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Orientalism Postmodernism And Globalization Summary

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Orientalism, Postmodernisation and Globalisation
Bryan Turner
Book Review
A professor of sociology and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Deakin University, Australia, Bryan Turner attempts in this book to combine some popular themes that various philosophers and researchers of different disciplines have introduced. The book is the compilation of different lectures, conference papers and articles which Brain S Turner gave, presented and wrote. While doing so, he has tried to investigate the current debate about the relationship between Orientalism, Post Modernism and the process of Globalization. Himself being a sociologist, he takes a critical view of the role of sociology in understanding the interconnectedness of Orientalism, Postmodernism …show more content…

In it, writer briefly describes the origins of the critique of Orientalism in the period of decolonization and the search of political and theoretical alternatives to conventional Western liberalism. Bryan Turner reviews the criticism of the cultural theorist Edward Said concept of “Orientalism”. Furthermore, the emergence of Islam in western world has also been discussed in this section. Turner attempts to critically review the Western thinkers critique of Orientalism which was used a theoretical tool for the imperialist expansion of western ideologies. The overestimation of the role of civil society in containing the rise of anarchic tendencies has also been discussed. Opinion of different sociologists about the civil society potency in this regard has been …show more content…

Turner 's criticism of the elitist preference of Habermas and the Frankfurt School, and the high culture touchiness of Walter Benjamin opens the debate of superiority and inferiority of culture. It also introduces the important concept of "nostalgia," a concept introduced by Kant. He examines how the cultural elite maneuvers the critique of the mass culture of capitalist societies by saying that criticizing mass culture is like disowning very existence of today. This section is also about the tradition of global outlook of sociology. The convergence of different societies results in the need of international umbrella of sociology as a subject for the better analysis. Whether sociology, nowadays, is global or national comes as a question. For me, the commonality of perspectives on "the World" apparent in both religious and sociological accounts makes it a global

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