Eurocentrism

by Samir Amin

Since its first publication twenty years ago, Eurocentrism has become a classic of radical thought. Written by one of the world’s foremost political economists, this original and provocative essay takes on one of the great "ideological deformations" of our Eurocentrism. Rejecting the dominant Eurocentric view of world history, which narrowly and incorrectly posits a progression from the Greek and Roman classical world to Christian feudalism and the European capitalist system, Amin presents a sweeping reinterpretation that emphasizes the crucial historical role played by the Arab Islamic world. Throughout the work, Amin addressesa broad set of concerns, ranging from the ideological nature of scholastic metaphysics to the meanings and shortcomingsof contemporary Islamic fundamentalism. This second edition contains a new introduction and concluding chapter, both of which make the author’s arguments even more compelling.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Theory, Sociology, Economics

152 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1989

About the author

The Arabic profile: سمير أمين

Samir Amin (Arabic: سمير أمين) (3 September 1931 – 12 August 2018) was an Egyptian-French Marxian economist, political scientist and world-systems analyst. He is noted for his introduction of the term Eurocentrism in 1988 and considered a pioneer of Dependency Theory.

Reviews

[Karlo Mikhail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of basic issues surrounding a Marxist critique of Eurocentrism. Now to go somewhere else for the details

[hami · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amin is an academic economist. I picked up this book thinking he will continue the great tradition of intellectuals of the Global South such as Said, Rosa Luxembourg, Fanon, Ngũgĩ, Césaire, or Linda Tuhiwai Smith, but to my surprise, Amin is somehow a Eurocentric himself. His lens in all the issues presented in the book remains economic as if there are no cultural or racial baggage from colonization. It's an orthodox-wyt-boy leftist book with no relevant analysis of eurocentrism itself. It's no wonder that Amin, is criticizing Said in the book by citing a French wayt man (Maxime Rodinson) and a Zionist (Sadek Jalal el-Azm) on page 102. He uses different big academic words to replace the word Eurocentrism. Terms such as "Eurocentric Universalism of Capitalism" or "Eurocentrism Economism". He made every excuse to change the subject from the racism of Europeans who view Europe as the center of the universe (even in liberal and leftist academic basements) to the horrors of Capitalism. Things people in the global South are way too familiar with (and not by reading but by experiencing). 


The book was written in 1989, so don't expect cutting-edge economics. Although, there are a few good ideas that made me interested to finish it. For instance, on page 110, He mentioned that the average income of people in the West per capita is 15 times more than the average income of people in the global South. Based on this material data, he takes the reader into deep places on the political spectrum to show how each political fraction interprets this inequality. I enjoyed reading those pages very much. 

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of my classmates dismissed this book as Marxist trash. I was very interested in the notion that the West has appropriated the culture of Greece into its canon when Greece is geographically and culturally much closer to the East.

[Hilda · Rating 5 out of 5]

No es de ninguna manera un libro introductorio a este tema, recomiendo este libro a gente que tenga ya cierto conociemiento del las ideas presentadas en el libro como el Marxismo, la historia del capitalismo, cierto conocimiento de economía etc.
Pero es cierto que es un libro fenomenal que presenta nuevas ideas que todavía tienen que ver con nuestro mundo hoy día. Una lectura obligada para todos interesados en el eurocentrismo y como afecta al mundo.

[tara bomp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a mixed bag. It talks about a lot of stuff that's important and every so often mentions something useful and interesting but I feel that on the whole it doesn't really come across as coherent. For example, I don't really have a clear definition of his idea of Eurocentrism. Every time he seemed about to talk about it explicitly, he went on to something else. It's almost certain it's, to a large degree, down to me being a bad reader, but it was definitely frustrating. I feel some of it might be down to translation but it still leaves a lot of times when he starts talking about something and I'm confused as to what he's referring to or don't see the link. One thing that's unusual is that he talks about religion a *lot* - it's a major part of the book. Again though, it wasn't clear in what ways he thought religion relates to Eurocentrism etc - what he talks about is very interesting on its own but it doesn't mesh together well. Near the end, he starts talking about global value which is a fascinating and important topic but he says it's not relevant here and doesn't go into it. Yet the conclusion of the book as a whole is just a page saying that worldwide value is the key to everything.

Ultimately, it said a lot of valuable stuff that I think could do with being talked about more and is generally kept out of view, but didn't say it coherently enough or in enough detail to make it a valuable guide for those looking to challenge Eurocentrism by itself. I appreciated it and what I learned from it, but not enough to make it a strong recommendation.

[Sam Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samir Amin is a well-known Egyptian-French Marxist theorist, and this is his most famous work by far, a great work of political economy like another favorite of mine, Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. I gotta say, I think Amin is just as good of a writer as Rodney is, reading this book was an absolute delight, very intelligent and rigorous but not at all difficult to read. Literally why don't more academics write as clearly as Rodney and Amin??? Eurocentrism is his work on the social, economic, and political relationship between Europe and the Middle East, though a lot of his ideas can be easily applied to other places where Euro-American countries have colonized or conquered. It isn't really the most important part of the book, but I personally really liked the part where he addresses the idea that the Christian religion is one of the causes of European economic dominance (which was advocated by the sociologist Max Weber way back when), but that might just be me as a religious studies nerd honestly. Oh, also I read another book with a similar title this past summer, the much more famous Orientalism by Edward Said, and I gotta say I like Eurocentrism way more. Not only do I think Amin's conclusions are better than Said's, it's also just unequivocally written better and more clearly.

[Nikos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Herausragende Einleitung ins Konzept Eurozentrismus und in die Felder globaler historischer Materialismus und globales Wertgesetz. Besonders schätze ich Amins Erledigung der ganzen Debatte zur asiatischen Produktionsweise. Kritik an dogmatischen Verirrungen im Marxismus orientiert Amin nicht an irgendwelchen verblödeten Maßstäben zu individueller Freiheit, sondern er bleibt ganz beim Thema Eurozentrismus und zeigt die Mängel auf, die z. B. die Etappentheorie in Bezug auf den historischen Materialismus haben. Super auch, dass er nochmal auf die Schule, die sich um Ferenc Tökei gebildet, hat eingegangen ist. Amins Modell kommunitärer und tributärer Produktionsweisen, insbesondere die Einteilung in entwickelte und unterentwickelte bei zweiterem, stellen die objektiv schlüssigere Erklärung für die unterschiedlichen Entwicklungen in Asien und Europa bereit. Von Wittfogels theoretischen Abwegen ganz zu schweigen.

[Lucas Arean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neste breve livro Samir Amin demonstra o porquê é reconhecido como um dos principais expoentes do pensamento terceiro-mundista e do marxismo não-ocidental.
Transitando com excepcional fluidez e erudição entre a filosofia, história e economia política, o pensador egípcio constrói uma arrebatadora crítica ao pensamento eurocêntrico, que identifica como ideologia e teoria social dominante da modernidade capitalista, expondo inclusive seus desdobramentos em correntes intelectuais críticas como o próprio marxismo ocidental de sua época.
Não se limitando a criticar a teoria social dominante, Amin busca a construção de uma teoria social anti-eurocêntrica, apresentando valorosas contribuições como o conceito de modo de produção tributário e de desligamento como estratégia de emancipação, trazendo uma profunda oxigenação à capacidade do pensamento marxista de analisar a realidade histórica e social de forma genuinamente universal e não limitada a uma visão particularista pelas lentes eurocêntricas.

[Oleksandr Fediienko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Книга не про євроцентризм і навіть не про його критику, а про критику універсалізму згаданого євроцентризму, під яким мається на увазі, що той шлях, яким іде (ішла) Європа - єдино правильний для всіх країн. Детальніше не буду пояснювати, бо точно заплутаюся - ця праця не для початківців, у мене при прочитанні голова пливла.

[Simon B · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This dominant culture invented an eternal West, unique since the moment of its origin. This arbitrary and mythic construct had as its counterpart an equally artificial conception of the Other (the Orient), likewise constructed on mythic foundations. The product of this Eurocentric vision is the well-known version of Western history—a progression from Ancient Greece to Rome to feudal Christian Europe to capitalist Europe—one of the most popular of received ideas."

Overall an extremely impressive work that challenged me to rethink some of the concepts I had taken for granted. It includes a very strong argument dismissing the imaginary notion of a uniquely 'Western' history & culture extending back to ancient Greece It also made me squarely confront the Eurocentric bias in the Marxist concept of history through stages (primitive communism, slave mode of production, feudalism, capitalism, communism) which (in its vulgar form) Amin convincingly argues wrongly universalises a European experience as though it's a global phenomenon. I had some trouble fully grasping his arguments about the globalisation of [capitalist] value and how it is ensured the superexploitation of labour in the south .. I'll have to return to the argument.

"The theory is a Eurocentric teleology that arises a posteriori due to the capitalist development of Europe, which implies basically that no other society could succeed in reaching capitalism by itself. If all that were true, then one should conclude that the laws of historical materialism only apply to the West and draw the idealist Hegelian conclusion that the history of the West corresponds to the realization of reason."

[Sencer Turunç · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kitabı son bölümü (Bamako Çağrısı) beni etkilemedi, hatta kapitalizmin insanlığın geleceği için yegane yapısal aktör olduğunu düşünürken buldum kendimi bu bölümü okurken... Bununla birlikte, Orta Doğu'nun küresel pazar ve uluslararası toplulukla girift ilişkilerini Marksist bir perspektiften okuyucunun önüne koyan bir kitap... Uzun ve zor okunan bir kitap da değil...

[ernst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eine historisch sehr weit gefasste Abhandlung. Geschrieben in einem eher essayistischen Stil und ohne wissenschaftliche Zitation, was gerade bei der langen Abhandlung zur arabisch-islamischen Metaphysik schade ist.

Die Kritik ist im Kern wichtig und Stichhaltig. Amin verbindet sie mit dem Argument, dass man dem Eurozentrismus letztlich nur entgehen kann, wenn man sich einiger Begriffe bedient, die er entworgen hat (weltweites Wertgesetz, tributarische Produktionsweise, System der Produktionsweisen, Kapitalismus als Weltsesystem mit Zentrum und Peripherie). Das wird auch weiterhin umstritten bleiben.

Unbedingt lesenswert und deutlich besser als andere Bücher zum Thema (etwa das von Robert Biel oder Bryan S. Turner, die dennoch auch lesenswert sind).

[João P]

An amazing read with a very queer structure. Samir Amin debates the history of Islamic philosophy/theology at length while mentioning the "Tributary mode of production" which will only be properly explained in the last section of the book, where he also embarks on a discussion of contemporary capitalism.

Also, Samir Amin is clearly very erudite and often points towards authors who debate in greater detail topics he just glosses over, but I wish he were a bit more thorough with his references.

Definetly recommend, though.

[Hank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking. Much of its outlook turned out correct 30 years later. Strong familiarity with global economic history will certainly help readers.

[Andrew Feist · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5+ stars. Definitely have certain political disagreements w Amin. But this work is brilliant and deeply penetrating into world history and the post Soviet situation.

[Zé]

sla
acho q preciso ler mais sobre e reler dps

[Efrahim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yazarın teorik soyutlamalarının tarihe zorla yedirildiği, iç-dış etkenler gibi garip bir karşıtlıkla diyalektiğe takla attırılan, sonu bir tür küresel MDD'ciliğe çıkan kötü yazılmış bir kitap.

[Eve · Rating 2 out of 5]

IDK what to rate this, but it maxes out at 4 stars, partly because IDK what some of it is saying. I guess 3 maybe 2 stars on the economics & 4 stars for the religion history.

I read this book because a bunch of posts on Tumblr about socialism & Islam were like this book calls out the white/euro supremacism of Marxism, i guess hoping i could see how localizations work.

So the point of this book is to debug the racism within historical materialism, not just of the Marxists but of the bourgeoisie too. It's occidental which is cool, yet there are problems.

So basically, instead of going about the externalities of so called profit in order to call out how capitalism is merely robbery by the center from the periphery, this book goes about proving this by looking at how the periphery gets screwed by the center. So the target audience was like countries wanting to be USA after the fall of USSR. Like the book talks about the middle class in the present tense, so yeah this is a very 20th century book (like "Settlers" by J Sakai was).

What I got was a book that dissected how the colonized SWANA region among others developed mixed with talk about delinking... Like it wasn't bad but it did lead to brain fry especially since this was my main book about periphery regions' histories.

This book uses words like "tributary" that appeal to my anarchism. (I also like rivers & trees.) But reading the first 87% of this book without other books to balance it out had me needing to research pol pot & Khmer Rouge in a way that made my brain feel rotten & fried.

The proposal of delinking is obsolete & genocidal since stuff like climate cataclysm, ecocide, habitat loss, and migration mean people can't stay in one place during a single year anymore.

So while part of communism does involve getting abundance spread out geographically... IDK if this book did this that well.

It was very interesting to hear about how various religions handled this, yet I think it mainly applies even we're looking at the legalism using these religions as a canon. So for where I'm at, that's not as obvious. however it did help out in explaining how say Islam gets used in like Pan-Arabism or such.

Point being, I'm still kind of confused about how to debug historical materialism from eurocentrism except to say that the stages don't wipe out the previous stages, one example being how feudalism into capitalism tried to have absolute monarchies for 2-3 centuries before the monarchies got overthrown.

So TLDR, i was recommended & prefer "the divide" by Jason Hickel, and I think that's a better book, but "Eurocentrism" I think can be connected better with books like "the bright ages" & whatever that ML study guide by Jose Maria Sison is titled.

PS: I'm currently going over again "Socialism, scientific & utopian" by Engles and the stuff discussed there seems to be what Samir Amin is talking about here in this book.

PSS: 2022-0708-1515 I learned yesterday from an article critiquing orientalist historiography regarding China that the "tributary" model is full of shit. So point being, I think I would be better off just reading specialized books about the topics this author writes about. So this book is 2 stars. It might be 1 star if I can't find a way to use it, but I think it inspires a reading list.

[Ammar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samir Amin’s Eurocentrism is a critical analysis of the ideological, historical, and economic dimensions of Eurocentrism as a worldview that sustains Western dominance. Throughout the book, he critiques the dominant view that European uniqueness and ingenuity resulted in the leap that resulted in the industrial revolution and birth of capitalism, and he demonstrates how this development didn't happen in isolation vis-à-vis the rest of the world. To support his case, he also dismantles the several foundational myths of European exceptionalism. He argues that Eurocentrism is not just a cultural bias but a structured ideology that distorts history, justifies imperialism, and perpetuates economic inequalities on a global scale.

Samir Amin’s Eurocentrism is a radical reassessment of history and global capitalism. Its strong point is in showing how capitalism is necessitated on unequal exchange. This book is as relevant now, if not more, than when it was published in 1989. The Eurocentric universalist view of the world that has dictated the world after the fall of the USSR is unravelling as we move to a multipolar world. The Eurocentric worldview is no longer considered universal by an increasingly large segment of the Global South. This book is excellent in not only showing how Eurocentrism is used as a weapon to dominate by western powers, but also how to challenge it and restructure this Western-dominated power structure.

[Geve_]

Ok, so, I probably don't honestly have enough educational background to fully get or critique this work, so I'll keep it brief.
This feels dated. I was surprised at some of the assumptions and generalizations that were made. Some of them I thought were reasonable, some of them not as much. And since I didn't have the background either educationally or culturally (I guess?), I felt like I missed something in this book.
I was also extremely surprised at how much religious talk there was here.
This feels like a big overview, and I hadn't read the reference works. I will say some of the history mentioned here is not accurate, but I guess it's all where you learned it from... Maybe I'll come back to this at another point, when I've read more.

[KT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholarly text critiquing dominant Eurocentric view of world history and the construction of Eurocentric culture

In particular, I thought the author laid out a convincing case against the Weberian thesis of religious reform being behind the Renaissance, while putting forward their argument that Europe wasn't returning back to its roots, as the etymological roots would imply, but rather making a break with its own history, a contradiction facilitated by the new invention of Capitalism

Author draws on another one of his books - Unequal Development to explain early development of capitalism in late feudalism and I would recommend reading both to get the best appreciation out of both

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amin is probably one of the best third world origin intelectuals in XX/I centuries.. If impartiality is impossible, Amin is trully far away from it..

This is a deep and wide analysis of the eurocentrism ideology, n his master piece..

Highly recommended!!

[Sara Salem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samir Amin at his usual brilliant best!

[Leonardo]

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