Eurocentrism

“Why do we view the Cold War as a "long peace"? Because the hundreds of conflicts and millions of lives lost in the battle deaths during the Cold War took place outside Europe, in the so-called Third World?” asks Amitav Acharya (2014, p. 648). His observations pinpoints at the problem of Eurocentrism.

According to Matin (2013), “Eurocentrism is a specific mode of comprehending modernity that begins and ends with Europe.” Its conceptual core consists of four interrelated assumptions: 1) The historical assumption that the emergence Europe’s modernity was entirely endogenous and autonomous, ignoring co-constitution through interaction with other regions; 2) the normative assumptions that due to this autonomy European modernity is superior to the rest; 3) the prognostic assumption that European modernity with its values, practices and institutions “are destined to become universal”; and 4) the stadial assumption that modernity progressively unfolds in all societies according to the same stages (also see Rostow, 1960), and that at the end world society will find some unity in European-style modernity (also see Fukuyama, 1992).

Eurocentrism is pervasive in the study of international relations and in theory-building (see below), whereas Europe is not the standard for civilization, modernity, political and economic systems and institutions, knowledge production, etc. Therefore, postcolonialism seeks to de-center Europe in international studies.