Sociology's Eurocentrism and the ‘Rise of the West’ Revisited

Abstract

Under the impact of ‘postcolonial’ critique, it is increasingly assumed in radical social theory that traditional disciplines like sociology remain palpably Eurocentric. However, this important challenge is typically advanced at a very general level, often lacking adequate instantiation. In this article some general formulations of the problem of Eurocentrism are connected to the work of three pairs of theorists in historical sociology. Foregrounding recent approaches to the classic ‘rise of the West’ question, these authors are probed for either substantive or ‘meta-theoretical’ expressions of Eurocentrism. Overall I argue that charging sociology with Eurocentrism is problematical, partly due to continuing uncertainty about the status of the concept of ideology in social science. © 2000, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.