Capabilities and Weaknesses of Different Approaches to Western Studies: Towards a Phenomenological Model

نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی

نویسندگان

1 Assistant Professor of Public Law, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

2 Associate Professor of Political Sciences, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

3 Associate Professor of Middle East Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

10.22099/ijas.2025.53347.1041

چکیده

Any encounter with a phenomenon is inherently accompanied by a theoretical approach that unconsciously influences various aspects of understanding the subject. This means that the conscious or unconscious application of a theoretical approach impacts the entire cognitive process. Theoretical approaches to understanding the West are no exception to this rule. However, what capabilities and shortcomings does each of these approaches possess? Broadly speaking, three common approaches to understanding the West can be distinguished: Western-centric, anti-Western, and indigenous. In the Western-centric approach, indigenous lived experience is often either underestimated or analysed under the rubric of Western-constructed ideologies and their inherent dualistic oppositions. The anti-Western approach has either utilised concepts generated within its own tradition, which usually leads to hermetic thinking (closed-mindedness) in understanding the West, or it has fundamentally employed parts of Western thought to critique the West, generally adopting a selective stance. Thinkers who have adopted the indigenous approach have also typically reconstructed and refined their concepts and ideas in engagement with other concepts and ideas (i.e., those from the West). Based on this premise, the present article seeks to reconstruct the indigenous approach based on a phenomenological model.

کلیدواژه‌ها

موضوعات

عنوان مقاله [English]

Capabilities and Weaknesses of Different Approaches to Western Studies: Towards a Phenomenological Model

نویسندگان [English]

  • Hadi Salehi 1
  • Mohammad Ali Tavana 2
  • Alam Alam 3
1 Assistant Professor of Public Law, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
2 Associate Professor of Political Sciences, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
3 Associate Professor of Middle East Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
چکیده [English]

Any encounter with a phenomenon is inherently accompanied by a theoretical approach that unconsciously influences various aspects of understanding the subject. This means that the conscious or unconscious application of a theoretical approach impacts the entire cognitive process. Theoretical approaches to understanding the West are no exception to this rule. However, what capabilities and shortcomings does each of these approaches possess? Broadly speaking, three common approaches to understanding the West can be distinguished: Western-centric, anti-Western, and indigenous. In the Western-centric approach, indigenous lived experience is often either underestimated or analysed under the rubric of Western-constructed ideologies and their inherent dualistic oppositions. The anti-Western approach has either utilised concepts generated within its own tradition, which usually leads to hermetic thinking (closed-mindedness) in understanding the West, or it has fundamentally employed parts of Western thought to critique the West, generally adopting a selective stance. Thinkers who have adopted the indigenous approach have also typically reconstructed and refined their concepts and ideas in engagement with other concepts and ideas (i.e., those from the West). Based on this premise, the present article seeks to reconstruct the indigenous approach based on a phenomenological model.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

  • Iranian thinkers
  • Western studies
  • Westernism
  • anti-Westernism
  • nativism
  • anti-essentialism

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سابقه مقاله

  • تاریخ دریافت: 25 بهمن 1403
  • تاریخ بازنگری: 17 آذر 1404
  • تاریخ پذیرش: 18 شهریور 1404
  • تاریخ انتشار: 01 آبان 1404

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