Eastern world

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The Eastern world in a 1796 map, which included the continents of Asia and Australia (then known as New Holland). Modern Asia (1796).tif
The Eastern world in a 1796 map, which included the continents of Asia and Australia (then known as New Holland).

The Eastern world, also known as the East or historically the Orient , is an umbrella term for various cultures or social structures, nations and philosophical systems, which vary depending on the context. It most often includes Asia, the Mediterranean region and the Arab world, specifically in historical (pre-modern) contexts, and in modern times in the context of Orientalism. [1] The Eastern world is often seen as a counterpart to the Western world.

Contents

The various regions included in the term are varied, hard to generalize, and do not have a single shared common heritage. Although the various parts of the Eastern world share many common threads, most notably being in the "Global South", they have never historically defined themselves collectively. The term originally had a literal geographic meaning, referring to the eastern part of the Old World, contrasting the cultures and civilizations of Asia with those of Europe (or the Western world). Traditionally, this includes East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and West Asia.

Conceptually, the boundary between east and west is more cultural, rather than geographical, as a result of which Australia and New Zealand, which were founded as British settler colonies, are typically grouped with the Western world despite being geographically closer to the Eastern world, while the Central Asian nations of the former Soviet Union, even with significant Western influence, are grouped in the East. [2] Other than much of Asia and Africa, Europe has absorbed almost all of the societies of North Asia, the Americas, and Oceania into the Western world because of settler colonization. [3] [4]

Countries such as the Philippines, [5] [6] which are geographically located in the Eastern world, may be considered Western in some aspects of their society, culture and politics due to immigration and historical cultural influences from the United States and Europe.

Overview

As with other regions of the world, Asia consists of many different, extremely diverse countries, ethnic groups and cultures. [7] This concept is further debated because in some English-speaking countries, common vernacular associates the "Asian" identity to people of East Asian origin and Southeast Asian origin, [8] [9] while in some countries the "Asian" identity is associated with people of South Asian origin, and in other contexts, Asian regions such as the Indian subcontinent are included with East Asia. West Asia (which includes Israel, part of the Arab world, Iran, etc.), which may or may not see themselves part of the Eastern world, are sometimes considered "Middle Eastern" and separate from Asia. [10]

The division between 'East' and 'West', formerly referred to as Orient and Occident, is a product of European cultural history and of the distinction between Christian Europe and the cultures beyond it to the East. With the European colonization of the Americas, the East-West dichotomy became global. The concept of an Eastern, "Indian" (Indies) or "Oriental" sphere was emphasized by ideas of racial as well as religious and cultural differences. Such distinctions were articulated by Westerners in the scholarly tradition known as Orientalism, which is notable in being a Western conception of a unified Eastern world not limited to any specific region(s), but rather all of Asia together. [11] [12]

Culture

While there is no singular Eastern culture of the Eastern world, there are subgroups within it, such as countries within East Asia, Southeast Asia, or South Asia, as well as syncretism within these regions. These include the spread of Eastern religions such as Buddhism or Hinduism, the usage of Chinese characters or Brahmic scripts, language families, the fusion of cuisines, and traditions, among others.

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Far East</span> Geographical term for eastern Asia

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southeast Asia</span> Subregion of the Asian continent

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The "Clash of Civilizations" is a thesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world. The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures. It was proposed in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orient</span> Archaic term for the Eastern world

The Orient is a term referring to the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of the term Occident, which refers to the Western world.

Westernization, also Europeanisation or occidentalization, is a process whereby societies come under or adopt what is considered to be Western culture, in areas such as industry, technology, science, education, politics, economics, lifestyle, law, norms, mores, customs, traditions, values, mentality, perceptions, diet, clothing, language, writing system, religion, and philosophy. During colonialism it often involved the spread of Christianity. A related concept is Northernization, which is the consolidation or influence of the Global North.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subregion</span> Part of a larger geographical region or continent

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maritime Southeast Asia</span> Cultural and economic area within Southeast Asia

Maritime Southeast Asia comprises the countries of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and East Timor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asia–Pacific</span> Geopolitical region

The Asia–Pacific (APAC) is the region of the world adjoining the western Pacific Ocean. The region's precise boundaries vary depending on context, but countries and territories in Australasia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia are often included. In a wider context, Central Asia, North Asia, the Pacific Islands, South Asia, West Asia, and even Pacific-adjoining countries in the Americas can be included. For example, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) includes five economies in the New World. The term has become popular since the late 1980s in commerce, finance, and politics. Despite the heterogeneity of the regions' economies, most individual nations within the zone are emerging markets experiencing significant growth. Sometimes, the notion of "Asia–Pacific excluding Japan" (APEJ) is considered useful.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultural area</span> Geographical area associated with a specific cultural orientation

In anthropology and geography, a cultural area, cultural region, cultural sphere, or culture area refers to a geography with one relatively homogeneous human activity or complex of activities (culture). Such activities are often associated with an ethnolinguistic group and with the territory it inhabits. Specific cultures often do not limit their geographic coverage to the borders of a nation state, or to smaller subdivisions of a state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Culture of Asia</span>

The culture of Asia encompasses the collective and diverse customs and traditions of art, architecture, music, literature, lifestyle, philosophy, food, politics and religion that have been practiced and maintained by the numerous ethnic groups of the continent of Asia since prehistory. Identification of a specific culture of Asia or universal elements among the colossal diversity that has emanated from multiple cultural spheres and three of the four ancient River valley civilizations is complicated. However, the continent is commonly divided into six geographic sub-regions, that are characterized by perceivable commonalities, like culture, religion, language and relative ethnic homogeneity. These regions are Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and West Asia.

Occidentalism refers to a discipline that discusses the Western world. In this context the West becomes the object, while the East is the subject. The West in the context of Occidentalism does not refer to the West in a geographical sense, but to culture or custom, especially covering the fields of thought, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, religion, colonialism, war, apartheid, and geography. It is not as popular as Orientalism in the general public and in academic settings.

The Western religions are the religions that originated within Western culture, which are thus historically, culturally, and theologically distinct from Eastern, African and Iranian religions. The term Abrahamic religions is often used instead of using the East and West terminology, as these originated in the Middle East.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western world</span> Countries with an originally European shared culture

The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and states in the regions of Western Europe, Northern America, and Australasia; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also constitute the West. The Western world likewise is called the Occident in contrast to the Eastern world known as the Orient. The West is considered an evolving concept; made up of cultural, political, and economic synergy among diverse groups of people, and not a rigid region with fixed borders and members. Definitions of "Western world" vary according to context and perspectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East–West dichotomy</span> Perceived difference between the Eastern and Western worlds

In sociology, the East–West dichotomy is the perceived difference between the Eastern and the Western worlds. Cultural and religious rather than geographical in division, the boundaries of East and West are not fixed, but vary according to the criteria adopted by individuals using the term.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hemispheres of Earth</span> Division of the globe into equal halves

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eastern culture</span> Norms, values, customs and political systems of the Eastern world

Eastern culture, also known as Eastern civilization and historically as Oriental culture, is an umbrella term for the diverse cultural heritages of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies of the Eastern world.

References

  1. ↑ Thompson, William; Joseph Hickey (2005). Society in Focus. Boston: Pearson plc. 0-205-41365-X.
  2. ↑ Meštrovic, Stjepan (1994). Balkanization of the West: The Confluence of Postmodernism and Postcommunism. Routledge. p. 61. ISBN   0-203-34464-2.
  3. ↑ "Embassy of Brazil – Ottawa". Brasembottawa.org. Archived from the original on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
  4. ↑ Falcoff, Mark. "Chile Moves On". AEI. Archived from the original on 17 April 2009. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
  5. ↑ Heydarian, Richard (12 January 2015). "Philippines' Shallow Capitalism: Westernization Without Prosperity". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 19 November 2016.
  6. ↑ Hunt, Chester L. (1956). "The 'Americanization' Process in the Philippines". India Quarterly . 12 (2): 117–130. doi:10.1177/097492845601200204. JSTOR   45071116. S2CID   152671922 . Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  7. ↑ Cartmill, Matt (September 1998). "The Status of the Race Concept in Physical Anthropology" (PDF). p. 651-660. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 June 2021. Retrieved 16 October 2021.
  8. ↑ For example, "Asian and Indian people" are referred to in the New Zealand Heart Foundation's BMI calculator Archived 2009-05-31 at the Wayback Machine .
  9. ↑ Schiavenza, Matt (19 October 2016). "Why Some 'Brown Asians' Feel Left Out of the Asian American Conversation". Asia Society . Retrieved 14 June 2022. And that, unfortunately, did not include any South Asians and only one Filipino. That caused a bit of an outcry. It raises a legitimate issue, of course, one about how 'brown Asians' often feel excluded from the Asian American conversation.
  10. ↑ Khatib, Lina (2006). Filming the modern Middle East: politics in the cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab world. Library of Modern Middle East Studies, Library of International Relations. Vol. 57. I.B. Tauris. pp. 166–167, 173. ISBN   1-84511-191-5.
  11. ↑ Tromans, 6
  12. ↑ from the Latin oriens; Oxford English Dictionary
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