Orientalism From Past to Present, Traditional to Digital

Introduction

Orientalism is basically simple but essentially it is very complex. For this reason, looking at the events, social dynamics and turning points of the East and the West in the historical process; it is very important to understand both orientalism and orientalist thought correctly. The further we go back in the history of humanity, the more we evaluate the events within the historical context, the more we can approach these concepts with a holistic perspective and add scientific meanings and values. In this context, one of the most important questions to be asked while making sense of orientalism should be how societies living in different parts of the world try to position themselves on the stage in the historical process.

Throughout the history, many societies living on different continents have adopted the most appropriate lifestyle in order to maintain their continuity. One of the most important factors that shape the lifestyles of these societies is the geographical features of the region that they live in and environmental conditions accordingly. For example indigenous people living in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, still have to gather food to survive today, as did all humans on earth 13,000 years ago. Among the swamp soil and the trees that do not provide food, considering that the most important food source of these people is the sagu palm in the rainforest, it can be understood why these people are food gatherers rather than being hunters. In this respect, the thought of ‘geography may be the destiny of people’ seems quite reasonable. Even today, we observe the reflections of societies leading to very different lives in different geographies. In fact, when we look at the history of the world, while in the 13 thousand years following the Ice Age, literate and industrial societies with metal tools emerged in various parts of the world where in the same period there were societies that were illiterate and engaged in farming or hunting using stone tools. These differences state a fundamental phenomenon in the history of the world and their reasons are unclear and open to discussion (Diamond, 2010).

Attempts to find answers to these differences have been made many times and are still ongoing. However, each answer contains some paradigms within itself. Of the interest of social scientists, especially anthropologists and historians, some thinkers approached to this subject on the basis of biological differences: they claimed that any population was superior in innate talent, intelligence or drive. However, it is quite clear in the light of today's scientific developments that different development of different people is not related to biological differences. These explanations are nothing more than a reflection of the orientalist thinking. On the other hand, social scientists such as the British Edward Tylor and the American Lewis Henry Morgan adopted some aspects of Darwin's evolutionist approach and tried to explain the differences between societies and their progress at different speeds.

Tylor argues that cultures progress in a series of evolutionary stages, while Lewis Henry Morgan states that societies have three stages of development which classifies savagery, barbarism and civilization and defines the stages with technological development levels (Bates, 2009). Engels, who was influenced by Morgan, defined the Western history as a representation of the general development of humanity and approached the development of society and civilizations unitary. In the Asian-type society, this type of society has been somewhat pushed out of history, as the state and society that pulled it around were considered separately (Balandier,2010).

As it can be seen in Haris’ study, “these ideas are associated with the characteristic feature of the 19th century British anthropology (Victorian Era) when the foundations of Orientalism were laid. During this period, cultural evolution, the idea that human societies developed in a certain direction, with a series of evolutionary stages and the idea of Westerners as the final stage of this development is widely accepted. In this sense, the origin of cultural evolution is sought in primitive societies and these societies, as the simplest societies, constitute the lowest step of the chronological development. In this sense, culture expresses an understanding that assumes the single and linear historical development of Europe, which is the highest point of civilization”(Nar, 2014, p. 1661).