The Western world, also known as the West
and the Occident, is a term referring to different
nations depending on the context. There are
many accepted definitions about what all they
have in common.
The concept of the Western part of the earth
has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization
in Europe, and the advent of Christianity.
In the modern era, Western culture has been
heavily influenced by the traditions of the
Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, Age of
Enlightenment—and shaped by the expansive
colonialism of the 15th-20th centuries. Before
the Cold War era, the traditional Western
viewpoint identified Western Civilization
with the Western Christian countries and culture.
Its political usage was temporarily changed
by the antagonism during the Cold War in the
mid-to-late 20th Century.
The term originally had a literal geographic
meaning. It contrasted Europe with the linked
cultures and civilizations of the Middle East
and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia
and remote Far East, which early-modern Europeans
saw as the East. Today, this has little geographic
relevance, since the concept of the West expanded
to include the former European colonies in
the Americas, Russian Northern Asia, Australia,
and New Zealand.
In the contemporary cultural meaning, the
phrase "Western world" includes Europe, as
well as many countries of European colonial
origin with substantial European ancestral
populations in the Americas and Oceania.
Introduction
Western culture originated in the Mediterranean
basin and its vicinity; Greece and Rome are
often cited as its originators. Over time,
their associated empires grew first to the
east and west to include the rest of Mediterranean
and Black Sea coastal areas, conquering, absorbing,
and being influenced by many older great civilizations
of the ancient Near East. Later, they expanded
to the north of the Mediterranean Sea to include
Western, Central, and Southeastern Europe.
Christianization of Bulgaria, Christianization
of Kievan Rus', Christianisation of Scandinavia
and Christianization of Lithuania brought
the rest of present-day European territory
into Western civilisation.
Historians, such as Carroll Quigley in The
Evolution of Civilizations, contend that Western
civilization was born around 500 AD, after
the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire,
leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish
that were impossible in Classical societies.
In either view, between the fall of the Western
Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West
experienced a period of first, considerable
decline, and then readaptation, reorientation
and considerable renewed material, technological
and political development. This whole period
of roughly a millennium is known as the Middle
Ages, its early part forming the "Dark Ages",
designations that were created during the
Renaissance and reflect the perspective on
history, and the self-image, of the latter
period.
The knowledge of the ancient Western world
was partly preserved during this period due
to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire
and the institutions of the Catholic Church;
it was also greatly expanded by the Arab importation
of both the Ancient Greco-Roman and new technology
through the Arabs from India and China to
Europe. Since the Renaissance, the West evolved
beyond the influence of the ancient Greeks
and Romans and the Islamic world due to the
Commercial, Scientific, and Industrial Revolutions,
and the expansion of the peoples of Western
and Central European empires, and particularly
the globe-spanning empires of the 18th and
19th centuries. Numerous times, this expansion
was accompanied by Christian missionaries,
who attempted to proselytize Christianity.
Generally speaking, the current consensus
would locate the West, at the very least,
in the cultures and peoples of Europe, the
United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
and parts of Latin America. There is debate
among some as to whether Latin America is
in a category of its own. Also, there is debate
among some as to whether Central and Eastern
Europe is in a category of its own. An argument
supporting Central and Eastern Europe being
a part of the West is that Central European,
Southeastern European and Baltic countries
such as Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Estonia,
Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria,
Romania and Croatia are now part of the European
Union and NATO, which mostly comprise Western
countries. These countries were both heavily
influenced by and influenced the Western World,
and share sociological values and culture.
The Russian culture is classified as a part
of the Western culture. Russia is often not
counted politically as a part of the Western
World due to contemporary political isolationism
of the country.
Western culture
The term "Western culture" is used very broadly
to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical
values, traditional customs, religious beliefs,
political systems, and specific artifacts
and technologies.
Specifically, Western culture may imply:
a Biblical Christian cultural influence in
spiritual thinking, customs and either ethic
or moral traditions, around the Post-Classical
Era and after.
European cultural influences concerning artistic,
musical, folkloric, ethic and oral traditions,
whose themes have been further developed by
Romanticism.
a Graeco-Roman Classical and Renaissance cultural
influence, concerning artistic, philosophic,
literary, and legal themes and traditions,
the cultural social effects of migration period
and the heritages of Celtic, Germanic, Slavic
and other ethnic groups, as well as a tradition
of rationalism in various spheres of life,
developed by Hellenistic philosophy, Scholasticism,
Humanisms, the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment.
The concept of Western culture is generally
linked to the classical definition of the
Western world. In this definition, Western
culture is the set of literary, scientific,
political, artistic and philosophical principles
that set it apart from other civilizations.
Much of this set of traditions and knowledge
is collected in the Western canon.
The term has come to apply to countries whose
history is strongly marked by European immigration
or settlement, such as the Americas, and Oceania,
and is not restricted to Europe.
Some tendencies that define modern Western
societies are the existence of political pluralism,
laicism, generalization of middle class, prominent
subcultures or countercultures, increasing
cultural syncretism resulting from globalization
and human migration. The modern shape of these
societies is strongly based upon the Industrial
Revolution and the societies' associated social
and environmental problems, such as class
and pollution, as well as reactions to them,
such as syndicalism and environmentalism.
Historical divisions
The geopolitical divisions in Europe that
created a concept of East and West originated
in the Roman Empire. The Eastern Mediterranean
was home to the highly urbanized cultures
that had Greek as their common language, whereas
the West was much more rural in its character
and more readily adopted Latin as its common
language. After the fall of the Western Roman
Empire, Western and Central Europe were substantially
cut off from the East where Byzantine Greek
culture and Eastern Christianity became founding
influences in the Arab/Muslim world and among
the Eastern and Southern Slavic peoples. Roman
Catholic Western and Central Europe, as such,
maintained a distinct identity particularly
as it began to redevelop during the Renaissance.
Even following the Protestant Reformation,
Protestant Europe continued to see itself
as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than
other parts of the perceived civilized world.
Use of the term West as a specific cultural
and geopolitical term developed over the course
of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread
its culture to other parts of the world. In
the past two centuries the term Western world
has sometimes been used synonymously with
Christian world because of the numerical dominance
of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism compared
to other Christian traditions, ancient Roman
ideas, and heresies. As secularism rose in
Europe and elsewhere during the 19th and 20th
centuries, the term West came to take on less
religious connotations and more political
connotations, especially during the Cold War.
Additionally, closer contacts between the
West and Asia and other parts of the world
in recent times have continued to cloud the
use and meaning of the term.
Hellenic
The Hellenic division between the barbarians
and the Greeks contrasted in many societies
the Greek-speaking culture of the Greek settlements
around the Mediterranean to the surrounding
non-Greek cultures. Herodotus considered the
Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a
conflict of Europa versus Asia. The terms
"West" and "East" were not used by any Greek
author to describe that conflict. The anachronistic
application of those terms to that division
entails a stark logical contradiction, given
that, when the term "West" appeared, it was
used in opposition to the Greeks and Greek-speaking
culture.
Western society traces its cultural origins,
at least partially, to Greek thought and Christian
religion, thus following an evolution that
began in ancient Greece and the Levant, continued
through the Roman Empire, and spread throughout
Europe. The inherently "Greek" classical ideas
of history and art may, however, be considered
almost inviolate in the West, as their original
spread of influence survived the Hellenic
period of Roman classical antiquity, The Dark
Ages, its resurgence during the Western Renaissance,
and has managed somehow to keep and exert
its pervasive influence down into the present
age, with every expectation of it continuing
to dominate any secular Western cultural developments.
However, the conquest of the Western parts
of the Roman Empire by Germanic peoples and
the subsequent dominance by the Western Christian
Papacy, resulted in a rupture of the previously
existing ties between the Latin West and Greek
thought, including Christian Greek thought.
The Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed
this deviation.
On the other hand, the Modern West, emerging
after the Renaissance as a new civilization,
has been greatly influenced by Greek thought,
which was preserved in the Roman Empire and
the medieval Islamic world during the Medieval
West's Dark Ages and transmitted from there
by emigration of Greek scholars, courtly marriages,
and Latin translations. The Renaissance in
the West emerged partly from currents within
the Roman Empire.
Roman Empire
Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew
from a city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula
about the 9th century BC to a massive empire
straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its 12-century
existence, Roman civilization shifted from
a monarchy, to a republic, to an autocratic
empire. It came to dominate Western, Central
and Southeastern Europe and the entire area
surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through
conquest using the Roman legions and then
through cultural assimilation by giving Roman
privileges and eventually citizenship to the
whole empire. Nonetheless, despite its great
legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual
decline of the Roman Empire.
The Western Roman Empire eventually broke
into several kingdoms in the 5th century AD
due to civil wars, corruption, and devastating
Germanic invasions from such tribes as the
Goths, the Franks and the Vandals.
The Eastern Roman Empire, governed from Constantinople,
is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire
after 476, the traditional date for the "fall
of the Western Roman Empire" and for the subsequent
onset of the Early Middle Ages. The Eastern
Roman Empire survived the fall of the West,
and protected Roman legal and cultural traditions,
combining them with Greek and Christian elements,
for another thousand years.
The Roman Empire succeeded the about 500 year-old
Roman Republic, which had been weakened by
the conflict between Gaius Marius and Sulla
and the civil war of Julius Caesar against
Pompey and Marcus Brutus. During these struggles
hundreds of senators were killed, and the
Roman Senate had been refilled with loyalists
of the First Triumvirate and later those of
the Second Triumvirate.
Several dates are commonly proposed to mark
the transition from Republic to Empire, including
the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as
perpetual Roman dictator, the victory of Caesar's
heir Octavian at the Battle of Actium, and
the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the
honorific Augustus.. Octavian/Augustus officially
proclaimed that he had saved the Roman Republic
and carefully disguised his power under republican
forms: Consuls continued to be elected, tribunes
of the plebeians continued to offer legislation,
and senators still debated in the Roman Curia.
However, it was Octavian who influenced everything
and controlled the final decisions, and in
final analysis, had the legions to back him
up, if it became necessary.
Roman expansion began long before the empire
and reached its zenith under emperor Trajan
with the conquest of Dacia in AD 106. During
this territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled
about 5 900 000 km² of land surface and
had a population of 100 million. From the
time of Caesar to the Fall of the Western
Roman Empire, Rome dominated Western Eurasia
comprising the majority of its population,
and trading with population living outside
it through trade. Ancient Rome has contributed
greatly to the development of law, war, art,
literature, architecture, technology and language
in the Western world, and its history continues
to have a major influence on the world today.
Latin has been the base from which Roman Languages
evolved and it has been the official language
of the Catholic Church and all religious ceremonies
all over Europe until 1967, as well as an
or the official language of countries such
as Poland.
The Roman Empire is where the idea of the
"West" began to emerge. Due to Rome's central
location at the heart of the Empire, "West"
and "East" were terms used to denote provinces
West and east of the capital itself. Therefore,
Iberia, Gaul, Mediterranean coast of North
Africa and Britannia were all part of the
"West", while Greece, Anatolia, Syria, Egypt
and Libya were part of the "East." Italy itself
was considered central, until the reforms
of Diocletian, with the idea of formally dividing
the Empire into true two halves: Eastern and
Western.
In 395, the Roman Empire formally split into
a Western Roman Empire and an Eastern one,
each with their own emperors, capitals, and
governments, although ostensibly they still
belonged to one formal Empire. The dissolution
of the Western half left only the Eastern
Roman Empire alive. For centuries, the East
continued to call themselves Eastern Romans,
while the West began to think in terms of
Latins and Greeks.
Christian schism
In the early 4th century, the Roman Emperor
Constantine the Great established the city
of Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern
Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire included
lands east of the Adriatic Sea and bordering
on the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of
the Black Sea. This division into Eastern
and Western Roman Empires was reflected in
the administration of the Christian Church,
with Rome and Constantinople debating over
whether either city was the capital of Christianity.
As the Eastern and Western churches spread
their influence, the line between Eastern
and Western Christianity was moving. Its movement
was affected by the influence of the Byzantine
empire and the fluctuating power and influence
of the church in Rome. Beginning in the Middle
Ages religious cultural hegemony slowly waned
in Europe generally. This process may have
prompted the geographic line of religious
division to approximately follow a line of
cultural divide.
Huntington argued that this cultural division
still existed during the Cold War as the approximate
Western boundary of those countries that were
allied with the Soviet Union. Others have
fiercely criticized these views arguing they
confuse the Eastern Roman Empire with Russia,
especially considering the fact that the country
that had the most historical roots in Byzantium,
Greece, expelled communists and was allied
with the West during the Cold War. Still,
Russia accepted Eastern Christianity from
the Byzantine Empire linking Russia very close
to the Eastern Roman Empire world. Later on,
in 16th century Russia created its own religious
centre in Moscow. Religion survived in Russia
beside severe persecution carrying values
alternative to the communist ideology.
Under Charlemagne, the Franks established
an empire that was recognized as the Holy
Roman Empire by the Pope in Rome, offending
the Roman Emperor in Constantinople. The crowning
of the Emperor by the Pope led to the assumption
that the highest power was the papal hierarchy,
establishing, until the Protestant Reformation,
the civilization of West Christendom. The
Latin Rite Christian Church of western and
central Europe headed by the Pope split with
the eastern, Greek-speaking Patriarchates
during the Great Schism. Meanwhile, the extent
of each expanded, as British Isles, Germanic
peoples, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia,
Baltic peoples and the other non-Christian
lands of the northwest were converted by the
West Church, while Bulgaria, Romania, Russia,
Belarus, Serbia, Caucasus and most of Ukraine
were converted by the Eastern Church.
In this context, the Protestant reformation
may be viewed as a schism within the Latin
Church. Martin Luther, in the wake of precursors,
broke with the pope and with the emperor,
backed by many of the German princes. These
changes were adopted by the Scandinavian kings.
Later, the commoner Jean Cauvin assumed the
religio-political leadership in Geneva, a
former ecclesiastical city whose prior ruler
had been the bishop. The English King later
improvised on the Lutheran model, but subsequently
many Calvinist doctrines were adopted by popular
dissenters, leading to the English Civil War.
Both royalists and dissenters colonized North
America, eventually resulting in an independent
United States of America.
Colonial "West"
The Reformation, and consequent dissolution
of West Christendom as even a theoretical
unitary political body, resulted in the Thirty
Years War. The war ended in the Peace of Westphalia,
which enshrined the concept of the nation-state
and the principle of absolute national sovereignty
in international law.
These concepts of a world of nation-states,
coupled with the ideologies of the Enlightenment,
the coming of modernity, the Scientific Revolution,
and the Industrial Revolution, produced powerful
political and economic institutions that have
come to influence most nations of the world
today. Historians agree that the Industrial
Revolution was one of the most important events
in history.
This process of influence began with the voyages
of discovery, colonization, conquest, and
exploitation of Portugal and Spain it continued
with the rise of the Dutch East India Company,
and the creation and expansion of the British
and French colonial empires. Due to the reach
of these empires, Western institutions expanded
throughout the world. Even after demands for
self-determination from subject peoples within
Western empires were met with decolonization,
these institutions persisted. One specific
example was the requirement that post-colonial
societies were made to form nation-states,
which often created arbitrary boundaries and
borders that did not necessarily represent
a whole nation, people, or culture, and are
often the cause of international conflicts
and friction even to this day. Though the
overt colonial era has passed, Western nations,
as comparatively rich, well-armed, and culturally
powerful states, still wield a large degree
of influence throughout the world.
Although not part of Western colonization
process proper, Western culture entered Japan
primarily in the so-called Meiji period, though
earlier contact with the Portuguese, the Spaniards
and the Dutch were also present in the recognition
of European nations as strategically important
to the Japanese. The traditional Japanese
society was virtually overturned into an industrial
and militarist power like Western countries
such as the United Kingdom.
Cold War context
During the Cold War, a new definition emerged.
Earth was divided into three "worlds". The
First World, analogous in this context to
what was called the West, was composed of
NATO members and other countries aligned with
the United States. The Second World was the
Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence,
including the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact
countries like Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary,
Romania, East Germany, Czechoslovakia.
The Third World consisted of countries, many
of which were unaligned with either, and important
members included India, Yugoslavia, Finland
and Switzerland; some include the People's
Republic of China, though this is disputed,
as the People's Republic of China is communist,
had friendly relations—at certain times—with
the Soviet bloc, and had a significant degree
of importance in global geopolitics. Some
Third World countries aligned themselves with
either the US-led West or the Soviet-led Eastern
bloc.
A number of countries did not fit comfortably
into this neat definition of partition, including
Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, and Ireland,
which chose to be neutral. Finland was under
the Soviet Union's military sphere of influence
but remained neutral, was not communist, nor
was it a member of the Warsaw Pact or Comecon
but a member of the EFTA since 1986, and was
West of the Iron Curtain. In 1955, when Austria
again became a fully independent republic,
it did so under the condition that it remain
neutral, but as a country to the West of the
Iron Curtain, it was in the United States'
sphere of influence. Spain did not join the
NATO until 1982, towards the end of the Cold
War and after the death of the authoritarian
Franco.
Modern definitions
The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat
subjective in nature, depending on whether
cultural, economic, spiritual or political
criteria are employed.
Many anthropologists, sociologists and historians
oppose "the West and the Rest" in a categorical
manner. The same has been done by Malthusian
demographers with a sharp distinction between
European and non-European family systems.
Among anthropologists, this includes Durkheim,
Dumont and Lévi-Strauss.
As the term "Western world" does not have
a strict international definition, governments
do not use the term in legislation of international
treaties and instead rely on other definitions.
Cultural
From a cultural and sociological approach
the Western world is defined as including
all cultures that are directly derived from
and influenced by European cultures, i.e.
western Europe, central Europe, northern Europe,
eastern Europe, southeastern Europe and southern
Europe, in the Americas, and Oceania. Together
these countries constitute Western society.
In the 20th century, Christianity declined
in influence in many Western countries, mostly
in the northern, central and eastern parts
of Europe and elsewhere. Secularism increased.
However, while church attendance is in decline,
some western countries believe that religion
is important, and most Westerners nominally
identify themselves as Christians and attend
church on major occasions, such as Christmas
and Easter. In the Americas Christianity continues
to play an important societal role, though
in areas such as Canada, low level of religiosity
is common as a result of experiencing processes
of secularization similar to European ones.
The official religions of the United Kingdom
and some Nordic countries are forms of Christianity,
even though the majority of European countries
have no official religion. Despite this, Christianity,
in its different forms, remains the largest
faith in most Western countries.(See,ARDA
data archives at, http:www.thearda.comregions/index.asp)
Modern political
Countries of the Western world are generally
considered to share certain fundamental political
ideologies, including those of liberal democracy,
the rule of law, human rights and gender equality.
Normally, all of these principles are prerequisites
for a state to become a full member of both
the Council of Europe and the European Union
and, therefore, from a modern political point
of view, all European Union member states
from Western, Central and Eastern Europe are
considered part of the Western world.
Economic
Though the Cold War has ended, and some members
of the former Eastern Bloc make a general
movement towards liberal democracy and other
beliefs held in common by traditionally Western
states, most of the former Soviet republics
are not considered Western because of the
small presence of social and political reform,
as well as the significant cultural, economic
and political differences to what is known
today as described by the term "The West":
North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
The term "Western world" is often interchangeably
used with the term First World stressing the
difference between First World and the Third
World or developing countries. This usage
occurs despite the fact that many countries
that may be geographically or culturally "Western"
are developing countries. In fact, most of
the Americas are developing countries, which
make up a significant percentage of the West.
It is also used despite many developed countries
not being Western.
The existence of "The North" implies the existence
of "The South", and the socio-economic divide
between North and South. The term "the North"
has in some contexts replaced earlier usage
of the term "the West", particularly in the
critical sense, as a more robust demarcation
than the terms "West" and "East". The North
provides some absolute geographical indicators
for the location of wealthy countries, most
of which are physically situated in the Northern
Hemisphere, although, as most countries are
located in the northern hemisphere in general,
some have considered this distinction equally
unhelpful.
The 34 high-income countries in the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development,
which include: Australia, Canada, Chile, Iceland,
Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South
Korea, Switzerland, the United States and
the countries of the EU, are generally included
in what used to be called developed world,
although the OECD includes countries, namely,
Mexico and Turkey, that are not yet fully
industrial countries, but newly industrialised
countries. Although Andorra, Cyprus, Hong
Kong, Malta, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino,
Singapore, Taiwan and Vatican City, are not
members of the OECD, they might also be regarded
as developed countries, because their high
living standards, high per capita incomes,
and their social, economic and political structure
are quite similar to those of the high income
OECD countries.
Other views
A series of scholars of civilization, including
Arnold J. Toynbee, Alfred Kroeber and Carroll
Quigley have identified and analyzed "Western
civilization" as one of the civilizations
that have historically existed and still exist
today. Toynbee entered into quite an expansive
mode, including as candidates those countries
or cultures who became so heavily influenced
by the West as to adopt these borrowings into
their very self-identity; carried to its limit,
this would in practice include almost everyone
within the West, in one way or another. In
particular, Toynbee refers to the intelligentsia
formed among the educated elite of countries
impacted by the European expansion of centuries
past. While often pointedly nationalist, these
cultural and political leaders interacted
within the West to such an extent as to change
both themselves and the West.
Yet more recently, Samuel P. Huntington has
taken a far more controversial approach, forging
a political science hypothesis he labeled
the "The Clash of Civilizations?" in a Foreign
Affairs article and a book. According to Huntington's
hypothesis, what he calls "conflicts between
civilizations" will be the primary tensions
of the 21st century world. In this hypothesis,
the West is based on religion, as the countries
of West and Central Europe were historically
influenced by the two forms of Western Christianity,
namely Protestantism and Catholicism. Also,
some Anglophone countries share these traits,
e.g. Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin
Islands, Palau, Australia and New Zealand,
as well as the more heterogeneous United States
and Canada. The identification of Western
Civilization with the Western Christianity
was not Huntington's original idea, it was
rather the traditional Western viewpoint and
subdivision before the Cold War era.
Huntington's thesis, while influential, was
by no means universally accepted; its supporters
say that it explains modern conflicts, such
as those in the former Yugoslavia. The thesis's
detractors fear that by equating values like
democracy with the concept of "Western civilization",
it reinforces stereotypes that some perceive
as being common within the West about non-traditionally
Western societies that some may consider racist
or xenophobic. Others believe that Huntington
ignores the existence of non-Western democracies
such as the East Asian and South-Central Asian
democracies. As such, these detractors believe
that it will provoke and amplify conflict
rather than illuminate a way to find an accommodating
world order—or, in particular cases, a commonly
agreed solution.
In Huntington's narrow thesis, the historically
Eastern Orthodox nations of Southeastern and
Eastern Europe constitute a distinct "Euro-Asiatic
civilization"; although European and mainly
Christian, these nations were not, in Huntington's
view, shaped by the cultural influences of
the Renaissance. The Renaissance did not affect
Orthodox Eastern Europe due in part to the
proximity of Ottoman domination, despite the
decisive influence of Greek émigré scholars
on the Renaissance.
Other views might be made regarding Hungary
and Russia.
The theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin conceived of the West as the set
of civilizations descended from the Nile Valley
Civilization of Egypt.
Palestinian-American literary critic Edward
Said uses the term occident in his discussion
of orientalism. According to his binary, the
West, or Occident, created a romanticized
vision of the East, or Orient to justify colonial
and imperialist intentions. This Occident-Orient
binary focuses on the Western vision of the
East instead of any truths about the East.
His theories are rooted in Hegel's Master-slave
dialectic: The Occident would not exist without
the Orient and vice versa. Further, Western
writers created this irrational, feminine,
weak "Other" to contrast with the rational,
masculine, strong West because of a need to
create a difference between the two that would
justify imperialist ambitions, Said influenced
Indian-American theorist Homi K. Bhabha.
The term the "West" may also be used pejoratively
by certain tendencies and especially critical
of the influence of the traditional West,
due to the history of most of the members
of the traditional West being previously involved,
at one time or another, in outright imperialism
and colonialism. Some of these critics also
claim that the traditional West has continued
to engage in what might be viewed as modern
implementations of imperialism and colonialism,
such as neoliberalism and globalization.
Allegedly, definitions of the term "Western
world" that some may consider "ethnocentric"
others consider "constructed" around one or
another Western culture. The British writer
Rudyard Kipling wrote about this contrast:
East is East and West is West and never the
twain shall meet, expressing his belief that
somebody from the West "can never understand
the Asian cultures" as the latter "differ
too much" from the Western cultures. Some
may view this alleged incompatibility as a
precursor to Huntington's "clash of civilizations"
theory.
Paradoxically, today Asia and Africa to varying
degrees may be considered quasi-Western. Many
East Asians and South Asians and Africans
and others associate or even identify with
the cosmopolitan cultures and international
societies referred to sometimes as Western.
Likewise, many in the West identify with a
transcultural humanity, a notion often found
in visions of the sacred.
From a very different perspective, it has
also been argued that the idea of the West
is, in part, a non-Western invention, deployed
in the non-West to shape and define non-Western
pathways through or against modernity.
Views on Latin America
By Huntington
A controversial theory of Huntington is that
he considered the possibility of Latin America
being a separate civilization from the West,
but also mused that it might become a third
part of the West in the future. The term Latin
America in itself is a French invention to
denote American countries of Iberian heritage
to remember them in a way of their closer
linguistic and cultural relatives in Europe,
and an approach to diminish the growing influence
of the Anglosphere countries in the region,
and some countries, such as Portuguese-speaking,
largely either itself-identified or Lusophone-identified,
historically largely Francophile Brazil, and
Marxist-Leninist, historically largely Hispanophile
Cuba, do not necessarily fit more to the group
in relation to other Western nations in various
factors. Therefore, many believe this view
would be another event of U.S. American generalizations
and little knowledge on the region's cultures'
and peoples' realities and their individualities.
Huntington did not present any evidence that
Latin Americans see themselves as foreign
in comparison to other Western cultures, or
even a probably existing Western point of
view of Latin Americans as foreigners in relation
to Europeans and their direct descendants.
With the Latin American racial whitening policies,
reflecting a still living regional tendency
to the preference of imitating or prizing
not only North American and European appearance,
but also fashion, cultural taste and items,
political values and even lexicon or given
names, it seems more ludicrous that the reality
is most often quite the reverse, i.e., that
Latin Americans, especially those from Brazil
and the Southern Cone, would be readily phobic
about being otherized by Westerners and put
in the same category as their often ridiculed
or disparaged worker classes and rural people,
or poorer neighboring and close cultural relative
nations, and thus, as a consequence, also
phobic to being seen as collectively very
"different" or "especial" in general.
Views on Turkey
By Huntington
According to Huntington, Turkey, whose political
leadership has systematically tried to Westernize
the country since the 1920s, is his chief
example of a "torn country" that is attempting
to join Western civilization. The country's
elite started the Westernization efforts,
beginning with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who
took power as first president of the modern
Turkish nation-state in 1923, imposed western
institutions and dress, embraced the Latin
alphabet, joined NATO, and are seeking to
join the European Union. It should also be
noted, however, that the integration of Turkey
with the West can be traced back to the 18th
century, during which the Ottoman Empire was
actively engaged in Westernization.
By others
In a 2010 interview given to The Times newspaper
of the United Kingdom, President Abdullah
Gül of Turkey stated that his country is
part of the West. In a more recent interview
with Zbigniew Brzezinski by the English-language
Turkish daily newspaper, Today's Zaman, the
former United States national security adviser
also stated that Turkey is part of the West
despite its religious diversity.
See also
Americanization
Anglicisation
Atlanticism
Eastern world
Europeanisation
Francophonie
Golden billion
Hispanophone
Russification
Russophone
Western esotericism
Western philosophy
Westernization
Western culture
Organisations
Council of Europe
European Economic Area
Group of Eight
Representation in the UN
Eastern European Group
Western European and Others Group
Maps
References
Further reading
Ankerl, Guy. Coexisting contemporary civilizations :
Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and West.
INU societal research. Vol.1:. Geneva: INU
Press. ISBN 2-88155-004-5. 
Bavaj, Riccardo: "The West": A Conceptual
Exploration , European History Online, Mainz:
Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved:
November 28, 2011.
Duchesne, Ricardo: The Uniqueness of Western
Civilization, Studies in Critical Social Sciences,
Vol. 28, Leiden and Boston: Brill, ISBN 978-90-04-19248-5
J. F. C. Fuller. A Military History of the
Western World. Three Volumes. New York: Da
Capo Press, Inc., 1987 and 1988.
V. 1. From the earliest times to the Battle
of Lepanto; ISBN 0-306-80304-6.
V. 2. From the defeat of the Spanish Armada
to the Battle of Waterloo; ISBN 0-306-80305-4.
V. 3. From the American Civil War to the end
of World War II; ISBN 0-306-80306-2.
