A Postcolonial Reading on Eurocentrism, Otherization and Orientalist Discourse in Sociological Thought and Its Criticism

• Main Author: İrfan Kaya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: ULUM: Journal of Religious Inquiries 2018-07-01
• Series: ULUM
• Subjects: Din Sosyolojisi; Oryantalizm; Avrupa-merkezcilik; Ötekileştirme; Kültürelcilik; Post-kolonyalizm; Sociology of Religion; Orientalism; Euro-centrism; Otherization; Culturalism; Post-colonialism
• Online Access: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ulum/issue/38422/449852?publisher=abdullah-demir

Modernity has long been a dominant paradigm in producing knowledge and in determining theoretical framework of the disciplines although it is in connivance with a Eurocentric ideology and conflict of paradoxes in itself. The other participant of the crime, committed with Eurocentric ideology, is sociology as an observation method of modernity’s self and developed with it. They also display a tautological view with each other. Compatibility of paradoxes in modernity makes the othering notions of rejection, negation etc. inevitable. Otherization in sociological literature has been a reference point in 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 criticize 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 other aim of this study. This paper aims to be authentic by determining the problems of post-colonial theory that criticizes the dominant paradigm through orientalist discourse yet falls into clutches of self-orientalism.