How to Overcome Ethnocentrism: Approaches to a Culture of Recognition by History in the 21st Century

Title

How to Overcome Ethnocentrism: Approaches to a Culture of Recognition by History in the 21st Century

Author

Jörn Rüsen

Page

59-74

DOI

Abstract

　　The paper starts with some observations on the international and intercultural dis- course about historiography. It seems to be influenced by a way of historical thinking which is deeply rooted in human historical consciousness and works throughout all cul- tures and in all times: ethnocentrism. This ethnocentrism will be described as a wide- spread mode of doing history with special respect to the role history plays in the cultural process of forming identity. Identity is presented by so-called “master-narratives”. These narratives define togetherness and difference as essential for identity in a way which causes tensions and struggles. They can be described as “clashes of civilisations” on the level of historical culture. Today tensions are one of the most severe problems of inter- cultural encounter and interaction on the level of culture, of the mental procedures by which humans understands their world and themselves.
　　The paper explicates the logic of ethnocentrism in historical thinking. It presents its main elements: asymmetrical evaluation, teleological continuity and centralised perspec- tive. After that there is a discussion of the possibility of overcoming these three princi- ples by replacing asymmetrical evaluation by normative equality, by replacing teleo- logical continuity by reconstructive concepts of development, which emphasize contin- gency and discontinuity, and by replacing centralized perspectives by multi-perspectivity and polycentric approaches to historical experience.
　　This change in the logic of doing history can bring about a new mode of universal history. Most ethnocentric master narratives have a universalistic scope, so the underly- ing universalistic concepts can serve as ideological means in the struggle for power which mostly characterizes the international and intercultural discourse on historical identity. Nevertheless there are convincing arguments in favour of a concept of human- kind with the help of which the problem of ethnocentrism can be solved. This idea of humankind conceptualizes the unity of the human species as being manifest in the vari- ety of cultures and historical developments. This is in fact the traditional concept of his- toricism which can be furtheron developed towards an outlook for historiography which responses the challenges of globalization for cultural differences.
　　Finally, the paper gives an outline of theoretical and methodical issues in historical studies which bring this idea of humankind into the work of historians thus enabling it to contribute to a new culture of recognition. The paper is based on the assumption that the creation of such a culture is the most important task of scholarly work in the humanities in general and historical studies in specific at the beginning of the 21st century.

Keyword

historical culture, historical identity, theory of history, intercultural communication

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