Eurocentric thought, modernity and periphery: reflections on Brazil and the Muslim World

Author(s)

José Henrique Bortoluci

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2009-07-01

Examining board members

Peter Robert Demant; Paulo Daniel Elias Farah; Jessé José Freire de Souza

• Advisor: Peter Robert Demant

Abstract

The Eurocentric paradigm of modernity has been suffering several kinds of attacks in the recent literature of Social Sciences. Nevertheless, such paradigm still provides the hegemonic categories and structures of thought for the reflection about modernity and the obstacles imposed to it in peripheral societies. This work intends to analyze the sociological sector of a eurocentric structure of attitudes and references, and the appropriations of such structure for reflections about the dilemmas of modernity, in Brazil and in Muslim societies. Furthermore, it intends to advance a criticism about that eurocentric paradigm, by means of an interparadigmatic postcolonial dialogue such a dialogue understood as a programme of critical studies on modernity, formulated from a peripheral point of view. Finally, this work tries to demonstrate that many elements of those anti-eurocentric approaches are present in historical and sociological analysis about modernity in Brazil and in Arab and Muslim societies. (AU)