@article{article_346780, title={A Postcolonial Reading on Eurocentrism, Otherization and Orientalist Discourse in Sociological Thought and its Criticism}, journal={Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi}, volume={21}, pages={1973–2008}, year={2017}, DOI={10.18505/cuid.346780}, author={Kaya, İrfan}, keywords={Sociology of Religion,Orientalism,Euro-centrism,Otherization,Culturalism,Post-colonialism}, abstract={<p> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:3pt 0cm;"> <b>Abstract:  </b> <span lang="en-gb" style="line-height:107%;" xml:lang="en-gb">Modernity has long been a dominant paradigm in producing knowledge and
in determining theoretical framework of disciplines although it is <span style="border:1pt none;padding:0cm;">in connivance with a
Eurocentric ideology and conflict of paradoxes inherent to itself. </span> <span style="border:1pt none;padding:0cm;"> </span> <span style="border:1pt none;padding:0cm;">The other </span> <span style="border:1pt none;padding:0cm;"> </span> <span style="border:1pt none;padding:0cm;">participant of the
crime, committed with Eurocentric ideology, is sociology as a method of observation
that modernity uses to observe itself and that developed with it. They also
display a tautological </span> </span> <span lang="en-gb" style="line-height:107%;" xml:lang="en-gb">  </span> <span lang="en-gb" style="line-height:107%;" xml:lang="en-gb">view with each other <span style="border:1pt none;padding:0cm;">. Disharmony of paradoxes inherent in modernity makes such othering
notions as rejection and negation inevitable. Otherization in sociological
literature has been a reference point in </span> </span> <span lang="en-gb" style="line-height:107%;" xml:lang="en-gb"> historiography that is developed with the claim that historical
process experienced throughout Europe is the only straight and universal one
with an essentialist perspective, in the Orientalist discourse that is
established in parallelism with colonial activities and generating ideal tips.
This article aims to criticise the framework and the narrative in modernity and
sociology as they contain Eurocentric discourse according to post-colonial theory.
While chasing a non-othering paradigm, inquiring troubles and dilemmas that
post-colonial theory faced will also be the another of this study. This paper
aims to be authentic by determining the problems of post-colonial theory that
criticises the dominant paradigm through orientalist discourse yet falls into
clutches of self-orientalism. </span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:3pt 0cm;"> <span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us"> <b>Summary: </b>  </span> <span style="text-indent:35.4pt;">The past and the present have been separated due to
modern history writing. Linear history writing that transforms the past into a
dead object that can be represented has been established on difference. The
contributions of anthropology which is the science of primitive societies
cannot be denied in “cleaning” the past and separating it from the present and
in establishing it as an object of knowledge. It is clear that anthropology is
functional in teaching Oriental societies that they have remained in the past
and that they do not have a place in our day by way of results put forth by
anthropology in its tense relationship with the past –protecting and destroying
at the same time. Similarly, in sociological thought this modern concept of
history attributing a direction and integrity to history has been seminal. Dual
categorizations that the sociological canon consults in depicting the
historical development process of societies have been arranged in accordance
with the linear history writing. The hierarchical order established between dual
concepts has been established at the same time according to the modern which is
also a concept of time. The beginning has been determined according to the end
in the Eurocentrism history writing that has been formed as though trying to
prove that the problem of history is not the past but the present. Such history
writing that moves from the primitive to the modern, from the simple to the
complex has been drawn out according to the final state of the writer of linear
history. The West has fortified its hegemony on the subordinate masses that it
has suppressed as those “without history”, those “who wish to enter into
history”, those “who are late to history.” In this paper, its own development has
been depicted through the primitiveness of the other that it has otherized.
Therefore, the Other has been taken into consideration as the place of
reflections or denial within the context of the formation of Western identity
in sociological thought. The Other that is inherent to the process of establishment
for the Western mind and knowledge preserves its qualification as a
prerequisite for sociology that acts in a coordinated manner with modernity.
Whereas the notion of Othering puts forth the East as not only passive and irrational
but also closed to change, it emphasises the difference with regard to the
uniqueness of the West. Therefore, sociological thought has established its
contact with the “discovery team of colonization” in the words of Cemil Meriç by
way of the othering notion of modernity with which it acts in a coordinated
manner. Whereas social change in sociological thought is formulated as from the
tra}, number={3}, publisher={Sivas Cumhuriyet University}