many of them,
as a result of socio-political changes brought about by decolonization in
their homelands as well as Malaya then decided to stay permanently, thus,
becoming citizens through the de jure principal.
The acceptance of the sovereignty of the Malay polity as the civilizational
canopy became the basis of the Federation of Malaya Agreement 1948.
The mechanism introduced by the British to consolidate the civilizational
canopy concept was the Communities Liaison Committee (CLC) established
in January 1949 (Oong Hak Ching, 2000). The CLC thus provided the much
needed over-arching political mechanism, often referred to as conscosia-
tionalism, as the all-important ‘political coalition’ that held together the
otherwise isolated and segregated ethnic groups – differentiated by culture,
religion, linguistics, education, economic activities and residential location.
They were able to come together to peacefully conduct negotiations on mat-
ters relating to the protection and preservation of not only the interests of
each ethnic group but also collectively for all in the Federation of Malaya.
Through a series of discussions held for nearly a year, competing ethnic
groups, represented by their elites, agreed to disagree on certain matters and
to accommodate differences, within the frame and spirit of the Federation
of Malaya Agreement 1948.
The first official articulation of such an agreement and also a testimony
of the success of the defining CLC approach occurred when the ‘coalition
formula’ became the accepted basic organizational model in the modern
electoral politics of Malaysia, referred to theoretically by Lijphart (1999) as
the best working model of consociationalism. This happened in the local

council elections of Kuala Lumpur in 1950. UMNO and MCA formed a
political coalition called the Alliance, which was endorsed by voters in Kuala
Lumpur and won handsomely. Based on that success and followed by the
expansion of the Alliance to include the MIC as a member of the coalition
in 1951, and most importantly, the resounding success of the Alliance in
the 1955 General Elections, the British introduced a self-rule system for
Malaysia to be managed by the Alliance.
The period 1955–7 was a critically pivotal one in Malaysia’s history because
during that time the all-important Federal Constitution was being prepared by
the Reid Commission based upon an open public consultancy method. After
taking into consideration opinions from all quarters, the Commission shaped
the final Constitution, organized in the frame of the Federation of Malaya
Agreement, 1948. The final 1957 Constitution consisted of the so-called ‘tra-
ditional elements’, which were essentially provisions that served to protect
and preserve Malay sovereignty as the civilizational canopy within which the
socio-cultural diversity of the society was managed to include accommodat-
ing the interests and demands of the settler communities (Fernando, 2001).
Some call this a ‘social contract’, namely, between the indigenous groups and
the settler populations that had decided to make Malaysia their home. Such
a symbolic consensus constructed within the civilizational canopy seems to
be possible only in a ‘host society’ context.
It must be noted that, historically, such negotiations did not take place
in the settler society contexts of Australasia and the Americas. There were
none between the Anglo-Celtic migrants and the aborigines in Australia or
between the Anglo-Celtic and French settlers and the indigenous Indian
populations of either the USA or Canada, and none whatsoever between
the Spanish or the Portuguese and the indigenous Indian populations of
Latin America. As such, epistemological and ontological problems have
rendered ‘multiculturalism’ a highly problematic conceptual-analytic tool
when applied to units of the ‘host society’ in the South East Asian region
(Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand and
Vietnam) and also in South Asia and China. Most scholars studying plural-
ism in South East Asia have not really addressed this issue in spite of their
earnest attempts to understand the complexity of the region.
The Malaysian Constitution presents a socio-political compromise
between the major ethnic groups, in the sense that it has accommodated
and legitimized the interests of every ethnic group and individual, in a
loosely-structured, fluid yet flexible, federalist-based social system. The sys-
tem operated well for a decade after 1957. The Konfrontasi (confrontation),
for instance, between Indonesia and Malaysia (1963–6), put the society’s
ethnic solidarity to a severe test although all groups acquitted themselves
very well. However, while the viability of the Malaysian social system
was also demonstrated during the 1964 general elections, the underlying
economic divide identified by ethnicity was laid bare by the open ethnic
conflict that took place immediately after the 1969 General Elections, on 13
May 1969. Malaysia’s survival as a country was put to its severest test in its
recent post-colonial history. The post-1969 National Consultative Council
(with a membership much larger than the 1949 CLC), comprising leaders
from all ethnic groups in Malaysia, concurred that the root of the problem
was the economic backwardness of the indigenous peoples, that is, that
of the Malays and other bumiputeras (literally sons of the soil). The New
Economic Policy, or the NEP (1971–90), was thus launched as an official
state-sponsored framework of affirmative action within the civilizational
canopy approach (Leete, 2009).
It has been about four decades (1969–2011) since such open ethnic conflict
occurred in Malaysia. In this period, Malaysia, despite many socio-political
and economic ups-and-downs, enjoyed a certain level of social cohesion,
which has impressed a number of leaders not only from the Islamic and
the Non-Aligned countries but apparently, also President Barak Obama (The
Guardian, 4 June, 2009) and, more recently, rather grudgingly, The Economist
(2–8 April, 2011, p.1). Forty years is a long time for any nation to be able to
maintain a certain level of social sustainability. Malaysia is ranked 19th in
the Global Peace Index 2011, only one notch below the highly economically
successful but ethnically troubled Australia, which is in 18th place.
The surprise results of the March 2008 general elections in Malaysia and
the ensuing calm and peaceful post-election situation was a vote for non-
assimilationist multi-ethnic social orientation that recognizes, encourages
and enhances the practice of inter-ethnic accommodation, cultural borrow-
ing and amalgamation through mixed marriages. It was also a vote for social
cohesion into which negotiation, compromise, consensus and conflict are
bundled into one. The endorsement through the ballot box also reflects the
fact that Malaysian society as a whole prefers peaceful means, not violence,
to deal with and sort out their differences, which allows them to continue
to enjoy the quality of life that they have had in the last four decades
(Shamsul, 2010).
Concluding remarks
The phrase ‘knowledge is power’, made famous by Michel Faucault hardly

three decades ago and viewed as a powerful intellectual statement, has now
become a cliché. Once the popular slogan of elites, students and the media,
it has gone through an interesting metamorphosis. As mere words it is even
printed on cheap T-shirts selling for about $10 alongside counterfeit Versace
and Gucci bags at beach resorts in Thailand. The corpus of knowledge
called ‘multiculturalism’ seems to be facing a fate not quite unlike that of
‘knowledge is power’. Emerging originally from the experience of settler socie-
ties in Oceania and North America, where it developed conceptually, directly
and indirectly from colonial knowledge, it became influential both in the

academic and public policy spheres in settler societies and has remained so
to today. It became popular later in host societies within Western Europe but
appears to be rejected now as public policy, although it remains a staple for
some in the academic sphere, where it is often viewed as ‘new knowledge’.
Attempts to introduce multiculturalism as public policy in host societies out-
side Western Europe have not been successful, except perhaps in Singapore.
Meanwhile in host societies outside Europe, especially in former European
colonies such as Malaysia, Fiji and Guyana, interestingly, in my opinion,
another knowledge base is developing (Shamsul and Mansor, 2008), which
will be referred to as the ‘civilizational canopy’ approach, although it is
not fully developed conceptually or elaborated and is still underpinned by
colonial knowledge. Unlike the settler society formulated ‘multicultural-
ism’ where there is, epistemologically, an absence of the concepts of the
indigenous, indigeneity and indigenousness, in this arguably new approach,
these concepts are the critical and significant epistemological core. It
defines the socio-political system, especially governance where the notion
of ‘citizenship’ is contestable and the state continues to intervene in the
marketplace. Presenting the Malaysian case is an attempt to explain this
approach. Obviously the term needs further elaboration to establish it as a
valid theory, concept or analytical tool. This chapter is an early attempt to
accomplish that.
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www.kenanmalik.com/reviews/sen_illusions.html, accessed 28 December 2010.
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(London: Routledge).
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Ethnic Studies, UKM).
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canopy: The sociological roots of social resilience in Malaysia’, paper presented at
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8
Historical Narratives of the
Colonized: The Noble Savage1
of Sarawak
Bromeley Philip
Introduction
This chapter will first take a look at the history of colonization of the East
as presented by European colonizers. Many colonial historical narratives
are stories of imperialistic European subjugations of Europe’s Other seen as
justifiable in the name of the discovery of the New World. European
colonizers seized the vantage position of being the powerful Self regarding
the colonized as the Other by virtue of their racial and cultural differences
vis-à-vis white civilized humanity (Hobson, 2004, p. 238). The powerful
Self sought to introduce the ‘idea of modernity as the history of humanity
in the singular and the idea of History as becoming-Western of humanity’
(Venn, 2000, p. 83). This position privileged the Self as ‘the superior locus of
world-historical development and the modern Western subject the agent of
that process’ (ibid.) and hence, central to the historical accounts produced.
Occidentalism privileged the notion of the becoming-West of Europe in
which Europe was located as the intellectual, spiritual, moral and economic
centre of the world.
Occidentalism is the institution of a particular imaginary, established

in specific representations and tropes, in images, metaphors, symbols
and signs which construct the frame of intelligibility of the West (Venn,
2000, p. 147)
It ‘is a space of the co-articulation of logocentric reason, technocratic

rationality and imperialism by way of an egocentric ontology of being’ (p. 83).
In the light of this, the chapter will first deconstruct the space, focusing on
Occidentalism in general, and then on Occidentalism with specific reference
to Sarawak and its indigenes, the Dayaks, in particular, the Dayak Iban, under
the Brooke regime. The chapter is, thus, located within the conceptual space
of post-coloniality since this space is constituted in the process of what Venn
(2000) calls the ‘deconstructive critique of Occidentalism’ (p. 83).
123
Against that backdrop, the second part of the chapter will scrutinize the
historical narratives about the white Rajahs of Sarawak in relation to its
predominant native inhabitants, the Dayaks. It is acknowledged that there
is a plethora of colonial historical narratives on the discovery of the New
World and its inhabitants. Thus, re-examining these narratives appears to
be yet another post-colonial activity. However, only a few narratives of the
Brooke regime in Sarawak have been interpreted from a local perspective.
Most are from the West. It is timely to subject these narratives on the Brooke
regime in Sarawak to a critical scrutiny in order to offer alternative local
perspectives. The natives of Sarawak have long been made to believe that
the history of the Brooke family dynasty was Sarawak’s nineteenth-century
history. The historical narratives by Occidental writers (see Crisswell,
1978; Boyle, 1984; Baring-Gould and Bampfylde, 1989) often reduced the
natives to mere rebels and relegated them to the ranks of uncivilized men
vis-à-vis the European standard. As savages, per force they had to be civilized
by the European imperialists. Native leaders believed to be recalcitrant were
considered to be most deserving of these ‘civilizing’ strategies; ‘the more
uncivilized a state or people was judged to be, the harsher the disciplinary
treatment would necessarily have to be in order to cure the deviant ailment’
(Hobson, 2004, p. 240).
The context of the gaze
Much of the colonialist knowledge of Europe’s Other was framed within the
axis described by Abdul Jan Mohamed (1986, p. 82 in Venn, 2000) as binaries
‘of diverse interchangeable oppositions between white and black, good and
evil, superiority and inferiority, civilization and savagery, intelligence and
emotion, rationality and sensuality, self and Other, subject and object’
(p. 63). Colonial historical narratives revolve around that axis, a notion of
history as ‘master discourses’ of the West (Venn, 2000, p. 48) that reflects
a monolithic ambition of Western categories in Western historical thinking
and historiography. Even Hegel, according to Smith (1999), conceived of the
fully human subject only to be someone capable of creating his or her own
history. ‘History was the story of people who were regarded as fully human’
while the Others, the indigenes, were not regarded as human and were
prehistoric because they were incapable of ‘self-actualisation’ and, therefore,
of creating history (Smith, 1999, p. 32). Thus, history was only about
the stories of the people who were regarded as fully human, in this case the
European colonizers vis-à-vis the subjugated natives, who were not.
Views about the Other had already existed for centuries in Europe, but
during the Enlightenment these views became formalized through science,
philosophy and imperialism, into explicit systems of classification or ‘regimes
of truth’ (Smith, 1999, p. 32) . The racialization of the human subject and
the social order enabled comparisons to be made between the Self, the West,
Historical Narratives of the Colonized 125
as ‘us’ and the Other, the rest, as ‘them’ (ibid.). From the nineteenth century
onwards, the processes of dehumanization were often ‘hidden behind jus-
tifications for imperialism and colonialism which were clothed within an
ideology of humanism and liberalism and assertion of moral claims which
related to a concept of civilised man’ (p. 26). The implication is that colo-
nized people have been compelled to define what it means to be human
because there is a deep understanding of what it means to be considered not
fully human, that is, to be savage. This has led to the construction of colonial
relations around the binary of the colonizer and colonized.
For far too long and too often, historical accounts of occupation and
domination have effectively elided records and narratives of events
significant to the colonized Other, privileging only the Self’s accounts as
the history of the world. Accounts of Sarawak’s history under the Brooke
regime, for instance, painted a positive picture of the colonizer, a ‘paternal’
white Rajah, bringing much-needed peace to an otherwise chaotic land of
savage head-hunters. Such historical accounts, however, are not merely
accounts about past records of events. They are also modes of discourse
about the past. They not only appropriate information as knowledge
but also recreate narratives.
Most historical accounts of the colonies, with the Brooke rule of Sarawak
being no exception, are accounts from the Western perspective justifying
colonization as the introduction of civilization to colonized communities.
However, the past, as an aspect of temporality and history, is not stitched
one onto the other allowing only for one reading of the past. The past, as
time, and history, as a record of events in the past, float free of each other;
because the same objects of enquiry can be read differently by different
individuals and communities over time and in different places, using dif-
ferent approaches and perspectives as historicities. New readings can always
emerge with a change in the gaze and a shift of perspective. The emergence
of the consciousness of past temporality in the non-Occidental scholar
warrants a scrutiny of the history of the East because too frequently history
has been the story of the rise of the powerful and its justification for the
domination of so called despotic and infantile regimes of rule, even up to
now, for example, with regard to the Middle East. The Occidental discourses
of the histories of the colonies demand more than a critical gaze because the
history of colonization privileged the supremacy of European agents of the
process, while the colonized were inevitably marginalized and reduced to
invisibility. Smith (1999) avers that the historical narratives of the West are
stories of the powerful Self; how they became powerful and how they used
power to maintain their dominant positions. As a consequence, colonized
communities had been excluded, marginalized and othered. The natives, as
conscious subjects of the discourse, are thus compelled to revisit such histor-
ical accounts as, for instance, the colonization of the Dayak Iban in Sarawak
by the white Rajahs of the Brooke regime. The Dayak Iban is the focus of the
following discussion because the Iban have been the most resistant of all the
indigenes of Sarawak to the rule of the white Rajahs.
The discourse of hegemony
Western discourse on the colonial history of the East includes the valouriza-
tion of white supremacy as evident in books such as Robert Knox’s The Races
of Man (Hobson, 2004, p. 237). These books introduced the tripartite division
of race based on skin colour–white, yellow and black. It was conceived of as
a permanent hierarchy of the human race. Extreme ‘scientific’ racism of this
form justified the annihilation of the inferior races at worst and the practice
of social apartheid at best. Racist discourse emerged in statements issued by
imperialistic bureaucrats and British politicians such as Joseph Chamberlain:
I believe this race, the greatest governing race the world has ever seen;
Anglo-Saxon race, so proud, so tenacious, self-confident and determined,
this race which neither climate nor change can degenerate, which will
infallibly be the predominant force of future history and universal
civilization. (Hobson, 2004, p. 237)
Humanity was divided into white civilized humanity, yellow barbarous

humanity and black savage humanity. John Westlake argued in his chap-
ters on the Principles of International Law (1894) that the ‘uncivilized regions
of the earth ought to be annexed or occupied by advanced Western powers’
(Hobson, 2004, p. 238). European international law became guilty of actively
prescribing and legitimizing colonization and imperialism in the East.
Countries referred to as Division Three countries were branded as
‘terra nullius’ (ibid.); that is, in essence, these lands of the ‘savages’ were
considered empty or waste spaces. Lord Carnarvon2 was to declare in
1874, that ‘the mission of England’ invoked ‘a spirit of adventure to fill up
waste places of the earth’. Edward Said (1978) was to note that, ‘It did not
trouble [the British] that what on a map was a blank space was inhabited
by natives’ (in Hobson, 2004, p. 238). But ‘it would not have troubled them
precisely because the natives were imagined as savages at best and animals
at worst and were, therefore, not entitled to claim a sovereign space’ (ibid.).
This ‘mental deterritorialization’ meant that complete colonial control was
entirely appropriate. Hobson (2004) further explains that:
once the discourse of imperialism had been forged through the

reconstruction of European identity and the racist invention of the
world, the launching of the ‘civilising mission’ became a moral duty. This
identity prompted the British to pursue imperialism not merely because
‘they could’ but because they believed they should (i.e. ‘the White Man’s
Burden (p. 239).
This holds true with regard to much of Said’s discourse on Orientalism. As

Said originally observed, Orientals had no status other than being seen as
problems that had to be solved through colonial take over.
I myself believe that Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of

European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is as a veridic discourse
about the Orient (which is what, in its academic or scholarly form, it
claims to be). Orientalism is never far from what Denys Hay has called
the idea of Europe, a collective notion identifying ‘us’ Europeans against
all ‘those’ non-Europeans, and indeed it can be argued that the major
component in European culture is precisely what made that culture
hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity
as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and
cultures. There is in addition the hegemony of European ideas about
the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental
backwardness. (Said, 2009, pp. 444–5)
Said goes on to explain that under the general heading of knowledge of

the Orient, and within the umbrella of Western hegemony over the Orient
during the period from the end of the eighteenth century,
there emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the academy, for
display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office, for
theoretical illustration in anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial,
and historical theses about mankind and the universe (p. 445).
It seems clear that knowledge was appropriated and histories were recreated,
all of which were meant to justify Western hegemony. What is even clearer is
that the othering of the Other was accomplished in an unending production
of discourse about the inhabitants of the lands that the colonizers were busy
taking possession of. It was intrinsic to conquest and subjugation. In fact, as
Venn (2000) puts it bluntly, ‘knowing the Other, taking possession and exer-
cising power over the objects of knowledge are interwoven in the story of the
conquest and subjugation of the New World’ (p. 112). This was the backdrop
to the colonization of the New World, the conquest of America.
The latter were discursively constituted into alien creatures beyond under-
standing, refractory to being ‘civilized’. They were stereotyped as people
who could be tamed only through the application of a constant and vigilant
violence. Violence was not disavowed, but seen as necessary, the proof that
it was the ‘only language’ that the ‘savage’ understood. Violent subjugation
became an inevitable duty, dictated by reason, instrumentalized, thus also
rationalized, and not the sign of inhumanity. The history of colonialism
shows the extent to which this attitude is repeated in other parts of the
world and acquires the status of common sense (Venn, 2000, p. 116).
In fact, as Hobson (2004) explains, the ‘“civilisational league table” of

countries and the racist invention of the world was the belief that the West
was normal and advanced whereas the East was deviant – backward and
either barbaric or savage’ (p. 240). ‘Europe learned to depict and shape the
New World into the image of its fantasy of itself and to make it serve its
ends’ (Venn, 2000, p. 61). That representation is an intrinsic element of the
history of the becoming-West of Europe that Venn (ibid.) calls Occidentalism.
As summarized by Lord Curzon:3
In empire, we have found not merely the key to glory and wealth, but the call
to duty, and the means of service to mankind. (in Hobson 2004, p. 238)
Most importantly, Western identity was constructed in such a way that

the imagined deviancy of the East could not be tolerated. Imperialism was
a civilizing mission. The moral duty of Western man was to bequeath to
the East the gift of civilization. Labelling imperialism as a civilizing mission
was fitting because it was designed to civilize and emancipate the East
by eradicating Eastern identity and culture and replacing it with superior
Western civilizational properties. Even if imperialism, as it actually played
out, was not good for the world, the British imperialists sincerely believed
that they were ‘civilizing’ or emancipating the East (Hobson, 2004, p. 241).
Hobson suggests that if, as Charles Dicken’s Mr Podsnap did, the British saw
other countries as a mistake, it fell to them to correct this mistake. What
could be more noble than helping others enjoy the fruits of modernity and
civilization that only the British could deliver, even if the Eastern peoples
were either too ignorant or too stubborn to recognize and appreciate the
gracious imperial British gesture (ibid.).
The civilizing mission would convert the East along Western lines so as
to eradicate the identity threat that the East posed in order to make the
West feel superior. But in order to remain superior it was also vital that the
Eastern economies be contained so as to prevent them from challenging
the economic hegemony of the West. Cultural conversion and containment
both implied the repression of the East. Cultural conversion embodied
the very essence of implicit racism in that the target group’s identity and
culture would be eradicated and replaced by the superior culture of the
imperial country. Equivalent to ‘ethnocide’, it meshed with the idea behind
containment. This was because as ‘the Eastern peoples were either inferior
or subhuman, they could “naturally” be exploited, repressed and utilised to
service the various needs of the “Mother Country” ’ (Hobson, 2004, p. 241).
Their ultimate sacrifice was to give up their culture and way of life in
exchange for the Occidentalist gift of the civilizing mission of imperialism
(Venn, 2000, p. 82).
However, as Hobson (2004) posits, had racism not existed and had the
West viewed the Eastern peoples as equal human beings, imperialism might
never have occurred (p. 241). But imperialism thrived taking on hideous
forms of massacre, oppression and exploitation in the name of transforming
the Other into ‘more or less the same as Western man’ – ‘white-but-not-
quite’ (Bhabha, 1994, in Venn, 2000, p. 62) The disorder also took the form
of demonizing the colonized through a Christianizing mission, because the
Other could only be saved as a Christian or otherwise remain a barbarian
outcast, outside the family of man (Venn, 2000, p. 58).
Western historiography and the historicization of colonized communities
have been deliberately reduced into the European conquest of the Other,
and into the civilizing mission and simple periodization in the discourse of
the Enlightenment. Histories of the Other were told from the Self’s point of
view while the Other became the outsiders as they heard their histories being
retold. The Other’s orientation to the world was already being redefined as
they were being excluded systematically from the writing of the history of
their own lands. Historical narratives of the East were, therefore, representa-
tions in the ‘master discourses of the West’ (Trinh Minh-ha, 1989 in Venn,
2000, p. 48) that ratified Western hegemony. The history-as-lived of European
oppression and exploitation of the so-called savage nations was organized
along what Venn views as ‘a vision of Europe as the chosen vessel for the
sure march of humanity towards maturity’ (2000, p. 61). But the history of
colonization, more so the historicization of the colonies, comprised a uni-
versal, global, world-transforming European imperialistic project undertaken
with nothing more in mind than ‘loot, adventure, the craving for riches,
the winning of a longed-for freedom’ (ibid.). Western historiography then
involved ‘the creation of emblematic heroes and villains, whose histories are
concretised in the form of memorials and sacred spaces in various parts of
the colony’ (Shamsul, 2006, p. 20). This is illustrative of the history of the
Brooke dynasty, which for a very long time was the only history of Sarawak
before it was ceded to the British at the end of the Pacific War.
Recounting the subjugation of the Dayak Iban
According to Venn (2000), the majority of conquerors from 1492, were

‘a motley crew of adventurers, criminals, obsessives, soldiers, sailors, priests
and dreamers, who were quick to regard the natives as sub-human, certainly
savage, possibly begotten by the Devil and beyond redemption’ (p. 113).
Charles Hose and William McDougall referred to the Dayak, the native
inhabitants of Sarawak, as the pagan tribes of Borneo (1912), while the
Brookes lived as white Rajahs. The Brooke residence exuded such an aura
of regal luxury that it was described by Baden Powell during his stay in the
‘Astana’ palace as:
surrounded with panels, painted by the Ranee of native orchids; and

here also are several stuffed Argus pheasants–those birds with huge
wings of brown feathers, with white peacock-like markings. There is

a very complete and representative little library, and a billard-room in
the tower. I have seldom been more luxuriously housed than when stay-
ing at the Astana, having a complete suite of four rooms to myself, and
every possible comfort. At a dinner party with men in evening dress,
and ladies in the latest Paris fashions, you might almost imagine your-
self in London, except for the gorgeous blue and gold costumes of the
servants – uniforms rather than liveries – and for the soldiers who stand
smartly at the corners, waving great fans on poles to and fro. (Powell,
1892, p. 251)
Powell’s accounts of the white Rajah’s Astana, portrayed a life of indulgent

luxury for the Brookes who complicitly legitimized oppression and exploita-
tion as the moral duty of the white Rajah. As a ‘higher race’ they executed
that moral duty by bringing so-called peace to an otherwise chaotic, savage
nation. Many war expeditions were launched by the Rajah enlisting ‘tamed’
Dayak warriors to kill ‘untamed’ ones whilst the Rajah gloriously claimed
victory and ownership of Dayak land wrought out of native bloodshed. The
tamed Dayaks were employed to exterminate other groups of fellow Dayaks
deemed recalcitrant and rebellious (according to the white Rajahs), thus
causing casualties only among the Dayaks.
It was during the Rajah’s civilizing mission that massive tribal wars
were planned and sanctioned by the Rajah himself, Charles Brooke, to
efface rebellious native leaders, like the legendary Rentap in particular,
a determined Iban Warrior Chief from the Skrang Riverine, and his band of
followers (Reece, B., 2004). Reece describes Charles Brooke as being adept
at exploiting ancient rivalries between down-river and up-river peoples
on the principle of ‘Dyaks can only act against Dyaks’ (1991, p. 44).
Harnessing Dayak warfare for his own purposes, Charles provided organi-
zation and arms for expeditions, which needed no encouragement with
their promise of enemy heads for the taking. There was no fighting role
for the Europeans and although he was always in the thick of the fighting,
using his rifle to fearful effect during the expeditions against Masahor and
Rentap, Charles Brooke did not see himself as a leading player. ‘I simply
went singly on these expeditions to act as an adviser, and be protected
as a queen ant among thousands of workers’ (ibid.). Charles Brooke’s
principle was:
Priests may preach, enthusiasts can’t, and peacemakers palaver, yet

evidence favours the fact, that the sword alone clears the path for the
scythe and the sickle. (Reece, 1991, p. 44)
The expeditions against the Saribas and Skrang in 1849 resulted in the
piratical tribes (notably the Dayak Iban) being split into two parties: one
that was content to submit to the government of Sarawak, and abandon its
former lawless practices (as viewed by the Rajah), and the other,
consisting of irreconcilables, the wild and fiery bloods, who loved slaugh-
ter and rapine above everything, and who could not be prevailed upon
to beat their spears into ploughshares. At their head stood a peculiarly
daring and turbulent Dayak chief called Rentap; and these had retreated
farther up the country to the head-waters of the Saribas. (Baring-Gould
and Bampfylde, 1989, p. 155)
The narrative was clearly biased against the Iban, branded as wild and fiery
bloods, who loved slaughter and rapine, and who could not be domesticated
as farmers. Rentap was pictured as a recalcitrant by Baring-Gould and
Bampfylde (1989): ‘Rentap was an active, crafty and determined man,
rootedly opposed to the interference of Europeans and the putting down
of piracy and head-hunting’ (p. 160). Despite his portrayal as a villain by
Western writers, Rentap’s struggle to ward-off alien encroachment of his
native land is clearly very commendable, from the indigenous perspective.
Faced with strong resistance from Rentap, the Rajah’s expeditions met with
failure twice. While the Rajah’s defeats were not highlighted in published
accounts of Sarawak, Rentap’s retreat, however, further into the interior
(taken to be Rentap’s eventual defeat), was highlighted:
Rentap will not be noticed again. Broken and deserted by all, he retired
to the Entabai branch of the Kanowit where he died some years later.
(Baring-Gould and Bampfylde, 1989, p. 184)
The writers picture Rentap’s defeat (as it was viewed by the Rajahs) as
being tragic; that he was broken and deserted. However, there was no
evidence to corroborate that Rentap actually suffered a tragic defeat. As
much as writers tried to show how successful and effective Brooke’s rule
was against the Iban warrior chief Rentap, what came to light was the
fact that Rentap was a force to reckon with indeed. Despite his lack of
modern arms and ammunitions, and small band of followers in contrast
to the Rajah’s forces, he defended his fortress against two separate attacks
by the Rajah. It took three expeditions (June 1857, July 1858 and August
1861) by Charles Brooke, the Tuan Muda, to finally dislodge Rentap from
his fortress. Rentap, however, evaded capture and managed to escape
(Ooi Keat Gin, 2005, p. 192). Rentap’s attack at the Skrang Fort led to the
killing of British subject Alan Lee, which earned him the instant label
of rebel from the Rajah. It was Rentap who actually showed bravery and
resilience against formidable white supremacy. Was Rentap a ‘rebel’ or a
‘hero’? Who would not have reacted the way Rentap did when threatened
by an alien race determined to force his people to submit to an unknown
power in his own motherland? Rentap’s retreat may well have been a sign
of strength of character in refusing to submit and surrender to an alien
race encroaching upon his territory. To interpret it from an Iban perspec-
tive, for as long as one has not openly declared defeat and surrender (nadai
nyerah alah), there is no real surrender nor is there any real defeat. In fact,
Rentap was merely being pragmatic and wise. He knew that his small band
of men was no match for the Rajah’s forces, but to have defeated the Rajah
twice was nothing but victory for Rentap and his followers.
Of particular interest to us as conscious subjects of our own history is
why there were uprisings among the Iban inhabitants. Were those uprisings
retaliatory reactions to the subjugation, oppression and exploitation by the
neighbouring Brunei Sultanate? The causes of the uprising and unrest among
the Iban have never been divulged; they were probably forced into obscurity
by the colonizers. The extant historical narratives only represent the Dayak
Iban as uncivilized savages. James Brooke was commissioned by the Sultan
of Brunei to put an end to the uprising among the Dayaks. But the question
that needs to be asked is: what were the causes of the uprising? And, to ask
the obvious: why were the causes of the Dayaks’ uprising never documented
in the recorded history of Sarawak? Brunei’s claims over Sarawak as part of
its sultanate were rather ambiguous as there was no obvious administra-
tive machinery to even symbolize its sovereignty over the state. Was the
Brunei Sultan in a legitimate position to appoint James Brooke, an owner of
a private warship, to suppress the so-called native rebels, and subsequently
cede Sarawak (which might have been just a nominal state of Brunei) to
Brooke? Fully armed and supported by the infrastructure of the imperial-
istic parent country, James Brooke and his successors built a century-long
dynasty, enjoying royalty status as the white Rajahs of Sarawak. In fact,
so successful was James Brooke as an imperialist that he was awarded the
Knight Commander of the Bath and made British Consul-general for Borneo
by the Queen of England (Reece, 2004).
What happened in Sarawak is representative of the oppression and exploita-
tion of the ‘superior’ race in their civilizational conquest of the East. European
supremacy was well articulated in the historical narratives of Sarawak. In his
book Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo, Boyle says with condescension:
The male Dyak, with his childlike vanity and love of display, has
contracted desires which his simple home cannot supply. Puzzled by the
superiority of the white race, and envious of the thousand resources of
civilization, he appears to be restless in his present tranquillity, though
the direction of his ambition may be unintelligible even to himself.
(Boyle, 1984, p. 235)
Throughout the book, in the account of his encounters with the Dayaks,
Boyle refers alternately to the Dayaks, only as savages, clearly indicating
that they were uncivilized by the European standard and it was perfectly
permissible to refer to them as savages with no sense of guilt. He elaborates
further:
The conclusion which the Government officers (British) of Sarawak

appear individually to hold is, that the Dyak population, constituting a
majority of Rajah Brooke’s subjects, may, and under the present judicious
system will, eventually acquire a position more elevated in the scale of
humanity, but can never be civilized in the European sense of the expres-
sion. (Boyle, 1984, p. 320)
Pringle’s (1970) version of Brooke rule, however, seems to cast the natives
in a more favourable light because the book was written with advice from
a local historian, writer and curator, the late Benedict Sandin, a Dayak
Iban himself. Pringle attempts to narrate the history of Sarawak during the
Brooke Rule by acknowledging the existence of what he describes as Iban
Country, with the Sultanate of Brunei being regarded as its nominal ruler.
It is gratifying that a Western writer is able to see the Iban as the people of
Sarawak considering that other writers legitimized the Brookes’ ownership
of Dayak land. Pringle acknowledges that the Iban were native to Sarawak
on the basis of the early history of Brunei and its relations with Sarawak
in relation to the Malacca ‘grant’.4 This was an area of land granted by the
Sultan of ‘Johore’, or even perhaps of Malacca (see Pringle, 1970), to the
first Muslim ruler of Brunei after the fall of the Majapahit empire, which
comprised only the ‘five countries’ of Kalaka, Saribas, Sadong, Samarahan
and Sarawak. There was no mention of the Batang Lupar river system
located between the Saribas and the Sadong where the Iban had first settled
upon migration from Kapuas. In later years it was the most vigorously used
river by the Ibans in the Second Division. Its omission from the ‘Malacca
grant’, according to Pringle (1970), may indicate that the warlike Ibans were
soon living along it in sufficient numbers to discourage Brunei interests.
Furthermore, the Ibans were not aware of the existence of any meaning-
ful central government. Their lack of respect for the Sultanate was quite
obvious when the new European overlords arrived. Charles Brooke related
an encounter between some Brunei nobles and the Ibans. Apparently, the
Pengiran (Royal Official in Brunei) displayed the Sultan’s commission care-
fully folded in yellow satin, hoping to dissuade the Ibans from attacking
them. But, according to Charles Brooke’s account, the Ibans replied, ‘We
don’t know things like that’; and apparently proceeded to take the heads of
the entire party (Pringle, 1970, p. 59), further reinforcing the notion of the
savage Iban.
Yet, as much as Pringle tries to be objective and neutral in his accounts by
taking into consideration the local perspective and recognizes that the Iban
were the people of the land, it appears that as a Westerner he succumbs to
the Orientalist temptation of referring to the Iban warriors as marauders and

to the European colonizers as the overlords. At one point, Pringle tries to
be neutral, referring to the phenomenon that later James Brooke was to call
piracy (Pringle, 1970, p. 61) as the ‘Iban traditions ... of warlike adventures
along the coast’. It appears that Pringle is conscious that Brooke’s description
of the Iban’s raiding activities as piracy may be inappropriate. He accepts
Sandin’s explanation that there were two types of raiding activities. One was
intertribal warfare, consisting of retaliatory head-hunting and marauding
between predominantly Iban communities who regard themselves as heredi-
tary enemies. In the second, Iban fleets, often mixed with Malays, raided
villages as distant as the Pontianak area indiscriminately (Pringle, 1970,
pp. 61–2). The historical account of Sarawak under the Brooke regime by
Pringle was the result of close consultation with Benedict Sandin who, as an
Iban, could provide interpretations of past events from the Iban perspective.
The historical gaze revisited
The history of colonization in Sarawak can be seen from the view-point of

Jenkins’ (1991) notion of ideological history, which positions people and
delivers views of the past from outside the subject. And those meanings are
not intrinsic to the past but are meanings given to the past by outsiders as
onlookers. Jenkins’ view of ideological history is:
The fact that history per se is an ideological construct means that it is

constantly being re-worked and re-ordered by all those who are variously
affected by power relationships because the dominated as well as the
dominant also have their versions of the past to legitimate their practices,
versions which have to be excluded as improper from any place on the
agenda of the dominant discourse. ( Jenkins, 1991, pp. 18–19)
According to Jenkins (1991), one cannot recount more than a fraction of

what has occurred and no historian’s account ever corresponds precisely
with the past. In fact, as Jenkins explains further, the sheer bulk of the past
precludes total history. It means that most information about the past has
not been recorded and most of the rest is evanescent. The nature of history
itself is open to debates with questions like: is it possible to say what really
happened in the past, to get to the truth, to reach objective understand-
ings, or is history incorrigibly interpretive? The past has gone and history
is what the historians make of it. But what if there are classes or groups of
people who have been or are omitted from histories? And what might the
consequences be of such omitted groups if they were central to historical
accounts and the now central groups were marginalized? What if the reverse
has happened to the colonizers? What might have been the consequences if
the inferior Other was central to historical narrativization and the superior
Self had been marginalized? The point is that it is historians who construct
the analytical and methodological tools to fashion out of the raw material
their ways of reading and talking about it. But this does not mean that the
historians make up stories about the past. Rather, the past comes to them–
always already as stories (Jenkins, 1991) that constitute reality.
Obviously, history is never for itself: it is always for someone. The histori-
cization of the colonized communities by colonizers was to maintain the
dominant–subordinate status quo:
The noble savage was living proof of the advancement of Europe

beyond that archaic stage, a validation of its moral and cultural superior-
ity. The trope (of noble savage) expels the colonized out of history while
inventing a history for the colonizers, namely, the history of civilising
mission, at first understood as Christianizing mission, before mutating in
the nineteenth century into the project of a planned re-formation of the
‘natives’ everywhere (Venn, 2000, p. 118).
In their efforts to make sense of the historical record, which is fragmentary

and always incomplete, historians have to make use of what Collingwood
calls the ‘constructive imagination’ (White, 2009, p. 353). White elaborates
that this constructive imagination functions ‘when it tells us that even
though we cannot perceive both sides of a tabletop simultaneously, we can
be certain that it has two sides if it has one, because the very concept of one
side entails at least one other’ (p. 353).
White (2009) further explains that no historical event is intrinsically
tragic; it can only be conceived as such from a particular point of view
or from within the context of a structured set of events of which it is an
element enjoying a privileged place. In history what is tragic from one per-
spective is comic from another; just as in society what appears to be tragic
from the standpoint of one class may be only a farce from that of another.
The same set of events can serve as components of a story that is either
tragic or comic, as the case may be, depending on the historian’s choice of
plot structure that he or she considers most appropriate for ordering events
of that kind for the construction of a comprehensible story (White, 2009,
p. 353). The important point is that most historical events can be sequenced
in a number of different ways, so as to provide different interpretations of
those events and endow them with different meanings. It means that histor-
ical situations are not inherently tragic, comic or romantic. All the historian
needs to do to transform a tragic situation into one that is comic is to shift
his point of view or change the scope of his perceptions. Again, as White
(2009) clearly puts it, how a given historical situation is configured depends
on the historian’s subtlety in matching up a specific plot structure with that
set of historical events that he or she wishes to endow with meaning of
a particular kind (p. 354).
Derrida (1995) avers that history ‘never effaces what it buries; it always
keeps within itself the secret of what it encrypts’ (p. 21). This means that
history allows for what Jenkins (1991) calls multifarious readings, that is,
one past but many histories. Jenkins elaborates that past and history are
not stitched together such that only one and one reading alone of any phe-
nomenon is entailed. This is because history is understood as recorded past
events whereas the past refers to what actually happened. In fact, the same
object of enquiry is capable of being read differently as different discourses.
Therefore, for the West to recognize their historical narrativization of the
colonized communities as part of the master discourses or the totalizing of
historical discourse into a single world history inevitably compels a critical
gaze from the conscious-of-being non-occident scholars with a view to
seeking the possibility of perspectival contestation. And contestation seems
necessary, as no historian can cover and, thus, re-cover the totality of the
past events because their content is virtually limitless (Jenkins, 1991).
Concluding remarks
Quite clearly non-Occidental scholars, as ‘conscious’ subjects of their own his-

tory need to counter-appropriate their history from the appropriative grasp
of the master discourses of the West. The effort warrants scrutiny, rethinking
and ultimately renarrativization through objective inquiry and even through
the process of rememoration to uncover the history ‘as lived’ in the everyday
or the past of the lifeworlds that had been forced into invisibility or silence by
forms of oppressive power. We need to put forward our interpretations from
our present vantage points. This begs the question not of ‘what is history?’
but rather ‘who is history?’ Future inquiries, therefore, should gravitate
towards the ‘who of action’ in our own past, which has been much narrativ-
ized but probably misinterpreted too. We need to tell our stories, in our own
words from our points of view, and in doing so reclaim our own history. The
current situation in Sarawak does not seem to favour either the Dayaks in
general or the Dayak Iban specifically to be able to do so.
The Brooke regime, which lasted a hundred years, was replaced in more
recent times by other political arrangements and alliances that have yet to
place the Dayaks firmly within the heart of political and economic power in
Sarawak. But to be able to claim the present for themselves the Dayaks must
first reclaim the history of their past. There is some movement towards that
end through both political activism and rapprochement to allow the noble
savage to stand proud again in the land of the hornbills.
Notes
1. The term ‘Noble Savage’ (French, bon sauvage) was coined in the eighteenth century
by Jean Jacques Rouseau in his famous essay, Social Contract (1762). To Rousseau,
the Noble Savage represented the ‘natural man’, that individual in an initial purer
state, uncorrupted by contact with the complexities and compromises of society,
living in nature according to nature’s own rhythms and patterns (according to
‘natural law). In Colin N. Crisswell’s (1978) Rajah Charles Brooke: Monarch of all He
Surveyed, Oxford University Press, pp. 7–8, it refers to the concept of an idealized
indigene, outsider (or the Other).
2. Lord Carnavon refers to George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, born on
26 June 1866, the fifth Earl of Carnavon.
3. Lord Curzon was a viceroy to India from 1899–1905. See Sumit Sarkar, (1989).
Modern India, 1885–1947, Macmillan Press.
4. The Malacca ‘grant’ according to Hugh Low (1880), based on the ‘Selesiah (Book
of Descent) of the Rajas of Brunei’, JSBRAS, No. 5, was an area of land granted by
the Sultan of ‘Johore’ (more like Malacca) to the first Muslim Ruler of Brunei after
the fall of Madjapahit. The ‘grant’ included only the ‘five countries’ of Kalaka,
Saribas, Sadong, Samarahan and Sarawak. No mention was made of the Batang
Lupar river system where the Iban had settled upon migration from Kapuas. Cited
as a footnote in Pringle, R. (1970) Rajahs and Rebels: The Ibans of Sarawak under
Brooke Rule, 1841–1941. London: Macmillan, p. 58.
Bibliography
Baring-Gould, S. and Bampflyde, C.A. (1989) A History of Sarawak under its two White
Rajahs: 1839–1908 (Singapore: Oxford University Press).
Boyle, F. (1984) Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo (Kuala Lumpur: Antara Book
Company).
Crisswell, C.N. (1978) Rajah Charles Brooke: Monarch of all He Surveyed (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Derrida, J. (1995) The Gift of Deaths (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Hobson, J.M. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Hose, C. and McDougall, W. (1912) The Pagan Tribes of Borneo (Calicut, India: Nalanda
Gigital Library, National Institute of Technology) http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/
resources/english/etext-project/history/paganborneo/, accessed on 10 August 2008.
Jenkins, K. (1991) Re-thinking History (London: Routledge).
Ooi Keat Gin (2005) ‘Brooke rebels or Iban nationalists? Revisiting Iban anti-Brooke
struggles 1841–1941’, The Sarawak Museum Journal, Vol. LXI No.82: 187–205.
Powell, B. (1892) In Savage Isles and Settled Lands (London: Richard Bently and Sons).
Pringle, R. (1970) Rajahs and Rebels: The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke Rule, 1841–1941
(London: Macmillan).
Reece, R.H.W. (1991) ‘Introduction to Ten years in Sarawak by Charles Brooke’, Borneo
Research Bulletin, Vol. 23: 41–53.
Reece, B. (2004) The White Rajahs of Sarawak, a Borneo Dynasty (Singapore: Archipelago
Press).
Said, E. (1978) Orientalism (London: Penguin).
Said, E. (2009) ‘Introduction to Orientalism’ in A. Budd (ed.) The Modern Historiography
Reader: Western Sources (New York: Routledge) pp. 443–8.
Shamsul, A.B. (2006) ‘Occidentalism and Orientalism, two sides of the same coin:
A Malaysian viewpoint’ in Nordin Hussin (ed.) The Easternization of the West
(Malaysia: IKON) pp. 13–28.
Smith, L.T. (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London:
Zed Books).
Venn, C. (2000) Occidentalism: Objectivity and Subjectivity (London: Sage
Publications).
White, H. (2009) ‘The historical text as literary artefact’ in A. Budd (ed.) The Modern
Historiography Reader: Western Sources (New York: Routledge) p. 353.
9
The Mutual Gaze: Japan, the West
and Management Training
Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini and Hiromasa Tanaka1
Introduction: ‘If Japan can, why can’t we?’2
This chapter argues for an understanding of an East–West ‘gazing

experience’ in the field of management and training philosophy and
praxis, which draws from a history of mutual, if not always peaceful,
influence. The analytical approach adopted here is discursive, which
means that the relations between the East, represented by Japan, and the
West, inclusive of Europe and America, will be characterized in terms of
discursive flows. The understanding of discourse here is one that is atten-
tive to the politics and praxis of language as action, and, therefore, is aware
of the material and power consequences of language. This critical stance
demands that our reflections, while limited by space constraints, should
be sensitive to contemporary socio-political and historical contingencies
and trends.
As joint interpreters of a number of discursive ‘gazes’, we exercise the
privilege of the qualitative researchers within the hermeneutics tradition3
(e.g., Gadamer, 1978). While our initial personal horizons are the result of
different experiential trajectories, they eventually become fused in the new,
shared horizon afforded by the ‘mutuality of the gaze’ perspective. For this
chapter, the academic researcher with a long-standing involvement in the
field of business discourse (first author) meets the professional management
consultant now also senior academic and researcher active in business
discourse research (second author). This partnership significantly dictates
the scope of the chapter: our West includes the US and Europe, as the
regions from where Western discourse of management and training and
development originated (Bargiela-Chiappini, 2012).
The ‘Eastern gaze’ will concentrate on the Anglophone West, as encap-
sulated in the ‘special relationship’ discourse between the UK and the US,
the historical origins of which date back to colonial Europe (see the next
section). This is also the West that most eagerly absorbed Eastern influences
139
in matters of management and training, many of them in the form of

Japanese management principles and practices. For the purposes of this
chapter, the ‘East’ is represented by Japan because of its unmatched influence
on Western management praxis; in turn, we remain aware of deep Chinese
influences on Japan through Zen Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism and Taoism
(Cleary, 1991).
A discursive approach to an arguably sociological phenomenon such as
the Eastern gazing on the Anglophone (British and American) mimetic
tradition of Japanese management is not intent on proving the existence
or the significance of this phenomenon. All it can hope to do is to reflect
selectively on the nature and the dynamics of the relations between the
three countries as traceable in some of the most salient discourses inscribing
them as related entities within the world’s history of management.
Against this backdrop, the chapter will articulate its main argument, of
the mutuality of the East–West gaze in the field of management practice and
training, by means of four interconnected gazes or discourses, which draw
from a range of classic and academic sources. The gazes proposed here do
not aim for comprehensiveness or detail; they can only seek to glimpse
some of the ideologies at play within each gaze and glean the complexity
and sophistication of the ‘mutual gaze’ that has locked Japan and the West
into a competitive, and at times openly conflicting, relationship since the
mid nineteenth century.
The exploration begins in the next section, where the first author has
singled out the debate around the ‘idea of Europe’ as an example of the
political significance of the discourses of geographic place. Europe, of
course, was the cradle of colonialism and imperialism; its self-perception
as centre of the geographic and moral world spun entire discursive
formations on the ‘other’ as (not necessarily in chronological order) bar-
barian, primitive, uncivilized, oriental and so on, in one word, inferior
by European standards. The Western gaze is then directed to the East (the
third section) where some of the ideological and philosophical discourses
that are claimed to underlie Japanese management will be teased out
by the first author. In the fourth section, the second author will introduce
a set of Eastern discourses that revolve around Japanese management
philosophies and practice. Through the fourth and last gaze (fifth section),
the chapter homes into an account of Japan’s perceptions of the Western
adoption of Japanese management and training practices as recounted
by the second author. Before concluding with a summary of the contents
and suggestions for future research, the penultimate section will seek to
reconnect the discussion in the chapter with some of the issues raised by
the Introduction. In so doing, we hope to offer reflections on the ‘Eastern
perspectives of Western discourses of the East’ that suggest looking beyond
easy dualisms.
The Mutual Gaze 141
The West gazing on the West: The ‘idea of Europe’

(and the rest of the world)
The term ‘Orient’ has apparently been in use since the sixteenth century to
define the lands located in the geographic east of Christian Europe (Chua,
2008). Europe is, therefore, of interest here, both as the cradle of Orientalist
discourses and as an ‘idea’ consisting of an amalgam of sometimes
contradictory ‘cartographic ideologies’ (Brotherson, 2009). Europe was the
West until its expansionist policies discovered the ‘New World’; nowadays,
the West is a movable feast, but it is worth noting here that for countries
such as Japan the West is mainly identified with the US.
There is now an established school of Orientalist studies, even though there
is no agreed definition of Orientalism. The anti-imperialist vocabulary of
‘ethnocentrism’ and ‘Eurocentrism’, particularly popular in European scholar-
ship, can be seen as a reaction to Said’s essentialist notion of the ‘Third World’
(Chua, 2008). For its part, the recent literature on Occidentalism is keen to
examine the West and Westernization in terms of ‘contingent and partial
creations’ (Bonnett, 2002, p. 460). The ‘West’ draws from ‘the construction of
a European history articulated in response to and within the specific contexts
of a whole range of non-European cultural histories’ (Gogwilt, 1995, p. 236,
quoted in Bonnett, 2002, p. 460). ‘Europe’ is an idea that became a ‘histo-
riographical problem’ for eighteenth–century historians (Albertone, 2008,
p. 349), a problem which belies a variety of interpretations and definitions.
Two dominant ideological discourses stand out in European historiography,
‘Atlantic Europe’ and ‘continental Europe’, reflecting cross and intra conti-
nental political alignments still current today. The Atlantic idea of Europe,
as the history of empires and trade, conceives of the continent in relation to
America and is cultivated within the English-speaking world (ibid.). Atlantic
Europe, in combination with another creation, the Cold War, engendered
Eastern Europe, which effectively collapsed central and Eastern European
countries into an unknown to be feared. Thanks to the Berlin Wall, the
‘West’, ‘Atlantic Europe’ and ‘Western Europe’ could all inscribe their ‘East’
as outside of the intricate mosaic of anonymous countries making up a (by
comparison, diminutive) continent.
By contrast, the alternative historiography of ‘continental Europe’,
bridging Spain and Russia, is a Eurocentric idea of Europe that defines itself
in opposition to Atlantic Europe and to the ‘New World’ of colonies. The
Asiento Treaty of 1713 marks the formation of the centre-periphery ideology
whereby Spain, France, Portugal and Britain re-defined their exploitative
relationship with their ‘empires’ in terms of sources of wealth for metropoli-
tan Europe (Benzoni, 2008, p. 378). It is this eighteenth-century, Eurocentric
paradigm that generated the myths of China, Peru and the ‘Noble Savage’,
and monopolized world ideologies and historiography. This is a trend that
Benzoni (2008, p. 380) claims, paradoxically continues to this day – even

after the decline of European influence in international relations – and is
visible ‘in the programmatic anti-Eurocentric attitude of “cultural studies” ’.
The ‘crisis of Europe’s conscience’ of the late seventeenth century con-
firmed national differences while reaffirming the continent as the Europe
of reason and of the enlightenment. So, Europe was at once a medley of
distinct peoples as well as a distinctive ‘civilization’ ‘a civilization which was
to serve as the model for any possible progress’ (Verga, 2008, p. 353). Barriers
against other civilizations were raised while internal north–south and
east–west divides became more accentuated. The French political thinker
and illuministe Montesquieu was swift at distancing Europe from Asia on
the grounds of their different histories and a combination of ‘physical’
and ‘moral’ causes; for Voltaire, philosopher of the Enlightenment, Europe
stopped at Berlin and Vienna. For the Scottish historian William Robertson,
Europe included the north-western regions and the western Mediterranean
(Verga, 2008, p. 356). For all this ‘distanciation’, the encounter of the
Western Roman empire with the ‘barbarians’ was identified by many his-
torians as the crucible of modern Europe, its society and civilization (ibid.,
p. 357). The French historian François Guizot made the startling remark
that before the crusades ‘Europe did not exist’ (ibid., p. 359). Branded as
‘an extraordinary phenomenon of fanaticism’ by Voltaire (ibid., p. 356), the
crusades were the first of a series of events that were to change European
economy and society, arguably for the better.
European historians of the nineteenth century, writing about the multifarious
‘idea of Europe’ developed the scholastic concepts of place attributable to
Aristotle, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, according to which temperate
latitudinal bands commanded great moral authority. The ‘privilege’ of Rome
and the Mediterranean was evident in the physical and moral qualities of
humans living in those latitudes, and became a justification for Europe ruling
over other lands. From within the same scholastic tradition, the Dominican
Bartolomé de Las Casas issued the most damning condemnation of European
imperialism against the Amerindians,4 and of Europe as the moral centre of
contemporary geopolitics (Wey Gómez, 2008). It was also against Western
expansionism that feudal Japan closed its borders to external influences for
two and half centuries, until the mid 1880s when finally American trade quite
literally forced its way into the islands. Since then, the love–hate relationship
between Japan and the West has unfolded in military and commercial twists
and turns, from which Japan finally emerged as a world power.
The West gazing on the East: ‘Scratch a Japanese of the most

advanced ideas, and he will show a samurai’5
The independent American scholar Thomas Cleary, well-known for his

authoritative translations into English of numerous Chinese and Japanese
The Mutual Gaze 143
classics, claims that in order to understand modern Japan it is necessary to

appreciate the influence of military and martial culture on the history of
the country.
Even in the social and cultural spheres, Japan today still retains the
indelible impression of the samurai Bushidō, the way of the warrior. This
is true not only in education and the fine arts, but also in characteristic
attitudes and conduct marking the course of political, professional, and
personal relations (Cleary, 1991, p. 2)
What Cleary goes on to define as the ‘culture of strategy’ is an influential

Western discourse of Japan that has a number of scholarly and popular
variants, which cannot be reviewed here due to space limitations.
In our chapter, we engage with Cleary’s interpretation of select Japanese
ideologies, which he analyses in his volume The Japanese Art of War (1991),
and which, he argues, have contributed to the ‘impression of mystery’ that
the country still conjures in the West. Cleary’s book refers extensively to
Bushidō, or the Code of the Samurai, which he translated from the Japanese
handbook Bushidō Shoshinshu, written by the Confucian scholar and military
scientist Taira Shigesuke (1639–1730). Taira was born the year after the
implementation of the national isolation policy, intended to protect Japan
from Western influences and predatory interests, and wrote his handbook
during a long period of peace and material prosperity.
Probably better known and widely admired by the Japanese is Nitobe
Inazo’s essay Bushidō. The Soul of Japan (1899); in our chapter we use the
thirteenth edition, which appeared in 1908. Nitobe was an Anglophile who
with his knowledge of Western philosophy and appreciation of British and
American literature represents an ideal bridge between the earlier, indigenous
voice of Taira and the modern Western interpretation of Cleary.
In the introduction to his translation of Bushidō Shoshinshu, Cleary (1999,
p. 9) writes that the handbook
presents a remarkably faithful mirror of many of the characteristics and

habits of modern-day Japanese civilization … all [the] aspects of life and
more are treated in this text from the point of view of the martial spirit
of Japanese knighthood.
Might this be the spirit that infused management theories and praxis in
twentieth century Japan? We only have space here to provide a synopsis
of the first of the three parts of the handbook as a way to preparing the
ground for the discussion of the other two monographs. As early as in its
introduction, the Code prescribes that the neophyte samurai practice loyalty
and duty to employer and parents, and when free from these, that they dwell
on death. Duty of care to parents extends to loyalty to employer: the Code
admonishes that ‘there is no such thing as someone who is disrespectful to

his parents yet faithful to his employer’ (Cleary, 1999, p. 9).
The training of the samurai places great importance on education.
Bushidō encourages the adoption of the spirit of apprenticeship: ‘Question
repeatedly, listen carefully, and remember everything. … Learning how to
do things thanks to senior and colleagues, and getting things done with
their help, is the manner of times of normalcy’ (Clearly, 1999, p. 18). Study
goes hand in hand with practice for the warrior so that all positions are
open to him, right up to command (p. 18); determination ‘never to give up
without having become a top-class knight’ (p. 12) drives the professional
warrior. In other words, fullness of knowledge and expertise is not displayed
and should not make the warrior haughty.
In the preface to the first edition of Bushidō. The Soul of Japan (1899),
Nitobe concludes that ‘without understanding Feudalism and Bushidō,
the moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume’. The reader is also
reminded that in the mid nineteenth century, Japan was the only country
where Feudalism could still be seen ‘in living form’ (p. 5). Bushidō could be
seen as a set of maxims handed down by famous warriors and elaborated
over a period of centuries. In Nitobe’s understanding, the samurai was edu-
cated and trained to serve his master; care was taken to build his character
through the development of wisdom rather than through the imparting
of abstract knowledge. Development of character entailed self-control and
self-restraint, manifest in the guarding of emotions and in the endurance of
adversity and pain (pp. 30–1). At the time of writing his monograph, Nitobe
concluded that Bushidō ‘was and still is the animating spirit, the motor force’
(p. 51) of Japan. He singled this out as the main source of transformation of
the country since its opening to foreign trade.
For a Western appreciation of Bushidō and its influence, we now turn to the
third source selected for analysis in this chapter, namely Thomas Cleary’s The
Japanese Art of War. Cleary (1991) is adamant that ‘there is no practical way
to overlook the military rule and martial culture that have dominated Japan
for many centuries, virtually up to the present day’ (p. 2). His argument for
the ‘culture of strategy’ is built on the contribution made by the works of a
few outstanding martial artists, influenced either by Shintō or Zen Buddhism.
These are Miyamoto Musashi, Yagyū Munenori and, in particular, Suzuki
Shōsan. Musashi was a swordsman and author of the strategy classic Book of
Five Spheres, which links the development of popular schools of martial arts
not with Zen Buddhism but with Shintō (Cleary, 1991, p. 24).
Interestingly for our chapter, Musashi points to the relevance of the ‘way
of the warrior’ to all aspects of life, including business. Like Taira, Musashi
writes about the importance of technical expertise, and of becoming
thoroughly competent in one’s discipline through apprenticeship (Clearly,
1991, p. 25). These ideas still survive in corporate Japan. In the spirit of
Buddhism, learning here is not seen as an end but as a means (p. 33). In
The Mutual Gaze 145
his interpretation of classic Zen teaching, the contemporary warrior turned

Zennist Suzuki Shōsan maintained that education is effective when it
promotes inner change and, thus, transforms the individual from within.
External disciplines can actually promote arrogance and insensitivity if
practised without a change from within that permeates the whole mind and
behaviour. Instead, it is to Taoism that Musashi appeals in his discussion
of leadership, based on the model of the master carpenter, which is given
prominence especially in the Taoist classic Huainanzi (Clearly, 1991, p. 25).
Among the many applications of Zen to ordinary life, we mention here
the mastery of ‘swordlessness’, in Yagyū’s words ‘the swordless art of not
getting killed when you have no sword’ (p. 76). Cleary surmises that this
is the strategy that enabled Japan to become a world power in one century
using the only resources available in the country, that is, human labour and
ingenuity. Put differently, resourcelessness became Japan’s resource. Drawing
on the principles of the Chinese classic The Art of War, Musashi extends
military strategy to the universal struggle for survival and excellence.
Techniques such as paying attention to the mind, not to the body, knowing
one’s adversary – for example, by deliberately putting them to the test–and
the power of total concentration have found their way also into Japanese
ordinary life (pp. 78–9).
In the next section, the second author traces the emergence of the third
discourse from within Japanese history and education.
The East gazing on the East: on Japanese management

philosophies
It is generally accepted among researchers that Japanese management

philosophies, in particular their influence on Japanese human resource
management (HRM) was the ‘engine’ of Japan’s economic high growth
period after the Second World War (Fukushima, 1999; Koshizuka, 1997;
Noguchi, 1995). The distinctive features of Japanese HRM include lifetime
employment, seniority-based wage system and in-house trade unions,
and are believed to have generated a suitable all-encompassing system for
promoting manufacturing and exporting (Urabe, 1978). In the medley of
Japanese HRM characteristics, one can identify several mutually conflicting
elements, such as strong hierarchy and family-like harmony. This section
explores the discursive construction of Japanese management philosophies
as emerging from a specific socio-historical and political context. It also
discusses the changing educational ideology that underlies training practices
and human resource development (HRD) in Japan. The history of Japanese
management philosophy exposes the influence of East Asian philosophies
such as Confucianism (Wakabayashi, 2001) as well as of Bushidō ( Jackson
and Tomioka, 2003, p. 197). The interplay of the two ideologies under the
socio-historical situation specific to Japan arguably underpins Japanese-style
management philosophies. This section shows how the attributes of such

philosophies developed throughout the modernization process in Japan.
Japan’s view of herself has been changing significantly since the country
opened her ports to foreign trade after centuries of national isolation
(see the introduction to this chapter). Japan viewed herself as a late-comer
to the global economy. The economy in Japan was essentially agrarian
until the late nineteenth century, when the feudal system was dismantled.
Throughout the feudal Tokugawa Shogunate (Edo period, 1603–1868), the
larger economic units were the merchant families. The production system
relied largely upon craftsmanship. The trade of daily necessities, for example,
rice and salt, was monopolized by the feudal lords (Kataoka, 1990).
In the Edo period, Japanese societal stratification distinguished between
samurai, peasants, craftsman and merchants. The Bushidō code governed
the conduct of the dominant social class, the samurai. These principles, as
discussed in the previous section, emphasized honour, courage, loyalty, self-
sacrifice, unquestionable reverence for the master and contempt for defeat.
The domination of samurai in the pre-modernization period nurtured solidar-
ity and interdependence among merchants. Although merchants developed
economic power, they were placed low in the feudal social order. The power
that merchants built upon their wealth was viewed as a potential threat to
samurai domination; strict laws concerning the display of wealth were prom-
ulgated. In order to protect themselves in a samurai-centred society, merchants
developed a system of mutual support. The social environment seems to have
stimulated the development of the notion of ‘family’ among merchants who
needed to support and protect each other (Sakumichi, Mishima, Yasuoka and
Inoue, 1980). The notion of family based on Confucianism came to shape the
development of HRM and HRD policies in the merchant class.
The Meiji restoration (1867–8) changed Japan’s political and social
structures dramatically. The social caste system was dismantled; both samurai
with political power and merchants with economic power established and
managed private companies. The government began to offer financial
support to such companies. It could be argued that the two different ideolo-
gies, of samurai and of mercantilism, converged into the foundation of the
Japanese management philosophy in the Meiji period. Hereafter, the second
author discusses the Bushidō and Confucianism influences on Japanese
management. The Bushidō philosophy was inculcated through Japanese
military training. The system yielded a military that was rigid, extremely
disciplined and unquestionably devoted (Forquer, 1995). Furthermore,
the consequences of the Sino–Japanese war (1984–5) and Russo–Japanese
War (1904–5) encouraged the Japanese empire during the colonial period
to transplant a Bushidō-like military ideology into public education. Ever
since, Bushidō has continued to influence the Japanese public education
and corporate HRD and training, well into the twentieth century (Noguchi,
1995). Bushidō was strongly enforced after Japan’s invasion of China in
The Mutual Gaze 147
1937. In keeping with Bushidō, emphasis on extreme ‘groupism’ demanded

self-sacrifice, devotion and obedience.
While the strong influence of Bushidō-style military discourse on Japanese
HRD has been much discussed in the West, indigenous studies investigating
Japanese companies claim that the Japanese company is a family-like
community that emphasizes organizational harmony and wholeness
(Moriya, 2005). Wakabayashi (2001) links the family norm of Japanese
companies with the paternalistic aspect of Confucianism:
namely, the company provided jobs, incentives, training, wage increases,

promotion, and job security, while workers demonstrated loyalty by
committing to the firm’s production goals and staying with the firm,
disregarding alternative employment opportunities elsewhere (p. 5)
Under ‘management familism’, companies became replicas of the family,

and the relationship between employer and employees was modelled on the
parent–child relationship. Such a relationship is based on the reciprocity of
benevolence and loyalty found in Confucianism.
The influence of the notion of family on training and development
systems dates back to the Edo period (1603–1868). Employees of merchants
were treated as family members. After acquiring basic literacy at Terakoya
schools (private schools in the Edo period), children, at around age ten, were
employed as apprentices (Decchi). These young apprentices lived in their
employer’s house together with the employer’s family, their supervisors and
colleagues (Yoshida, 1966). Training and development of the merchants’
employees were integrated with the recruitment system. The promotion was
based on age; when the apprentices turned 15 or 16, they were promoted to
junior employees; and to senior employees (Tedai) at 17 or 18. After working
for ten years as senior employees they were promoted to managers (Banto)
and finally to senior managers (Shihainin). On the job training (OJT) was the
dominant style of employee training (Okamoto, 1977).
The apprenticeship model of the Edo period was carried forward to the
corporate training system in the Meiji period. The corporation apprentice-
ship developed in the 1920s. The system trained 12–13 year olds as new
recruits on the job site; after work, trainees were taught academic subjects
such as mathematics and dynamics in the factory meeting rooms. The
system nurtured employees’ loyalty to the employer and the seniority-based
promotion system was integrated in the training system. The role of the
corporation apprenticeship system was highly estimated in relation to the
formation of ‘the prototype’ of the ‘Japanese Employment System’. About
40 per cent of corporate apprentice school graduates, presumably many
more after the late 1920s, were involved in the ‘Life Long Employment
System’ (Sugayama, 1985). The OJT-centred HRD tradition is still current in
Japanese companies (Kambayashi, 2003).
Emphasis on loyalty is common to both Bushidō and Confucianism, yet

the principles of hierarchy and harmony found in the Confucian notion
of family may appear as irreconcilable. However, it is the combination of
these two contrasting values that created an interesting synergy within the
Japanese business community eventually resulting in the shaping of the
Japanese management system. This system, consisting of seniority-based
wages, lifetime employment and in-house trade unions, led Japan to the
‘miraculous recovery’ (Kobayashi, 1984, p. 4) spanning from the 1950s to
the 1980s. Under this system, all new college graduates received the same
amount of salary if they were hired in the same year, and they kept receiv-
ing more or less the same amount in the next ten years (Koshizuka and
Tanaka, 2000).
The seniority-based wage system is hierarchical because age is the
determining factor of the worker’s position, and challenging elders is seen as
rebellious behaviour. At the same time, the seniority-based wage system has
family-like connotations. Everybody will be promoted equally if they stay in
the same company for a certain period of time. In-house trade unions tend
to consider their employers’ situation as well as the employees’. As a result,
most employees stay with the same company all their lives, which enables
Japanese companies to plan long-range business strategies that enhance
their competitiveness. Employees are aware that even unpaid effort, such as
small group activities, will ultimately benefit them in the long run.
The combined notion of hierarchy and family is also found in other aspects
of business life such as office design. Kidd (1999) mentions that there is no
individual space in Japanese offices even for the general managers, or bucho,
who, in large companies, work together with their 20–50 subordinates.
Whilst the bucho share the room with their subordinates, there is a marked
hierarchical distance between general managers and their subordinates.
The characteristics of Japanese management also contributed to develop
a ‘groupist’ identity among employees (Kobayashi, 1984; Koshizuka, 1997).
Such identity was indispensable for the success of the autonomous small
group activity system, which aims to improve production efficiency. This
system is variously called ‘Small Group Activities’, Kaizen, or ‘Quality
Control’ (Koshizuka and Tanaka, 2000).
Participants in such group activities are not paid. Usually the small groups
meet after working hours and discuss every possible measure to decrease
the defection rate, to increase productivity and to enhance safety. It could
be argued that the success of these small group activities is built upon
a combination of mutually conflicting Japanese educational ideologies,
namely ‘traditional morality’, including hierarchy, loyalty, obedience and
diligence, as well as harmony. The embedded Bushidō code promotes the self-
sacrificing attitude necessary to join small group activities, and Confucius
familism fosters the ownership of company problems by the employees.
This restrictive normative system exercises pressure on those who leave the
The Mutual Gaze 149
workplace without participating in small group activities. They are viewed

as non-conformists. The people who think and act differently from other
employees are thought to hinder high productivity. Corporate employees
are all supposed to act according to the same organizational values.
The East gaze on the West: adopting and adapting
During Japan’s early modernization process, the West was seen as a rich
resource of managerial knowledge and technology advanced capitalism.
In 1870, the government clearly stated that learning from the West was
to be a national policy. Conventional business and accounting practices
were replaced with Western practices. The Meiji government instituted a
European-style banking system. The idea of management was influenced
by German management studies (Kataoka, 1990). Japanese politicians and
capitalists were eager to learn from the West, namely from the British,
French and Germans, and later from the Americans, in order to fill the gap
between Japan and other industrialized countries.
The notion of scientific management was introduced in the 1910s (Ueno,
1955). The management system advocated in Taylor’s The Principle of
Scientific Management (1967) was implemented in 1915 in the Tokyo Niigata
Tekkoujo factory, a machinery manufacturer (Ueno, 1993, p. 147). American
management scientists were invited to lecture Japanese managers on how
capitalists used human labour effectively (Ueno, 1993, pp. 140–1). The
Japanese did not simply apply Western principles and lessons. Instead, they
modified and adapted them to the Japanese work environment. One of the
earliest attempts of such a modification process is seen in the formation
of the Kamaishi mining-manufacturing community. The technology was
transplanted from the British mining industry, but was modified to fit the
traditional Japanese craftsman organization. Such policy is called Wakon
yōsai, that is, Japanese spirit with Western learning.
Before and during the Second World War, The Japanese Colonial Empire
viewed the West as competitors. Antagonism towards Western countries
swept out the elements of Western management philosophy and replaced
it with military-based traditional morality in order to maximize Japan’s
limited resources (including people, finance and natural resources). Most
Western loan words were replaced with Japanese words. The West was
imperial Japan’s enemy from which the country needed to cut itself loose.
Free from the ties with Western superpowers, the Japanese Colonial Empire
envisioned the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as an autocratic
bloc of Asian nations. The ethnocentric idea of Japan’s cultural superiority
over other Asian races fired the Japanese government’s ambition of leader-
ship over the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Because of the strong presence of the American-led occupation of Japan
after the Second World War, in the post-war period the West became
identified with the United States. The continuing influence of the United
States as the largest importer of Japanese products was evident in manage-
ment, training and development, and public education. After the Second
World War Japanese education reforms were initiated by the Monbusho
(Ministry of Education) and the occupation forces. The basic aim was
to decentralize and democratize the educational administrative system
by sweeping away the ultra-nationalist influences that had dominated
the pre-war Japanese education system. Some key features of the reform
included the abolition of state-sanctioned sex discrimination, provision of
correspondence courses, offer of financial aid and extension of compulsory
education to nine years. Since the equal opportunity policy in education
was expected to help revitalize Japan, people from various social classes
welcomed the reform philosophy (MacVeigh, 2000).
Despite the changes, remains of a deep-rooted, pre-Second World War
military-based educational ideology were carried through to the education
reform (MacVeigh, 2000; Tachibana, 2002). In fact, quite a few officials
involved in the education reform did not want to sacrifice ‘traditional
morality’–the integration of Confucianism and Bushidō spirits, for example,
hierarchy, loyalty, obedience, harmony and diligence–in the name of
‘Western egalitarianism’ forced upon Japan by the American Occupation
Army (Schoppa, 1991). Schoppa (1991), Noguchi (1995) and Tachibana
(2002) point out that the Japanese military ideology was strongly influential
of Japanese education around the 1940s and is still present in today’s
Japanese education and training systems.
The American-style ‘democratization’ of the public education system
was reflected also in Japanese HRD philosophy. American training and
education programmes, such as ‘Training within Industry for Supervisors’,
‘Management Training Program’ and ‘Civil Communication Section
Management Program’, were widely used to train Japanese managers
(Ueno, 1993, p. 148). However, because of the spirit of Wakon yōsai, the
Japanese HRD ideology did not copy American HRD but instead developed
into a distinct ideology combined with the pre-war traditional morality,
which implicitly underlay the public education discourse. As already
mentioned, traditional morality emphasized self-sacrifice, team orienta-
tion and the development of workers’ identity as ‘owners’ of the company.
The Japanese workers’ attributes developed under the Japanese HRD ideol-
ogy made it possible to lay the strong technological foundation for the
massive post-war technology transfer from the US and Western Europe
(Chen, 2004).
Japan’s ability to adapt to existing technological change developed under
Japanese-style HRM, which is an umbrella notion of various aspects of
people management, including distinctive HRD. These principles facilitated
the absorption of external notions while allowing the rapid development
of strong Japanese competition against the originator of technology. For
The Mutual Gaze 151
example, one of the key factors of Japanese industrial development, total

quality control, was the result of a modification of Deming’s quality man-
agement (Ueno, 1993, p. 149). The well-known manufacturing process just
in time (JIT) was the result of a Japanese engineer’s inspiration following his
investigation of inventory control processes in an American supermarket,
where empty shelves and space or gaps constitute the ‘trigger’ mechanism
for shop assistants to replace products (Sangyo Gijutsu Kinenkan, 2008).
In 1970, Japan recorded much higher productivity gains in the
manufacturing sector than those of its Western competitors. Its gross
national product (GNP) surpassed that of West Germany and Japan became
the second world economic power. A large number of studies that observed
the Japanese management system through Western perspectives were under-
taken (Dale, 1986). Vogel (1979) argues that the Japanese management system
was key to explaining Japan’s economic growth. The question of whether or
not the Japanese management system can be transplanted to other countries
remained unanswered. Ouchi (1981) describes the Japanese workers’ deep
involvement in management and shows how it can be adapted to American
companies using his Z theory. He offers a set of managerial prescriptions and
concludes that both East and West are converging on a Z-style organization,
which is not dependent on Japanese cultural norms. However, the current
general agreement is that cross-national transfer needs negotiation of local
values (Saka, 2003). The Japanese management system, when transplanted,
needs to be modified before being applied in other contexts.
The bursting of the bubble economy in Japan followed by the financial
crisis in Asia brought pressures on Japanese companies to transform them-
selves. It is argued that Japanese management is suitable for high growth
periods but, in case of economic stagnation, its competitive advantage
changes to weakness. The weakness of the Japanese management system
became especially evident in the late 1990s. Some of Japan’s competitive
advantage was lost, while the disadvantages of Japanese management began
to outweigh the advantages, even within Japan. Under such economic
circumstances, the West appeared to be ‘rescuing’ Japanese companies: for
example, Nissan sought a strategic alliance with Renault, as did Mazda with
Ford. Both companies appointed a Western president who was expected to
dispose of the unclear conventions that Japanese complex relationship had
accumulated over time. Inviting Western managers onto their boards was
seen by Japanese companies as an effective counter-measure to deal with
the new, fast-pace economy. However, business corporations, both in the
East and West, have also been affected by the world-wide financial crisis.
Neither Eastern nor Western style management have thus far been able, or
interested (?), to respond creatively to the moral challenges posed by the
fatally wounded ‘new world order’. Who knows, the international crisis
might spur the competitive spirit of the ‘mutual gaze’ towards charting new
grounds in management practice.
Conclusion: Looking again at the ‘gaze’
In her illuminating introduction to this book, Nair-Venugopal probes the

issues and challenges raised by the ambitious scope of the collection. She is
particularly generous towards the current chapter in her perceptively critical
treatment of Eurocentric discourses and of Japan’s rapport with the West. In
this sense, her reflections set the scholarly scene for our own engagement
with the topic of the volume whilst also providing stimuli for considering
the possible implications of the mutuality of the ‘gaze’.
Firstly, the discussion of select discursive flows in this chapter clearly
recognizes ‘the historical resonance …, pragmatic disposition and utilitar-
ian philosophy of profitable enterprise’ (Nair-Venugopal, Introduction, this
volume, p.1) that characterize the trading of technology and management
ideas between East (in our case, Japan) and West (in our case, the US and
the UK). The ‘adopt and adapt’ praxis that underlies the economic success
of Japan can be traced back, for example, to the drive for practical learn-
ing to achieve mastery in the given discipline as described in Bushidō,
itself inspired by a blend of ancient sources, many exogenous to Japan.
The ‘mystery’ (Cleary, 1999) that Japan continues to represent in a certain
(romantic?) Western tapestry of Eastern mythology could be represented as a
consequence of the persisting ‘idea of Europe’ that decentralizes and isolates
the Other. In the case of Japan, this attitude played on her claim to ‘unique-
ness’, flaunted by nihonjinron (or studies of the Japanese), as well as on her
historical ambition of supremacy within a hypothetical Pan-Asian project.
Wakon yōsai was Japan’s pragmatic and utilitarian response to the challenge
to match and surpass the technological advances of the West.
Secondly, in the cumulative effort of two different voices merging as one in
this chapter, we have deliberately chosen a discursive approach that affords
the freedom of engaging in critical dialogue with select original sources from
a range of disciplines. In so doing, we sought to embrace the epistemology
proposed by the Introduction; we, too, attempted to ‘engage’ without any pre-
tence of ‘fixing’ (Nair-Venugopal, this volume), while continuously animated
by the tantalizing possibilities disclosed by the mutual gaze. Such mutuality,
which is not unmitigated imitation, nor facile enthusiasm, nor acquiescence,
is instead fundamentally political: even a cursory look at the history of the
relations between Japan and the West reveals the extent of (mutual) interests
that entangled governments and its peoples in often less than salubrious
deals, if not outright war. Aware of the hegemonic streak of the ‘mutual gaze’,
the deliberate choice of a hermeneutic approach to interpretation adopted
in this chapter was intended to safeguard each author’s voice (his or her
‘horizon’) whilst permitting an eventual co-existence in the form of intersect-
ing, though never mutually-eliding, discourses. Each author came to embody
two particular discourses, the engagement with which amply drew from the
experiential baggage of each person as a historically-situated interpreter.
The Mutual Gaze 153
Thirdly, and finally, the mutuality of the ‘gaze’ revealed by the two-
way direction of influence, at least in the areas of business management
and training, suggests a decisive move away from what may now appear
simplistic characterizations of the West as almost ‘naturally’ and exclusively
hegemonic and the East(ernization) being ‘under siege’. Admittedly,
Westernization (Americanization?) is quite visible in contemporary Japan,
but if the very mixed fate of Japanese imports by Western management
praxis (without necessary adaptation) is anything to go by, we need not
worry yet about a possible Easternization of Western management and
training philosophies and practices.
Notes
1. We would like to express our gratitude to Thomas Price Caldwell (Professor in the
International Studies Department, Meisei University) and Sandra Harris (Professor
Emeritus, School of Humanities, Nottingham Trent University) for their comments
and suggestions on an earlier draft of our chapter.
2. This is the title of a 1980 NBC documentary, which according to Robert Heller,
a leading management writer, marked the beginning of the cult for Japanese
management principles in the US (http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/
management/japanese-management.php, accessed on 7 July 2009).
3. Further detail on the advantages and limitations of this approach are discussed in
Bargiela-Chiappini (2009).
4. It is the well-known Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account
of the Destruction of the Indies, or The Tears of the Indians), published in 1542.
5. Nitobe, I. (1899) Bushidō. The Soul of Japan, p. 56.
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10
Indian Collectivism Revisited:
Unpacking the Western Gaze
Shamala Paramasivam and Shanta Nair-Venugopal
Introduction
The terms individualism and collectivism are culture-general constructs

that have distinct elements. Numerous studies in business and workplace
communication give the impression that collectivism and individualism
are universal; the former usually used to describe Eastern cultures especially
Japanese, Korean, Chinese, but also Indian, and the latter to describe
North American and North Western European cultures such as the British,
French, German and Nordic. Asians are generally viewed homogenously
as collectivist across cultures, despite much variation and differences in
context dependent cultural practices. There have been studies that examine
collectivism emically from culture-specific contexts, such as those of India
(Dumont, 1970; Marriott, 1976; Daniel, 1984) and Japan (Hamaguchi, 1985).
However, attempts to understand collectivism from an emic perspective
have not resulted in descriptions that differ very much from a culture-
general understanding of the term either. The term ‘across cultures’ may
even be dangerous as such applications deny ‘the uniqueness of (the) phe-
nomena and the context dependency of (the) meaning and interpretation’
of the occurrences (Bargiela-Chiappini, 2005, p. 220).
We suggest that the Western gaze on collectivism in Asia, as the East,
continues to remain essentialist as it is not fully observant of the praxes
of collectivism in Asia. While we do not dispute that, in general, collec-
tivism characterizes Asian cultures, we attempt to provide a contextually
dependent perspective to demonstrate that collectivist practices are actually
realized differently and manifested variously within the broader spectrum
of Asian cultures, such as that of the Indian Hindu, for instance. We focus
on the religio-cultural aspects of being an Indian Hindu in relation to the
culture-general phenomenon of Indian collectivism to contribute to an
understanding of the social praxes of work and business in a culturally
dependent Indian context.
156
Indian Collectivism Revisited 157
Collectivism and individualism
Collectivism is generally understood as
a social pattern consisting of closely linked individuals who see themselves

as parts of one or more collectives (family, co-workers, tribe, nation); are
primarily motivated by the norms of, and duties imposed by those col-
lectives; are willing to give priority to the goals of these collectives over
their own personal goals; and emphasize their connectedness to members
of these collectives (Triandis, 1995, p. 2).
Individualism is described as
a social pattern that consists of loosely linked individuals who view

themselves as independent of collectives; are primarily motivated by
their own preferences, needs, rights, and the contracts they have estab-
lished with others; give priority to their personal goals over the goals of
others; emphasize rational analyses of the advantages and disadvantages
to associating with others (Triandis, 1995, p. 2).
Table 10.1 shows a generalization of the values usually attributed to collectiv-

ist and individualist cultures in the literature that is available (see Hofstede,
1984, 2001, 1991, 2005; Triandis, 1995; Gibson, 2002; Nisbett, 2003; Chaney
and Martin, 2007).
The Western gaze
The Indian as a collectivist

The general Western perception of Indians is that they are collectivist in
nature; that they value collective identities especially of caste and family
Table 10.1 Generalization of values attributed to collectivist and individualist cultures
Collectivist cultures Individualist cultures
a high regard for others; the self is primary;

social harmony and consensus are the self is a free agent;
ultimate goals;
relationships prevail over task; tasks prevail over relationships;
opinions are predetermined by group the individual has distinctive attributes;
membership;
behaviour is regulated through shame personal goals of success and achievement
or loss of face; are concerns;
hierarchical and status-oriented; equality of treatment is desired;
in-groups and out-groups are do not distinguish between in-groups and
distinguished. out-groups.
and that the collective interests of these groups prevail over individual
wants (Dumont, 1970; Hofstede, 1984, 2001). Dumont (1970), for instance,
describes India as a hierarchical society with an emphasis on caste-based divi-
sions of labour that create interdependence between collectives. Brahmins sit
at the top of the system and the untouchables (known interchangeably as
Dalits too) anchor the bottom. Other than caste, an Indian’s identity is also
viewed as realized within groups such as the family, village and society itself.
Even today, in largely traditional societies, such as India is considered to be,
‘the stress is placed on the society as a whole, as collective Man’ where ‘each
particular man in his place must contribute to the global order of society’
(Dumont, 1970, p. 9). Value is placed on the order of society rather than
on individual affairs. Actions are guided by what benefits and maintains
groups and their interdependence rather than by individual motivations and
self-interests.
Hofstede (1984, 2001) reports that Indian culture is of high power distance
and Indians respect hierarchy with deference to elders and centralized
decision making with the head of the group being the primary decision
maker, while in-group and out-group membership determines how Indians
relate to one another. Within in-groups it is observed that Indians tend to
maintain good relationships and cooperate with, take care of and make
sacrifices for each other.
The Indian as a ‘dividual’

Marriott (1976) makes an observation (in Mines, 1994) that at the interper-
sonal level of Indian collectivism, an Indian is not an individual. This is
not so much because the Indian is a holistic-collectivist, but rather because
each person is a ‘dividual’ or divisible being and the person is a composite
of transferable particles that form his or her personal substance. A person
supposedly absorbs and gives out particles of substances – ‘essences, residues,
or other active influences’ in interpersonal transactions or contact ‘that may
then reproduce in others something of the nature of the persons in whom
they have originated’ (Marriott, 1976, p. 111). So, for instance, when an
Indian cooks, it is believed that some of the cook’s personal ‘substance’ is
transferred into the food and absorbed by the consumer. Likewise, a woman
takes on the qualities of her husband and her husband hers, as they engage
in a variety of transactions that involve bodily contact and intimacy with
each other. In short, Marriott is of the view that an Indian is misrepresented
if depicted as an individual.
In expanding on Marriott’s notion of the Indian dividual, Daniel (1984)
declares that as a consequence of the Indian’s divisible nature, the central
issue of being Indian is the search for a state of equilibrium. Motivated to
achieve a substance–mind balance, an Indian seeks to search for balances
not only in substances but also in relationships. So an Indian will not eat
food that is considered ‘cool’ if he believes that he has a cool body for, even
if the food is served hot, it will accentuate his own ‘coolness’ and cause him
to catch a cold. Such balances are taken into consideration even more seri-
ously in the search for a suitable spouse by comparing the Vedic astrological
readings of a couple to establish the compatibility of the two individuals for
marriage as a Hindu couple.
Thus, the Western gaze on Indian collectivism has produced alternative
views to the essentialist ones; that the Indian is a dividual rather than an
individual; that there is no individualism in the Indian culture (Marriott,
1976; Daniel, 1984); that the self is constantly transferred and transformed in
dealings with others in an iterative search for states of balance, compatibility
and equilibrium in life. By and large, however, prevailing views of collectivism
continue to homogenize Indians, as they do other Asians, whose actions, as
members of a culture, are seen to be motivated by the interests of the collec-
tive rather than by the self-interests of individuals (Dumont, 1970; Hofstede,
1984, 2001).
Unpacking Indian collectivism
The Indian Hindu

In contrast to the generalized views of Indians as collectivists, other per-
spectives argue for individualism as an integral facet of Indian collectivism
(Appadurai, 1986; Kumar, 2004; Mines, 1994). The latter note, that, although
Indians are generally collectivist in nature, individualist orientations lie at
the heart of the sense of self. For instance, the Indian Hindus’ collective
identity is not wholly collectivist but a mixture of individualism and collec-
tivism. While collective individualism depicts the collective Indian identity,
individuality commingles with and is inseparable from an Indian’s sense of
collective identity (Mines, 1994, p. 3). This phenomenon can be understood
through an appreciation of Hindu culture and religion and its effect on the
mental schema of Indian Hindus.
At the heart of Hinduism is the belief in an ultimate supreme reality
viewed as the realization of the absolute truth, with an emphasis on the
importance of seeking it. This ultimate reality has no name and no form
and is the realization of truth as an ideal. Each soul seeks to uncover this
truth, finally reaching the pinnacle of consciousness where man and God
are one. Termed Brahman, this ultimate reality is understood as ‘the nature
of truth, knowledge and infinity’ (Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, 1990, p. 194).
The soul continues to reincarnate until Brahman or this God-realization is
attained, after which the soul is liberated in its enlightenment. In Hinduism,
asceticism is a pathway towards achieving this ultimate goal of Brahman or
God-realization and salvation or moksa through an austere life of abstinence
of the body, mind and speech from worldly pleasures. Asceticism is the
basis of the individual’s spiritual journey, regardless of caste.
Based on Khare’s (1984) observation of the Untouchables or low castes

of Chamar in Lucknow, North India, Appadurai (1986) challenges the
Dumontian (mainly) and Marxist views on Untouchables. Appadurai notes
that far from being fettered by the hierarchy of caste, they ‘place themselves’
in ‘an articulate world view’ (1985, p. 751) in which they hold an ideology
of self that transcends the hierarchical system of caste. Individualism in this
context is that of the ascetic and goes beyond the social boundary of caste.
The individual in this respect refers to the spiritual individual whose soul is
both permanent and transcendental, and not to the physical person. The
individual, thus, exists in sameness and in equality with other individuals
although they may simultaneously exist differently and unequally in relation
to one another in a society that is ordered hierarchically by caste. The self is
conceived of as the same as and equal to all other individuals even if the par-
ticular individual, as a member of the wider community, is on the lowest rung
of the caste system. This scheme of equality and sameness is embedded within
an Indic (Indian) understanding of asceticism where the spiritual individual
is the ‘critical unit’ that represents ‘a dynamic copy of the Universal Spirit’.
The ‘ascetic’, derived from this Indic scheme of equality, is the ‘individual’
who ‘best represents the untouchable model of individuality’ (ibid.). Thus,
while the untouchables of Chamar are subject to the hierarchical order of
Hindu society, they also exist simultaneously as individuals, equal to others
in spirit, outside Hindu orthodoxy, in relation to the Indic ideals of ascetism.
As a result of this realization that the self is an inherent aspect of the indi-
vidual’s transcendental soul, the Chamars of Lucknow are able to transcend
caste and mainstream dedication to its hierarchy. As Appadurai notes (p. 752),
they do so ‘in a way that continues to relate them to the mainstream (as its
conscience), to Brahmans (as their moral alter egos) and to the rest of Hindu
society (as the guardians of a renunciatory ideal all Hindus value)’. Thus,
despite being socially subject to the hierarchy of the caste system as abject
individuals, they, however, see themselves spiritually the same as, as well as
equal to, the individuals in higher castes. This is because of the belief in a
permanent and transcendental soul that can be liberated from the earthly
trappings of the physical body and the hierarchical social order of caste.
Kumar (2004) posits that the Indian Hindu mindset reflects both a
‘Brahmanical idealism’ (p. 42) and an ‘anarchical individualism’ (p. 45).
The former focuses on the purity of the inner world and in uncovering the
ultimate reality, no matter how difficult, while the latter places primacy on
individuals attaining the desired ideal through rigid adherence to absolutist
forms of interpersonal behaviour. The overall impact of Brahmanical ideal-
ism and anarchical individualism is a mindset that encourages the individual
to strive for ideals or perfection while simultaneously recognizing that this
attainment may be difficult and even impossible. Kumar explains that
this mindset is the reason for the individualistic streak in Indian Hindus,
and, indeed, perhaps in all Indians.1 Thus, Indian individualism from the
ascetic and Brahmanical perspectives conceives of the individual as an

independent entity, on a free and equal footing with others. The idealistic
mode of thinking and the rigidity in pursuing high ideals reflect autonomy
in thought and behaviour, but it is the freedom with the equality to pursue
views and opinions that gives the Hindu Indian the agency to transcend and
equalize him or herself with others.
Indian Hindu individuality

Mines’ (1994) views Indian Hindu individuality as part of the Indian Hindu
collectivity too; as individuality has to do with identity or who a person
is. This individuality has both an exterior (public) and interior (private)
dimension. The exterior or public dimension involves what others know
about the individual, particularly his or her reputation. This is an estimation
of who he or she is in the eyes of others with regard to character, actions,
achievements, roles, statuses, connections, influence and agency. A person’s
individuality is, thus, also determined by what others know about him or
her. It is captured in Indian culture in the individual’s eminence within
groups where it is understood as an individual’s uniqueness and the result
of generosity. Generosity is recognized as an individual attribute that is
achieved through serving others, whereby an individual establishes and
maintains relationships. In return, the individual is appreciated and is
imbued with eminence by his constituents. Generosity is associated with
the tradition of service (sewa) within Indian culture and it is a highly valued
feature especially of leaders. There are a number of leadership terms in the
Tamil language, for instance, that convey pre-eminence and prestige, such
as ‘headman (talaivar), big man (periyar), big gift-giver (periyadanakaarar), the
premier landlord or wealthiest person of the locale, eminent man among
men (nambi)’ synonymous to the English terms ‘bigshot’ and ‘boss’ but
which differ semantically from the English meanings of the word (Mines,
1994, p. 14). In the Tamil culture, as a sub-set within ‘Indian’ culture, these
terms connote the ideal for altruistic service and the accompanying appre-
ciation and respect for such service.
The interior or private dimension of individuality, on the other hand, is
located within the person. It is the individual’s understanding of self; ‘self-
awareness, self-interest, motivations, agency, goals and choices, a sense of
life-course, and a reflexive sense of separation from and involvement with
others, as well as a person’s sense of mediating this polarity’ (Mines, 1994,
p. 12). Individuality, in the private dimension, however, is circumscribed
by standards of civic character, which emphasize harmonious relationships
and personal traits valued by society, such as generosity. Cultural definition
and the evaluation of character traits within the group restrict individuality
in the private dimension. This means that an individual is not free to be
him/herself as he or she pleases because the group(s) to which that person
belongs limits his or her individuality within society. Character defined
in terms of public standards, such as generosity, reliability, honesty and

so on, determines civic individuality (public dimension) and these public
standards regulate goals and responsibilities set by the individual (private
dimension). Self is, thus, moderated by the public. The public and private
dimensions of self are, therefore, closely intertwined with Indian Hindu
individuality located within an individual (a person’s own awareness of
self) as well as in the perceptions others have of the individual (society’s
judgement). The private interior self intersects with the social exterior self,
in terms of relationships with others, social positions and actions in society.
Individuality is embedded in its collectivity.
Manifestations of this type of individuality and collectivity are evident
within the social praxis of Indians in the contexts of business and the work-
place. From the outset, however, these practices appear to be collectivist, for
the Indian values of individuality and collectivity that underlie the practices
are not apparent to the gazer. Mines (1994, p. 15) notes that ‘institutions are
highly personalized in India, much more than in the West, where corporate
bureaucracy mutes the roles of specific individuals. Individuality is actually
more critical to the viability of Indian institutions than Western ones’. This
is because Indians believe they should be able to circumvent bureaucratic
red tape and approach the head of an institution directly as a human being
who is open to appeals for assistance.
Indian Hindu collective individualism

Mines (1994) illustrates how a loan was obtained in India in the context
of Indian business and banking that illustrates Indian Hindu collective
individualism at work. The younger brother (Tambi) of a wealthy and
well-connected businessman in Madras (Chennai now), and his three close
friends, needed a loan to start a business manufacturing tubular aluminium
furniture in the city. So, Tambi approached his elder brother (Annan), who
had close contacts with business moguls through membership in a men’s
club for business and government elite, and a religious group (with influ-
ential business friends) that makes annual pilgrimages to a particular place
of worship. Annan arranged for Tambi to obtain a loan from a private lend-
ing society that his friend owned. Tambi and his partners found a place to
manufacture the product in an industrial estate in Madras run by the state
government. They knew competition to obtain a lease would be stiff, so they
approached Annan again who put them in touch with a friend who was
the deputy director in the Department of Industries and Commerce, which
administered leases in that estate. They succeeded in obtaining the lease.
With a fixed capital loan and the lease, Tambi and his partners then applied
to the State Bank of India to obtain a working capital loan for the business.
They obtained it as the bank only required that the applicants be university
graduates with a viable business project. The business progressed and the
fixed capital loan was repaid to the lending society within a year. However,
the working capital loan was recalled by the State Bank of India because
Tambi and his partners could not repay the loan. They approached several
banks to finance a capital loan to repay the bank but were unsuccessful as
their enterprise was considered a bad risk for a new loan. Tambi approached
Annan again who put him in touch with the chairman of a leading bank
who was a member of the same caste (Nagarattars) and known to Annan
through frequent business dealings. That the chairman approved the loan
without much fuss is symptomatic, as Mines (ibid.) observes, of prominent
Hindu men of caste who as leaders help fellow caste members.
Trust-based relationships, caste-based loyalties and connections with men
of influence are all quite clearly important for doing business in this con-
text. The established men in the narrative were the chairman of the Bank
of Madurai and the deputy director in the Department of Industries and
Commerce. They enacted the roles of ‘big-men’ because of their pre-eminent
power and control of desired resources and services to clientele. As a result of
their eminence, they were able to wield substantial influence among the other
prominent men, such as Annan who as one of the ‘bigmen’s lieutenants’ can
also affect the outcome of events although his influence is subordinate to
the chairman’s or the deputy director’s. Nevertheless, his own constituency
incorporates Tambi and his partners. The latter become members of Thambi’s
constituency because his connections make him their benefactor. Tambi, in
turn, is a member of the constituencies of the chairman and the deputy direc-
tor, through Annan. The bonds joining the men in each instance are based
on personal trust rather than bureaucratic ties. The business encounter reveals
how the public individuality of the persons involved (Chairman of the Bank
of Madurai, Deputy Director of the Department of Industries and Commerce,
the older brother Annan and the younger, Tambi), in terms of their social
positions and personal public traits (of generosity, trustworthiness, reliability
and so on) as good men, interweave with the ties between them as members
of their collectives (members of the same family, caste, club, religious group
and business enterprise) to affect work and business. Clearly Tambi’s success
was the result of Annan’s stature and ties with men of eminence in business,
facilitated by caste loyalties and some elements of business cronyism.
The practices above, also appear to hold true for clan or familial ties in
other groups and communities (inclusive of diasporas), for instance, the
Chinese (see Ong, 1999). The motivation, however, in the Indian context
appears to have its roots in the Indian values of honouring (and perhaps
even valourizing) the reputation and generosity of the individual (individ-
ual identity), with the simultaneous concern for caste, familial and personal
relationships with constituents (collective identity).
The globalized Indian

Both the Indic ideal of asceticism and a mindset governed by ‘Brahmanical
idealism’ and ‘anarchical individualism’, is manifested in the Indian Hindu’s
ability to transcend a disadvantaged position of subservience and equalize

with the dominant other. This ability appears to operate in India’s phe-
nomenal success in the globalized workplace as a leader in the proliferating
Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) and Business Processing
Outsourcing (BPO) industries. The ITES and BPO industries provide inter-
national business communication support in credit card inquiries, product
orders, billings and collections, insurance claims, medical transcriptions,
invoices and payrolls and so on for Western business corporations particularly
in the US and UK (Upadhya and Vasavi, 2009; Nickerson, 2010).
Research on Indian call centres indicates work practices that show the
emergence of a cultural politics that is reflective of Western colonialism
and imperialism (Mirchandani, 2004; Shome, 2006). For instance, language
training programmes in Indian call centres aim to neutralize Indian accents
in order to be intelligible to Western customers, as in the Americanization
of the English of call centre workers. As Shome (2006, p. 108) notes, the
control of language, voice and accent is ‘cultural neutralization’. It is reflec-
tive of racism that occurs through aurality, since Indians are required to
de-Indianize and take on an American linguistic identity. The practice
reflects ‘transnational governmentality’ (p. 110) where the Indian is literally
erased and reconstructed in the servicing of the global economy. In adopting
an American identity, Indian workers are also required to display ‘locational
masking’ and ‘cultural mimicry’ (Mirchandani, 2004, p. 361) where they
role play American identities while assuming American aliases along with a
fictional American family by way of names, occupations and locality. In the
example that Shome provides, a typical Southern Indian name
Balasubramanyan … becomes Betty Coulter … a 21-year old college

graduate, with a management degree from Illinois … likes wearing bell-
bottom jeans and is an avid fan of Friends and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Her fictional parents are Irish immigrants Robert and Della Grace, who
reside in Illinois and her brother is James, a 15-year old. (2006, p. 117)
Call centre work also involves ‘colonization of time’ (Mirchandani, 2004,

p. 363) where workers work on American daytime hours of about a 12–15
hour difference with Indian time, which requires Indians to work at night
and sleep in the day. Additionally, these workers are required to talk and
behave like ‘keyed toys’ (Mirchandani, 2004, p. 359) relying on the use of
standardized service scripts to deal with customers. This is closely monitored
by supervisors as a central mechanism of control. In effect, Indian call
centre workers live and work in India, but organize their lives on Western
terms: speak with Western accents and adopt Western communication
styles, work on Western time, take on Western celebrations, festivals and
holidays. In sum, they ‘live’ double identities, Indian and Western, both of
which function simultaneously.
Shome (2006) observes that Indian call centre workers experience

numerous ailments and illnesses, such as fatigue-related diseases, psycho-
logical conditions related to stress, tension, anxiety, mental health problems
and a confusion of identity as result of the call centre work culture. This
begs the question, then, of why do Indians subject themselves to these work
practices? And how do they deal with the work crisis? Mirchandani (2004)
argues that it is because Indian call centre jobs pay very well. Young men
and women are able to take home salaries that their parents cannot even
dream of at retirement. Additionally, although Indians are subjected to
imperialist practices at the call centres, they are simultaneously able to ‘dis-
rupt the narrative of globalization from above’ and ‘enhance their quality
of life vis-à-vis transnational capitalism’ (Mirchandani, 2003, pp. 18–19) in
two ways. She refers to them as the ‘cracks’ or ‘gaps’ in the practices of global
capital at transnational call centres in India (Mirchandani, 2004, p. 355).
Firstly, Indians situate themselves and have an awareness of the place of
their work in the global world order. In learning to be Westerners they learn
about global labour markets and make comparisons between Indian and
Western call centres that give them an awareness of the place of their work
in relation to Western labour markets and the global economy. This aware-
ness allows them to resist the rhetoric of call centre work and challenge
employer definitions of their work as skilled, privileged, prestigious and
desirable, and defy their construction as a passive and grateful workforce,
thereby ‘“crafting” themselves in the light of “shifting fields of power”’
(Mirchandani, 2004, p. 370, citing Kondo 1990). Secondly, Indians construct
and reconstruct Americans as ‘rich but stupid’ and this rhetoric allows them
‘to pity rather than revere’ their Western customers (Mirchandani, 2004,
p. 363). Call centre staff elaborate,
Americans don’t know anything about computers. … if you say to

them, just go to the start button, they will not be able to find the start
button. … And sometimes people are … talking about the trouble shoot-
ing steps and they are not sitting in front of their computers. [They say]
I’m not able to see anything. And then we ask, are you sitting in front of
your computer? He said, No, I’m not sitting in front of my computer. My
God! (Mirchandani, 2004, p. 362).
In the process of cultural mimicry, Indians begin to realize that while

Western customers have high incomes they have little knowledge and that
nationality overrides class boundaries where ‘highly educated Indian work-
ers employed in middle class white collar occupations are often serving lower
class poorly educated American callers’ (ibid.). By constructing ‘Americans’
and situating their jobs within global labour markets they ‘attempt to live
with industrial systems without losing their human dignity’ (Mirchandani,
2004, p. 363, citing Ong, 1991). Therein lies the Indian individual’s ability
to persevere against the odds (Western capitalist markets and systems) in

pursuing a desired goal (a job) through which the individual transcends a
disadvantaged position (of subservience) to one of equality (with the domi-
nant other). Like the Untouchables of Lucknow, the call centre workers are
able to transcend experienced and perceived inequality by basically defying
the status quo of circumscribed and presumed indignity respectively.
Summary
Our perspective on Indian collectivism demonstrates that individualism
is a part of the collective identity. We discuss two aspects of Indian indi-
vidualism. Firstly we look at it from the culturally dependent context of
the Hindu religion and culture. There are two dimensions that are defined
by this context. There is the aspect of individualism from the Indic ideal
of asceticism (Appadurai, 1986). There is also the mindset that reflects
both a ‘Brahmanical idealism’ (p. 42) and an ‘anarchical individualism’
(Kumar, 2004) where the individual is in apposition to others individually
or collectively. In this context the individual is viewed as free, independent
and equal with others, and is quite capable of conduct that contrasts with
the norms of Indian collectivity, such as the caste system.
Secondly, individualism is defined in relation to relationships borne out
with others, and vice versa, as part of the collectivity, since individuality is
about identity or who a person is to others (Mines, 1994).
Conclusion
Triandis (1995) notes that collectivism and individualism are present in all
cultures but in different combinations and that many factors determine how
the constructs operate – mainly with regard to those of language, history and
geography, all of which impact on culture. We argue that different combi-
nations of collectivism and individualism lead to differences in the way in
which the phenomena are realized and manifested in cultures. We show
how collectivism and individualism work in the context of Indian Hindu
culture through an appreciation of the ways of thinking and reasoning
within it. Clearly the realizations and manifestations of these constructs in
Indian Hindu culture may differ not only in the diaspora, such as that of
Malaysia (where Indian Hindu culture has been in contact with indigenous
and other cultures), but also in India itself, with its tremendous regional
diversity. Investigations of how Indian Hindu collectivism and individual-
ism function in contact with other cultures in the international arenas of
work and business, and in intercultural situations with other cultures such
as those of the Malays and Chinese in Malaysia, for instance, can yield
alternative perspectives to Western understandings of the phenomena.
To illustrate, the Malays in Malaysia are described as collectivistic with
a high regard for power hierarchy (Dahlan, 1990; Asma Abdullah, 1996)
but more recent socio-political developments suggest that individualism

among Malays has increased in the past few decades. Lim’s (2001) study
on work-related values of Malays and Chinese Malaysians, for instance,
showed that both groups, although considered collectivist traditionally,
exhibit work values that reflect individualism. The study, however, employed
Hofstede’s (1991) work-related values in analysing the behaviour of both
groups. So collectivism based on Confucianism was considered the normative
tradition in the Chinese community without taking into account Chinese
individualism with its roots in Taoism and the individualist thinking of
Lao Zi. Another study (Wong, 2001) examined collectivism and individualism
in the workplace in China, mainly using Hofstede’s (1991) categories again, to
describe individualist and collectivist behaviours.
McSweeney (2002) argues that Hofstede’s (1991) model of national culture
is based on fallacious assumptions of culture as the core or nucleus of a
nation, territorially unique and shared by, or common to, all individuals
within a nation. It is viewed as extreme, singular and only allowing for uni-
level analysis and ‘precludes consideration of interplay between macroscopic
and microscopic cultural levels’ (p. 113). Instead of assuming ‘national
uniformity … that is the essentialist notion of national culture, we need to
engage with and use theories of action which can cope with change, power,
variety, and multiple influences – including the non-national – and the
complexity and situational variability of the individual subject’ (ibid.). In
using Hofstede’s (1991) categories, Lim (2001) and Wong (2001) are guilty
of continuing to reinforce the facile homogeneity of behaviours across Asian
cultures by perpetuating essentialist stereotypes.
The continued and frequent applications of Western constructs to
examine Eastern social behaviour is evidence of the global dominance of
Western categories and paradigms as hegemony. What we require are more
studies of the cultural phenomena that view collectivism and individual-
ism from context-dependent perspectives (emic-oriented) rather than
from etic perspectives that generalize cultures across specific nations and
regions. We are, thus, encouraged by Parker and Grimes’ (2009, p. 292)
observation (although with specific regard to organizational and manage-
ment communication studies) that ‘the trend … to study race [including
culture] in ways that reinforce western universalistic paradigms … fail to
question the limits and controlling influences of these paradigms’; and
their call for more studies ‘to contest and subvert the unquestioned sov-
ereignty of Western categories – epistemological, ethicomoral, economic,
political, aesthetic, and the rest’ (p. 293, citing Prasad, 2003). This chapter
is part of the effort to place the Western gaze of the East in perspective,
which, in being largely stereotypical in its observation of collectivism in
Asia, has not been fully observant of all of the praxes. Clearly, there is
more to collectivism in Asia than has met the eyes of the West, in its gaze
of the East.
Note
1. See Amartya Sen, A. (2005) The Argumentative Indian (London: Allen Lane), for an
exposition of the Indian mind-set.
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11
Framings of the East: The Case of
Borneo and the Rungus Community
Ong Puay Liu
Introduction
Differentiation and stereotyping of the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ have preoccupied
the minds of people residing in both. There is a tendency to place depic-
tions of the East and the West in binary form; that is, East is this and West
is that, with no point of connection. The worldly preoccupation is depicted
by Kipling in his 1890s poem, Ballad of East and West:
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till
Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there
is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong
men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
(Kipling, 2009)
In keeping with the title of this volume, The Gaze of the West and Framings
of the East, it is noteworthy that 58 years ago, on 13–20 December 1951, the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
organized a discussion on the cultural and philosophical relations between
East and West by bringing together thinkers and philosophers of different
countries to discuss the issue. At the close of the discussions, a draft report
presented both conclusions and recommendations. The general conclusion
drawn up was that although differences exist between East and West, these
differences, according to the report, had been over-emphasized in popular
thought. The ‘East’ is also not synonymous with India, and that certain
differences due to geography, climate and so on would always remain and
could not be changed. Even so, the typical attitudes of Eastern and Western
persons were the products of evolution and in the process of time could
be modified by cultural contacts. Such contacts were now possible on a scale
unknown before, and should be encouraged by every means available. The
report also mentioned that we might take hope from the reflection that
wars and world conflicts had not arisen from differences of civilization
170
such as are those represented by the ‘East’ and the ‘West’, but from between
uncivilized and fanatical minorities within a single civilization. It was to
eliminate such uncivilized minorities by means of education that the ‘East’
and the ‘West’ were expected to co-operate (UNESCO, 1952).
This preoccupation with the East–West distinction continued thereon. In
1978, some 28 years after the UNESCO meeting in New Delhi, Edward Said
published his seminal work Orientalism. In it, he called into question the
underlying assumptions that form the foundation of Orientalist thinking
(Sered, 1996) and emphasized ‘the relationship between power and knowl-
edge in scholarly and popular thinking’ and in particular, ‘how Europeans
saw the Arab world’ (Shamsul, 2006, p. 13).
Orientalism has much relevance for the depiction of the peoples of the
East because men, Said (1991, p. 39) maintained, have always divided
the world up into regions having either real or imagined divisions from
each other. The absolute demarcation between East and West had been
years, even centuries, in the making. There were innumerable voyages of
discovery; there were contacts through trade and war. But more importantly,
since the middle of the eighteenth century, there had been two principal
elements in the relations between East and West. One, the growing sys-
tematic knowledge in Europe about the Orient: knowledge reinforced by
the colonial encounter and by the widespread interest in the alien and
unusual, exploited by the developing sciences of ethnology, comparative
anatomy, philology and history. A sizeable body of literature was produced
by novelists, poets, translators and gifted travellers. Two, Europe was always
in a position of strength, the Europeans seen as rational, virtuous, mature,
normal; the Orientals as irrational, depraved, childlike, different. The Orient
was almost a European invention and had been since antiquity a place of
romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, and remarkable
experiences (Said, 1991, p. 1).
For Said, Orientalism is a symbol of Western domination and strength. It
is the European-Western way of coming to terms with the Orient based on
the Orient’s special place in European-Western experiences (1991, p. 204).
Later, in 2003, Said reasserted the tragedy of categorizing people under one
generic label. The terrible conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying
rubrics, like ‘America’, ‘The West’ or ‘Islam’ (as illustrated by the September
11, 2001 tragedy), and that invent collective identities for large numbers
of individuals who are actually quite diverse, cannot continue to remain as
potent as they are; they must be opposed.
Said’s call for a bridging of mutual understanding across cultures through
meaningful and contextual learning poses a challenge to present-day
citizens of the world, each with their own tendencies to practise isms, be
it Orientalism or Occidentalism. At the International Convention of Asian
Scholars (ICAS 6) held at Daejeon, Korea on 6–9 August 2009, an institu-
tional panel organized by the Asia-Europe Foundation (AEF), was entitled
Asia in the Eyes of Europe (Bersick, 2009). The main focus of the panel
was European perceptions of Asia, seen from a cross-disciplinary approach
through expert analyses from a variety of backgrounds, offering cultural,
economic, political and media-based perspectives. This merging of exper-
tise across disciplines and regions provides an excellent avenue for open
dialogue and facilitates better understanding to counter existing stereotypes
of Asia in Europe that have been created by media and public discourses.
As Asia and Europe become more intertwined and interdependent in ever
increasing ways, a strong impetus has developed to open up discussions to
spur debate on the origins and the current societal implications of how they
perceive each other. These perceptions have far reaching repercussions on
how the two regions interact with one another affecting various aspects of
Asia–Europe relations.
We see that there is an apparent divide between the East and the West by
virtue of human inclination to create stereotypes and images based on their
respective self interests and ideological orientations. If there exists a dispa-
rate East–West mentality, culture, civilization and value system, for example,
the following questions come to mind. With this continuous discussion
about the East and the West, will it be possible to have a real meeting of
minds between the East and the West and should we continue to speak of
the East and West in this way?
Enthusiasm for the ways and ideas of ancient China and India (as the East),
initially for trade, religion and spirituality, and later conquest, has been
evident in the West from the early decades of the twentieth century. Indeed,
Western fascination with the ways of the East has been growing ever since
Jesuit missionaries first went to Asia in the sixteenth century (Clarke, 1994).
One sector that has been the target of this Western fascination is tourism.
Stereotypes and images play a substantial role in the tourism sector.
Historical depictions of the East by the West, especially by travel writers,
historians and colonial administrators, have very much influenced the way
the East is represented by the tourism media today. Interestingly, Western
depictions of the East have been appropriated by the tourism media of the
East as well. These purveyors of tourism describe their indigenous peoples
and cultures as ‘primitive’ and ‘living at the edge of modernity’ while
being simultaneously ‘exquisite’ and ‘exotic’. The landscape is described as
‘untouched by time, as evidenced by hundred million year-old rainforests,
and quaint traditional villages’.
This chapter focuses on Borneo and how the West created markers about
Borneo to represent its own thoughts and feelings. The discussion is prem-
ised on two major themes of the West as representations of Borneo. These
are eternal paradise and wild people of the forest. Berger (1972, pp. 8–9) reit-
erates that, ‘what we know or believe affects the way we see things. We only
see what we look at. We are always looking at the relation between things
and ourselves’. This way of seeing, in the tourism context, is what Urry
(1990, p. 1) calls the tourist gaze: ‘When we gaze at something, our gaze is
socially organised and systematised. We just do not see or look but we see
and look from a perspective, socially constructed through time and space’.
Thus, the tourists who pay a sum of money to come to see and experience,
ultimately do so from someone else’s perspective.
The touristic gaze: Borneo, Sabah and the Rungus
Borneo as eternal paradise

Borneo is a large island (the third largest in the world) and comprises the three
countries of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. The population of Borneo is 16
million people (Brunei 300,000, Kalimantan, Indonesia 12 million, and Sabah
and Sarawak, Malaysia 4 million).
St. John (1862, p. 1), chronicling his life and times in Borneo, wrote:
‘The wild tribes of Borneo and the not less wild interior of the country,
are scarcely known to European readers, as no one who has travelled in the
island during the last fourteen years has given his impressions to the public’.
Nevertheless, when early European explorers and travellers did commit their
impressions to paper, they did so with a European gaze for a European audi-
ence. Borneo’s ‘great stretches of wild, untouched hill country empty of human
trace’ (ibid.) triggered the notion of a vast expanse of uninhabited, untouched,
abundant and resource-full natural landscape. Earl (1837, p. x), who travelled
around Borneo in the 1830s, wrote of Borneo as a ‘mysterious, unknown land,
the haunt of head-hunters and ravaged by lanun pirates, supposedly rich in
resources but crying out for peace and development’. St. John (1862, p. 248)
also wrote of villages with fruit trees and villagers who lived on the banks
of running streams and how all of the population kept themselves clean by
frequent bathing and had sufficient food to keep them healthy. Through such
writings, Borneo became alive with a diverse range of flora and fauna. The
Bornean image is rooted in the image of a natural paradise – a place abundant
with wild flora, fauna and humans. Beeckman (1718, p. 37), chronicling
his voyage to Borneo, described Borneo thus:
The country abounds with Pepper, the best Dragon’s blood, Bezoar, most
excellent Camphire, Pineapples, Pumblenofes, Citrons, Oranges, Lemons,
Water Melons, Musk Melons, Plantons, Bonano’s, Coconuts ... The moun-
tains yield Diamonds, Gold, Tin and Iron; the Forests, Honey, Cotton,
Deer, Goats, Buffaloes and Wild Oxen, Wild Hogs, Small Horses, Bears,
Tygers, Elephants and a multitude of monkeys. The Monkeys, Apes and
Baboons are of many different sorts and shapes.
Earl (1837, p. 255) viewed the state of the Dayak society as peculiar and
extraordinary where ‘they are scattered in small tribes over the face of the
island ... totally cut off from social interaction with each other and speak
a dialect often unintelligible even to the people of the district immediately
adjacent’. Earl (1837, p. 320) concluded that ‘under such circumstances,
improvement is perfectly impracticable; they have in all probability existed
in their present state during the lapse of ages and without foreign inter-
course must continue in the same condition for ever’. He cited the case of
the Dusun or Idaan people living near the Kinabalu Mountain. He had read
that the Idaan people were interested in beads and brass wire. On his first
journey up the Kinabalu Mountain in April 1851, he found that the people
did not want beads or cloth but concentrated on brass wire. On his second
trip to the mountain in August 1851, the people’s preference had shifted
from brass wire to cloth. In addition, their clothing had changed too: ‘chawats
(loincloths) were decreasing, trousers were coming in’.
Some European writers did not share St. John’s account of change within
the local societies. Hose (1926, p. vii), for example, had this to say about the
‘change-resistant or unchanging savages’.
Customs and beliefs of the various peoples at present living under the
Rajah Brooke’s beneficent rule in Sarawak present an epitome of the early
history of civilisation representing as they do a series of primitive phases
of culture that in most parts of the world would have been completely
suppressed by the disturbing influences of higher types of civilisation. In
Borneo, some of the most interesting and significant of the earlier phases
have been crystallised and fixed for us to study at the present day.
Late nineteenth- and twentieth-century European writers drew upon

these earlier writings to strengthen further the Bornean myth. Carl Book,
a Norwegian, was commissioned by the governor-general of the Netherlands
East Indies in 1879 to travel into the interior of Southeast Borneo and report
on it. He published his report in 1881 entitled ‘The Head-hunters of Borneo’.
The report, according to Saunders (1993, p. 280), is a sensational account
of Book’s travels. It includes a section on cannibalism among the Tring
Dayaks and Book’s prolonged efforts to locate a tribe of men with tails – the
Orang-Boentoet. The book also contained 30 colour plates depicting native
artefacts, housing and dress. The scanty native dress contributed greatly to
the popular image of Borneo, as a place inhabited by wild head-hunters
and dusky bare-breasted women. Saunders (1993, p. 284) also mentioned
Ella Christie, who was called Sarawak’s first tourist. On her visit to Borneo
in 1904, the Commandant of the Sarawak Rangers invited her to a ‘show of
Dyaks’ for her ‘to Kodak’.
All in war paint, really savages ... I did Sir Percy beside them in one, as
a contrast ... I have got some very good Borneo savage relics and hats.
(Saunders (1993, p. 28)
Borneans as the wild people of the forest

Haddon (1901, p. 321) described the Bornean people as ‘wild savages, shy,
timid ... cheerful, bright people, who are very fond of children and kind to
women’. In Wallace’s (1869, p. 255) account,
the men as usual among savages, adorn themselves more than women.
They wore necklaces, earrings, finger ringers and delight in a band of
plaited grass tied round the arm just below the shoulder. The elaborately
adorned, shy, timid, cheerful, bright, women- and children-loving male
savage was also a fierce and fearsome head-hunter.
Writing about the monkeys and apes, Beeckman (1718, p. 37) claimed
that ‘the most remarkable are those they call oran-ootans,1 which in their
language means men of the woods. They grow up to be six foot high; they
walk upright, have longer arms than men, tolerable good faces ... No Tails
nor Hair’. Beeckman did not mention ‘men with tails’ but his ‘oran-ootan’
might have inspired stories of men with tails thereafter. St. John (1862,
p. 40) wrote that he had heard of such stories in every place he visited.
By the eighteenth century Europe had familiarized itself with the notion
of the ‘Noble Savage’, as Beaglehole (in Moorehead, 1966, p. 41) had clearly
portrayed:
now rose up, indeed, within Natural History, something new, something
incomparably exciting, Man in the state of Nature; the Noble Savage
entered the study and the drawing room of Europe in naked majesty to
shake the preconceptions of morals and of politics.
The idea of the ‘simple, unsophisticated, child-like, happy, healthy people

living in sun-kissed lands’ (Wood, 1941, p. iii) whose ‘every want was
supplied by the tropical forest and who, best of all, knew nothing of the
cramping sophistries of civilisation’ (Moorehead, 1966, p. 41) fed the politi-
cal imagination of the Europeans. Cook’s ‘discovery’ of Tahiti in the 1760s
opened up the once unknown and mysterious Pacific Basin to many expedi-
tions, explorations, invasions and missionary activities.
Winks (1971, p. 14) suggests that Europeans came to know of the Beau
Savage less through the writings of the philosophers of the Enlightenment
than through three other, more important sources of presumed information:
popularized writings of explorers, writings of missionaries and anthro-
pologists and, most vital of all, the highly coloured works of romantic
novelists of the Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The philosophical notion of the Noble Savage was the vogue in the late
eighteenth century but the greater impact of such romanticized visions of
native populations was felt in the late nineteenth century and after.
The writings of explorers popularized what Winks (1971, p. 15) termed the
‘land of the mind’: utopia, where the mind thinks, the body seeks. Islands
and places – remote, self-contained, unexplored, believed to be capable of
sustaining unknown forms of animal life – became the natural habitat for
science fiction. Governments made it possible for voyages and explorations.
Noble leaders led the way and common seamen provided the energy, the
continuity and word of mouth knowledge of the voyages.
Winks (ibid.) argued that the entire history of exploration is one of fabrica-
tion and invention rather than the scientific unrolling of a map. Moorehead
(1966) has a similar view regarding the history of exploration. He cites the
case of Tahiti:
In the Pacific, the artist had no precedent to guide him/her; everything

was new. The engravers of the artists’ works added their own refinements–
they tended to Europeanise the originals even more, so on both counts,
in the written word and in the illustration, a false, idealised impression
of Tahiti was being built up. The temptation to paint the idea of Tahiti
rather than the reality was very strong and it was an idea interpreted in
an European manner. (1966, p. 48)
Several researchers have argued that there is a parallel between colonialism

and tourism. O’Connor and Cronin (1993, p. 71) say that ‘international
tourism recapitulates a historical process: areas of one’s country are given
over to the pleasure of foreigners and the rhetoric of development serves
as a defence’. The needs of the colonialist and tourist are mirrored in
images and representations created for their consumption and pleasure.
The tourism authorities represent the host territory as ‘empty space’ just as
the colonialists justified colonialism by saying that the land occupied was
‘empty’ and, therefore, available for stamping their own mark on ‘virgin
territory’. The days of colonialism might be over, but can it be said that its
place has been taken over by tourism?
In the tourism context, areas and countries are represented as exclusively
available for the construction of a pleasure paradise for tourists to engage
in carefree play during their vacation or holiday. Stockwell (1993, p. 270),
for example, suggests that tourism in Malaya was a result and a reflection
of colonialism. He maintains that Western tourists to Malaya, whether they
came from Britain, continental Europe or the USA, were associated with
British colonialism by their contacts and by the colour of their skin. Trav-
ellers to Malaya saw themselves and were treated by others as guests of the
British not of the indigenous people. The people, however, were willing to
oblige the tourists merely because they were the orang putih, white people.
And, while in the host destination, the guides directed tourists to inspect the
flora and fauna of the countryside but only within the confines of botanical
gardens or game parks. The attraction was not Asia but European activities
in Asia. Hence, Stockwell (1993, p. 258) asserts that ‘as myth fosters tourism,
tourism encourages myth’.
Viewed as wild savages deeply attached to their pagan beliefs, the Bornean
people were ‘gazed’ upon as people of low culture and incapable of autono-
mous improvement, hence justifying outside intervention or colonialism
and the notion of the white man’s burden in particular. St. John (1862) and
Earl (1837, p. ix) were some of the propagators of the creed of the white
man’s burden. St. John (1862 repr. 1974, pp. 369–70) wrote that
it is better the natives should be Roman Catholics than remain in their

present low state of civilisation. Nothing but Christianity can alter the
real condition of the people, as that only will turn their minds in a
new direction and free them from practices and habits which keep the
country poor and undeveloped.
His conclusion that the ‘Dayaks are an improvable race; that they do not
possess any superstitions or beliefs likely to offer great obstacles to Christian
teaching’ (ibid.) implies that the Dayaks could improve themselves only
through Christianity and with the help of Christian missionaries.
If Bornean images were the result of Western imperialism and expan-
sion and the writings of Western travellers and administrators, then Sabah,
in Malaysian Borneo, is a by-product of the Bornean myth. Most of the
tourism media depict Sabah as Borneo’s paradise, as illustrated by the follow-
ing promotional statements in the Sabah Tourism Board’s official website:
‘Welcome to Sabah – a destination with myriad attractions and multi-wonders
in the Land Below The Wind’; ‘A tropical paradise of natural wonders, scenic
beauty, rugged landscapes and cultural diversity’; ‘The land of eco-treasures.
Nowhere else can you find nature weave such a colourful and complex tapes-
try;’ ‘Home to more than 30 ethnic groups, your taste for exotic culture will
be more than sated by Sabah’s customs, colourful celebrations, fascinating
festivals and exciting events all year round’ (Sabah Tourism Board, 2005).
Such is the perception of Sabah as a paradise in harmony with nature that
Alliston (1966) expresses his fear of Sabah becoming a ‘threatened paradise’
because of the changes he observed then.
It is still far from the tourist routes and is likely to remain so. Nevertheless,
a certain number of visitors have found their way to Sabah’s shores and
often their first reaction is one of considerable surprise. Most of the towns
are on the coast and their unexpectedly impressive modern buildings
raise clean lines against the blue of a tropical sky … ‘Can this really
be Borneo?’ one is tempted to ask. ‘No shrunken heads? No blowpipes
and poisoned darts?’ No, that is the old, fast-disappearing image of the
country. Today these things are hard to find; tomorrow they will be in
museums. (1966, p. 13)
Rightly so; shrunken heads and loin clad natives are now a thing of the past
and have found their way as artefacts into museums and cultural villages.
Nevertheless, the tourism sector continues to beguile its potential market
with images of yesteryears.
On 24 October 1995, Matunggong, Kudat became the focus of interest for
foreign tourists because it was the site for the total solar eclipse. The Sabah
Tourism Board, in the brochure on its website, noted that
many eclipse enthusiasts from Japan, Singapore, Europe, Canada and

United States … chose to stay at a Rungus longhouse to wait for the
dramatic moment. It was ‘logical’ that when one goes to watch a momen-
tous event like a total solar eclipse, one should cap that highlight in one’s
life with a stay in a Rungus longhouse.
What exactly is the logical connection between the eclipse and a Rungus
longhouse? The answer lies in the mythology surrounding the Rungus peo-
ple, a mythology fed by the writings of past travellers and colonial writers,
and reproduced by the contemporary tourism media.
Apart from the beaches, the Rungus are the main reason why tourists
undertake the 150 km road journey from Kota Kinabalu to Matunggong.
The tour operators and guides reassure the tourists that their visit to
Rungus territory will be worth their money and time because they will be
visiting the Rungus who live ‘in the Kudat forest’ (Home Away From Home
n.d.) at their binatang, that is, the longhouse. It is somewhat amazing (and
amusing) to think that the Rungus word for longhouse is binatang. In the
Malay language, binatang, or its more politically correct equivalent haiwan,
is the generic term for animals or wildlife, including the oran-ootan. The
Malay (the medium of communication between the Rungus and non-
Rungus) meaning of binatang subtlely commits the Rungus to the lowly
status of binatang (animal/wildlife) as they live in a longhouse (referred to
as binatang).
The pre-twentieth-century wild people of Borneo have come full circle
with modern tourism. From being viewed as a threat or a hindrance to oth-
ers, Borneans have now become friendly and hospitable. Their ‘low state of
civilisation’, as observed by St. John (see above), is now a good resource for
product development. The tour brochures promoting the Rungus people,
for example, invite the tourists to visit the Rungus, ‘Sabah’s most traditional
ethnic group’ (Hutton, 1997, p. 17) and ‘learn about the culture of the Rungus
people’ (Exotic Borneo Holidays, 2003). Unfortunately, the texts do not specify
what cultural aspects the tourists are supposed to learn and the purpose of the
learning.
Could the Rungus be ‘Sabah’s most traditional ethnic group’ given
the historical trading links, European expansionism, Basel missionary
work, cross-cultural contacts, contemporary development programmes and
tourism in their midst? Radford, in an article entitled ‘Big Feet, Small World’,
describes the contradiction inherent in tourism:
If you want a remote corner of the world to remain exotic, don’t go there.
The folk of Detroit or Doncaster dream of escape to Mombasa or Mandalay
and are prepared to pay for it. The people with an income measured in
$1 or $2 or $3 a day and whose only capital potential is white coral
sand, coconut palms and a precarious bargain with the typhoon season,
are glad to welcome them. The one group buys adventure and peace
and contact with ‘real people.’ The other acquires dollars. But of course
things change. Tourists want to go to exotic locations but not to exotic
plumbing or sanitation. They need hotels with hot and cold showers
ensuite. But if tourists get clean water, how about the locals? If tourists
get the road and transport, how about the locals? Rich Americans don’t
just leave big footprints. They also shift a lot of dirt – car parks, buildings,
roads and drains. (Radford in The Guardian, 16 May 1998, p. 5)
The Malaysian and Sabah state governments and tour businesses promot-
ing Rungus tourism have understood the contradictions and the contrasting
needs of tourism. In the tourism media, the authorities promise the tourists
they will get to see and experience the Rungus’ past when they visit the
Rungus destination: ‘Experience the past through the communal longhouse
lifestyle’ (KK Tours and Travel, 2011); ‘Visit a Rungus longhouse, a simple and
unique house which reflects the communal living practised since ancient
times’ (Exotic Borneo Holidays, 2003). At the same time, the tourism authori-
ties strive to reassure the tourists that they can expect to visit the Rungus’ past
in relative comfort: ‘Overnight in twin-bedded room in authentic longhouse
built on stilts with thatched roof, tree bark wallings and split bamboo floor-
ings’ (Borneo Ecotours, 2003), which is ‘built entirely using local materials’
(Pan Borneo Tours and Travel, 2011), ‘stay in comfort and enjoy privacy (non-
existent in a normal longhouse) as well as modern comforts such as mattress,
mosquito nets, separate toilets and showers’ (Hutton, 1997, p. 70).
In the Bornean context too, Orientalism provided the representations
for the image making of the Bornean, and, by extension, the Rungus. The
Bornean image was the way in which Western colonial powers and early trav-
ellers came to agreements when dealing with the people they encountered
in that abundantly forested island. Travel writers and tour companies have,
thus, participated in creating a particular type of discourse that reinforces
tourists’ preconceptions and expectations. As King (1992) asserts:
Any perspective which assumes that there is something authentically

‘traditional’, untouched by the outside world and therefore can be
and should be preserved by promoting alternative kinds of appropriate
tourism is mistaken. Malaysian populations, however remote, have been

brought into relationship with wider economic, political and cultural
systems before, during and after the European colonial period. (King,
1992, p. 5)
In the Rungus case, the tourists expect to see the Rungus villagers’ lifestyle
and livelihood as different from their own lifestyles. This difference does
not only refer to the customs or ways of doing things that are different
between them and the Rungus. The tourists expect to see the Rungus
living in a manner that indicates a continuation of a way of life from the
past. Tourists hope to visit an unchanged and unsophisticated Rungus
community, as this will indicate that the Rungus are still primitive and
undeveloped. As one American tourist visiting a Rungus longhouse said:
I can use the money to buy a house or car. But I want to travel and see
how other people live. The world is getting smaller. It is coming nearer
towards nature and people. In time to come, it will be difficult to find
nature and people untouched by modernisation. We will have to go
deeper into the jungle to do this (Ong, 2008).
Gewertz and Errington’s (1991) account of the Chambri community of

Sepik, Papua New Guinea and its participation in the tourism sector pro-
vides some insights into the complexities and ironies that small scale,
peripheral societies share in their efforts to use tourism as a tool for devel-
opment. Like the Rungus, the Chambris and their tour operators use the
Chambri culture as a resource to transform them into a tourist attraction.
The Chambris regard tourism as a principal source of income and an avenue
for development. The road to development, however, was not without diffi-
culties and constraints. This was because the Chambris and the tourists met
in a world system filled with uncommensurate differences. ‘It was a world
system in which the Chambri were of value primarily because they lacked
development’ (Gewertz and Errington, 1991, pp. 22–3). To the extent that
the Chambri were successful in developing, they would endanger the basis
of their development. The Chambri would remain of special interest to tour-
ists only as long as they remained ‘primitive and unchanged’ (ibid.).
What the tourists valued in their encounter with the Chambri, and other
Papua New Guineans, was their primitiveness. Many of the tourists who
visited the Chambris were prosperous middle-aged professional American
men and women who came on package holidays that promised a tour of
the ‘primitive’. They viewed the primitive Chambri as an increasingly rare
prize to be witnessed and captured before it was too late. Expecting to see
the ‘primitive’ Chambris just on the edge of change, these tourists thought
that they had come to Sepik just in time, before too much change had taken
place. Gewertz and Errington wrote of the prior warning they received from
an experienced guide on the Melanesian Explorer. The guide cautioned
the authors that in their lectures (in exchange for board and room) to the
tourists, they should be careful not to over-emphasize the extent to which
change had already taken place among the Chambris. They should not, for
example, inform the tourists interested in black magic that old Chambri
men had begun to tape record their magical spells so that these spells would
not be forgotten when they died. Tourists, the guide said, ‘don’t mind a little
change but would hate to know that the natives are sophisticated enough to
tape their own chants’ (Gewertz and Errington, 1991, p. 39).
The people of Borneo and the Rungus community too might have
contributed to the continuation of the touristic gaze of the Bornean and
the Rungus but they might have done so in ways that allowed them to
distinguish between what was meant for tourist consumption and what was
not, that is, the difference between myth and reality.
Concluding remarks
In the case of the Rungus community in particular, two dominant discourses

about the Rungus people can be distinguished: the touristic/commodi-
tized and non-touristic/non-commoditized discourses. The commoditized
discourse relies on historical images of Borneo and the Bornean people.
Tourists who want to see the Rungus in their natural state – that is, living
in the longhouse amid the green lush forest – and experience a taste of
wild adventure will choose the Rungus village as their holiday destination.
Perpetuating the historical images will ensure the sustainability of Rungus
participation in the tourism sector. The non-commoditized discourse on the
Rungus represents the government officials’ and tourism authorities’ percep-
tions of the Rungus people. Frustrated by the lack of active participation and
visible success of their projects and programmes involving the Rungus peo-
ple, these development officials and tourism authorities say that the Rungus
are lazy, non-thinking, dirty and opposed to change.
Rungus participation in tourism means that they will have to subscribe
to the commoditized and touristic discourse. How do they act out the
images and myths contained in this discourse? The so-called ‘lazy’ Rungus
(Isager, 1997) are participating in a modern, sophisticated, technological,
demanding and ever-changing service industry. So how do the Rungus cope
with and manage this new experience, if indeed it is new?
Gewecke et al. (1996, p. 12), writing on experiences as a missionary
with the Basel Mission in Africa, say on reflection: ‘One is being moved
to realise that people can live in quite different ways from us, organising
themselves to maintain what they value in their own cultural contexts
and what they need to survive in their physical environment’. Both domi-
nant discourses do not seem to acknowledge the Rungus’ capacity to live
a way of life that has helped them to survive in their physical environ-
ment. Acknowledging this capacity means acknowledging that change has
occurred, which will subsequently negate the proclamations of the Rungus
as ‘traditional’ or ‘primitive’ and their way of life as ‘authentic’. It means

negating the commoditization of the Rungus.
Note
1. Oran-ootan, as Beeckman (1718) spelt it, or orang utan, in the Malay language,
refers to the primates found in Malaysian jungles. The Malaysian government has
classified the orang utans as an endangered species and has taken steps to protect
the species. In Sabah, there is an Orang Utan rehabilitation sanctuary in the forest
of Sepilok, Sandakan, on the east coast of Sabah.
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12
Interpreting Mosque Architecture
in the Twentieth Century: Trapped
between Two Worlds
Mohamad Tajuddin Mohamad Rasdi
Introduction
The main intention of this chapter is to summarize some of the discourse

related to the interpretation of mosque architecture in order to demonstrate
how the discourse is trapped between the two worlds of academia and prac-
tice. One is the intellectual framework of what constitutes the ‘history’ of
architecture and the notion of ‘Islam’ in the West. In the second, that of
architectural ‘practice’, there is a serious lack of commitment and profes-
sionalism on the part of architects to design mosques in the true spirit of
what practice should be, which is replaced instead by the popular approach
of Revivalism. The result is a confused state of architectural language that,
at one end, makes it difficult to use, and, at the other, presents Islam as an
extravagant religion, relegating most architectural issues regarding mosques
to object-centered rather than value-centered discourse.
There are three sections to this chapter on the interpretation of mosque
architecture. The first examines the historical problem of interpretation by
Western historians. The second deals with the extant typologies of mosque
design in Malaysia and the third with the problem of revivalism in mosque
architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe and
America in order to contextualize the issue of revivalism in Malaysia.
European views of the mosque in the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries
With respect to the historical documentation of buildings deemed to be

‘Islamic architecture’, there are several issues worth taking note of in such
work. The first is the idea of ‘architecture’ as something grand that evokes
a sense of beauty. The second is the methodology of sampling and descrip-
tion. The third is the idea of ‘religion’ and the perception of ‘Islam’. The
fourth issue concerns the treatment of Islamic religious sources to explain
mosque architecture.
184
Interpreting Mosque Architecture in the Twentieth Century 185
The idea of ‘architecture’

The first issue with respect to interpreting the mosque or Islamic architecture
is to consider what actually constitutes the idea of ‘architecture’. There are
historians and critics with different views of what constitutes a mere build-
ing and what an artistic edifice should look like. Within that dilemma also
lies the question of what a ‘House of God’ is supposed to be. With regard
to the selection of buildings sampled, there is also the question of why
such buildings were chosen and what would entail a full or appropriate
architectural description of them.
In his famous book, Pioneers of Modern Architecture, Nicholas Pevsner
(2007) declared that while a cathedral is a piece of architecture, a garage
is a mere building. This ‘aesthetically’ inclined view of architecture was
taken up by many traditional historians of eighteenth-century Europe and
it became the standard on which to judge and choose what buildings to
talk about and document. This view that there is a difference between a
utilitarian structure and another meant to evoke an emotional response
separates what was considered good architecture from a purely functional
structure like a bridge, garage, store house or dam. A cathedral is considered
to be a magnificent piece of art because the architect goes all out to create
a space that is bathed in light, in order to fulfill not only the requirement
of ritual movement, but also a sense of awe similar to the feeling of being
near a unique work of nature like a huge waterfall or the Grand Canyon.
Such poetic messages found in nature have been understood by artisans
and reproduced in turn on a smaller scale to suit the purposes of human
beings. Through the manipulation of space sequences and structural spans
to support roofs and allow light to bathe the interior, a piece of architecture
is said to have been created.
This view of architecture as a pure expression of art first came under
attack from the late nineteenth-century modernist Violet-le-duc, culminat-
ing in Adolf Loos’ declaration that ornamentation was a crime in the early
twentieth century. Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe promoted Violet-
le-duc’s dictum about structure and form into the early twentieth century,
which saw the Fagus Factory and the Manheim Theater Project in Germany
as celebrations of pure structural and constructional utility (Curtis, 2006).
Architecture to them was simply responding to functional requirements
with the minimum amount of structure and materials as possible. The true
art form was not form for form’s sake but simply the result of constructional
resolution–ergo: form following function. There were, of course, other moder-
nist trends such as that of Le Corbusier’s adventure into abstract art forms as
compositional forms of pure beauty and the regionalistic preoccupations of
Frank Lloyd Wright (Curtis, 2006). But the machine aesthetic of Gropius and
Mies won the day and, after the 1920s, buildings simply became ‘functional’
and nothing more. Almost a century later, the functionalist traditions of
the modernists were taken up by a group of anthropologist-architects and

behaviourist-designers who proclaimed that human behaviour as well as
cultural forces are the main determinants of form (Snyder, 2008). Thus, even
a goreng pisang (fried bananas) stall can be a piece of architecture as it is an
honest resolution of activity and space to perform a set ritual.
With regard to the notion of ‘architecture’ as a grand ‘master piece’ or
tour-de-force, early documentation was trapped in the academic modes of art
history and criticism.
Arabia, at the rise of Islam, does not appear to have possessed anything
worthy of the name of architecture. Only a small portion of the popula-
tion was settled, and these lived in dwellings which were scarcely more
than hovels. (Creswell, 1958; p. 1)
Watkin (1980) notes that the writing of architectural history was an off shoot
of art history where much of the documentation was meant for connoisseur-
ship. Early architectural history tended to sample the big, the unique, the
expensive and buildings owned by an elite aristocracy that were deemed to
be imbued with a quality sense of art and beauty. In today’s view of archi-
tecture, where buildings of worth range from the same categories as before
to those considered ‘meek’ and cheap products, the work of Hassan Fathi in
housing the poor in Egypt is being hailed as an excellent tour-de-force, which
historians of old would not have given a second glance. The main issue here
is that, in order to fully realize the true merits of beauty in design, architecture
must be representative of the people it serves and not of the elite or eccentric
few who are deemed to be ‘educated’ and ‘beyond poverty’. Nowadays, an
architectural work such as housing for the poor by Charles Correa in India
supports the belief that it is a proper balance between culture, economics,
politics and climate that deserves the label of a good design product.
The methodology of Tafsir or Qur’anic Exegesis

The second issue relates to concerns regarding descriptive methods. Types of
writing range from that of a tourist’s glance of physical attributes to Bannister
Fletcher’s (1956) dissection method of elemental description. Many of the
earlier historians were travellers, soldiers or officers in the colonial admin-
istration in Muslim countries. Their interest in documentation was in part
spurred by the new enlightenment of Europe that was seeking new vistas of
knowledge and interest. The writings were in the form of curiosities framed
by the Judeo-Christian outlook on life. Thus, the method of structuring the
description as if one was describing a church was a favourite one. Then there
was the art or connoisseurship of classification and of being a structured
critic of separate elements of the buildings like the gardens, ornament, domes
and arches. Finally, there were also those who assumed a superiority stance in
comparing Muslim architecture to that of the Greek or Gothic architectural
scholarship. There are two main problems with these kinds of description.
The first is the problem of dealing with the idea and the original intentions of
the structures. The description is based on a ‘hit-and-run’ method of cursory
‘photographic discourse’. There is not much discussion of the cultural aspects
but there is a concentration on the uniqueness and expressive nature of the
architectural elements. It is difficult to use description of this type to assign
original ideas and their worthiness through time. Then there is the notion
that religious values ‘progress’ with time and that the original religion was
nothing but ‘primitive’:
No further change had taken place in Muhammad’s house at the time

of his death on 8 June 632 AD. He was buried in the room that he had
occupied in his lifetime. His house has not yet become a mosque and its
transformation to such was by no means a rapid process. It apparently
remained a house long after his death, for Abu Bakr, on being elected Khalif
or Successor, made use of it in the same way as Muhammad himself. It was
still a house in 655 AD, when the Khalif Uthman was murdered there, in
the room next to where the Prophet lay buried. Caetani considers that the
fundamental change took place when Ali transferred the seat of govern-
ment to Kufa in 657 AD and Medina sank back to the status of a provincial
town. It was then that the memories of the Prophet, with which it was so
intimately associated, raised it to the grade of sanctuary, as the place where
more than half of the Qur’an was revealed, the place which had been his
home for ten years, and finally his grave. (Creswell, 1958, pp. 5–6)
The idea of religion

The third concern is the idea of ‘religion’ and the perception of ‘Islam’.
Western historians seemed to treat religion as a ritualistic act of devotion
devoid of ‘worldly concerns’ (Fergusson, 1859; Statham, 1912; Rosengarten,
1893; Hoag, 1989). In late nineteenth-century Europe, where the force of
Christianity was on the wane from the onslaught of the rationalists, philoso-
phers and scientists, the prevailing view of religion as akin to that of an elite
club rendered such institutions as the church to be used solely for meditation,
prayers and monastic seclusion. Thus, the emphasis on the isolationistic and
meditative aspects of lighting, contemplative ornamentation and paradisiac
gardens abound in the literature on mosque architecture.
The history of religions has known two influences that sought to reduce
its jurisdiction by limiting the data that constitute its subject matter:
one was to attempt to redefine the religious datum in a restricted and
narrow manner, and the other was an isolationist policy observed vis-a-vis
Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The attempt to limit the jurisdiction of phenomena of religions by
giving the religious datum a narrow definition led to theories that have
tried to isolate the religious element and to identify it in terms of ‘the

religious’, ‘the holy’, ‘the sacred’. The problem these theories faced was
primarily the reductionist’s analysis of the religious phenomenon into
something else that would lend itself more readily to his kind of investi-
gation. (Ismail Faruqi, 1992, p. 2)
At the other extreme of religious perspective comes the notion of Islam

from the Sufistic or the Shi’ite’s point of view. The demarcation between the
Sunni mainstream and the other sectarian divides is blurred as rituals and
spaces are discussed without a proper religious framework. I do not wish to
be divisive in my personal view of Islam, but suffice to point out that there
is a real juristic difference of opinions on the question of tombs specifically
and their relationship to the mosque and the city. Thus, a student of Islamic
architectural theory must take into account these differences in order to put
history and culture in its proper perspective before deriving ideas on the
principles of the design of buildings, artefacts and settlements.
The treatment of religious sources

The fourth and by no means less serious issue is the reading of the religious
texts and sources to explain architecture. The first problem relates to the
preferential treatment given to the Qur’anic Verses over the Hadith and the
second problem is the choice of the Hadith and the method of interpreta-
tion. Many scholars of Islamic architecture prefer the Qur’anic Verses to
the sayings in the Hadith. I have assumed three reasons for this. The first
is the ‘openness’ of the interpretation of the Qur’an, since it deals with
the broad principles of values and laws. The second is the ‘sacredness’ of
its source compared to the Hadith. The third is the idea that the Qur’an is
more ‘eternal’ whilst the Hadith is considered ‘historical’. Scholars such as
Creswell, Hoag and Hillenbrand shied away from the general body of the
Hadith as they found that the Prophet’s moral values differed from the latter
day Islam of the Ummayad and the Abbasid with regard to the building of
monuments, tombs and glorious edifices.
Such was the house of the leader of the community at Medina. Nor
did Muhammad wish to alter these conditions; he was entirely without
architectural ambitions, and Ibn Sa’d records the following saying of his:
‘The most unprofitable thing that eateth up the wealth of a Believer is
building.’ (Creswell, 1958, p. 4)
Creswell went so far as to suggest that Islam during the Prophet’s time was
more ‘primitive’ than the ‘contemporary’ or ‘modern’ versions during the
post-prophetic and the post-Khulafa-Rashidun period.
Another group of scholars, including Titus Burckhardt and James Dickie,
use the Hadith as much as the Qur’anic Verses in interpreting the meanings
of past architecture as well as in their theoretical construction of the idea of

Islamic architecture. The issue here is that their methods of interpretation
raise some concerns with respect to the traditional Islamic exegeses of
religious sources. Firstly, the framework of Islam in which the Hadith
is interpreted seems to stem from both Shi’a sources and Sufism. Their
argument is that while the Persians and the Shi’a have a long tradition of
art, the Sufis as the rationalists have attained an understanding of the inner
meaning of rituals and, thus, their architecture is more meaningful. The
second concern is with the manner of interpretation that does not respect
the traditional mode of ijtihad or religious interpretation. For instance, the
Hadith should not be interpreted singly but must be supported by other
‘authentic’ sources as well as the Qur’an and the values stemming from the
Sunnah or the way of life of the Prophet Muhamad. Most scholars of Islamic
architecture interpret single sources of the Hadith in isolation, without refer-
ence to the other sources or the Qur’anic verses.
Mosque architecture in Malaysia: Classification of styles
Mosque architectural language in Malaysia can be classified into six styles.

They are: the traditional vernacular, the Sino-eclectic, the classical, the North
Indian, the modernistic expressionism and the post-modern revivalism. This
section describes the range of characteristics of each style together with the
rationale for the choice of names used.
The traditional vernacular style

The word traditional used in this context represents the ideas and practices
of the Malays before the colonialists came to the country. The word ver-
nacular denotes the availability of materials, craftsmanship and technology
of the pre-colonial period.
There are three types of mosques in this category, which can be distinguished
mainly by their roof forms. The first uses the three tier pyramidal roof style like
those of the Kampung Laut Mosque (see Photograph 1) in the state of Kelantan
circa seventeenth century and the Kampung Tuan Mosque (see Photograph 2)
built in 1830 in the state of Terengganu. From the tip of the pyramid to the
bottom of the columns, the mosques can be inscribed into an almost perfect
cube. The second type uses the two tier pyramidal roof forms such as that of the
Papan Mosque (see Photograph 3), built in 1888, in the state of Perak, and the
Lengeng Mosque in that of Negeri Sembilan. They were built between the eight-
eenth and nineteenth centuries. The third kind uses the gable roof form, which
is similar to that of the house. There are single or double tier roof forms in this
typology. All of these mosques are raised from the waist to shoulder height.
All of the mosques in this stylistic classification are built of timber. None
of them had serambi or verandahs originally. The serambi came later. An
interesting feature of these mosques is that they do not come equipped
Photograph 1 Kampung Laut Mosque, Kelantan, circa seventeenth century
Photograph 2 Kampung Tuan Mosque, Terengganu, 1830

Photograph 3 Papan Mosque, Perak, 1888
with minarets. These were added later although some mosques still do not
have minarets. All these mosques only posses a single space layout with no
indication of subdivisions to be found. Since many of the mosques are built
close to a river for ablution purposes, few of them have wells to prepare for
prayer. There is no indication that these early mosques were fenced up and
isolated from the villages either.
The Sino-eclectic style

As the term suggests, the Sino-eclectic style indicates Chinese influence and
a combination of two or more influences of architectural design. There are
two types of mosque in this category. The first has a three tiered pyramidal
roof form and the second a double tier pyramidal roof form. Although both
types are similar in a majority of other features, the first is characterized by
the three tiered pyramidal roof form, which is similar in proportion to that
of the traditional vernacular style. The differences between the two styles lie
in the prominent curvature of the roof ridges that are made of cement. Examples
of mosques of this style are the Kampung Hulu Mosque (see Photograph 4),
the Tengkera Mosque and the Kampung Keling Mosque (see Photograph 5) all
of which are in the state of Melaka. The Undang Kamat Mosque and a few
others similar to it are found scattered in Negeri Sembilan. The Lebuh Acheh
Mosque in Penang is also of this style. The mosques of this style sit on the
Photograph 4 Kampung Hulu Mosque, Melaka, 1728
ground and are not raised like those of the traditional vernacular ones. All have
slabs of concrete on the ground, which are raised to about half a metre with
stone stairways leading to the main floor plan. The plan of the mosque proper
consists of the enclosed prayer area and the serambi or verandah surrounding
either three parts of the square plan or all of it. These mosques are all located
in dense urban areas and they are surrounded by masonry fences, sometimes
with roofed gateways almost reminiscent of Chinese temples.
The roof structure is made of timber rafters and sometimes of simple
trusses. The roof materials are clay tiles. The whole roof is supported pri-
marily by four central columns and nine or twelve perimeter columns. The
walls are of masonry with timber door and window frames. The floor is of
concrete and it is usually tiled. There are at least three doors on the non-
Qibla walls with stone stairways to match the entrances.
European classical style

The European classical style refers to the High Renaissance architecture
that was derived from the Greco-Roman heritage. The main characteristic
features of this style are the use of the definitive tripartite division of the
base, middle and top with double columns supporting semi circular arches
Photograph 5 Kampong Keling Mosque, Melaka, 1748
or walls with pilasters. A strong symmetrical composition of mass and space

is also an identifying feature.
An example of this style, the Sultan Abu Bakar Mosque in Johor Bahru,
the capital of the state of Johore, is equipped with four stout minarets with
small domes crowning the top. The main prayer hall has a closed hipped
roof. The European classical style is distinguished by its elaborate exterior
cornice work forming a continuous band around the building. The windows
are also framed by plastered cornice work. The Pasir Pelangi Mosque, also in
Johore, has a deep pyramidal roof form reminiscent of the traditional ver-
nacular mosques of the past but without any dividing tiers. The minaret is
heavy in proportion and capped by a small pyramid roof not by a dome. The
Sultan Ibrahim Mosque in Muar, also in Johore, has a hipped gable roof that
covers a large central portion of the prayer space. This part of the mosque
protrudes above the rest of the roofed area to form clerestory windows remi-
niscent of the basilican type churches of early Christianity in Rome.
The main columns are of masonry and so are the semi-circular or flat
arches spanning the columns, doorways and windows. The concrete floor is
raised less than a metre above ground and tiled. The roof structures are of
timber trusses in the best English tradition.
The North Indian style

The term is used to describe the imitative Moghul type architecture that
once flourished in colonial Malaya. The North Indian style is easily dis-
tinguished from others due to the generous use of small and large onion
domes, a multitude of spires and small domed canopies, more than a single
minaret, and horse shoes or multi-foil arches over decorated columns.
The Ubudiah Mosque in Perak, the Kapitan Keling Mosque in Penang, the
Jamek Mosque (see Photograph 6) in Kuala Lumpur and the Masjid India also
in Kuala Lumpur are prime examples of this style. The plans of these mosques
are similar to those of other styles with their central domes and arched
verandahs. The mosque compound is fenced up to the full perimeter with
car parks and grass lawns. The structure of early twentieth-century mosques
Photograph 6 Jamek Mosque, Kuala Lumpur, 1909

was of masonry built with an enclosure system. The roofs are covered with
masonry domes and corrugated asbestos sheets.
The modernistic style

The term ‘modernistic’ is derived from the ideas and main principles that
governed the early revolution of architecture in Europe in the early
twentieth century. Many of these ideas relate to the notion that true
architecture rejects historic revivalism and ornamentation in any form, and
that it celebrates abstraction in forms and structural expression in architecture.
Two types of modernistic styles are found in the mosques of Malaysia–
modernistic expressionism and modernistic structuralism.
The phrase ‘modernistic expressionism’ is derived from William J. Curtis’
(2006) classification of ‘expressionism’ as any form of architecture that carries
a metaphoric message through the use of the structurally expressive form.
Eric Mendhelson’s Einstein Tower in Germany and Eero Saarinen’s TWA
Airport Terminal in New York are examples of these styles of architecture.
I have used the word modernistic because in some buildings only one part
has these expressive qualities while the other parts subscribe to general
modern architectural language. Only two mosques belong to this category in
Malaysia. They are the Masjid Negara or National Mosque (see Photograph 7)
Photograph 7 The National Mosque or Masjid Negara, Kuala Lumpur, 1965

in Kuala Lumpur and the State Mosque of the state of Negeri Sembilan.
The Masjid Negara is the best example of the combination of a modernistic
reinterpretation of traditional Malay architecture with a folded plate ‘dome’
in the metaphor of a royal umbrella signifying the importance of the build-
ing as a national monument. The Masjid Negara uses extensive serambi or
verandah space with light courts and air wells to provide ample daylight and
passive cooling to the building. It is by far the best example of a building
imbued with the technological and spiritual qualities of an architectural
form with a true Malaysian identity. The Negeri Sembilan State mosque
uses a series of intersecting reinforced concrete conoids to depict the horn-
like gable roofs of the Minang (the state’s) traditional architecture. The
reference to the bumbung gonjong or ‘horned roof’ is uniquely expressed
in the structural play of the conoids. The architect did not resort to the
simplistic revivalism alternative of the traditional roof but reinterpreted it in
an abstract and creative way.
The other type of style within this category is the style of modernistic
structuralism. This is the classic Miesien tradition of treating the building as
a mere machine of structural expression, nothing more, nothing less. The
dictum of ‘less is more’ echoes throughout the buildings of this style. The
State Mosque of the island state of Penang, for example, presents a concen-
tric ring of curved reinforced concrete ribs. The tip of each rib is crowned
with an awkward dome to give it its ‘Islamic’ signature. The Kota Samarahan
Mosque, in the East Malaysian state of Sarawak, has an identical form with
the exception that it uses steel delta trusses with stretched teflon tensile
fabric as the roofing material. The Al-Syahidin Mosque in Sik in Kedah uses
the structural system of a folded space frame that is anchored at four points
to the ground. The roof spans a space that is totally and uniquely devoid of
any solid wall. The Qibla wall is a free standing structure whilst the whole
floor is ringed by a metre high railing.
Post-modern revivalism
The term post-modern denotes an approach that contradicts the principles and
edicts of what was understood as the modern style. The term revivalism denotes
one of the many ways in which the post-modernist attempts to create an archi-
tecture of meaning for the general public rather than for the elite few.
There are two kinds of post-modernist revivalism in this category of style.
The first is foreign revivalism and the second is vernacular revivalism. Foreign
revivalism in mosque architecture seems to be the order of the day with such
examples as the Putra Mosque in Putrajaya (see Photograph 8), the Shah Alam
Mosque in the state of Selangor (see Photograph 9), the Wilayah Mosque in
Kuala Lumpur, the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Mosque in Johor,
the Sarawak State Mosque and many others. These grandiose statements
of so called ‘Islamic glory’ are the preferred language of state and federal
governments to express their commitment to Islam. The use of an eclectic
Photograph 8 Putra Mosque, Putrajaya, 1999
Photograph 9 Shah Alam Mosque, Selangor, 1988

array of Iranian and Turkish domes, Egyptian and Turkish minarets, Persian
iwan gateways, lavish courtyards surrounded by the sahn and an Arabian
hypostyle planning composition and pointed or semi circular arches bathed
in sumptuous classical ‘Islamic’ decorations are the vocabulary of such
mosque design. The vernacular revivalism calls for a slightly less monumen-
tal approach with its use of the three tiered pyramidal roof form built either
of concrete or timber. The state mosque of Melaka represents the grandiose
extreme whilst Malaysian architect Jimmy Lim’s design in the 1980s of a
mosque prototype for the villages of Pahang represents the humbler version.
The Al-Azim State Mosque of Melaka (see Photograph 10), combines the use
of arches and gateways along with neo-vernacular imagery whilst the Pahang
village mosques adhere more strictly to the scale of modern timber construc-
tion without any Middle Eastern flavour or Central Asian touches. With the
exception of the Pahang village mosque, the others are fenced up complexes
with lavish compounds filled with fountains, paved grounds and grass lawns
with much sculptural landscaping.
Revivalism as an approach
With reference to all the interpretations discussed previously, the West has
built an impressive framework with which to view Islamic architecture
Photograph 10 Al-Azim State Mosque, Melaka, 1984

in general and the mosque in particular. Architects in both the West and
the East have subjected themselves to this framework in their understand-
ing of both through education and through the nature of their practice.
Eastern architects have mostly only been critical, which ultimately leaves
much to be desired in relation to the formulation of frameworks. The gaze
of the West has consciously or subconsciously dominated the discourse of
mosque architecture. This has led to the popular approach of revivalism in
mosque architecture, which is usually both extravagant and alien to tropical
architecture.
The term revivalism is used by architectural historians to describe an archi-
tectural approach that considers the imitation of past historical architectural
typologies such as the mosque as a valid and ‘sanctified’ way of designing
buildings. Revivalism in architecture developed in Europe and the United
States during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The British, French,
German, Italian and American architects who were mostly trained at the
famous school of the Ecole-des-Beaux Arts accepted the notion that to be
considered beautiful, buildings of importance, such as palaces, opera houses,
universities, museums, churches and banks, should be designed using the
materials, proportions and architectural vocabulary of the great buildings
of Greek and Roman antiquity. It was assumed that these past master
builders had discovered the magic formula for architectural aesthetics in
creating the important elevations for a building. The plan of the building
would be mostly symmetrical in keeping with a past typology of temples,
palaces and administration buildings. The elevations are finely crafted with
ornamentation, friezes and the rhythmic placement of windows to produce
a symphony of balanced beauty.
A century later, these claims and approaches were almost wiped out by
the austerity of the modernists who centred their approaches on the faithful
presentation of building forms through an honest expression of technology.
Thus, the image of the ancient Parthenon was deemed appropriate for
the new image of a museum whilst the Monticello building by Thomas
Jefferson in Virginia was based almost entirely on the Pantheon Temple
of two millenniums ago. It was probably thought that the spirit of the
temples as scared objects to honour the gods were appropriate surrogates
for the new ‘sacred’ functions of a museum and a university. Both museum
and university have knowledge as their spiritual idol with the artefacts and
books as the new iconic relics. The late nineteenth-century modernists like
Louis Henry Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and
Mies van der Rohe despised the act of revivalism as seen in Sullivan’s con-
demnation of the People Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at the end of
the nineteenth century being phrased in the Roman style, and the design of the
Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois by Wright, which was in stark contrast to
the cruciform shapes of Italian cathedrals in the Middle Ages. Modernism
forced stones and masonry to be replaced with steel, reinforced concrete,
aluminium curtain walls and thin glass. The new forms were the new truths
of abstraction and functionalism. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, a wind

of change blew from the post-modernists led by such academics as Charles
Jencks. The post modernist began to talk about meaning in architecture and
condemned the modernist’s view of making buildings a mere form of basic
shelter devoid of any sense of beauty or social responsibility. In this regard
the post-modernists had opened the floodgate for the use of historical build-
ing precedence as a legitimate source of referent meaning. This ran contrary
to the modernist view that history has nothing to offer contemporary archi-
tects because of the march of progress in construction technology, structure
and materials. However, the post-modernists were very careful not to accept
the legitimacy of using historical precedence in its revivalistic format. They
too made it known that architectural progress should not be in tune with
simplistic revivalism. It is, however, because of the pragmatic desire of
Malaysian architects to please their client’s totally that revivalism such as
in the Shah Alam State Mosque, the Wilayah Mosque or the Putra Mosque
exists. I wonder if post-modernists such as Michael Graves, Charles Jencks or
Charles Moore would approve of such approaches to mosque design.
After a long stint of austere building activities in the modernist mode such
as the Bank Negara or Central Bank building, the Public Works Department’s
(PWD) standard office blocks and police barracks, architects in Malaysia began
to revel in copying much foreign and local precedence. Outside of Melaka,
most mosques carried huge and smaller domes, multiple minarets, massive
iwan gateways and lavish ornamentation. In Melaka, however, because of
the respect for the heritage of such buildings as the Kampung Hulu Mosque,
the Kampung Keling Mosque and the Tengkera Mosque, the State Mosque
was designed using the model of the three tiered pyramidal roof. Any new
mosque built in Melaka has to subscribe to this unwritten rule.
Revivalism of neo-vernacular or foreign vernacular typologies has found
much favour with Muslim Malays who value the architectural language of
domes, minarets and ornamentation highly.
Conclusion
The influence of Western ideas on architecture, Islam, religion and history

has left an indelible mark in the perception of these subjects. Most
architects from the East who have been trained predominantly in the West
or use a curriculum that is subject to the interpretation of ideas from the
West are voluntarily trapped by the physical attributes of approaches in
architecture because it is far easier to agree to the client’s wishes. The clients,
particularly the political leadership, are influenced by the literature that
showcases the many historical mosques of Islam’s ‘glorious’ past. Although
the discourse of architecture has evolved in the West from social, political,
artistic and scientific stand points, many in the East seem to prefer to follow
the by-products of forms and images. Coupled with the feudalistic agendas
of politicians in many Muslim countries (Malaysia not being totally exempt),

who pay lip service only to the ideals of democracy, mosque architecture has
taken a monumental and discomforting turn that I have phrased as ‘being
further away from the values of the Sunnah’ or the way of the Prophet.
The West has the strength of the value-centred discourses of the early
modernists such as Wright, Sullivan, Corbusier and Ruskin but historians
like Hillenbrand, Hoag, Grabar, Dickie and Creswell are trapped within their
restricted and one dimensional understanding of what constitutes ‘Islam’
and ‘religion’. Thus, the problem with the interpretation of mosque archi-
tecture is the two pronged problem of the West’s limited understanding of
Islam as ritual rather than a way of life, and that of the professionals in the
East who have not fully understood the potential of the early intellectual
discourses on modern and post-modern architecture. They tend to rely on
other informants, such as politicians, for instance, for an understanding of
what constitutes Islamic architecture. This vicious circle will continue well
into the future unless someone steps up to formulate a framework for a fresh
outlook on Islamic architecture and mosque design, in particular.
Bibliography
Burckhardt, T. (1976) Art of Islam: Language and Meaning (London: World of Islam
Festival Publishing Company).
Creswell, K.A.C. (1968) A Short Account Of Early Muslim Architecture (Beirut: Librarie
du Liban).
Curtis, W.J.R. (2006) Modern Architecture since 1900, 3rd edn, (New York: Phaidon).
Dickie, J. (1979) ‘Allah and Eternity: Mosques Madrasas and Tombs’, in G. Mitchell
(ed.) Architecture of The Islamic World (New York: William Norrow & Company Inc.).
Faruqi, I. (1992) Al-Tawhid (Herndon, USA: International Institute of Islamic
Thoughts).
Fergusson, J. (1859) A Handbook of Architecture (London: John Murray).
Fletcher, B. (1956) A History Of Architecture On The Comparative Method, 16th edn.
(London: B. T. Batsford Limited).
Hillenbrand, R. (1985) ‘The Mosque in the Medieval Islamic World’, in S. Cantacuzino
(ed.) Architecture in Continuity (New York: Aperture).
Hoag, J.D. (1989) Islamic Architecture (London: Faber and Faber).
Le Corbusier (1985) Towards a New Architecture (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.).
Pevsner, N. (1991) Pioneers of Modern Design (London: Penguin).
Rosengarten, A. (1893) A Handbook of Architectural Styles. Translated by W. Collet
Sanders (London: Chatto and Windus).
Statham, H.H. (1912) A Short Critical History of Architecture (London: B.T. Batsford)
Sullivan, L.H. (1979) Kindergarten Chats (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.)
Watkin, D. (1980) The Rise of Architectural History (London: The Architectural Press).
13
Global Hybrids? ‘Eastern Traditions’
of Health and Wellness in the West1
Suzanne Newcombe
Introduction
Many traditions of health and well-being with ostensibly ‘Eastern’ origins

have become both accessible and popular in ‘the West’. This chapter will
first outline contemporary use of complementary and alternative medicine
(CAM) and then briefly put into context the rise of its popularity in ‘the
West’. For the purposes of this chapter ‘the West’ will be assumed to consist
of Europe, the United States and the Anglophone Commonwealth nations
but the focus will be weighted towards Britain. The chapter will argue that
while Westerners use CAM in various ways, for the majority this involves
a significant overlap with biomedicine.2 There is, for some, an idealization of
Eastern traditions of health and wellness as being ancient, pure and natural
traditions which must – by definition – avoid the pitfalls of toxicity and
side effects believed to be endemic to biomedicine, a perspective that will be
described as a kind of Romantic Orientalism. This Romantic Orientalism is a
significant feature of the use of Eastern traditions of health and wellness in
the West. However, the actual practice and use of Eastern traditions might
be better described by what William Sax has termed the ‘asymmetrical
translations’ of non-Western health traditions, which embody a ubiquitous
power imbalance in relationship to the more dominant ‘Western’ biomedi-
cal model (Sax, 2009).
It will be argued that Eastern-origin alternative therapies challenge Western
culture in creating a condition of pluralism within medicine. These changes
are occurring in parallel to immigration from East to West creating unprec-
edented cultural and religious diversity within Western cultures. Many
countries in the East have been dealing with a wider diversity of religious
and cultural practices for a longer period of time than in the historically
Christian West. Therefore, the conditions of global pluralism within Western
nations could be considered a type of ‘Easterization’. But this situation may
be better described as a feature of contemporary globalization where both
East and West continue to be transformed by intercultural exchange. In the
202
Global Hybrids? 203
West, a power imbalance in favour of ‘Western’ biomedicine remains intact,

but the practice of biomedicine has been transformed by the increasingly
pluralistic marketplace.
Since the early 1990s, CAM has become a recognized part of the Western
healthcare landscape; in 1991 the United States Government provided the
start-up funding for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative
Medicine (NCCAM), which exists primarily to ‘explore complementary and
alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science’, to provide
training for practitioners and to provide authoritative information to the pub-
lic (NCCAM, 2009). In the UK, the Prince of Wales has taken the initiative to
promote CAM or ‘integrated healthcare’ in Britain, establishing a charity for
this purpose in 1993. A limited amount of CAM is available on the NHS in
Britain; in 2001 around 500,000 adults received CAM treatments as part of the
NHS service at a cost of around £50 million (Ong and Banks, 2003). In the
United States, private health insurance companies are increasingly including
CAM in their coverage; according to one report, about 48 per cent of members
of Health Maintenance Organizations reported having some access to alterna-
tive care in 1999 (Coulter, 2004, p. 118). The introduction of CAM practices
is part of a greater transformation in medicine, which is also being driven by
accessibility of information on the Internet, the popularity of patient self-help
groups and the importance of lay carers in managing a variety of chronic
conditions (Novas and Rose, 2000; Turner, 2004). Many individuals seeking
out CAM are interested in promoting more optimal health and ‘well-being’
above and beyond addressing illness and symptoms. It could be said that,
particularly in the last ten years, CAM has become part of a movement within
biomedicine with a growing focus on a ‘person-empowering approach to
health and self-care’, which is also intricately linked to contemporary public
health strategy (Barnett, 2007, p. 208).
Today, CAM is most often a treatment of choice in the West for illnesses or
pain that has been a problem for over a year, especially back pain, arthritis,
gastrointestinal problems, ongoing effects of injury, anxiety, depression,
migraine and asthma (Barnett, 2007, p. 210). In the United States, a 1997
telephone survey estimated that 42 per cent of the population had used a
CAM therapy in the past year, the majority having used relaxation tech-
niques (Eisenberg et al., 1998). According to the Prince of Wales’ Foundation
for Integrated Health, the most popular ‘complementary therapies’ in Brit-
ain are acupuncture, Alexander Technique, aromatherapy, the Bowen
technique, chiropractic, cranial therapy, herbal medicine, homoeopathy,
massage therapy, naturopathy, nutritional therapy, osteopathy, reflexology,
Reiki, shiatsu and yoga therapy (The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated
Health, 2009).
The very name, ‘complementary and alternative medicine’, describes
a power relationship in which the biomedical model is assumed to
be dominant. However, this hegemony of biomedical power could be
considered relatively recent. Before the First World War, medical care in the
West could be characterized by the existence of several competing models
of treating illness and promoting health, which included biomedical prac-
titioners, herbalists, homoeopaths and naturopaths, as well as those who
subscribed to the power of mesmerism and positive thinking (New Thought)
amongst others (Saks, 2003, pp. 68–71). All of these ‘alternatives’ were mar-
ginalized by biomedicine as a consequence of a combination of technical
advances, organized professionalization of biomedical practitioners and
robust public support; this led to a ‘golden age’ of biomedicine in the middle
of the twentieth century. The cultural authority of biomedical models was
again challenged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period when many
types of authority in Western society were also being questioned. Particular
criticisms of biomedicine included conceptual attacks of how biomedical
assumptions dehumanized the patient, the failure of germ theory to cure
many chronic illnesses and the continued prevalence of major illnesses
such as cancer and heart disease. Simultaneously, interest in a variety of
‘alternative’ therapies was growing.
The rise of CAM in the West
During the 1960s in the West, there was an influential anti-psychiatric

movement associated with the psychiatrist R.D. Laing. Those interested in
his critique of the psychiatric profession were often also exploring ‘Eastern
spirituality’. Laing himself was actively exploring Buddhism and yoga dur-
ing the 1970s and encouraging those around him to do the same. Thus,
there was a link between young people in the West who were disillusioned
with traditional forms of religious and medical authority (not to mention
political authority) and those looking to the ancient cultures of the ‘East’ for
inspiration. For example, during the 1970s in Britain, members of the School
of Economic Science, a new spiritual movement aligned with the Advaita
Vedanta, began exploring the efficacy of Ayurvedic medicine, an interest
that was shared with a small minority of yoga practitioners of the period
(Newcombe, 2008a, pp. 255–6). Since the late 1950s, and increasingly since
the 1970s, middle-class Westerners have been able to travel to exotic cultures
on holiday and bring home tales of amazing massages and spiritual inspira-
tion (Newcombe, 2008a, p. 153). This has had a direct popularizing influence
on interest in ‘exotic’ and ‘Eastern’ forms of health and well-being.
There is still a demographic overlap between those participating in
‘Eastern’ spiritual or fitness activities and those using the healing systems
associated with the East. For example, Elijah Siegler (2007) mentions that
many American Daoists also become interested in tai chi, chi gong and
traditional Chinese medicine. Many of the Western students on Ayurvedic
courses have had prior experience in yoga as practised in the West and may
include yoga asana as part of their recommendations for clients (Newcombe,
Global Hybrids? 205
2008a, pp. 255–7; Ståhle, 2011). Ayurvedic-branded products are also often
placed in yoga magazines (Ready, 2004).
However, the youth counter culture was not the only demographic with
a growing interest in ‘Eastern medicine’ from the 1970s onwards; women were
also increasingly challenging the medical profession for being patriarchal and
disempowering. Women continue to make up a majority of those active as
clients in the CAM milieu and also constitute a large number of practitioners
(Barnett, 2007, p. 210; Newcombe, 2007; MacPerson et al., 2008). The trust
of women in the biomedical profession was undermined when, during the
1950s, pregnant women were prescribed thalidomide for morning sickness,
which resulted in severe birth defects in their offspring. Additionally, by the
1970s, a growing number of women were vocalizing their dissatisfactions and
feelings of disempowerment with ‘medicalization’ of childbirth (Newcombe,
2007). The importance of CAM therapies in giving both practitioners and cli-
ents a feeling of empowerment and individual control over their health and
well-being is often commented upon by those studying this field (McClean,
2006, MacPerson et al., 2008; Nevrin, 2008; Smith, 2008). As an auxiliary heal-
ing profession similar to nursing women as alternative ‘healers’ fits comfortably
in Western stereotypes of women’s work. However, in choosing alternative
therapies rather than being directly subordinate to male doctors, women are
actively choosing their own fields of empowerment and expertise.
The concerns of the Western second wave feminist movement over-
lapped with critiques against institutional racism and a growing awareness
of the problems of colonialism. Many women became interested in
anthropologists’ idealistic descriptions of ‘natural birth’ and less fraught
childrearing practices in non-Western cultures. Books like Fredrick Leboyer’s
Birth Without Violence (1974) and Jean Liedloff’s The Continuum Concept
(1975) were influential in promoting an idealistic non-biomedicalized East.
Many women would argue that this literature is needed as a corrective of the
disempowerment women experience at the receiving end of the ‘medical
gaze’ (Foucault, 1973). However, this genre of literature also idealized the
positive aspects of ‘natural’ childbirth in non-Western cultures without con-
sideration for the health problems such peoples may experience due to lack
of access to potentially lifesaving biomedical interventions, poverty caused
by Western economic policies and deforestation, amongst other problems.
Continuing this idealistic gaze on the more ‘natural’ and ‘healing’ lifestyles
of non-Western peoples, present-day CAM is often presented as offering an
answer to problems created by a ‘Western’ focus on materialism and the
perceived inherent Cartesian dualism of biomedicine (e.g., Selby, 2005).
The gazes of the West I: ‘Pragmatics’ and ‘true believers’
There are many different ways in which Western individuals interact with
the praxis of CAM. For the purposes of understanding some of the main
ways CAM practitioners and clients view CAM, these approaches could
be characterized into three main groups: ‘pragmatics’, ‘true believers’ and
‘holistics’. These categories should not be considered exhaustive or even
entirely mutually exclusive. A particular individual might shift between
these descriptions through time or embody some aspects of several of these
groups. For example, Catherine Garrett provides an intelligent analysis of
how Transcendental Meditation, Reiki and yoga can each be used to trans-
form an individual’s relationship with suffering (Garrett, 2001, pp. 329–42).
While aspects of Garrett’s exploration of her relationship with pain through
CAM therapies might encompass the ‘holistic’ type, other aspects of her
explorations would be better described by the ‘pragmatic’. The point is that
these three types can be used to emphasize the multiple ‘gazes’ by which
Westerners typically engage with Eastern-origin CAM practices.
‘Pragmatics’ are primarily interested in CAM to find relief for a chronic
or acute problem. Often this problem is something that has a biomedical
diagnosis but that does not respond effectively to standard biomedical
treatment. For example, many of those who seek out Ayurvedic practi-
tioners in the UK are women suffering menstrual pain or irregularity, or
irritable bowel syndrome (Newcombe, 2008a). Although this group may
also be interested in spirituality, their motivation for using CAM is to find
a technique that helps their complaint. The primary concern is whether
or not the therapy ‘works’; any spiritual interests are only secondary. This
group would include many of the biomedical physicians who offer CAM
practices such as ‘dry needling’ (a form of acupuncture that does not require
training in Traditional Chinese Medicine) or ‘yoga therapy’ to treat a specific
ailment, for example, osteoarthritis.
Evidence suggests that around half of active clients in the praxis of CAM
do not actively engage with the ‘spiritual’ claims of the therapies. For exam-
ple, recent data from the Kendal Project in Britain suggests that 49 per cent
of those practising yoga and 36 per cent of those receiving Reiki treatments
do not consider their participation in the activity to be at all spiritual
(Heelas et al., 2000, Question 1). This is reinforced by evidence that suggests
about half of practitioners of Iyengar yoga do not imbue their practice with
a spiritual meaning but persist primarily for perceived benefits in terms of
health, fitness and flexibility (Hasselle-Newcombe, 2005).
In contrast, those who could be described as ‘true believers’ have com-
pletely rejected the biomedical norm in favour of what might be described
as a theologically-based world view. Interestingly, the group that most
frequently fits this description in the West are sectarian Christians who rely
exclusively on the power of faith and prayer and reject the authority of secu-
lar physicians. While Western society allows individuals to have a great deal
of autonomy over both their beliefs and consent to medical interventions,
it also directs strict sanctions when this ‘alternative’ paradigm is applied to
children or those deemed ‘vulnerable’ due to serious illness. For example,
Global Hybrids? 207
during 2009, the parents of Kara Neuman were convicted in the United States
for allowing their 11-year-old daughter to die from undiagnosed diabetes;
the father, a Pentecostal minister, told the jury that he believed going to
a doctor would ‘cut him off from God’ (‘Praying Man Let His Daughter Die’,
2009; Johnson, 2009). However, such ‘true believers’ can also be found in
Eastern-origin CAM practitioners as exemplified by the General Medical
Council’s case against two biomedical doctors who practised Maharishi
Ayurvedic Medicine on HIV+ individuals (Newcombe, 2008b). These ‘true
believers’ are undoubtedly a minority in the Western CAM praxis and their
exception proves the general stance of a pluralist use of biomedicine and
CAM therapies. All but the most dedicated promoters of CAM treatments
will revert to a biomedical model in situations of acute trauma, for example,
when dealing with injuries resulting from an automobile accident.
Gazes of the West II: ‘Holistic’ Romantic Orientalism
The third major group of CAM clients could be described as ‘holistics’.

‘Holistics’ hold a significant amount of metaphysical beliefs regarding
their activities in promoting health and well-being. These clients and prac-
titioners are often active participants in a kind of romantic Orientalist
‘salvation’, which emphasizes the purity of an Eastern tradition in concep-
tual opposition to ‘modern’ scientific, secular biomedicine. The emphasis
on the holistic individual’s use of CAM is not necessarily directed at treating
an illness but at promoting optimal health and well-being. This conceptual
tendency is a direct continuation of nineteenth-century notions of the
‘mystic East’ popularized by American transcendentalists and Theosophists,
amongst other movements ( Jackson, 1975, 1981; Versluis, 1993). This ide-
alization of the mythic, ancient East as a repository of healing knowledge
often conflates distinct theories of health and well-being, reducing into
a single tradition diverse and evolving practices that span huge expanses of
time and geography.
For example, aromatherapy, a practice of associating healing with
particular aromas, has its immediate historical origins with the Frenchman
René-Maurice Gattefossé (1881–1950); however, it is often claimed that
the practice originates with the ancient Egyptians and has also been used
by ancient Greeks, Persians and Arabs (for example, see Quinessence
Aromatherapy, 2009). Likewise, recent research has argued that what
might be recognized as a practice of ‘yoga therapy’ has definite roots in the
modern period (Alter, 2004). Nevertheless, the website of the Prince of Wales
Foundation for Integrated Health (2009) uncritically asserts that ‘Yoga is an
ancient tradition of mental and physical exercises which started in India
over 5,000 years ago and is now widely practised in the UK’, ignoring the
centuries of complex inter-cultural exchange between East and West that
created what is practised as yoga today in the West – and indeed the East.
Some Western practitioners of Ayurveda have felt inspired to revitalize the

great Ayurvedic tradition, which appears to be undervalued in contemporary
India (Ayurvedic Practitioners Association, 2007; Ståhle, 2011). This per-
spective is based on an idealistic holistic assumption rather than engaging
with the sociological and historical reality of the tradition they practice.
Practitioners of Ayurveda who hold these views ignore the reality that
Ayurveda is a multi-faceted tradition that has been profoundly influenced
by biomedicine within India. While modern Ayurvedic practitioners (in
both India and abroad) still refer heavily to the classical texts of the Suśruta
and Carakra, which have been dated at around 500 CE (Wujastyk, 2003,
pp. 393–409). Ayurveda is a multi-faceted tradition that has been subject
to various historical influences (Leslie, 1976, 1992). During the twentieth
century, within India, Ayurvedic medical training has been restructured
based on Western-style education to favour the recognition of state-
sponsored college degrees that include training in biomedical anatomy and
diagnostics rather than ‘traditional’ guru-student apprenticeships on the
Ayurvedic model alone (although these still occur as well) (Wujastyk, 2008,
pp. 43–76). Some Swedish Ayurveidic lifestyle coaches feel that Ayurveda as
practiced alongside biomedicine in India is less authentic than the holistic
model that they practice in Sweden (Ståhle, 2011). The ubiquitous influence
of biomedicine on the contemporary practice of Ayurveda within India
underlies the complexity of inter-cultural transmission and power imbalance
found when the biomedical model is involved (Sax, 2009).
Likewise much of the literature promoting yoga as an ancient Indian
spiritual practice ignores the more recent influence of Western physical
culture and biomedicine that is an integral part of what is practised as
‘yoga’ in both India and the West in the late twentieth century (Alter, 2004;
Singleton, 2010). Similarly, some American Daoists emphasize Daoism’s
universality and de-emphasize any associations it has with contemporary
Chinese culture. One contemporary Chinese-American Daoist teacher,
Maoshing Ni, went so far as to claim that the Chinese would eventually
re-adopt Daoism when they were presented it by Americans (Siegler, 2007,
p. 16). Such ideological assumptions could be considered a kind of post-
colonial, inverted form of Romantic Orientalism.
A conflation of specific traditions into a ‘holistic’ mystic East is exemplified
in the contemporary Western practice of Reiki. Reiki is a practice of chan-
nelling healing energy that originated in 1921 with a Japanese national,
Mikao Usui (1864–1926). In the Reiki model of healing, healing energy is
believed to be accessible to everyone, but the ability to heal effectively can
be ‘opened’ by a special ceremony of ‘attunement’. This consists of a ritual
that cleanses the practitioner’s energy channels and teaches them to access
this universal energy for the benefit of others. A Reiki treatment usually lasts
about an hour and involves the healer moving their hands over, but not
touching, a fully clothed ‘patient’. Reiki energy can also be channelled for
Global Hybrids? 209
distant healing where the patient requests the healing at a specific time as the
practitioner visualizes the treatment. Reiki masters emphasize that learning
or receiving Reiki requires the adoption of no particular belief system.
Yet, in Reiki, there is often a conflation between various ‘Eastern’ cultures
within the practice of an ostensibly Japanese technique. Judith Macpherson
describes that contemporary Scottish Reiki ‘practitioners may, for example,
engage with Diane Stein’s provision of a Tibetan Buddhist definition of the
five Reiki symbols, which she also places within a Goddess cosmology. Or
they may favour Walter Lubeck’s representation of these same “characters”
as having roots in the writings of Confucian philosopher Mancius in 300
BCE’ (Macpherson, 2008, p. 114). Additionally practitioners might call on
guardian angels from the Christian tradition to assist with their practice
or be actively involved in pagan goddess spiritualities (Macpherson, 2008,
pp. 154, 173). Rather than being an importation of an ‘Eastern’ metaphysic,
Macpherson’s research suggests that Reiki practitioners, who are mostly
women, are constructing a metaphysical understanding of healing that they
find empowering and self-validating in opposition to a patriarchal society.
As one commentator on the contemporary CAM scene notes ‘the fact that
many CAM therapies have their roots in ancient practices, leads to the claim
that they have stood the test of time. “Old”, like “natural”, is often thought to
mean “good”’ (Barnett, 2007, p. 209). Perhaps this non-specific Eastern origin
allows Westerners a feeling of legitimacy in using the techniques and therapies;
if these traditions belong to a non-specific, natural, idealized past, or a ‘univer-
sal energy source’, these practices could be understood as a legitimate resource
for all times and places. Perhaps this ideological position avoids conscious-
ness of ‘colonial guilt’ while ironically perpetuating an Orientalist pattern of
thinking. Thus, the ideology of those CAM actors who could be described as
holistics should be understood as promoting a distinct world view which has
historical origins in the West, rather than the East (see also Hanegraaff, 1998).
Although the language of ‘holism’ pervades the marketing of CAM in the
West, the number of people who use this ideology as a lifestyle choice is
not necessarily very large. Heelas and Woodhead’s survey of the northern
English city of Kendal suggested that 1.6 per cent of its population were
‘involved on a weekly basis in associational activities regarded as spiritually
significant by practitioners’ (Heelas and Woodhead, 2000). ‘Associational
activities’ included many things associated with the New Age milieu and
most of the Eastern-origin CAM therapies, such as aromatherapy, Reiki,
Shiatsu, Indian head massage and yoga. If this percentage is representative
of the British population, this is not really a significant number of people,
certainly not enough to make claims towards an Easterization of Britain on
this basis alone (Campbell, 2007). However, the holistic description might
be considerably more widespread if the holistic ideal-type is considered as
a spectrum of ideological adherence that individuals may dip in and out of
engagement depending on life-stage and levels of health or wellness.
While it might be tempting to view the spectrum of ‘Western gazes’ on

Eastern CAM practices as exploitative, because they often do not appear to
be valuing traditions in their own terms, the reality is much more complex.
Those promoting Eastern healing traditions are often adroit cultural actors
(of both Western and Eastern cultural origin) who are attuned to present-
ing their Eastern tradition in a way that anticipates the desires of a Western
market and are willing to reinforce romanticized, Orientalist assumptions
when it suits their purposes. When considering those promoting yoga and
Ayurveda in the West, Srinivas Aravamudan’s (2007) articulation of a lin-
guistic registrar of ‘guru English’ is especially pertinent. One of the most
widely known examples of this kind of successful cross-cultural actor in
the CAM field is Deepak Chopra (1989), who now promotes a variety of
CAM therapies under his own name as a brand. Chopra was born in India
and received his biomedical training at the All India Institute of Medical
Sciences. He had relocated to the United States and was a practitioner at
the Boston Regional Medical Center when he began publically promoting
the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s form of Ayurvedic Medicine. His 1989 book
Quantum Healing epitomizes the mix of biomedical and alternative pillars of
knowledge that characterize this milieu. Chopra distanced himself from the
Maharishi organization in the early 1990s although he has continued work
within an Ayurvedic model of health and healing (loosely understood).
Many of the Indian nationals who popularized yoga were complex blends
of Eastern and Western culture. Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), Aurobindo
Akroyd Ghose (1872–1950) and Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952)
were all profoundly influenced by Western culture before promoting yoga
as a cultural asset accessible to East and West. Recent research on Yogendra
Mastanami (1897–1989), a seminal figure in defining yoga as it is now
practised worldwide, highlights the influence of Western physical culture,
Indian wrestling, and ascetic training on his transformation of yoga postures
(Singleton, 2010, pp. 116–22). Likewise one of the first popularizers of yoga
in Britain went by the name of Yogini Sunita. However, in India she was
known as Bernadette Cabral, a relatively well-off Catholic Anglo-Indian born
in a Bombay suburb. While in India, she wore Western dress and worked for
the Italian embassy. Soon after she moved with her family to Birmingham in
1959 she transformed herself into a sari-wearing ‘Yogini Sunita’ who taught
a popular form of yoga based on relaxation at the Birmingham Athletics
Institute to thousands of students (Newcombe, 2008a, pp. 83–93). There
is nothing to suggest that the presentation of herself as either ‘Bernadette
Cabral’ or ‘Yogini Sunita’ was inauthentic. Rather, her self-presentation
could be seen as representing the complex reality of a modern, globalized
identity.
Like Ayurveda and yoga in India, traditional medicine and acupuncture
within China has undergone huge transformations over the last 2000
years. These changes have been particularly significant since Mao Zedong
Global Hybrids? 211
championed the nationalistic importance of Traditional Chinese Medicine,

opening colleges to teach Chinese medicine as well as issuing directives
for practitioners to modernize, ‘scientize’ and integrate with Western
medicine. Chinese Medicine continues to change both within China and in
European contexts (Lo and Schroer, 2005; Chen, 2005). Interestingly, some
Western practitioners have recently commented that Western acupuncture
practitioners have:
perpetuated a pre-scientific view of acupuncture as an alternative to

biomedicine by reviving vitalistic ideas that assume [Qi is] a non-physical
entity, force or field that has to be added to natural laws. Together these
perspectives maintained the notion that Chinese medicine principles
are incompatible with modern science and have created a split between
the scientific community and practitioners of acupuncture (MacPherson
et al., 2008, 157).
The authors of this statement argue that the perceived incompatibility of

acupuncture and biomedicine is more a construction of Western practi-
tioners than descriptive of the ‘actual’ tradition of practice. Although this
statement goes some way towards recognizing the complexity of acupunc-
ture’s relation to modern scientific ways of understanding the human body,
it also recognizes a widespread gap between the ideals and assumptions of
the Western practitioners and the recognition of the complex and histori-
cally multifaceted nature of the practice they are promoting. The authors
of this statement are actively working to establish ‘evidence based research’
acceptable to biomedical scientists.
Conclusion
The vast majority of those who promote a holistic approach to Eastern-origin

CAM do not reject biomedical authority completely or the importance of
(biomedical) evidence-based medicine as being needed to legitimize CAM
activities. Although a Reiki practitioner may firstly resort to healing energy
imbalances, persistent pain will find most at their biomedical doctor’s
surgery. In his ethnography of crystal and spiritual healing (Western-origin
CAM practices) in northern England, Stuart McClean (2006) highlights the
presence of ‘white coats’ and the significance of the metaphor of spiritual
‘cleansing’. He emphasizes that healers’ explanations for the existence of ill-
health are invariably a response to and a critique of biomedicine. Healing
concepts are, therefore, relational: ‘drawn from the healer’s conceptual
understanding of orthodox medicine’ (McClean, 2006, p. 96). Although
McClean’s comment is based on his description of Western-origin crystal
healing, it is also the case that many of those who consult Eastern-origin
CAM practitioners also have a biomedical diagnosis that they are seeking
to address. In the CAM field, this reference to biomedical psychological

descriptions and diagnostics is one example of the ‘asymmetrical translation’
of the non-Western medical traditions.
The trend in all Western countries has been for CAM practitioners to
professionalize, often following a model that borrows from biomedicine
significant concepts such as ethical committees. In the European Union there
has been a growing concern amongst CAM practitioners to standardize their
training programmes to conform with the growing pan-European legal frame-
work. However, there is a fair amount of variation between who is allowed to
practise CAM techniques across Europe. In countries whose legal systems are
based on Napoleonic law rather than common law, particularly France, only
the biomedically qualified are legally permitted to offer any complementary
therapies (Cant and Sharma, 1999, p. 60). In contrast, Britain has been
relatively liberal in allowing lay practitioners to gain qualifications to prac-
tise in a variety of CAM therapies. Interestingly, the first degree-level course
in Ayurvedic medicine offered in mainland Europe at the Rosenberg Society
for Holistic Health and Education in Birstein, Germany, was accredited by
Middlesex University in the UK, but is only open to those German speakers
who already have a recognized medical qualification in Germany or Austria.
There is no question that secular biomedicine still forms the basis of
the dominant model of thinking both within and outside of CAM praxis
in Western society. Although CAM is becoming more integrated within
Western medical systems, its role is complementary rather than alterna-
tive to the ideological and social power of the biomedical model (Cant and
Sharma, 1999, p. 51–82). It is to the standards of biomedical evidenced-
based medicine that CAM techniques must justify themselves. While
Western society is increasingly tolerant of a pluralistic model of healing
practices that promote health and well-being, the uses of these practices
are generally circumscribed to areas where Western biomedicine offers little
ongoing support. If the CAM technique is believed not to cause harm and
is not supported by public funds, there is little objection to healthy adults
with disposable incomes experimenting. However, if CAM therapies are
thought to have the potential to cause harm or are targeted towards vul-
nerable populations (e.g., children, cancer patients or HIV+ sufferers) most
Western societies have enacted a variety of legal limitations on the practice
of CAM as an alternative to biomedicine.
The West has been transformed by contemporary medical–cultural
exchange. However, there has also been a social change in the late twentieth
century effected, in part, by having immediate contact with many different
world cultures and Human Rights based ideology, which demands (at least
ideologically) respect for more varied expressions of human culture. Some of
the ‘traditional’ markers of human progress as defined by European cultures,
such as GDP as a measure of the health of a nation, are being reconsidered
by leading thinkers (Stiglitz et al., 2008).
Global Hybrids? 213
Conceptually, Eastern-origin CAM has come to hold a position as an

ideological opposition to Western medicine’s focus on pathology and
illness. Many of those using CAM are making a personal and political
statement that they value health and ‘being well’. This way of thinking is
influential throughout the middle and upper classes in the West; that is, the
population with the leisure time and resources to think about improving
heath rather than dealing with an immediate crises. CAM practitioners can
offer lifestyle and health-based advice without focusing on a medical diag-
nosis, something that many Western doctors are not able to do (although
some doctors would certainly like to) partially as a result of doctor’s payment
conditions and restrictions on practice time. Western medicine has to some
extent acknowledged defeat in areas of caring for some chronic medical
conditions and improving ‘quality of life’ for those in pain. CAM therapies
now occupy an accepted place in the medical marketplace throughout the
West. Although it resists acculturation by the real or imagined East, bio-
medicine in the West has had to face a dynamic state of medical pluralism
brought about by patient demand and inter-cultural exchange. Western
culture and medicine has been transformed by its contact with Eastern
medical systems.
With regard to how to evaluate the ‘Western gazes’ within the praxis
of CAM, the evidence is far from being a clear case of simple exploitation
or cultural appropriation. Many of those individuals involved in popular-
izing Eastern-origin CAM in the West are extremely skilful cultural actors
of Eastern origin who may have sincere beliefs in what they are offering.
Additionally, many of the fallacies of ‘natural’ and ‘ancient’ being ‘good’ in
opposition to the perceived symptom-oriented focus of Western biomedicine
are as common in the East as the West (Tirodkar, 2008). Additionally, the
use of traditional medical techniques in the East appears to be subject
to the same conditions of pluralism and client pragmatism as characterizes
the use of CAM in the West (e.g., Tridokar, 2008; Langford, 2002; Lo and
Schroer, 2005).
If any generalization can be made about the praxis of CAM in the West, it
is that this area is characterized by pluralism, pragmatism and an emphasis
on patient ‘empowerment’ as well as the continuing dominance of the
secular, biomedical model. If the incorporation of medical pluralism can be
seen as the West approaching a cultural position more familiar to the East,
perhaps this can be understood as a type of Easternization. Significantly,
the growing popularity of Eastern traditions of health and well-being in
the West reflect a very human tendency to minimize personal suffering
by whatever is perceived to be the most effective means available. There
is also a pattern towards simplifying complex and multifaceted traditions
into a more empowering ‘truth’ that can be easily applied for the purposes
of healing. In these tendencies, perhaps, there is no duality between East
and West.
Around the year 1970 the jazz musician Duke Ellington was touring the
world and reflecting upon the nature of cultural exchange. Introducing his
suite entitled Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971), Ellington reflected on this process
of exchange via a dialogue with Professor Marshal McLuhan:
Mr McLuhan said that the whole world is going Oriental and that no one
will be able to retain his or her identity – not even the Orientals. And of
course we travel round the world – a lot, and in the last five or six years
we too have noticed this thing to be true
Ellington and McLuhan’s conclusion about the effects of such a process are
significant: in the field of CAM neither East nor West retained ‘his or her
identity’ after the intense intercultural exchange of the second half of the
twentieth century. In this context it is questionable to what extent a term
like ‘Easternization’ can describe the complex global results of intercultural
exchange.
Notes
1. The author wishes to thank the Institute of Occidental Studies (IKON) at the
National University of Malaysia, all the participants at the IKON International
Symposium ‘The Gaze Of The West: Framings of the East’ (2009) and, in particular
Shanta Nair-Venugopal, for their generous support and critical comments that
have lead to the creation of this chapter; IKON is creating a invaluable forum in
intercultural exchange and critical reflection on East–West relations.
2. The research on which this chapter is based stems from social historical research
on the history and context of yoga and Ayurveda in Britain (funded by a grant
from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council) alongside ten years of socio-
logical work at Inform. Inform is an organization based at the London School of
Economics and largely funded by the UK Department of Communities and Local
Government to research and provide information on minority religions and spir-
itualities. The beliefs and practices of many minority religions often include beliefs
and practices relating to medicine, health and well-being.
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Ashtanga Yoga’ in M. Singleton and J. Byrne (eds.) Yoga in the Modern World:
Contemporary Perspectives (London: Routledge), pp. 140–60.
Stiglitz, J., Sen, A. and Fitoussi, J. (2008) ‘Report by the Commission on the Measure-
ment of Economic Performance and Social Progress’, http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.
fr/en/index.htm, accessed 27 September 2009.
Versluis, A. (1993) American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Wujastyk, D. (2008) ‘The evolution of Indian government policy on Ayurveda in the
twentieth century’ in D. Wujastyk and F. Smith (eds.) Modern and Global Ayurveda:
Pluralism and Paradigms (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), pp. 43–76.
Wujastyk, D. (2003) The Roots of Ayurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings
(London: Penguin).
14
The Sociology of Gastronomic
Decolonization
Jean-Pierre Poulain
Introduction
The food exchanges between East and West have had a very long history;
beginning with the trade in spices, continuing with colonization, various
migratory waves and prolonged by the actual effects of the globalization
of markets. From the twentieth century right up to the end of the 1970s,
the role of the chefs was reduced to that of interpreters of the classic art of
the masters of the golden age of nineteenth-century gastronomy. With the
advent of nouvelle cuisine it was necessary for them to become creative. This
movement led them to take the popular cuisines as a source of inspiration.
These are referred to as cuisines de terroir, which are supposed to concretize
the talents of a human society in the culinary exploitation of the richness
of the biotype in which it lives. Nouvelle cuisine de terroir, which emerged
from this rooting of gastronomy in the ‘local’, or in any case from the play
of gastronomy with the ‘local’, opens a decisive sequence in the modern
history of world gastronomy, that is, the decolonization of haute cuisine.
Nouvelle cuisine de terroir is characterized by the idea that there exists
a double gastronomical tradition: the cuisine and table manners of the elites
and popular food cultures. It is with this conception of gastronomy that, in
the 1980s, French chefs travelled all over the world as consultants to major
international hotel chains.
All the best hotel schools and universities, like the Tsuji school of Osaka
(Japan), the Institute of Tourism and Hotel of Quebec, Montreal (Canada),
the School of Hotel and Tourism of Estoril (Portugal), Taylor’s University
College of Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), the Hotel Fach Schüle of Heidelberg
(Germany) host the fine fleur of the French chefs who promote a cuisine
that is attentive of the local culinary heritages. This contact with other
food cultures has a double consequence. First of all, it contributes to the
development of creative erudite cuisines of local inspiration and allows for
the birth of a Japanese, Malaysian or Australian nouvelle cuisine, which is
executed today with real brilliance by many chefs.
218
The Sociology of Gastronomic Decolonization 219
From French gastronomy to French gastronomies
Contemporary French gastronomy is a skilful mix of haute cuisine and

French regional cuisines. However, this was not always the case. For many
years haute cuisine kept its distance from the food eaten by ordinary French
people, and the native, rustic cooking of France, or cuisine du terroir, as it
is conceived of today, is but a recent invention, dating back scarcely any
further than to the mid nineteenth century.
How, did France, following the Renaissance, become the country synony-
mous with gastronomy? To understand how this movement that attached
aesthetic value to the act of eating came about, we must look at the social
context in which it developed and identify the social functions it fulfils.
What role do the arts of the table play in the civilizing process described by
the German sociologist Norbert Elias (1939)? How does gastronomy relate
to Catholic religious morals? How do traditional French chefs perceive
culinary inventiveness? How did this form of cuisine and the accompa-
nying table manners impose themselves as the standard of excellence
recognized by Western elites? At the same time, taking an interest in French
gastronomy entails a sociological rereading of French, European and a part
of world history.
The second part of this chapter deals with the rise of regionalism in
French cuisine and the export of the concepts of nouvelle cuisine, which
allowed for the decolonization of haute cuisine and the development of
new gastronomic movements all over the world. The last part focuses on
the forms of gastronomic development between local nouvelle cuisine and
fusion cuisines.
A driving force for social differentiation

It all began in 1530 when the term ‘civility’ was first used in a text by
Erasmus of Rotterdam entitled ‘De civitate morum puerilium’. This concept
was to become the ‘backbone of court society’ (Elias, 1939). It corresponded
to a way of portraying oneself that aimed at drawing a distinction between
the upper and lower classes. Table manners became governed by extremely
strict rules. By the time of the Renaissance, the movement had spread to a
majority of countries in Europe and reflected a degree of European social
unity. However, it was in France that the conditions were conducive to it
taking a particular form. The establishment of the French court at Versailles
in the late seventeenth century, in line with the centralizing logic initiated
by Henri IV, marked the beginning of a number of key social changes. To be
nearer to the centres of decision-making, the provincial aristocracy moved
to the court, neglecting its political role in the regions. Confronted with the
resulting local political power vacuum, the bourgeoisie, whose economic
strength was growing, began to copy the manners of the aristocracy, adopt-
ing an attitude denounced in Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme. The copied
members of the nobility then hastened to commission their artists and cooks,
clothing, perfume and wig makers to invent new social practices designed to
denote their differences. This led to the ‘civilizing process’ described by Elias
(1939). Fashion in clothing, the art of perfume-making and gastronomy,
thus, became distinctive systems, a means of asserting social differences and
of recognition. The ‘French way of life’, rapidly imitated by Europe’s elites,
was based on the growing sophistication of these practices, which ensured
that the up-and-coming classes were kept out of touch and guaranteed the
superiority of the elites. It was from these games of recognition and differ-
entiation, from this hiatus between the true followers and those who merely
copied, that fashion derived its vitality.
As early as 1691, culinary literature began to serve this social process. The
first explicit reference to the bourgeoisie appeared in the title of Massialot’s
book Le cuisinier royal et bourgeois. Henceforth the chefs of the aristocracy
would write books targeting this social category, with the aim of educating
the upwardly mobile middle classes about ‘good taste’. Far from bringing
an end to this movement, the French revolution breathed new life into it,
since it gave the bourgeoisie the social standing it had aspired to for the past
two hundred years. This was because, although the French revolution was
a popular uprising, it was the bourgeoisie that chiefly benefited from it. The
commercialization of gastronomy, via the restaurants opened by the chefs
who now found themselves unemployed, gave a greater number of people
access to the experience of fine dining. Apart from its role in differentiating
the social classes, the French gastronomic model, which progressed through
society in a top-down movement, helped to shape the French identity.
Taste as a vector of development

In Mediaeval and Renaissance cooking, spices played a key role in mark-
ing social differences.1 When, in the late sixteenth century following the
discovery of the New World, the bourgeoisie began to make ostentatious
use of spices, which had become both less expensive and more common-
place, the cuisine of the aristocracy turned away from them. Abandoning
the use of spices, as a sign of disregard for such needs, sophisticated French
gastronomes switched to taking an interest in the taste of food. In 1654,
in a fundamental work Les délices de la campagne, Nicolas de Bonnefons
established a revolutionary concept: ‘Cabbage soup must taste of cabbage,
leek soup of leek, turnip soup of turnip, and so on … And I intend what
I say about soup to become a common precept, applicable to all food.’ This
laid down the basic principle of what was to become French gastronomy.
A cuisine where the taste of food was masked by strongly flavoured
secondary elements was replaced by a cuisine where the combination of
ingredients became an art governed by rules very similar to that of musical
harmony or pictorial balance. A new culinary category came into being: the
sauce base, or fonds, which enhanced the taste of food. Unlike Mediaeval
sauces, which closely resembled our current mustard or Vietnamese nuoc

mam, the sauce became a genuine base in the pictorial sense. It was used
to bring out the savour of the food it accompanied. Massialot, for instance,
proposed not less than 23 different coulis, each with a dominant flavour and
all with specific uses (Massialot, 1691).
It was along these lines that French cuisine developed–from Marin to
Carême, from Beauvilliers to Escoffier, from Gouffé to Robuchon. This
quest for flavour must be understood in a dynamic sense. Starting from
the Mediaeval culinary concept, in which spices covered the taste of food,
it resulted in an ever-more subtle combination of the savours of a dish’s
ingredients.
It has been shown that the thinking of eighteenth and nineteenth-
century chefs, pursuing this quest for flavour, was influenced by alchemic
theory, which concerns the relations and symbolic interdependence of
humans and nature. Aware that there was something magical about their
ovens, equated with the alchemist’s athanor, they began their quest to pro-
duce edible gold. In their writings the great chefs of the time express their
desire to improve their sauces and sauce bases in genuinely alchemic terms.
For the eighteenth-century cook, the quest was not just for the most perfect
sauce. By improving his cuisine he believed that he was perfecting himself,
and also contributing to human progress. Menon’s viewpoint was: ‘Would it
be going too far to say that the skills of modern cuisine are among the physi-
cal reasons that, when barbarism reigned, caused us to return to an age of
courtesy and of the talents of the mind, the arts and the sciences?’ (Menon,
1749, p. XXII). It was in even clearer terms that Favre, the founder of the
culinary academy, illustrated the magic of the principle of incorporation.
By consuming these sublime sauces, this ‘liquid gold’, humanity is trans-

formed. It is because of these sauces that France is at the forefront of
gastronomy. Sauces constitute the basis of good cooking, and it is their
excellence which makes French cuisine superior to that of other nations
(Favre, 1883, p. 1766).
In sum, by eating ‘good’ food the French became even ‘better’. Human beings
are in fact what they eat. However, for the sensuality peculiar to French gas-
tronomy to emerge, there had to be a religious context that allowed pleasure
to be seen in a positive light. This was provided by Catholicism.
Catholic morals and the gastronomic spirit

The arguments I wish to advance here are partly inspired by and constitute
a counterpoint to Max Weber’s (1905) still debated theories in The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The hedonism characteristic of the gastro-
nomic spirit was able to emerge and to thrive solely in the Catholic religious
environment of the early modern era.
Is enjoying life’s pleasures a sin? From the sixteenth century the answer
to this question was linked to the divide between the Reformation and
Catholicism. The first was synonymous with an anxious ascetism, in the
hope of spending eternity in paradise, which attached little value to the
body and its crudest senses; the second glorified God in an aesthetic per-
ception of life on earth and in the company of others. Similar theories
have already been mooted on several occasions. In a romanticized form
this thinking is at the heart of Karen von Blixen’s (1958) Babette’s Feast
(which Gabriel Axel turned into a film in 1987). This is undoubtedly one of
the best introductions to the aesthetics of French gastronomy. The film is
extremely well-acted: and the tense faces, which gradually relax in the con-
vivial atmosphere–in the strong sense of the term of ‘living together’ – that
the food and drink create, say a great deal about the role of fine dining in
French culture.
It is to the geographer Pitte that we owe the most detailed analysis of this
theory. He concludes by saying ‘the possibility of making food sacred, of
attaining something of God by eating good food, an old animist concept
which Christianity had more or less tacitly made its own, thus vanished in
the world of the Reformation’ (1991, p. 75). In a study of how happiness
and sexuality were perceived by the English puritan theologians, better
known as the ‘Cambridge Platonists’, Leites (1986) questions the idea that
they renounced all that was worldly and shows that their ideal was a mix
of sensual pleasures and spiritual joys. It is accordingly more reasonable to
seek the differences between Catholics and Protestants in the break with the
cycle of sin/confession/penitence/pardon instituted by the Church (Valade,
1996), which the Reformation brought about.
I believe that gastronomic aesthetics owe something to Catholic morals
not only in their original approach to pleasure but also, and above all, in
the special relationship between food and the sacred in Catholic thinking
(Poulain, 2005). Three examples serve to illustrate the imagery underlying the
relationship of Catholicism to food and the pleasures of eating. Christianity
as a whole has made Communion, based on the tangible act of eating and
drinking, the prototype of man’s relationship with God. In the process it uti-
lizes the two components of the imagery of incorporation – ‘I become what
I eat’, meaning what I eat changes my very substance – and the idea that by
consuming a food valued by a social group and sharing the act of eating with
that group, the individual becomes part of that community. This imagery was
also relied on by very many religions predating Christianity.
However, although Christianity made use of the mental associations
that these images of incorporation aroused, it was to attach considerable
importance to distinguishing Communion from the sacrificial rituals of
both animism and Judaism. By achieving the transition from sacrifice to
a god (or gods) to commemoration of the sacrifice of the ‘son of God made
man’, rendering any other form of sacrifice pointless, it fundamentally
departed from sacrificial reasoning.2 The sacred dimension of the Eucharistic

meal erases its food and drink components. Détienne shows how Christian
theorists who studied the Greek ritual of sacrifice denied the bodily nature
and the eating and drinking dimension of the Eucharistic sacrifice:
To prevent confusion between the gross rituals of the nature-worshippers

and the spiritual mystery of the Eucharist in the only true religion,
a distinction is drawn within the concept of sacrifice between instincts
led astray to the point of practising the abject display of bloody flesh
and, on the other hand, the noble tendencies of a purely spiritual
exchange where the forms of manducation are negligible and the eat-
ing and drinking aspects are obliterated, as in a manner of denial.
(Détienne, 1979, p. 31)
Among Christians the Eucharistic ritual became one of the most contentious
points of divergence between Catholics and Reformers. There is no doubt
that, in accordance with the biblical messages ‘This is my body … This is
my blood’ and ‘Do this in remembrance of me’, during the first millennium
Communion was most frequently taken in the two forms: bread and wine,
respectively representing the body and the blood of Christ. The wine, which
symbolized the blood, had to be red and the bread leavened, which was
both a reference to the metaphoric description of Christ as the ‘leaven of
faith’ and a means of differentiation from the Jews who consumed unleav-
ened bread in memory of the exodus from Egypt (Dupuy, 1986).
In the late Middle Ages the rituals of Communion underwent a first
change, with the separation of Communion in the two forms, reserved for
the clergy, and Communion solely with bread, for the laity (Loret, 1982).
This showed the increasingly hierarchical nature of the Catholic commu-
nity, with a distinction between ordinary worshippers allowed to partake
of the Eucharistic meal only with the bread, and the ecclesiastical ranks
receiving Communion by eating bread and drinking wine. Wycliffe, Huss,
Luther and Calvin – representing all the different tendencies within the
Reformation – called for Communion in the two forms to be restored, so as
to place all believers on an equal footing before God.
The second change came with the rise of the Reformation. It consisted in
the replacement of the leavened bread with the unleavened host and of the
red wine with white.3 The switch from red to white wine corresponded to
a symbolic differentiation between the blood and the wine, a euphemiza-
tion of the image of the blood. The substitution of the host for leavened
bread, strongly identified with the early Christians who sought to distin-
guish themselves from the Jews, is intended to make the bread less real
a food. Behind these apparently harmless changes of ritual, which make
the Eucharist more remote from a real meal, a change in the relationship
between the sacred and the profane can be perceived.
To grasp the full importance of these changes, they must be relocated

in the context of the theory of transubstantiation: the Catholic theory,
reasserted even in the latest version of the Catholic catechism of 1992, that
during the sacrament of Communion ‘the fundamental substance of the
bread and the wine is wholly converted into the body of Christ risen from
the dead’ (Eglise Catholique, 1992, p. 297). It is therein that the mystery of
the Eucharist lies. The bread and the wine change their nature and ontologi-
cally become the body and the blood of the ‘son of God made man’.
As far back as the twelfth century, Beranger de Tours challenged this ‘sac-
ramental materialism’, which, he maintained, lent credence to the theory
that Christ was really present in the Eucharistic bread and wine. He thereby
initiated a debate, which was to assume growing importance until the
Reformation and drastically divide Christians. The Reformers denied the
change in substance and defended concepts that can be classified into two
main approaches. On the one hand, Wycliffe and Luther proposed the idea
of ‘consubstantiation’, whereby the ‘body of Christ is in, with and under
the bread and the wine, which entails the permanence of these natural
substances’ ( Jossua, 1976, p. 734). On the other, Calvin rejected both tran-
substantiation, which he considered an annihilation of the bread and the
wine, and consubstantiation, which he regarded as too spiritual a position.
‘He accordingly envisaged a spiritual yet real presence, where bread and
wine’ (p. 735) are such strong symbols that the truth is joined to them.
Here the emphasis is on faith and faith alone, without which there is no
presence, since there is no ontological link between the body and blood
of Christ and the bread and wine: if one eats and drinks with faith, one
also receives the spiritual gift. (Daumas, 1986, p. 75)
With the discovery of the New World and the revelation of the cannibalistic
practices of certain of its inhabitants, the clash between these theories wors-
ened and became a true rift at the very heart of Christianity. The Reformers
accused the Catholics of being God-eaters and denounced this ‘God of
flour’ and the ‘butcher priests disjointing the body of Christ’ (Lestringant,
1994). It was in reaction to this criticism that the ritual was changed and
the bread and red wine were replaced with the host and white wine. To
preserve what they regarded as the essence of the Eucharistic ritual, that is
to say the divine presence, the Catholics accordingly desubstantiated the
Eucharist, separating the secular consumption of food and drink from the
sacred incorporation (Poulain and Rouyer, 1987). This desubstantiation was
based on three forms of dematerialization of the Eucharist: rejection of the
alcoholic nature of the wine and the drunkenness it causes, replacement of
the red wine (too representative of the blood) with white and replacement
of the leavened bread (a real food) with the host.
Catholic ritual accordingly became more remote from the process of the
incorporation of food and drink, which had too many magical overtones
and was above all too cannibalistic, since it was indeed a question of con-
suming the body and blood of a man, albeit the son of God. This led to the
emergence of a fundamental division between the sacred and the profane
in the field of eating and drinking. On the one hand, the Eucharist was
an encounter with Christ and the related incorporation of the partaker of
Communion into the community of Christians. On the other, ordinary
day-to-day food with real bread and wine was synonymous with the human
condition. The distinction between sacred incorporation and profane incor-
poration made daily eating and drinking an area that escaped the Church’s
supervision, one over which it exercised little control. However, gluttony
remained a cardinal sin. It took the extraordinary means of release from
guilt offered by confession, the theories of repentance and purgatory, and
even the practice of granting indulgences, to enable Catholic society to set
store by the ‘here and now’ and to dare transgress the commandment for-
bidding gluttony and its transformation into an aesthetic art. Gastronomy
was then set to become a celebration of all that was worldly.
Gastronomy can be seen to be key to the development of French society,
which, apart from marking differences, helped to build the national iden-
tity. For example, after the French Revolution, when part of the aristocracy
had been driven out of France, and the King had just been guillotined, the
bourgeoisie, now giving the orders in culinary matters, took delight in dishes
such as Bouchée à la Reine, Poularde Royale, Fruits Condé and Potage Conti. In
this way, it metaphorically cannibalized the aristocracy so as to incorporate
one of its characteristics – ‘class’, which was to lend it the legitimacy it had
lacked for centuries. At the same time, when a chef named a dish after one
of these new power mongers, they raised and incorporated him into the
aristocratic ‘pantheon’.
From the discovery of regional cooking to world gastronomies
In 1923 and 1924, in the context of the Paris autumn fair, Austin de
Croze organized a regional gastronomy week, at which chefs from all over
France were invited to present their regional dishes. Four years later, with
the assistance of the tourist boards, an inventory of French regional cookery
traditions was produced (de Croze, 1928). This led to the gradual emergence
of a regional gastronomy, extolled by Charles Brun in the following terms:
Although one can dine in Paris, the real eating goes on only in France’s
provinces. The delicious variety of dishes and wines, the tasty recipes
religiously passed on from one generation to the next constitute
a treasure for each region of France, of an entirely unsuspected, incredible
diversity. (Brun, 1928, p. 122)
The golden age of gastronomy had made Paris the centre of culinary inven-
tiveness, but the twentieth century was that of the discovery of France’s
regional cuisines thanks to a partnership between tourism and gastronomy

(Moulin, 1988). In 1970, gastronomy took a new direction. Tired of repeatedly
producing Escoffier’s classic dishes, the chefs adopted a creative attitude. The
food critics announced the birth of nouvelle cuisine. The idea behind this
new concept of cooking was that there was a dual gastronomic heritage: the
haute cuisine and table manners of the elites and that of the local, regional
gastronomic cultures founded on popular tradition. Leading the taste of
French chefs for the cuisines of exotic places and for fusions between styles
of cuisine was the same movement that led them to turn to the rustic, native
cooking of France’s regions. After some teething troubles, characterized by the
desire to break free of the values and ideas of traditional nineteenth-century
gastronomy, French nouvelle cuisine accepted as its sources of inspiration
both traditional haute cuisine and popular, regional cooking. In the 1980s, it
was with this concept of gastronomy that the great French chefs swept the
entire world. They were invited abroad to promote French cuisine, and the
best known names were asked to serve as consultants to major international
hotel chains or big agro-food groups. Roger Verger and Blanc in Bangkok,
Joel Robuchon, Pierre Gagnaire, Gérard Loiseau and Michel Bras in Japan,
Michel Guérard in the United States and Paul Bocuse world-wide, followed
today by Alain Ducasse (Neirinck and Poulain, 2009).
The leading European, North-American and Asian hotel and catering colleges
and universities were visited by the flagship French chefs. Those awarded the
distinction meilleur ouvrier de France and the happy possessors of the famous
three Michelin stars came to spread the good word of French nouvelle cuisine
and its rediscovery of the regional roots of French cooking. It must be said
that an interest for foreign cuisine is not entirely new in French gastronomy.
Urbain Dubois, one of the great nineteenth-century masters, published a book
entitled La cuisine de tous les pays (1868). His standpoint was nonetheless
rather colonialist and, to say the least, decidedly ethnocentric, since he did not
hesitate to rethink these cuisines, deemed ‘lacking in gastronomic qualities’,
according to the rules of ‘true’ cuisine – that is, that of France.
What distinguishes contemporary French chefs from their predecessors
is that they have ceased to regard other culinary traditions as ‘sub-cultures’
that need civilizing and now find new sources of inspiration in them.
Their encounters with other food cultures have firstly contributed to the
development of local forms of haute cuisine and enabled the birth of local
nouvelle cuisines everywhere in the world. This stage in the development of
gastronomy, which is born from this rooting of gastronomy in the ‘local’,
opens a decisive sequence in the modern history of world gastronomy: the
decolonization of haute cuisine.
The battle between local identity and exotism shall not take place
In the 1990s, a controversy emerged within French gastronomy between
two fabricated opponents: French traditional cuisine on one side (inclusive
of the great gastronomic tradition and homeland-localized traditions) and

the supporters of a more global cuisine opened to métissage on the other
side; cuisine which many journalists will rename ‘World Cuisine’. The first
school of thought portrays itself as a strong defender of French culinary
art that is subject to aggression from major players in the American agro-
industry and blames their opponents for selling off French culinary heritage
(national as well as local). The second school of thought reminds us that
French cuisine was constructed through time using multiple influences and
has kept borrowing features since, without losing its own identity.
The above quarrel needs to be situated in the context of the modernity of
food and its consumption. Contemporary interest for homeland cuisines or
ethnic cuisines mirrors the nostalgia of a social space where the eater is sup-
posed to live without anxiety, sheltered by a culinary culture that is clearly
identified and identifiable. The over-promotion of tradition, homelands and
authentic products counters anxieties linked to food industrialization devel-
opment, as well as risks of national and local identities’ dilutions within
globalization phenomenon, or even within geographically delimited areas
such as Europe.
This phenomenon has spread out widely and we can today acknowl-
edge a common interest for local culinary heritages in Western countries.
A sense of urgency – that recalls the frenzy of ethnographic census in
the 1960s – suddenly emerged, which led the French agriculture and cul-
ture ministries to launch a broad inventory of French gastronomic heritage
in 1990. This programme was extended later to Europe and pan-Europe.
However, homeland or local cuisines are being seen as traditional worlds
in the candid sense of the term4 if we listen not only to consumers but also
to the spontaneous idioms of the foodservice and major tourism players
(Poulain, 2008).
In other words, a stable world founded on immutable tradition as opposed
to transformations and trend cycles of liberal market economics; stable but
also authentic in opposition to the artificial shell of urban environment
where fabrication takes over from nature. Within this authentic space, prod-
ucts and practices would depend on usage values and not on distinction
logics in the sense that Pierre Bourdieu (1979) describes it. What arises
from consumer expectations is an Eden-like picture of rurality and alterity,
promoted to the status of an anthropological world of harmony between
mankind and nature.
Cuisine is more than recipes

We shall avoid the trap of the quest for the true recipe that would freeze
some kind of culinary orthodoxy. This vain project of local sectarism
sterilizes the spirit of local gastronomies by mummifying dishes into
immutable recipes, whereas on the contrary all that is unsaid plus the oral
tradition bear the role of welcoming individual variations, thus enabling
homemakers to sign off their work, leaving a landmark in time. Parodying

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1955, p. 435), we shall propose that a recipe is the sum
of all its variations. These variations cease then to be seen as deviations and
become versions that function to mark, in a manner of inclusive dialectics,
the differentiation of geographical, social or family borders.
Because cuisine and table manners mean staging the fundamental values
of a society and of a time, meals enable intimate encounters with other
cultures in their most tangible and palatable aspects with knowledge aris-
ing from taste, like the apple of the garden of Eden. Bearing in mind the
temptation of mythologizing local and exotic cuisines – a process that simul-
taneously shuts the door to alterity and future – contemporary gastronomies
contribute to the re-appropriation of the social and cultural components of
our food histories, thus opening up to other cultures (Poulain, 1997, 2002).
Man does not feed himself solely with nutrients (proteins, carbohydrates,
fats, minerals, vitamins and so on), but rather with cooked meals that are
loaded with symbols, signs and myths. Culinary art cannot be contingent
to its technological dimension alone. Cooking is also building, designing–in
the architectural sense – a food item in all its objective, aesthetic and
cultural dimensions. Cooks rule, more than ever, holding the keys to a cer-
tain societal future (de Garine, 1991).
Exotism is the other’s daily routine

Interest in foreign cuisines is not something new for French gastronomy.
In the nineteenth century, as mentioned earlier, Dubois (1868) wrote the
masterpiece entitled La cuisine de tous les pays. The perspective of chefs was
somehow ethnocentric and they did not hesitate to re-think foreign cuisine,
using French cuisine as a benchmark. What differentiates the behaviour of
contemporary cooks from that of their predecessors is that they have ceased
to consider other cuisines as sub-cultures that would need refinement, but
rather look at them now as new sources of inspiration.
The taste for exotic food is without any doubt one of the positive effects
of globalization. Nonetheless it needs to be contextualized within the
perspective of global tourism development. One travels more due to the
democratization of transnational tourism. The decrease in airline fares
have opened up new destinations. To Spain, Italy and France, which were
once traditional destinations for European travellers, were added Tunisia,
Morrocco, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and South-America.
Meals transform tourists from spectators to actors. Meals enable intimate
encounters with another culture in its most practical and palatable aspects.
Food consumption bears a peculiar specificity because it is physically and
literally incorporated. It is probably this ultimate intimacy of incorporation
that gives oral consumption a very special symbolic prominence that con-
tributes to make food a kind of travelling machine in social and imaginary
space (Fischler, 1990, p. 79).
Finally, one also travels more increasingly while just sitting in one’s
armchair in front of a television set. Documentaries with cultural or ethno-
logical flavour proliferate in specialized shows and channels. Local cuisine
or gastronomy is used more often as an entry point for documentaries on
tourism. Taking into account the rising concern of carbon dioxide pollution
by air transportation, this form of virtual tourism is most probably bound
for a great future.
The Easternization of French gastronomy
In return, this meeting between East and West has had an influence on the
use of products and exotic techniques in French cuisine. The most visible
influence is in the decoration. The art of Asian decoration, in particular
Japanese, is visible in the presentation of contemporary French cuisine.
At the culinary level, one of the many transformations we witness is
the wide range of spices used. From their use at a quasi homeopathic level in
the traditional kitchen, they have become important as main ingredients
in the cuisine. Another is the diversification of the techniques of steaming
food that includes, for instance, the use of Asian bamboo steamers.
A jigsaw-puzzle cooking that assembles flavours: the ultimate

promise lies on the palate
Classic cuisine used to be a combination of osmosis and synthetical cook-
ing, in which sauces were consciously elaborated, using stocks. The theory
of sauces and stocks is for classical cuisine the equivalent of the colour
of the background for painting or the accompaniment for music. These
sauces carried the functional duty of enhancing, binding and uniting the
various tastes of the main ingredients. They are the complex assembling of
flavours that echo the main ingredients in a minor mode. Nouvelle cuisine
promotes a flavour-compilation sequence that may be applied, either for
the creation of new dishes or to the reinterpretation of classic recipes. Let
us consider two examples. The first one is a creation. We are looking at the
famous Ailerons de volaille (chicken wings) by Michel Bras.
The plate itself is spatially divided into three parts: partially deboned
chicken wings stir-fried in butter, a cottage cheese-based sauce and a mix of
spices, bread crumbs and sea-salt ‘fleur’. The eating protocol is as follows: use
your fingers, then dip the chicken wing into the cottage cheese, and then
again roll it into the blend of bread crumbs and spices. The eater doses him
or herself with the quantity of spiced bread crumbs that suits him or her the
most. The gustative synthesis thus attained within the mouth itself is only
partially attributed to the cook’s culinary skills.
The second dish, namely Jambonnettes de grenouilles à la purée d’ail et jus
de persil (stuffed frogs’ drumsticks in garlic purée and essence of parsley)
is a reinterpretation of the classic Cuisses de grenouilles à la provencale (frog
legs in Provencal fashion) by Bernard Loiseau. Frog legs are torn apart here,
partially deboned and pan-fried, while garlic purée and some parsley juice
are served separately. Here again, the eater arranges his or her own mix
according to personal taste; more or less garlic, more or less parsley.
These two examples stress the eater’s active role in the finishing of the
dish, not only into a definite construct of taste, but also into a transfor-
mation of the mere concept of cuisine. Within this shifting process of
a synthetical cuisine, where cooking plays the main part in this apposition-
cuisine of combination and re-combination, it is somehow easy to induce
the influence of Japanese cuisine, and more specifically the Great cuisine
of Kaiseki-ryori.5 This movement prefigured an upcoming trend that has
been developed under the name of ‘Molecular Gastronomy’ or ‘Experiential
Gastronomy’ as Spanish Chef Ferran Adria prefers to label it.
Soon a ‘fusion cuisine’ rose up, revisiting the code of culinary creativity.
Contemporary emergence of nouvelle cuisine chefs in every corner of the
world coincided with the posture of this new cuisine. The fact that the new
cuisine focuses on local food cultures created the conditions for a ‘gastro-
nomic decolonization’. Henceforth, it is utterly interesting to observe how
various forms of autonomization are located behind these sets of reciprocal
influences.
Fusion models consist of a blend of inspirations. Two competitive features
live side by side. The first is the result of the métissage approach that
presumes variable-but-distinguishable, clearly readable by original gastro-
nomic or culinary worlds. The second is related to the linguistic process of
creolization. This second model prolongs métissage in a way that it creates
a new autonomous culinary social space, as Créole is a new language born
from the mix of multiple influences, but not reducing the so-called new
language to a juxtaposition of various pieces together, as the acculturation
paradigm defines it.
Conclusion
Interest in the local heritage of native cooking is becoming interna-

tional and can nowadays be observed throughout the Western world.
With the European Union’s assistance, a programme of an inventory of
gastronomic heritage was extended across the whole of Europe in 1996. In
a context of growing international travel, the tourism industry now treats
the gastronomic traditions of tourist areas as heritage (Poulain, 1993) to
be accounted for and as a means of promoting local development (Bessière,
2001; Tibère, 2001). The values attached to popular traditions, native
cooking and ‘authentic’ produce can be viewed against the background
of concern about the increasing industrialization of food production and
distribution and the risks of a dilution of local and national identities in
globalization or within larger areas, such as Europe.
The emergence of leading chefs all over the world was a natural consequence
of the attitude of the adepts of nouvelle cuisine. The new focus on local food
cultures has engendered conditions conducive to gastronomic decoloniza-
tion, which can only be welcomed. It will not harm the reputation of the
great chefs of France that there is less French ethnocentrism in gastronomy,
and this cannot but be a healthy trend for those who are less skilled. The
talent of one chef does not in any way diminish that of the others.
Notes
1. For a discussion of the various possible interpretations of the role of spices in
Mediaeval cuisine and the questions they raise, see Flandrin and Montanari (1996)
and Neirinck and Poulain (2009).
2. The idea that Christian thinkers broke away from pre-Christian concepts of sacri-
fice can be found in the earliest works of anthropology (Hubert and Mauss, 1906).
However, at that time this idea was seen against the background of an evolutionist
ideology, which prevented identification of the links it continues to sustain.
3. However, this change was not systematic and regional ethnology has revealed
communities where Communion continued to be taken with red wine and leav-
ened bread, notably in Provence (Topalov, 1986).
4. Term that Jean Cuisenier has skillfully attempted to decrypt in his 1995 book,
namely, La tradition populaire, PUF.
5. Naomichi Ishige, 1994, articles ‘Nourriture, cuisine’ and ‘Manières de table’ in
Berque Augustin, dir. Dictionnaire de la civilisation japonaise, Paris, Hazan.
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Part IV
Observations
15
Conclusion
Taking stock
This concluding chapter re-examines our original contention that Western

consumption of the material and cultural influences of the East reflects and
represents Western attitudes that may be exemplified as ‘the gaze of the
West’. It summarizes the effects and consequences of cultural change blow-
ing from the East as well as those of other global flows, such as the products
of economic and other activity as evidence of the praxis of Easternization
in the West. With regard to cultural change, acculturation is compared with
hegemony as the power relations inherent in ‘the gaze’. The effects of the
cultural capital of Western colonization, as historiographies and epistemolo-
gies in theories, frameworks and methodologies are also examined wherever
demonstrably evident.
Notwithstanding criticisms that the shorthand, binary divisions of West
and East are spurious – especially today in a world where instantaneous
communication technology, rapid transportation systems, pervasive popular
culture and social media have seemingly rendered geographical boundaries
irrelevant and borders porous – they, nevertheless, continue to represent
ideational, geographical and cultural entities. Romantically and polemically
derived as the Occident and the Orient respectively, the West and the East
refer to cultural habitation rather than to specific geographical regions and
have shifted according to preferred historical and cultural positions. They
continue to remain relevant tropes in the global discourse of difference, as
narratives of opinion, interpretation and attitude.
To date, most of the critiques available of Orientalism as a pervasive
Western academic and artistic tradition of prejudiced outsider perceptions of
a generalized East, have been directed at the ideology of Orientalism, rather
than its praxis. In focussing on the praxis of Easternization in the gaze of
the West, we are dealing with a phenomenon that correspondingly reveals
inherent attitudes in the narratives about it. These attitudes are not solely
about Easternization as a perceived process of cultural change in the West
235
or about the Western consumption of the East. They are also ideological
regarding the affirmation of Eastern cultural traditions and heritage, as
part of the East’s accumulated knowledge or cultural capital, in the ‘life
worlds’ of the West.
Almost wholly credited with exposing the connivance of Orientalism as
the handmaiden of colonization in the imperialistic triumphs of the West,
Said’s (1978) Orientalism has become iconic in the discourse of that exploi-
tation, with Neo-Orientalism – its new avatar – seen as the corresponding
handmaiden of neo-colonialism (Singh, n.d.). The latter is charged with
continuing to exploit natural, economic, human and intellectual resources
invisibly and indirectly through institutions like the World Bank, IMF and
Security Council of the United Nations. Singh argues that neo-Orientalism
stands for the ‘discourse about (sic) Orient by the people of the Orient
located in the West or shuttling between the two … primarily a product
of what Anthony Appiah calls “comprador intelligentia”’ or the ‘discursive
practices about the Orient by the people from the Orient ... located in the
non-Orient for the people of the non-Orient’ (p. 13). In its latest manifesta-
tion as neo-neo-Orientalism, it is ‘a discourse about the Orient, constructed
by the Occident (West = America) and the Orient in collaboration’ where
‘the project, its nomenclature, category and methodology are determined by
the Occident’ (pp. 13–14).
What we try to achieve in this volume is quite the antithesis of neo-
Orientalism and its variations. Subjected to the Western gaze as its objects, our
lens has been directed primarily at the West so as to uncover those attitudes
towards the East that we argue are inherent in Western discursive practices
about the East. This effort is complemented by three observers located in
the West itself in order to achieve a more wide angled understanding of the
West. The objective in this final chapter is to establish what ‘the gaze’ as the
leitmotif in the volume is as it flits from the subjects to the objects to reveal
attitudes residing in particular discursive constructions. We have ruminated
on whether the gaze would be a case of the voluntarily mutual interaction
of ‘giving and taking’; or conversely, that of the power dynamic of ‘looking
and taking away’, with its implications of a psychological relationship of
power in favour of the Western spectator; and lastly, what the dialectic of
the reflective or counter gaze, might be. Nonetheless, our assumption was
that the gaze was more likely to be multivalent and that there may not be
congruence on how the East is viewed.
We have put together a set of cross-disciplinary perspectives about
the East by the West as a set of ideas, mindful of the way in which peo-
ple see and confront each other in an increasingly interconnected world;
where differences are constantly fudged through contact and acculturation
despite the effects of hegemony and orthodoxy, and increasingly mediated
by the internet and social media. We have also looked at ourselves in the
mirror with some self-abnegation, moving away from both anti-Eurocentric
Conclusion 237
cultural polemics (Hall, 1995), and the triumphalism of the discursive

polarities of the past (Fukuyama, 1992; Huntington, 1996) and present of
the ‘West and the rest’ (Ferguson, 2011) to look for directions in Occidental
studies. Instead of trying to inform the West on how it is invariably imagined
or understood, we have tried to demonstrate how it is perceived in specific
contexts of contact, interaction and change, in ten specific spheres of
human life, experience and activity. This we achieved by venturing beyond
the boundedness of the time warp of post-coloniality and Orientalism, as
well as by employing an intercultural rationale (Nair-Venugopal, 2008)
as one of the premises of engagement for Occidental studies.
The first four chapters deal with the nature of the gaze in the non-material
realms of philosophy, religion and spirituality, knowledge production and
historical narration but with regard to both the symbolic and material nature
of the praxis and its consumption. The six chapters that follow look at
specific spheres of human experience, life and activity, namely training and
management, social and cultural life in work and business, tourism, archi-
tecture, gastronomy, and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
As specific contexts of contact, reception, consumption and reproduction of
the cultural and other influences of the East, these six spheres demonstrate
more concretely how the cultural refashioning of the West, that we posit as
Easternization, is taking place in both material and non-material ways as
evident in the discursive constructions of the East.
Evidence for ‘the gaze’
Ahmad Murad Merican challenges the foundational epistemology of

Western philosophy in relation to Eastern philosophy in Representations of
Philosophy: The Western Gaze Observed. Murad opines that the manner in
which philosophy has been introduced to the modern world is in itself prob-
lematic because the discourse on philosophy as we ‘know’ it today has been
largely predicated on the use of essentially Western terms and categories,
such as ‘god’ and ‘religion’, and based on the periodization of Western his-
toriography. These dominant Western modes of epistemology consequently
subjugated Eastern or non-Western philosophies by relegating, for example,
Eastern or non-Western eras of civilizational eminence. There are clear
differences between Western and Eastern or non-Western philosophies on
the ontology of human existence and what these differences mean in rela-
tion to knowledge and wisdom.
We may, thus, infer that the Western philosophical gaze has triumphed
in rendering the objects of its sweep virtually ineffectual in reclaiming the
ground that has been so powerlessly lost, except at the special behest or
interest of Occidental scholars and romantized Orientalists, including New
Agers and followers of Esoteric aspects of Eastern religions and traditions. By
not considering philosophical thought from the East as either fundamental
or contingent to defining philosophy, the West has assumed that the East has
no agency in philosophy as a sphere of thought and wisdom, despite the
long lineage of traditions emanating from it; from Siddartha Gautama, the
Buddha, to Confucious, Lao Zi (all predating Socrates) and later, Muslim
scholars and philosophers. In excluding Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and other
non-Western philosophical traditions in its foundational prototype, philoso-
phy continues to pass off its logic as a ‘universal’ type of human knowledge
although it is Western in form and substance with roots in the Greece of
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and subsequent teleological considerations.
It is, thus, caught in aporias of its own making with ‘unique’ Eastern
philosophical traditions and the tropes and exemplars associated with them
that it is more increasingly confronting in an age of Eastern or non-Western
resurgence.
In Chapter 6, Lim Kim Hui observes that while the West rapaciously con-
sumes the popular cultural forms of the East, it has been less avid in imbibing
core Eastern philosophical values. This, Lim argues, renders the impact of
Easternization purely acculturation with far less deep-seated effects, whereas
Westernization is both acculturation and hegemony. Defined as colonialism,
capitalism, Christianity, culture, concept and colour, Westernization as
hegemony is presented as domination through cultural supremacy and
various forms of control. This is derived from the understanding that the
West has developed for itself a collection of universal values that controls
the whole world (Latouche, 1996). As acculturation, both Easternization and
Westernization are the result of the impact of global flows of reciprocal and
asymmetrical cultural influences that are adopted and adapted to suit local
and individual preferences. For instance, while Buddhism is absorbed as
Easternization, ‘American Buddhism’ is part of its Westernization.
Lim focuses on three dimensions of religion to state his case. They are
belief, culture and product – and respectively explained as the interpretation
of religious meanings, the difference between religion as regime and fashion
or fad, and the commoditization and commodification of religions. The last
is consonant with the rise of soft Western capitalism that seeks to capture the
huge commercial potential of the global cultural market. The ways in which
Eastern religions, for example, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Sufism are
presented, represented and reproduced, are often quite removed from their
philosophical contexts and belief systems. Lim decries Western encroach-
ments into Eastern beliefs and religions that ignore the sensibilities of
the East, in tandem with the trivialization and reduction of the sacred to the
absurd, as forms of religious blasphemy. Lim is mindful, however, that while
the West is exploitative of the East in the commodification of its religions
and beliefs in the lucrative cultural marketplace of new ideas, the East is
equally exploitative of itself in the trade and traffic of its cultural products.
Notwithstanding Lim’s arguments, a claim can, in fact, be made for the
praxis of Easternization in the West quite apart from the obvious intercultural
Conclusion 239
exchange between East and West and the glocalization of cultural flows. The
undeniable economic and industrial impact of the East is already evident
in the global consumption of cheap ‘made-in-China’ goods, Indian IT skills
and services, Japanese management techniques, Korean technology and
both Japanese and Korean automobiles and electronic products. It is also
prevalent in the ‘hedonistic’ consumption of the more visible East-inspired
Western lifestyle retail choices: ‘pick-and-mix’ herbs and spices, fashion and
music, ‘cut and paste’ spiritualities and philosophies, ‘pick-me-up’ therapies
of acupuncture and Ayurveda, Reiki and reflexology, yoga and meditation,
and ‘exotic’ touristic packages. The permeation of cultural influences par-
ticularly as hybidization in the frequently less visible osmosis of the praxis
must surely also constitute a type of cultural refashioning. Campbell (1999,
2007) and Brown and Leledaki (2010) point to such movement on the
ground. Much of the praxis of Easternization absorbed into the social fabric
of life in the West is not merely about being novel or exotic but also about
the realization of the value of the transformative quality of human potential
through self-cultivation that is available as forms of human development in
Eastern and other traditions.
In Chapter 7, Shamsul A.B. notes that in establishing themselves in
various parts of the globe as an integral component of the societies in them,
Europeans contributed to different forms of knowledge from their experi-
ences: theories of ‘multiculturalism’ from settler societies, and the ‘plural
society’ and ‘consociationalism’ from host societies. The ‘civilizational can-
opy’ emerged as a variation of the ‘plural society’, as a system of governance
that was inherent in the indigenous social systems of host societies in Africa,
South and West Asia and the Malay archipelago.
Malaysia evolved as a multi-ethnic host society within the indigenous
‘civilizational canopy’ of the ‘Malay world’ within which communities from
other civilizations became embedded. Adopting indirect rule and deploying
modern European-based governance, the British retained the Sultan (Malay
ruler) at the top, British-trained Malay administrative civil servants, beholden
to colonial officers, in the middle, and the Penghulu (village headman) at
the bottom. Settler communities of various classes of mainly Chinese and
Indian origins, led to the creation of the ‘plural society’ in which, despite
indigenous communities and settlers living side by side, inter-ethnic con-
tact did not go much beyond economic links or the demands of functional
utility. It was within this over-arching mechanism of the sovereignty of the
Malay polity, enhanced by the relationship between the Malay rulers and
subjects, as enshrined in the 1957 constitution, that the socio-cultural diver-
sity of the plural society of the Federation of Malaya first and subsequently
Malaysia was managed. The symbolic consensus achieved between the
indigenous and settler populations, also referred to as the ‘social contract’,
appears to have been possible only because of this unique context of gov-
ernance. Taking Malaysia as an example of a socio-political compromise
between the major ethnic groups through a process of accommodating to

the legitimate interests of each in a federalist-based social system, Shamsul
argues that the ‘civilizational canopy’ is an appropriate conceptual-analytic
tool to study host societies contra ‘multiculturalism’.
The civilizational canopy, as exemplified in the notion of kerajaan as
government, has held together both appositional and oppositional forces
reasonably well despite the severe stress of the race riots of 1969, and the
increasing demands of civil society for greater rights and liberties amidst
contestations of ‘citizenship’. However, in more recent times, there have
been problems of perceptions regarding the neutrality of the rulers, viewed
in the light of the original notion of kerajaan, which was ‘conceptualized
in terms of the personal relationships between ruler and subject (rakyat)
and not a specific race’ (Milner, 2011, p. 10). Milner observes, however,
that ‘Malay sovereignty’ is now linked to ‘the position of the rulers’ that
presents them ‘in the role of protectors of Malay rights’ (p. 15). While the
protective umbrella of the civilizational canopy has maintained a fair level
of social cohesion within a diverse and multi-ethnic society, the ‘sacredness’
of the original notion of kerajaan appears to have ruptured, with a rewrit-
ing of the role of the Malay monarchy in the wake of current socio-political
events and the pressures of containing them in Malaysia.
From the stand point of the historical evidence that confronts us, the
‘umbrella’ protected the British as colonial masters exceedingly well too.
An imperialistic policy of divide and rule successfully dominated and sub-
sequently exploited the early settler serviced economy of Malaya until its
independence in 1957, while it continued to placate the indigenous com-
munities by employing traditional elements of rule inherent in the notion of
kerajaan in the civilizational canopy approach to government. Nevertheless,
while the colonial gaze was prescient in its management of peoples from
incompatible traditions and cultures and exploitative in obtaining maxi-
mum economic advantage from the arrangement, it was arrested by the
subsequent discourse of freedom and rights within the new pluralisms of an
emergent societal consensus.
In Chapter 8, Bromeley Philip makes a clear case, as an indigene Dayak,
for the revisionism of the historical accounts of his native Sarawak and its
peoples, in particular, the Dayak Iban, who were once subjects of the Brooke
regime, a self-styled family of ‘white’ Rajahs (rulers). Philip demands more
than a critical gaze of the histories of the colonies. Colonization clearly
privileges the gaze of the European agents of the process who marginalize
and reduce the colonial subjects to invisibility, just as Western historiog-
raphy privileged the imperialism of the Brooke regime (1842–1941) Philip
concurs with Tuhiwai Smith (1999) that history as produced by the West, is
a collection of stories of the West as the powerful Self, for they effectively
elide records and narratives of events significant to the colonized Other
while appropriating information and recreating narratives. Such narratives
Conclusion 241
represent the ‘master discourses of the West’ (Trinh Minh-ha, 1989) that
ratify Western hegemony.
In examining that disjunctive in Sarawak’s history through the post-
colonial lens of historiography, Philip concludes that the relevant question
to ask from the Dayak perspective, is not ‘what is history?’ but rather ‘who
is history?’ echoing Jenkins (1991). For Philip, it is only when the Dayaks
tell their own stories, and justify the exploits of ‘heroes’ like the legendary
Rentap, as the alternative discourses of ‘conscious’ subjects, that they will be
able to reclaim their history by counter-appropriating it from the appropria-
tive grasp of the ‘master discourses’.
The exploitative gaze of the Brook regime of a hundred years violated the
trope of the innocent and pristine noble savage it had first fetishized for
itself, against the backdrop of the eighteenth-century debates on morality
and values in Europe. But when confronted by Dayak resistance, it evoked
the trope’s concealed paradoxical alter ego of the uncivilized and primitive
creature, battering the brute to save itself. Yet, subsequent political alliances
in Sarawak have still not placed the Dayaks firmly within the heart of
political and economic power in Sarawak either, although both activism
and rapprochement appears to be moving in that direction. The prevailing
situation in present day Sarawak does not seem to have fully rehabilitated
the pride of the Dayaks. Neither have the Dayaks in general, or more
specifically the Iban, rewritten their ‘history’ to reclaim custodianship of it.
The Dayak story is still unfolding; its course blighted by the curse of history
and more recent political arrangements and allegiances.
The other six chapters deal with specific spheres of human experience, life
and activity namely those of training and management, social and cultural
life, tourism, architecture, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)
and gastronomy. The first on the list is Chapter 9 by Francesca Bargiela-
Chiappini and Hiromasa Tanaka, which proposes an understanding of the
influence of Japanese management theory and praxis on Western business
as a mutual ‘gaze’ in recognition of a historical pattern of mutual influ-
ence. Early in the twentieth century, the Japanese appropriated and adapted
American industrial models while decades later the United States and Britain
sought to apply Japanese management practices. The authors explore some
of the possible ideological and philosophical components of that gaze by
drawing on European historiography, Japanese philosophy and manage-
ment history, among others, to inform us of four interconnected gazes.
The first emerges from the ‘idea of Europe’ and Europe’s self-perception as
the centre of the geographic and moral world and its creation of the Other
as inferior by European standards. The second gaze, directed to Japan as
the East, teases out some of the ideological and philosophical discourses
claimed to underlie Japanese management. The third examines a set of
Eastern discourses revolving around Japanese management philosophies
and practices such as Confucian familism and the Bushidō Code, or ‘way of
the warrior’, of hierarchy, loyalty, obedience, harmony and diligence within

Japan’s specific socio-historical situation. The fourth looks at Japanese per-
ceptions of the Western adoption of Japanese management and training
practices. The mutuality of this gaze, inherent in the ‘adopt and adapt’
praxis that underlies the economic success of Japan, it is posited, can be
traced to the drive to achieve mastery in particular disciplines as described
in the Bushidō. Fundamentally such mutuality, which is not unmitigated
imitation, facile enthusiasm or acquiescence, is political, given the history
of Japanese–Western relations.
Bargiela-Chiappini and Tanaka argue that the discursive approach adopted
in the chapter is more of a methodological response to the ephemeral and
diffused, yet persistent, nature of ideological flows permeating management
practice over time and across geographical boundaries and they are not intent
on proving the existence or the significance of the gaze in the praxis they
discuss. They nevertheless succeed in establishing that the mutuality of one
of the more celebrated East–West gazes of modern times, that is, of reciprocal
and asymmetrical, even competitive global ideological flows between Japan
and the West, is a fait accompli in the praxis of management and training.
The mutuality of that gaze also suggests, a ‘move away’ from what may appear
as simplistic characterizations of the West as almost ‘naturally’ and exclusively
hegemonic and of East(ernization) being ‘under siege’. They make the point
that although Westernization or Americanization is quite visible in contem-
porary Japan, the West has embraced the praxis of Japanese management and
training and an Easternization of the Western praxis is not imminent.
Paramasivam and Nair-Venugopal, in Chapter 10, argue that the ways in
which much of the social and cultural praxis of the contemporary workplace
is presented, continues to privilege the Western gaze. Although work and
business in the East is viewed to be both unique and different, the discourse
remains didactic. The general understanding that communicative and social
practices are driven by collectivism in the East and by individualism in the
West (Hofstede, 2001, 2005) reflects a generalized view of widely varying
cultural traditions. Moreover, it does not show sufficient appreciation of the
different ways of thinking and reasoning that underlie the communicative
and social practices of contextually dependent cultural differences.
Indian collectivism, for instance, contains features of individualism that
are manifested in two different ways in the Indian Hindu. Firstly, in the
Indic ideals of asceticism and Brahmanism, as well as that of anarchical
individualism, the individual is free, independent and equal in apposition,
and also capable of conduct that may be against the collective norms of
society. Secondly, the individual can express and define personal identity in
relationships with both individuals and collectives. Examples drawn from
a localized context of business financing and the globalized context of inter-
national call centre work highlight the contextually dependent variants of
individualism within Indian collectivism.
Conclusion 243
A case study by Pal and Buzzanell (2008) of a call center in Kolkatta, India,
showed employees invoking strategic identities in relation to the changing
discourses of identity, identification and career in their globalized business
context. They ‘overtly and visibly shifted their identifications from their
culture of origin to those (American) preferred in the workplace for task
accomplishment’ (p. 45), their discourse and reported practices depicting
‘a changing cultural order – one centered on economics redefining certain
sociocultural standards and norms’ (p. 48). This demonstrates that these
employees are able to compartmentalize their cultural and professional
identities. Their preferred workplace identity is prioritized and fore-
grounded so that they are able to go straight into their jobs and minimize
personal conflict for themselves.
As a consequence of decolonization and globalization, migration and
mobility is changing global workplaces. New hybridized ethnic identities are
emerging in workplaces world-wide as sites of intercultural communication,
ranging, especially in the West, from white to non-white to mixed, multi-
cultural and multilingual. ‘When people with substantially different cultural
identities interact, they can create a new cultural context: a hybrid that syn-
thesizes components of each person’s cultural background’ ( Jameson, 2007,
pp. 230–1). The Hofstedian (2001, 2005) label of homogeneous ‘national
cultures’ is, thus, becoming unstuck, especially the essentialist notions
of individualism and collectivism. The flattening effects of globalization
(Friedman, 2006), the ‘universal’ face of globalized corporate culture and
English as lingua franca or as Globish (McCrum, 2010) are levelling so-called
‘national’ workplace cultures. Some examples from Indian call centres are
‘cultural neutralization’ (Shome, 2006), the homogenization of voice and
accent training, and the standardization of service scripts and protocols
(Mirchandani, 2004). In unpacking the Western gaze on collectivism in
India, the myth of ‘national’ workplace cultures is also unravelled in the face
of variable contextual dependencies that disprove the logic of ‘the gaze’ in
the homogeneous ascription of collectivism in the East.
In Chapter 11, Ong Puay Liu argues that the historical depictions of East
by the West, especially by travel writers, historians and colonial administra-
tions, has greatly influenced contemporary tourism’s media representations
of the East, which has appropriated them. The indigenous peoples and
cultures of the East described as ‘primitive’ and ‘living at the edge of
modernity’ are simultaneously ‘exquisite’ and exotic’, while the landscape
is ‘untouched by time’. Focusing on Borneo, the discussion is premised on
two major themes of the West’s representations of Borneo: eternal paradise
and the wild people of the forest. It is informed by ‘the tourist gaze’, which
is ‘socially organised and systematized’, that is, ‘from a perspective, socially
constructed through time and space’ (Urry, 1990). Ultimately what tourists
pay for and expect to see and experience is managed by others and what
they encounter can be quite different from what they anticipate.
Ironically, the East and the West compete for the same tourist gaze, with
the East appropriating the romanticized Orientalist view that first ‘sold’ the
East to the West via the colonial gaze of European explorers, travel writers,
missionaries, anthropologists and colonial administrators. It is this gaze
that anti-imperialists and post-colonialists target with the parallels between
the tourist industry and colonialism. The host territory is presented as an
‘empty space’ to be explored just as colonialism justified the ‘occupation’
of land that was terra nullius or ‘no man’s land’. Additionally Orientalism
provided the representations for the Bornean image, which continues to
beguile the potential touristic market as it mirrors its needs. It was also
how Western colonial powers and early travellers came to terms with the
Bornean people. Travel writers and tour operators have, thus, created a par-
ticular type of romantic discourse that reinforces tourists’ preconceptions
and expectations. The Rungus and other communities, as the subjects of
that discourse, have also contributed to the continuation of the touristic
gaze of the Bornean by succeeding to keep myth and reality apart for
themselves.
Tourists who want to see the Rungus live in their ‘natural’ state (despite
the implications of voyeurism) continue to ensure the sustainability of
Rungus participation in the tourism sector. This entails subscribing to the
touristic and commoditized discourses, which rely on the Bornean image.
Meanwhile, tour operators exploit the Rungus way of life as a resource to be
transformed into income generating tourist attractions that the community
regards as contributing to its development. However, there is an apparent
contradiction to all this. While it is the Rungus’ primitiveness, marked by
a lack of modern development, that the tourists value most in their encoun-
ters, the authorities meanwhile complain that it is the specific traits of the
Rungus and their lack of active participation in the state-sponsored projects
and programmes that scuttle them. Both these dominant discourses, how-
ever, fail to acknowledge the continued survival of the Rungus way of life in
such a physical environment. Acknowledging the capacity for change will
nullify the ‘traditional’ or ‘primitive’ status of the Rungus and challenge the
‘authenticity’ of that way of life, thus, negating the commoditization of the
Rungus in the deflection of the tourist gaze.
Next comes the argument that Eastern perspectives of Islamic architecture
and the mosque are the result of the political agendas of national leaders
in projecting Islam, current professional concerns and the historical bag-
gage of traditional historians, critics and artists. In Chapter 12, Mohamad
Tajuddin argues that the interpretation is trapped between the Western
intellectual framework of the ‘history’ of architecture and the perceptions
of ‘Islam’ and architectural ‘practice’, and highlights the lack of commit-
ment and professionalism in building mosques in the true spirit of what the
practice should be. Eastern architects are critical of the Western framework
on Islamic architecture and the mosque in particular, which is widely used
Conclusion 245
largely because of Western education and its practice, but they have not
formulated alternative frameworks. A minority of practitioners adhere to a
more social and value based view of mosque design, but Muslim leaders tend
to rely on revivalist ideas of the grandiose architecture of Islam’s glorious
past to provide religious legitimacy for their regimes.
The scholarship on Islamic architecture that developed in the West
revolved around traditionalist ideas of ‘architecture’, ‘history’, ‘Islam’ and
‘religion’. Architecture was meant to evoke a sense of awe and beauty
through grandeur as masterpieces. This view was attacked later by the late
nineteenth-century belief that architecture must represent the people it
serves and not an elite or eccentric few. The methodology of selection and
description was still mainly framed by the Judeo-Christian outlook on life,
with little discussion of the cultural aspects despite Qur’anic exegesis. Juristic
differences between Sufis and Shi’ites compounded this, with Islam being
viewed as a ‘religion’ of ritualistic practice devoid of worldly concerns, and
mosques as secluded places for prayer and worship only. The architecture of
the Sufis became the most valued while Qur’anic Verses were preferred over
sayings in the Hadith as sources for exegesis.
In Malaysia, mosque architecture can be classified in the six main styles of
traditional vernacular, Sino-eclectic, European classical, The North Indian,
modernistic and post-modern revivalism (see photographs) with some
reflecting quite appropriately cultural hybridity. Yet, revivalism with its usu-
ally extravagant and unsuitable design for the tropics seems to be the more
popular approach. The popularity of grandiose revivalism is the legacy of
the Western framework of mosque architecture. Malaysian Muslims appear
to have become both victims and perpetrators of ‘the gaze of the West’ by
choosing to be imitative spectators; followers rather than innovators.
Very often the cultural refashioning of the West, as Easternization, is not
apparent. Either the socio-historical contexts of Eastern traditions have
been abstracted from the praxis or the praxis itself is hybridized. This is
particularly evident in traditions that involve multilayered rituals of the
body, such as Ayurveda for health and wellness, or bodily movement, such
as yoga (and meditation) for therapeutic healing, and other movement
forms like the Chinese and Japanese martial arts of Falun Gong, Tai Chi
Chuan, Qigong, Aikido, Jujutsu and Eastern dance forms among others. In
the sphere of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), it appears
that traditions such as Ayurveda, Reiki and acupuncture that emanate
from the East, perceived as a source of ancient, mystic and holistic healing
knowledge, are often fused with distinct theories of health and well-being.
These reduce diverse and evolving practices spanning huge expanses of time
and geography into a single tradition, whose cultural authenticity then
becomes debatable, with clear implications for cultural authority. As noted
in Chapter 4, the question of who or what has the authority to sanction and
affirm a particular tradition as praxis and, thereby, its absorption into the
fabric of society, is a salient issue. As a powerful legitimizing tool, Western

scientific validation can either affirm or replace the traditional cultural
authority of Eastern traditions.
So are the socio-historical and cultural contexts of the origins of Eastern
traditions being abstracted from the praxis of Easternization? Part of the
answer lies in how actors of both Eastern and Western cultural origins, as
purveyors of the praxis, seek affirmation too in order to serve their own
interests in legitimizing their trade in ‘Eastern’ healing traditions, in the
West. Suzanne Newcombe argues, in relation to CAM, in Chapter 13, that
while it might be tempting to view the spectrum of Western gazes on
Eastern practices as exploitative, because they often do not appear to be
valuing Eastern traditions in their own terms, the reality is much more com-
plex. Many purveyors in anticipating the desires of a Western market are not
averse to projecting themselves as romanticized Orientalists either.
Newcombe observes that the very term ‘complementary and alternative
medicine’ (CAM) assumes the dominance of the biomedical model, but
argues that biomedicine has been responding to an increasingly pluralistic
medical marketplace. Newcombe notes that, not only has the West been
transformed by contemporary medical–cultural exchange, there has also
been real social change partly because of contact with diverse world cultures
and an ideology based on human rights that demands respect for more
varied expressions of human culture. Some of the traditional markers of
human progress defined by European cultures, such as GDP as a measure of
the health of a nation, are being reconsidered. Western medicine has had
to acknowledge some failure too in its ability to deal with chronic medi-
cal conditions or improve the quality of palliative care, although it resists
acculturation by the real or imagined East. It has had to face a dynamic state
of medical pluralism demanded by patients and as the result of intercul-
tural exchange. In evaluating the Western gazes within the praxis of CAM,
Newcombe concludes that although Western culture and medicine has been
transformed by its contact with Eastern systems, it is unclear if this is a case
of simple exploitation or cultural appropriation.
Newcombe suggests that if the incorporation of medical pluralism in the
West can be seen as approaching a cultural position more familiar to the
East, then it may be understood as a type of Easternization. On the other
hand, she argues that since the growing popularity of Eastern traditions
in the West reflects what is basically a very human tendency to minimize
personal suffering by whatever is perceived to be the most effective means
available for the purposes of healing (that may well involve simplifying
complex and multifaceted traditions to increase efficacy), then there may be
no duality after all between East and West in such human aspirations. While
echoing a rather common Western tendency to argue for the manifestation
of the praxis of Easternization as an inherent aspect of an inner worldli-
ness of the West (see Hamilton, 2002; Dawson, 2006), Newcombe also sees
Conclusion 247
it as an intercultural exchange of global flows and as a rapprochement of

cultures.
In the last chapter of Part III, Chapter 14, Jean Pierre Poulain discusses
the role played by gastronomy in the development of French society and
national identity in relation to both French ingenuity and the historical
events that have shaped it. Catholicism exemplified the special relation-
ship between food and the sacred, as in the Eucharistic ritual providing the
context for the peculiar sensuality of French gastronomy, while the French
Revolution resulted in the bourgeoisie’s domination of culinary matters
and the incorporation of aristocratic ‘class’ for the social standing it had
lacked for centuries. Although the Reformation desacralized the bread of
the Eucharist ritual, the Church could not control the distinction between
the sacred and profane in the daily rituals of eating and drinking either. So,
although gluttony remained a cardinal sin, gastronomy became an aesthetic
art, and a celebration of all that was worldly. The golden age of French
gastronomy was the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth
century. Up to the end of the 1970s French chefs basically interpreted the
classic art of the masters, but with the advent of nouvelle cuisine in 1970,
it became imperative to be creative and popular local cuisines or cuisines
de terroirs were the source of inspiration. Born out of the dual gastronomic
heritage of elite cuisine and table manners, and with an emphasis on popu-
lar local cuisines, nouvelle cuisine soon became the vogue and French chefs
found themselves consultants to major international hotel chains.
Contact with other food cultures contributed to the development of local-
ized nouvelle cuisine. East–West contact also influenced the use of products
and techniques in contemporary French cuisine: use of spices as essential
ingredients, Asian methods for steaming food and, most visibly, the art of
decoration, particularly Japanese, in the presentation of food. A ‘fusion
cuisine’ soon emerged to redefine French culinary creativity that coincided
with the focus on local food cultures globally, creating the conditions for
gastronomic decolonization.
Although the French gastronomical gaze has traditionally been rather
supercilious and Eurocentric, Poulain illustrates how over time, space and
place it has become both reflective and multidirectional, as well as cosmo-
politan in its outlook, resulting in the decolonization of its own haute culture
and in the creation of nouvelle cuisine as an expression of the mutuality of
its global gaze. It is quite apparent that food can transform the tourist gaze
too. Instead of being mere spectators tourists become active participants by
partaking of the local food.
Concluding remarks: The last post?
The Western gaze has revealed that it is multifaceted and complex in

its attributes in the spheres we have examined in this volume. It is
diverse: homogenizing and varied (business and work), mutual and strategic
(management and training), interactive and cosmopolitan (gastronomy
and the culinary arts), exploitative and appropriative (religions and spir-
itualities; tourism), dominant and authoritative (CAM) and highly mobile
in its penetration. Hegemonic in its dominance in philosophy, knowledge
production and historiography, it has produced avatars of colonialism and
Orientalism – neo-colonialism and neo-Orientalism – while the ‘master dis-
courses’ of the West have inhibited understandings of Eastern or non-Western
cultural realities. In re-examining Orientalism and Occidentalism, and in
problematizing Easternization, we have moved away from an a priori position
of an inevitably hegemonic West by presenting a set of interdisciplinary per-
spectives that explore with autonomy new directions in Occidental studies.
Three issues were raised in relation to Easternization as cultural change in
the West. The first was about the prevalence and nature of Eastern cultural
influences. They are not merely heterodoxical New Age phenomena. This
is evidenced by the transformative capacity of CAM, management and
training, religions and spiritualities and gastronomy. The second was whether
Easternization is refashioning the West. While the research evidence for this
may not be compelling, there appears to be greater movement on the ground
than is actually acknowledged. The last was whether Easternization is under
siege; whether Westernization still rules. Easternization pales by comparison
to the global hegemony of Westernization in the cultural refashioning of
the West posited as a corollary to the intellectual refashioning of the East as
Orientalism (Said, 1978). Yet the imprints of the effluence of Easternization
on the life worlds of the West are ubiquitous; most certainly as a type of
globalization (Ritzer, 2010) everywhere.
Additionally, while the historical incidence of imperialism, colonization
and decolonization has affected Eastern traditions and impacted on Eastern
economy and industry, the West has not been affected by such forces in more
modern times. It has also been impervious to the potentially salubrious
effects of some of the more civilized and higher moral standards of the East.
The core values of civic order and social harmony, familism and filial piety,
dignity and honour, ethics and morality, and self-realization and inner peace
embedded in the major spiritual traditions of an Asian East have not been
acknowledged as readily as some of the more material aspects of Easternization
have been embraced. Arguably elements of such values may reside in the
West in ‘the very inner-worldly character of trends within Western think-
ing’ (Hamilton, 2002). Still, Western order may well benefit from the values,
policies, priorities and attitudes that have fuelled the economic rise of the
East. But the East, especially China and India, can only show the way if it
can also see for itself the potential for ecological and political crises in the
unbridled and hedonistic consumption of the West (see Nair, 2011).
As this volume goes to press the ‘implications of the Arab Spring’ heralded
by the tumultuous events of 28 January 2011, in Tahrir Square, Egypt,
Conclusion 249
has dawned on the rest of the world. It may prove to be as iconic and
monumental as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was for the West. But what
are the implications of such movements in the middle-East that were clearly
not West-inspired? Indigenous forms of alternative governance are certainly
evolving as new nationalisms in tandem with citizens’ right to expect to
share national resources. In an ever changing, uncertain world now besieged
by fiscal problems, ravaged ecologically, stunned by the ‘Arab Spring’ and
confronted by new meanings of terrorism in the wake of the massacre of 77
people in Norway in July 2011, the West can learn from newly emergent
truths. It must now come face-to-face with its own vulnerabilities in its gaze
of the East.
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Index
Abdel-Malek (1981), 49, 50, 51, 86 aristocracy, 219–20

Abrahamic tradition/s, 33, 96 aromatherapy, 207, 209
acupunture, 66, 203, 210, 245 Art of War, The, 145
acculturation, 20, 23, 63, 74, 95, 213, Ascension, 65
230, 235, 238 ascetism, 159, 160–1, 222, 242
‘adopt and adapt’ praxis, 242 Asia, 33, 61–2, 93–4, 96–7, 156, 167,
Advaita Vedanta, 204 172, 176–7
Ahmad, A. (2008), 56 Asia-Europe Foundation (AEF), 171
Ahmad Merican (2008), 14 Asian/s, 69, 72, 156, 159
Aikido, 66, 245 Asian East, 248
Alain Ducasse, 226 ‘Asian Values’, 30, 61, 62
Al-Azim State Mosque, Melaka, 198 Asian discourses, 33
Alatas, S.H., 52 Asiento Treaty, 141
Alliance, 119 astrology, 66
Alliston, C. (1996), 177 asymmetrical cultural influences, 238
alternative medicine, 74 Atlantic Europe, 141
America, 139–41, 171,184 Australian aborgines, 109
American autonomization, 22
worldview, 54 Auguste Comte, 84, 89
Buddhism, 238 Aung San Suu Kyi, 31
transcendentalists and Aurobindo Akroyd Ghose, 210
Theosophists, 207 Ayurveda, 22, 66, 70, 74, 208, 210, 245
Americanization, 60, 153, 242 Ayurvedic medicine, 74, 204, 212
anarchical individualism, 160,
163, 166 Babette’s Feast (1958), 222
Anders Behring Breivik, 36 Baden Powell, 129
Angela Merkel, 36 Banto, 147
Anglophone, 30 Balagangadhara, S.N. (1994), 88
culture, 30 Beau Savage, 175
West, 140 becoming–West of Europe, 47, 123
Anglophone-American, 30 beliefs, 20, 93–9
Anglophone Commonwealth believers, 20, 96, 99
nations, 202 percentage of, 97
Anglo-Saxon West, 89 Benazir Butto, 31
animism, 32 Benedict Sandin, 133
Annan, 162–3 Bentham, J. (1791), 72
Antonio Gramsci, 7 Beranger de Tours, 224
Appadurai, A. (1990), 6, 60 Berlin Wall, 141, 249
Appadurai, A. (1996), 60 Berger, J. (1972), 172
Arab Spring, the, 248 Bernard Lewis, 81
Arabia, 164 beyond boundedness, 45
Arabs, 13, 49 Bible lands, 13
architecture, history of, 184 Big-men, 163
Aristotle, 238 Binatang, 178
251
252 Index
biomedicine, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, CAM, 202–14, 245, 246, 248
208, 212–3 in the West, 204
biomedical practitioners, 212–13
anatomy and diagnostics, 208 praxis, 212
industry, 40 techniques, 212
model, 203, 212–13 therapies, 207, 209, 210, 212–13
Bargiela-Chiappini (2005, 2012), Campbell, C. (2007), 6, 18, 30, 39, 64,
156, 139 66, 73, 238
Bhabha, H. (2004), 14, 53 capitalism, 99
Bonnett, A. (2004), 5, 8, 31, 33 ‘captive mind’, 46, 51, 52, 53, 55,
Bornean, 179 57, 69
Image(s), 177–9, 244 Carakra, 208
myth, 174, 177 Carrette, J. and King, R. (2005), 96
people, 175, 181, 244 Carrier, J (2003), 41
Borneans as Wild People of the Forest, Carl Book, 174
175, 243 Cartesian dualism, 205
Borneo, 21, 170, 172–4, 177–8, 181, 243 caste, 157, 160
as eternal paradise, 173, 243 system, 160
Bourdieu, P. (1993), 16, 227 caste-based loyalties, 163
bourgeoisie, 219–20 Castelles, M. (2000), 42
Boyle, F. (1984), 132 Cathecism, 224
Brunei Sultanate, 132 Catholics, 97, 222–4
Brahman/s, 158–60 Catholicism, 221–2, 222, 247
Brahmanism, 242 Catholic
Brahmins, 158 community, 223
Brahmanical idealism, 160, 163, 166 morals, 221–22
Britain, 202 rituals, 224
British Muslim, 117 thinking, 222
Britishness, 116 theory, 224
British multiculturalism, 116 (Latin) Christianity, 34
Brooke Chamars of Lucknow, India 160
regime, 20, 123–5, 134, 136, 240, 241 Chambri/s, 180, 181
dynasty, 129 culture, 180
Brown, D. and Leladaki, A. (2010), community, 180
73, 239 Charles Brooke, 130
Brun, C. (1928), 225 Charles Correa, 186
bucho, 148 Charles Jencks, 200
Buddha, 31, 103, 238 China, 61, 62, 67, 117, 172, 210, 248
Buddhism, 12, 30, 32, 67, 70, 80, 88, Chinese, 156
97–101, 144, 204, 238 Chinese medicine, 66, 114, 211
Buddhists, 97, 101 Chineseness, 114
Bumiputeras, 120 Christian/s, 97, 98, 206, 223–5
Buruma and Margalit (2004), 14 absolutism, 4, 98
Bushidō, 21, 143–148, 150, 152, 241 beliefs, 68
Bushidō Shoshinshu, 143 Europe, 36, 141
Bushidō the Soul of Japan (1899), 144 missionaries, 68
business management and teachings, 66
training, 153 tradition, 70
Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) West, 202
industries, 164 Christendom, 7–9, 33
Index 253
Christianity, 8, 12, 30, 32, 65, 84, 89, cosmopolitan, 247

94, 96–100, 177, 187, 222, 224 counter culture, 98, 101
as a dominant religion, 10 Counter Culture Revolution, 39
Christianizing mission, 129, 135 Cowan, D. E. (2003), 64
civilization, 42, 142, 170 cross displinary discourses, 23
civilizational canopy, 20, 108, cross-cultural exchanges, 71
114–15, 117–18, 239–40 cuisines de terrior, 218–19, 247
civilizing cultural
mission, 68, 128–30, 135 addiction, 67, 100
process, 220 appropriation, 246
strategies, 124 authenticity, 245
clash of civilizations, 33, 62, 73 authority, 245
Code of the Samurai, 143 change, 63, 64, 235
collectivism, 156, 157, 159, 243 flow/s, 63, 94, 101, 103, 239
collectivist, 157 influences, 40, 63
holistic, 158 mimicry, 164–5
colonial paradigms, 64
history, 126 refashioning, 239
knowledge, 20, 52, 57, 107, 108, 110, relations, 93
111, 114 traditions, 96
government, 13 cultures, 156
guilt, 209 North American, 156
methods, 14, 111 North Western European, 156
rulers, 108 ‘cultural capital’, 75
colonialism, 47, 94, 107, 127, 140, ‘cultural neutralization’, 243
176, 248 ‘cultural mimicry’, 164
colonialist, 176 cultural refashioning of the West, 17,
coloniality, 56 23, 39, 64, 237, 345, 248
colonization, 218, 236, 240 Cust, E. (1839), 52–3
‘colonization of time’, 164
Cold War, 34, 62, 141 Dalai Lama, 67
collectivist, 156–7 Dalits, 158
collectivism, 157, 166 Dawson, A. (2006), 64
Communion, 222–3, 225 Daojia. See philosophical Taoism
commodification, 20, 41, 71–2, 99, 103 Daojiao. See religious Taoism
commoditization of the Rungus, 181 Dalits, 158
commoditized discourses, 244 Daniel, E. V. (1984), 156
complementary and alternative Daumas, J. N. (1986), 224
medicine, 202. See CAM David Cameron, 36
‘comprador intelligentia’, 236 Dayak/s 20, 124, 129–30, 132, 136,
Confucius, 31, 238 177, 241
famlism 147 Iban, 125, 130, 240
Confucian philosopher Mancius, 209 society, 173
Confucianism, 12, 30, 61–2, 145–6, Decchi, 147
148, 150 decolonization, 40, 45, 46, 226, 243,
consociationalism, 109, 119 247–8
consubstantiation, 224 of haute cuisine, 218
Continental Europe, 141 of gastronomies, the, 22
‘constructive imagination’ 135 Decolonizing Methodologies (1999), 55
Cory Aquino, 31 Deepak Chopra, 74, 210
254 Index
Derrida, J. (1995), 136 philosophical values, 238

desubstantiation, 224 philosophies, 86
Détienne, M. 1979, 223 philosophy, 85, 80, 88, 89
Dictionnaire universel de cuisine, psyche, 94
(1883), 221 practices, 246
divide-and-rule policy, 118 religions, 66–7, 96–8, 101, 237, 238
divination, 66 systems, 246
discourse of difference, a, 14 spirituality, 204
Donald Lopez (1994), 102 spiritualities, 70
dualistic society, 68 spiritual traditions, 30
Dubois, U. (1868), 226, 228 spiritual or fitness activities, 204
Duke Ellington, 214 traditions, 22, 202, 207, 237, 245,
Dumont, L. (1970), 156 246, 248
Dunn, F. L. (1970), 60 traditions of health and wellness, 202
Dusun, 174 East Asia, 61
Eastern-origin, 213
East, the, 3, 6, 7, 9, 13–4, 21–3, 29, 30, alternative therapies, 202
32–3, 48, 51, 62–4, 67, 70–4, 80–2, CAM therapies, 209, 211
93–6, 101, 103, 109, 115, 125–6, CAM practitioners, 211
128–9, 132, 140, 142, 152, 170–2, Easternization, 4, 15, 16, 18–19, 20 23,
200, 202, 204, 207, 209, 210, 213, 38–41, 60, 63–4, 66–74, 93, 95, 153,
218, 229, 235–6, 238, 242–6, 248 202, 209, 213–14, 229, 235, 237–8,
Eastern, 170, 238, 248 245–6, 248
alternative medicine, 40 as cultural change, 64
beliefs and religions, 94–5, 102, 238 of the West, 17, 18, 39, 103
bloc, 34 of the Western praxis, 242
CAM practices, 210 impact of, 39
civilization, 67 issues, 63–4
cultures, 156, 209 under siege, 72
cultural flow, 64 with Orientalism, 38
cultural influences, 63, 68, 70, 71, Easternization thesis, 40, 64, 93
72, 248 ‘Easternization being under siege’, 40
cultural origin, 210 Easternization–Westernization thesis, 73
cultural osmosis, 70 East and West, 202
cultural traditions, 71, 73, 74, 236 East–West
communism, 62 contact, 247
discourses, 140 cultural relations, 93–4
economy and industry, 248 divide, 73
Europe, 141, 227 distinction, 171
forms of health and well-being, 204 flows, 63
healing traditions, 22, 210, 246 mentality, 164, 172
identity, 128 power relations, 93–4
medical systems, 213 Edo
metaphysic, 209 era, 10
methodology, 98 period, 146–7
movement forms, 70 Elias, N. (1939), 119, 220
mythology, 152 Ella Christie, 174
origins, 61, 202, 209 endism, 82
perspectives 3, 19, 33, 140, 244 enumerative modality, 112
philosophical traditions, 238 English, 114
Index 255
Enlightment, the, 82, 124, 129, Falun Gong, 245

142, 175 Fanon, F. (1963), 15
episteme, 94 Far East, 33
erotic, 69, 98 faiths, 95
esoteric, 65 fashion, 70
eternal paradise, 21 Favre, J. (1883), 221
ethnic canopy, 108 Federal Constitution, 119
ethnocentrism, 141, 231 Federation of Malaya Agreement 1948,
ethnocide, 128 118–19
‘ethnoscapes’, 36 feminist movement, 205
Eucharist, the, 223–4 Ferran Adria, 230
Eucharistic fields of gravitation, 96
sacrifice, 223 first settlers, 109
ritual, 223–4, 247 Fisher, J. (2008), 37
meal, 223 Fischler, C. (1990), 228
bread and wine, 224 fonds, 220
Eurabia, 36 food exchanges, 218
Eurocentric, 54, 247 Ford, 151
worldview, 54 Foucault, M. (1973), 16
social science, 55 four interconnected gazes, 241
Eurocentric world, 48 frame, 70
Eurocentrism, 45, 141 framings of the East, the 45, 53, 93, 101,
Eurocentric social science, 55 170
Europe, 8, 33, 47, 81, 94, 97, 107, 124, free flows, 63
139–41, 171–2, 184,187, 195, 199, French cuisine, 22, 228–9
202, 230 regional, 219
-as-Christendom 9 traditional, 226
Europeans, 107, 171 Ferguson, N. (2011), 237
European French Gastronomy: The History
Agents, 240 and Geography of a Passion
classical style, 192, 245 (2002), 222
colonizers, 124, 134 French gastronomical gaze, 247
concept of, 69 French identity, 220
discourses, 21 French Revolution, 225, 247
economy, 142 ‘French way of life’, 220
Enlightment, 89, 142 Friedman, T. (2005), 42
exoticism, 68, 69, 74 Friedrich Nietzsche, 84
historiography, 241 Fukuyama, F. (1992), 82, 237
history, 81 Furnivall, J. S. (1948), 12, 109, 118
ideas, 127 fusion cuisine, 22, 230
identity, 127
imperialism and colonialism, 37 Gastronomic Heritages and Their Tourist
philosophers, 89 Valorizations (2008), 227
philosophy, 90 gastronomic
scholars, 109 aesthetics, 222
standards, 140 decolonization, 218, 230–1
subjugation/s, 123 development , 219
supremacy, 132 heritage, 247
‘evidence based research’, 211 movements, 219
exotic, 21, 68, 69, 172, 204, 243 spirit, 221
256 Index
gastronomy/ies, 218–20, 225, 247 Hindu/s, 21, 70, 101, 159, 163
French, 219, 228, 226, 228–9, 231, 247 Hindu beliefs of Karma, 32
world, 219, 225 history, world, 219
golden age of, 225 historical
gaze, the 16, 20, 21, 23, 54, 72, 93, 152, gaze, 134
235, 236, 237, 243 discourse, 136
concept of, 72 narratives, 123–4, 129, 132
exploitative, 241 historiographic modality, 112
of the East, 167 Hobson, J. M. (2004), 8, 17, 31, 123, 128
of Europe, 29 Hofstede, G. (1984, 2001), 158
Gaze of the West, the, 3, 16–17, 46, 53, holism, 209
72, 170, 199, 205, 207, 235 holistics, 206, 207, 209
generalized East, a, 235 Hollywood, 101–2
George Harison, 99 homeland cuisines, 227
George W. Bush, 36 homoeopaths, 204
Gerard Loiseau and Michel Bras, 226 homogenization of voice and accent
Gewecke et al., (1996) training, 243
global host societies, 107–9, 114, 115, 117,
discourse of difference, 235 119, 239
flows, 60, 63, 238 Huntington, S. (1996), 33, 62, 73, 237
hybrids, 202 hybridization, 62, 103, 239
pluralism, 202 hybridized ethnic identities, 243
GDP, 212 Hyundai, 61
globalization, 37, 39, 60, 202, 227, 228,
230, 243, 248 Iban, 126, 133–4, 241
globalized Indian, 163 idea of
Globalized Islam, 62 Europe, 127, 140–2, 152, 241
global labour markets, 165 religion, 187
Globish, 243 ‘the West’, 34
glocalization, 95, 103, 239 Identité régionale et tourisme à l’heure de
Golden Age of Islam, 82 l’Europe (1993), 230
Goddess cosmology, 209 identity boundaries, 110
‘God is dead’, 84, 89 ideology of Orientalism, 235
God-realisation, 159 ideological history, 134
Gorbachev, 34 ijtihad, 189
imperialism, 46, 128–9, 140, 248
Hadith, 188–9, 245 India, 13, 117, 158, 170, 172, 248
Hall, S. (1996), 47, 48, 49, 57 Indian/s
Hamilton, M. (2002), 64 as collectivist, 157, 159
Harman, L.D. (1988), 42 as dividual, 158
haute cuisine, 219, 226 as a individual, 158
haute culture, 247 Indianness, 114
Head Hunters of Borneo, The, (1981), 174 Indian collectivism, 21, 158–9, 166, 242
‘healing’ lifestyles, 205 Indian individualism, 160
Health and Wellness, 202 Indian Hindu/s, 156, 159, 160, 163
hegemony, 20, 74, 95, 203, 235, 238 collective individualism, 162
‘hedonistic consumption’, 41, 72, 239 collectivity, 161
herbalists, 204 individuality, 161–2, 166
Hexagon of Power, 93 Indian Philosophy, 81, 82
Hinduism, 12, 30, 32, 80, 88, 97–9, 100, Indic ideal, 163, 166, 242
159, 238 Indira Gandhi, 31
Index 257
indigene Dayak, 240 management philosophies, 145

indigenes, 107, 124, 126 management practices, 241
indigenity, 107 philosophy and management history,
indigenization, 55 241
indigenousness, 107 Jamek Mosque, 194
indigenous Jenkins, K. (1991), 134–6, 241
communities, 239 Jews, 223
people, 176 Joel Robuchon, 226
social systems, 239 Horgan, J. (1996), 82
society, 114 John Lennon, 99
individualism, 156–7, 159, 160, 242 Jose Rizal, 15, 23
individuality, 21, 161 Joseph Chamberlain, 126
individualist, 157 Jujutsu, 66, 245
‘indolent Filipino’, the, 15 Judaism, 31, 96, 100, 187
Indonesia, 117 Judeo-Christianity, 32
Information Technology Enabled Judeo-Christian
Services (ITES), 164 nexus, 33
inner worldliness of the West, 246 outlook, 186, 245
intercultural traditions, 30
exchange, 202, 207, 214, 238 West, 33
interactions, 71 ‘just-in-time’ (JIT), 61, 151
rationale, 237 ‘just-in-case’, 61
intellectual refashioning of the East, 39,
64, 248 Kaiseki-ryori, K., 230
investigative Kaizen, 148
modalities, 111, 114 Kamaishi, 149
modality, 111 Kampong Laut Mosque, 189–90
Iron Curtain of Soviet rule, 34 Kampong Tuan Mosque, 189–90
Ismail Faruqui, (1992), 188 Kampong Keling Mosque, 191–3
Islam, 12, 13, 31–3, 49, 62, 68, 80–1, Kampong Hulu Mosque, 191–2
84–5, 96, 100, 171, 184, 186–9, 201, kastom, 41
244, 245 Khare, R. S. (1984), 160
Islam and Secularism (1978), 88 kebatinan, 32
Islam’s glorious past, 245 kejawen, 32
Islamic architecture, 21, 22, 184–5, 189, kerajaan, 118, 240
198, 245 Kevin Rudd, 109
‘Islamic glory’, 196 ‘keyed toys’, 164
Islamic philosophy, 81, 82 Konfrontasi, 119
Islamization, 55 knowledge, 107, 110
Islamophobia, 36 King, V.T. (1992), 180
iwan, 200 Kitaro Nishida, 90
Kumar, R. (2004) , 160
Jacques Maritain, 89 Kyoto School of Philosophy, 89–90
Jainism, 30
James Brooke, 132 Lao Zi, 167, 238
Japan, 9, 10, 20, 30, 61, 67, 97, 139–45, Lacan, J. (1949/2000), 16
149–53, 156 La cuisine de tous les pays (1868),
and Westernization, 67 226, 228
Japanese Art of War, The (1991), 143–4 Lamaism, 67
Japanese, 156, 247 Latouche, S. (1996), 40, 238
management theory and praxis, 241 ‘lazy native’, the, 15, 51, 52, 53
258 Index
‘lazy’ Rungus, 181 management and training, 139–40

Leites, E. (1986), 222 philosophy, 139
leitmotif, 236 marginalized, the, 51
Le cuisinier royal et bourgeois (1691), 220 Marriott, M. (1976), 156
Le Corbusier, (1985), 185 Masao Abe, 89
Les délices de la campagne (1654), 220 master discourses of the West, 47, 124,
L’Homnivore, (1990), 228 129, 241, 248
Liaison Committee 1949, 118 material influence, 64
life force, 66 and cultural influences, 235
‘life worlds’, 236, 248 materialistic dualism, 39
Lijphart, A. (1999), 109, 118 Max Weber, 39, 90, 221
Lim Kim Hui (2003), 80 Mazda, 151
‘living at the edge of modernity’, 172 medicine
‘living together’, 222 traditional, 210
local culinary heritages, 218 Chinese, 206, 211
‘locational masking’, 164 Western, 213
localized nouvelle cuisine, 247 medical pluralism, 213
logic, the fallacy of, 87 Medieval
LOHAS, 100–1 Islam, 81
Look East policy, 11 period, 81
Lord Curzon, 128 meditation, 66, 97
Meiji
Maori/s, 30, 37 government, 149
Mao Zedong, 210 period, 10, 147
Madonna, 99 Restoration 10, 146
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 74, 99 meilleur ouvrier de France, 226
Mahatma Gandhi, 15, 31 Melton, J. G. (2000), 65
Mahathir Mohamad, 11 Menon, 1749, 221
Malay Archipelago, 29, 82, 108, 239 meta-analysis, 86
Malay, 110, 113–14 metaphysics, 91
history, 110 metissage, 227, 230
identity, 57, 111 Michael Jackson, 36
rulers and subjects Michel Foucault, 16
tradition, 80 Michel Guerard, 226
world, 57, 81, 117, 239 Middle East, 13, 29, 33, 39
world view, 81 Mikao Usui (1864–1926), 208
Malayness, 114 migration, 36
Malay Reservation Enactment 1913, 113 Mirchandani, K. (2003, 2004), 165
Malaya, 176 ‘mirror stage gaze’, the, 16
colonial, 194 Miyamoto Musashi, 144
Malayan peninsula, 15 mobility, 36
Malaysia, 4, 11, 110, 117–18, 166, 184 Modern Japan, 143
May 13, 1969, 120 Modern Orientalism, 49
Malaysian modern Western ‘aesthetic’, 40
Constitution, 119 modernistic expressionism, 195
historiography, 110, 111 modernistic structuralism, 195–6
history, 110 modernistic style, 195
identity, 196 Mogul type architecture, 194
Muslims, 32 moksa, 159
‘management familism’, 147 monism, 30
Index 259
monotheism, 30, 39 New Agers, 66, 98, 237

mosque architecture, 189–99 New Ageism, 66
interpretation of, 21, 184 New Economic Policy (NEP), 12, 120
in Malaysia, 189–96 new religions, 64
multiculturalism, 20, 109, 115–17, new knowledge, 115, 121
119, 120 New World, 123–4, 127, 141, 220, 224
multiple ‘gazes’, 206 NHS, 203
museological modality, 113 Nicolas de Bonnefons (1654), 220
multicultural theories, 108 Nihonjinron, 152
Muslim/s, 4, 31, 36, 49, 97, 117 nineteenth-century gastronomy, 218
Orient, 13, 29 Nissan, 151
Malays, 200 noble savage, 123, 141, 175, 241
viewpoints, 4 of Sarawak, 20
‘mutual gaze’, the, 20, 140, 152, 241 non-Christians, 36
mutuality of its global gaze, 247 non-occidental
mutuality of the East–West gaze, 140, scholar/s, 125, 136
152–3 world views, 79
mystic East, 207, 208 non-Orient, the, 236
mythic, 207 ‘non-subjects’, 55
Myth of the Lazy Native (1977), 15, non-West, 32
51, 53 non-Western, 41
cultural realities, 248
Nair-Venugopal, S. (2003, 2008), 36, 237 cultures, 54
Nagarattars, 163 health traditions, 202
Nandy, 5 identity, 56
nambi, 161 observation, 82
nation state, 114 philosophies, 79, 84
national cultures, 243 philosophy, 90–1
‘national’ workplace cultures, 243 resurgence, 238
National Consultative Council, 120 societies, 45, 48, 56
National Mosque, 195 social science, 86
naturism, 69 scholars, 51
naturpaths, 204 traditions of modernity, 42
NCCAM, 203 world, 51, 52, 80, 84, 85
Neo-Orientalists, 50 ‘normative gaze’, the, 16
neo-colonialism, 236, 248 Norman Jones (1996), 33, 34
neo-Orientalism, 236, 248 North Indian style, 194, 245
neo-neo Orientalism, 236 nostalgia, 40–1
Near East, 29, 31 nouvelle cuisine, 218–19, 226,
Near or Middle East, 39 229–31, 247
New Age, 63–6, 98 nouvelle cuisine de terroir, 218
community, 66
phenomena, 17, 63, 64, 67, 248 object-centered, 22, 184
milieu, 209 Occident, the, 13, 14, 18, 29, 55, 57, 62,
Movement/s, 18, 39, 63–4, 66, 71, 93, 79, 84, 87, 235
98, 100 Occidentalism, 10, 14, 38–9, 46, 102,
Orientalism, 102 123, 128, 141, 171, 248
spirituality, 74, 100 Occidentalism (2000), 46, 64
stores, 100 Occidental
Newcombe, S. (2008a), 206 belief, 80
260 Index
Occidental – continued patient ‘empowerment’, 213

scholars, 237 Patterns of Democracy: Government
studies, 5, 23, 38–9, 41–2, 237, 248 Forms & Performance in Thirty-six
West, 32 Countries (1999), 122
world, 30, 79 patriarchal society, 209
‘Occidental’ nations, 30 Paul Bocuse, 226
Okakura, 31 Penghulu, 239
Olympics Games, 100 Pevsner, N. (2007), 184
One Hundred Philosophers (2004), 81 periodization, 46, 55, 79–82, 86, 129
Orang Boentoet, 174 periyadanakaarar, 161
orang putih, 176 periyar, 161
Orient, the 12–3, 18, 29, 32, 50–1, 57, Philippines, the, 97, 102
62, 69, 79, 87, 98, 141, 127, 141, philosophical Taoism, 98
171, 235–6 philosophy, 79, 80-3, 85–6, 89–90
of the Near and Middle East, 32 crisis, 89
Orients, 13, 29, 38, 50 Islamic, 81
Oriental/s, 69, 214 Western value, 81
Oriental Occidentalist, 15 Pierre Gagnaire, 226
oriental philosophy, 79 Pitte, J.R. (2002), 222
Orientalism, 3, 13, 14, 15, 16, 31, 38–9, Plato, 238
41, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, plural society, 118, 239
71, 86, 123, 127, 141, 171, 179, pluralism, 213
235–7, 248 ‘politics of recognition’, 108
critiques of, 48 pop culture, 99
definition of, 141 popular cusines, 218
in scholarly writing, 102 post-colonial, 46, 47, 208
methodology of, 51 criticism, 86
of the west, 19 dislocation, 45
Orientalism (1978), 38, 56, 57, 86, 248 imagination, 45
Orientalist/s, 49, 50, 57, 74, 79, 171 period, 108
Orientalist-occidentalist mode, 79 scholar, 47
Orientalist, 210 space, 46, 54
pattern of thinking, 209 subject, 56
scholarship, 49 theory, 54
studies, 141 post-coloniality, 45, 48, 56, 123, 237
Orientology, 87 post-colonialism, 37, 56
Orthodox, 33 post-colonization, 40
Orthodox (Greek) Christianity, 34 post-modern revivalism, 196, 245
Osama bin Laden, 36 post-modernism, 37, 83
Other/s, the, 6, 46, 51, 53, 56, 80, post-modernists, 200
86–8, 123–5, 127, 129, 134, 140, post-modernity, 37
152, 240 post-modernization, 40
Otherness, 32, 34, 50 Poulain, J.P. (1993, 2008), 227, 230
power relations, 93, 95
Paganism, 100 ‘pragmatics’, 206
Pantheon, 199 Pratiques culinaires et esprit de sacrifice
pantheistic, 32 (1979), 223
panentheistic, 32 praxis, 245
Papan Mosque, 189, 191 praxis of
Paramahansa Yogananda, 210 Easternization, the 4, 16, 17, 38, 40–1,
Parthenon, 199 71, 72, 74, 95, 235, 238–9, 246
Index 261
CAM, the, 205, 206, 213 ringi system, the, 61

management and training, 242 Rodney, W. (1974), 15
primitive, 172 Roger Verger, 226
Principle of Scientific Management, Blanc, 226
The, 149 Roman Catholic/s, 97, 177
Pringle, R. (1970), 133, 134 romantic
‘privatization of religion’, 96 Orientalist, 207
Prophet Muhammad, the, 189 Orientalism, 202, 207, 208
Protestants, 222 romantized Orientalists, 237, 246
Putra Mosque, 196–7 Rungus, 21, 170, 173, 178–82, 244
Russia in the West, 33
Qigong, 66, 71, 99, 245
Qur’an, 49, 188–9 Sabah, 177
Qur’anic sacred, the, 188, 222–3
exegesis, 186 canopy, 108
Verses, 188, 245 spaces, 112
quality control groups, 61 ‘sacramental materialism’, 224
sahn, 198
Rabinbranath Tagore, 5, 15, 31 Said, E. 13, 18, 46
racist discourse, 126 sakoku, 10
Rajah Brooke, 174 Saks, M. (2003), 204
rapproachement of cultures, 247 Sakuma Shozan, 10
rational monotheism, 39 Salman Rushdie (1991), 42
Reid Commission, 119 salvation, 32
Reiki, 66, 70, 206, 208, 209, 245 Samurai, 142–6
reflexology, 66 Sarawak, 20, 123–4 , 126, 129, 132–3,
reflexive modernization, 71, 72 136, 240
reincarnation, 66 colonization of, 134
religion/s, 79, 80, 95–6, 98–9, 101, Sardar, Z. (1999), 9, 50–1, 53–4
103, 201 savage/s, 124, 174–5
as philosophy, 87 Second World War, 149
influence of, 67 secularization, 79, 84, 89, 95–6
the idea of, 187 Self, 123–4, 240
Religion Sen, A. (2005), 60, 62
as belief, 95, 96 September 11, 2001
as culture, 95, 96 serambi, 189, 192, 196
as product, 95, 96 settler societies, 107, 114–15
religious sewa, 161
commercialism, 96 Shamsul, A.B., 12, 171, 129
sources, 188, 189 Shah Alam Mosque, 196–7
Reece, B. (2004), 132 Shi’a, 189
Reece, R. H. W. (1991), 130 Shi’ites, 245
Renault, 151 shiatsu, 209
Rentap, 130–2 Shihainin, 147
repackaging religion, 96 Shinto, 144
Reformers, 223 Shintoism, 30
Reformation, the, 222, 223–4 Shome, R. (2006), 165
revivalism, 184, 195–6, 199, 200 siddha, 98
as an approach, 198 Sino-electic style, 191, 245
grandiose, 245 Subramuniyaswami, S. (1990), 159
Ritzer, G. (2010), 60 Sikhism, 30, 32
262 Index
Singapore, 62, 68 Taylor, C. (1992), 108

sky God, 95 Taylor, F. (1967), 149
Smith, L. T. (1999), 37, 125, 240 ‘terrorist’, 36
social contract, 119, 239 Terakoya, 147
social mileau, 41 ‘terra nullius’, 126
Socrates, 238 The Easternization of the West
soft Western capitalism, 238 (2007), 39
South Korea, 30, 67, 97 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Soviet Communism, 34 Capitalism (reprinted 2004), 221
‘special relationship’, 140 The Puritan Conscience and Modern
spices, 220 Sexuality (1986), 222
‘spiritual tourist’, 99 Thibawi, A.L. (1964), 49
spirituality, 67, 73, 95, 97–100, 103 Third World, 141
standardization of service scripts and Taoism, 70, 88, 97, 145, 167
protocols, 243 Tibet, 67, 102
stereotypes, 172 Tibetan Buddhism, 67
stranger, the, 42 Timore Leste, 97
‘stylised images of the West’, 41 Toyota, 61
Sufi’s, 189 Tokugawa
elements, 99 Era, 10
rituals, 99 trope, 235, 241
teachings, 99 tropical architecture, 199
Sufis, 245 tourism, 172, 176, 179, 226
Sufism, 99, 189, 238 tourist/s, 174, 228
Sultan, 239 ‘tourist gaze’, the, 21, 243, 244, 244
Sunni, 188 touristic gaze, the, 173
Sunnah, 189, 201 traditional cultural authority, 246
Sun Yat Sen, 15 ‘traditional’ guru-sisha, 208
surveillance modality, 112 Traditional Malay architecture, 196
survey modality, 112 traditional vernacular style, 189, 245
Susruta, 208 transcendental meditation, 206
Suzuki Shozan, 144–5 movement, 74
Swarmi Vivekananda, 210 transmigration of souls, the, 32
Syed Farid Alatas (2003), 45, 52 transnational tourism, 228
Syed Farid Alatas (2006), 86 transubstantiation, 224
Syed Hussein Alatas (1977), 15, 46, travel modality, 113
51–3, 56–7 Triandis, H. (1995), 157, 166
Syed Muhammad Naquib al-attas, 88 Tring Dayaks, 174
Trin Minh-Ha (1989), 47, 129, 241
Tafsir ‘true believers’, 206, 207
methodology of, 186 “truly asia”, 11
Tai Chi Chuan, 66, 71, 245 trust-based relationship, 163
Taiwan, 67 Turner, B. (1997), 40, 72
talaivar, 161
Tambi, 162–3 universal
Tamil, 114 values, 93
Taoism, 30, 98, 140, 238 applicability, 94
Philosophical, 98 Universal Spirit, 160
Religious, 98 universality, 55, 70
tantra, 66, 98 United Nations Report 2004, 31
Index 263
‘under siege’, 153, 248 discourse/s, 3, 19, 38, 126, 139–40,

Urry, J. (1990), 17, 21 143
US/United States, 150, 152, 202 discursive practicies, 236
untouchables, 158, 160 domination, 171
education, 245
Venn, C. (2000), 45 esotericism, 64, 65
Verhoeven, M. J. (2003), 95 Europe, 30, 65, 109, 121, 141, 150
value-centered, 22, 184 expansionism, 142
Voltaire, 142 framings, 103
von Blixen, K. (1958), 222 gaze/s, 21–2, 47, 82, 140, 210, 213,
157, 159, 236, 242–3, 246–7
wakon yoosai, 10, 67, 95, 149–50, 152 healthcare landscape, 203
Wang Gungwu (2008), 12, 62 hegemony, 40, 95, 101, 127,
‘way of the warrior’, 241–2 129, 241
West, C. (1982), 16, 17 heroism, 101
West, the 3, 6–8, 9, 13–14, 16–18, 20–3, historians, 187
30, 32–4, 36–7, 48, 56, 60, 62–4, historiography, 20, 129, 240
67–8, 70–4, 79, 80–2, 84, 88–9, identity, 128
93–4, 96–7, 98–101, 109, 115, 124, imagination, 68
128, 139, 140–2, 149, 152, 162, 167, imperialism, 20, 41, 177
170–2, 184, 200–2, 204, 206, institutions, 71
209–10, 212–13, 218–19, 235–6, intellectual framework, 244
238–40, 243–6, 248–9 intellectual traditions, 41
in Asia, 9 invention, 69
‘west and the rest’, the 23, 237 management praxis
West as the west and in the west, markets, 22, 60, 210, 246
the, 34 medical systems, 212
West’s representations of Borneo, 243 nations, 202
Western, 48, 49, 170 narratives, 74
academic and aatristic tradition, 235 nutritional diets, 72
attitudes, 23, 235 pantheism, 98
authors, 52 paradigms, 95
belief, 88 perspectives, 151
biomedicine, 22, 70, 203, 213 philosophy, 80, 81, 83, 84, 88, 91
biomedical models, 74, 202 philosophies, 81, 79
business, 241 philosophers, 83
capitalism, 62, 94–5, 103 physical culture, 208, 210
capitalist hegemony, 94 powers, 126
categories, 124, 167 practitioners, 208, 211
civilization, 45, 67, 93, 94 religions, 96
culture, 62, 64, 69, 80, 88, 94, 202, science/s, 52, 71
210 scientific validation, 71, 72, 246
culture and medicine, 246 scholarship, 51
colonization, 235 society/s, 95, 206, 212
concepts, 94 spectator, 23
consciousness, 54 subject, 123
consumption, 235, 236 teachers, 52
countries, 227 tendency, 246
customers, 165 tourist/s, 176
dietary habits, 72 views, 79, 80
264 Index
Western – continued 74, 93, 95, 141, 153, 238,

vegetarianism, 101 242, 248
world, 84, 89, 230 thesis, 93
worldview, 66, 82 Westernization Rules, 72
Western framework white man’s burden, 126, 177
of mosque architecture, 245 white rajah/s, 20, 124–6, 129–30, 132,
on Islamic architecture, 244 240
Western gaze Whites (Pakeha), 31
on Indian collectivism, 156 wild people of the forest, 21
of the East, 167 work and business, 156
Western-origin ‘World Cuisine’, 227
CAM practices, 211
crystal healing, 211 Yagyu Munenori, 144
Western-style education, 208 yoga, 22, 66, 70–1, 97, 100, 204,
Western capitalist markets and 206–10, 245
systems, 166 therapy, 206, 207
Western and the Eastern Roman Yogendra Mastanami, 210
Empires, the 34 Yogini Sunita, 210
Westernization, 15, 18, 20, 30, Zen philosophy, 87, 140, 144
38–40, 60, 63, 67, 70, 71, 72, Zawiah Yahya (2010), 4

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The Gaze of the West and Framings of the East

Frontiers of Globalization Series

Frontiers of Globalization Series

List of Photographs vii

Part I Sighting the Terrain

12 Interpreting Mosque Architecture in the Twentieth Century:

1 Kampung Laut Mosque, Kelantan, circa seventeenth century 190

This book owes as much to its contributors as it does to a University

Shanta Nair-Venugopal is Professor and Principal Fellow at the Institute of

Shamsul A.B. is Professor of Social Anthropology and Founding Director,

Bromeley Philip is Associate Professor at the Academy of Language Studies,

communication. She has researched and published about language use in

This new collection of chapters provides a welcome and significant addition

Sighting the terrain

intellectual discourses in the West on the praxis of Easternization, we intend

narratives of the praxis of Easternization as the objects of our interrogation.

Marking the terrain

a form of organization that reached its apogee in the development of the

development of Europe as Christendom? If the West can be defined in such

The West in Asia

player in the establishment of Dutch and English trading houses. He also

is epitomized in the potential it embodies for the promise of a vision that

Since Said’s Orientalism highlighted colonial methods of knowledge

studies. This concern is addressed in Chapter 3. A priority in this volume

The gaze of the West

• Is it looking at something with interest and curiosity from a particular

Consequences and ramifications

Eastern perspectives of Western discourses

It is these perspectives that we turn to in Chapters 5–14, in Part III of this

In Chapter 6, ‘Framings of the East: Rebranding Beliefs and Religions’,

framework of the West and the other by that of architectural ‘practice’. He

Lastly, in the ‘Conclusion’, Chapter 15, we draw conclusions from the

Boundaries and borders

Islam in the East

Russia in the West

indispensable tool in an ongoing debate around the country’s destiny and

The West as the West and in the West

These lines are augmented by others imposed by social scientists according

such version is the representation of early American settlers as the ‘good

The West is, in sum, all these representations – an idea, an essentialism,

Comparing Easternization with Orientalism

Drawing comparisons between East and West are tendentiousness to say

may be viewed as discourses opposed to each other, or as different trajectories

Firstly, it tends to stereotype Eastern religions in a somewhat misleading

and values of the social mileau. A similar contemporary reaction is that

Orientalism, Occidentalism and Occidental studies

Contrasts are invariably drawn between Orientalism and Occidentalism with

Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

Alternative discourse in its various forms informs us simultaneously on

The traditional dominant cultures of nation-states has been challenged by

indeed their intensification’ (p. 44). Venn’s analysis, instead of appropriating

The West as representing the East: Critiques of Orientalism

It is of course one thing to be skilful in deciphering documents in Arabic

Tibawi was against (mis)interpretations of classical works on Arabs and the

1. Modern Orientalism, despite its academic advances, continues to rely

But works of scholars, almost always described as Orientalists, who have

of Islam and Arabs. ‘“The study of ancient civilizations; the gathering of

1. Orientalism focused on studying the past of the Oriental nations and

attribute the ‘backwardness’ of the Orient to its unproductive history and

Because the methodology of Orientalism was ‘tainted with ethnism and

Al-Ghazali complained that religious persons felt an ingrained sense

Such was the intensity of the gaze of the West.

The challenge of the marginalized