eurocentric views about culture and civilization in africa WEEK 2

eurocentrism

• refers to the tendency to interpret and evaluate the world through European cultural, historical, and intellectual perspectives, often positioning Europe as the standard of progress and civilization. 

what influence did eurocentrism have on africa

• european scholars & scholars particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries often depict Africa as the “dark continent’

• african art, religion and social organization were viewed as inferior

5 major arguments in eurocentric views

• africa as the ‘primitive other’

• the ‘civilizing mission’

• linear model of civilization

• denial of African contribution

• racial and cultural supreriority

africa as the primitive other

suggests that African people lack political organization, philosophy or science

the civilizing mission

they argue that European intervention was necessary to bring modernity to supposedly ‘backwards people’

linear model of civilization

european scholars often assumed that civilization followed a linear path from ‘primitive’ to ‘modern’ wth Europe of the apex

denial of African contribution

eurocentric history marginalized Africa’s influence on global civiliation

racial and cultural superiority

• Africans were stereotyped as childlike, emotional, or incapable of self-rule—ideas that fed into scientific racism and colonial policy.