Ibn Khaldu-n and modern sociology 49

Empire, the Safavid dynasty, the Mongol conquest of China and many other
empirical fields.
Few studies have gone beyond the mere comparison of some ideas and con-
cepts in Ibn Khaldnjn with those of modern Western scholars, towards the theo-
retical integration of his theory into a framework that employs some of the tools
of modern social science.36 The reason for this state of affairs has to do with the
continuing prevalence of Eurocentrism in the social sciences.

A definition of Eurocentrism
At this point, it should be said that it is not being claimed here that the topic of
Eurocentrism has not been dealt with before. Although Eurocentrism has been
discussed by a number of scholars, for example A. L. Tibawi, Anouar Abdel-Malek
and Edward Said in the context of their systematic treatment of Orientalism, such
concerns with Eurocentrism have not made their way into teaching in the social
sciences. This is not to say that the topic of Eurocentrism is not raised in social
science and humanities courses. However, the discussions are generally confined
to courses on the Third World or on postcolonial topics. Rarely do we find that
basic or foundational courses are informed by concerns raised by the critique of
Eurocentrism. For example, while there is no dearth of literature on problems
associated with Eurocentrism, courses on sociological theory generally do not
attempt to correct that bias by introducing non-Western thinkers or by critiquing
Eurocentric elements in the works of Western theorists such as Marx, Weber and
Durkheim. Therefore, it is necessary to present a definition of Eurocentrism in
order to demonstrate how it remains persistent as an orientation in the social sci-
ences as they are taught in institutions of higher learning.
Eurocentrism is a particular instance of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is gen-
erally defined as the regard of one’s own ethnic group or society as superior to
other groups. It involves the assessment and judgement of other groups in terms
of the categories and standards of evaluation of one’s own group. Eurocentrism,
therefore, refers to the assessment and evaluation of non-European societies in
terms of the cultural assumptions and biases of Europeans. In the modern world,
Eurocentrism cannot be dissociated from the economic cultural domination of the
United States, as a result of the settlement of America by Europeans and the sub-
sequent rise to hegemony of the United States. We would therefore be more accu-
rate to refer to the phenomenon under consideration as Euroamericocentrism.37
Having given this general definition, how can we understand the manifestation
of Eurocentrism in the social sciences? Eurocentrism in the social sciences can be
understood as the assessment and evaluation of European and other civilizations
from a decidedly European point of view. For our purposes, it is crucial to define
what is meant by the European point of view. This can be described as that which
establishes and employs concepts derived from European philosophical traditions
and popular discourse, which are applied to the empirical study of history, econ-
omy and society. The empirical field of investigation is selected according to
European (for European read also American) criteria of relevance. As a result, any
50 Ibn Khaldu-n and modern sociology
particular aspect of historical or social reality is constructed in terms of European
categories, concepts as well as ideal and material interests. There is a failure to
present the point of view of the other.38
The traits of Eurocentrism, particularly in historical and social scientific works
on various topics relating to the grand macro questions such as the origins of
modern civilization or the rise of modern capitalism, can be listed as (but not
confined to) the following.

1 The subject–object dichotomy. Europeans are the knowing subjects or the

narrators and protagonists, while non-Europeans remain as unheard objects
whose points of view only get communicated to us as and when the narrators
see fit. These objects are passive, non-participating, non-active, non-autono-
mous and non-sovereign.39 Said spoke of Flaubert’s meeting with an Egyptian
courtesan who never spoke of or represented herself. Rather, it was Flaubert
who spoke for and represented her.40 The result of this “omniscience” was the
problematic construction of things non-European. As noted by Wallerstein,
these constructions came under attack at three levels – they do not fit empiri-
cal reality, they over-abstract, resulting in the erasure of empirical variety,
and they are founded on European prejudices.41
2 Europeans in the foreground. There is a focus on Europeans in the fore-
ground as opposed to intercivilizational encounters with non-Europeans.
Modernity is seen as a specifically European creation and is due to European
superiority, whether this is viewed in biological, cultural or sociological
terms. Encounters with non-Europeans are often referred to but not assessed
as contributing to any significant changes to the course of European history.
3 Europeans as originators. Europeans are consistently viewed as originators.
As a result there is far less consideration of the multicultural origins of many
aspects of our modern civilization. In works on the history of philosophy, for
example, Islamic philosophy is often relegated to footnotes and regarded
simply as having transmitted Greek thought to the European world of the
Renaissance. Alfred Weber, the younger brother of Max Weber and author of
a history of philosophy, noted that the Arabs were “apt pupils of the Greeks,
Persians, and Hindoos in science. Their philosophy is the continuation of
Peripateticism and Neo-Platonism. It is more learned than original, and con-
sists mainly of exegesis, particularly of the exegesis of Aristotle’s system”.42
Here, in a few lines, the entire contribution of Islamic philosophy to Renaissance
thought was denied by claiming that it was utterly lacking in originality,
despite the availability of the works of Muslim philosophers and scientists
from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries that would show otherwise.
4 The imposition of European categories and concepts. Tibawi noted the “per-
sistence in studying Islam and the Arabs through the application of Western
European categories”.43 This was because of the basic fallacy of Eurocentrism,
pointed out by Needham in 1955, that the universal nature of European sci-
ence and technology meant that everything else European was universal
too.44 As Wallerstein noted, European social sciences were universalist in the
 Ibn Khaldu-n and modern sociology 51
sense that European achievements in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries
were regarded as replicable elsewhere not only because that was desirable but
also because it was inevitable.45 To the extent that this process was universal,
so were the social scientific truths that explained it. European social science
is seen as universal in the sense that it holds scientific truths that are applica-
ble everywhere else in the world. If they are not, this has to do with specific
problems in concept formation or empirical problems relating to observation
or data collection, but not with social science itself. The result, then, is the
imposition of European categories and concepts and the concomitant neglect
of those of non-European origins. Things non-European are regarded as
worthy as objects of analysis but rarely as cognizant subjects. For example,
Ibn Khaldnjn’s fourteenth century theories of historical change and state for-
mation have often been the objects of studies but rarely if ever developed and
applied as theoretical perspectives to the study of empirical realities.

It should be clear that as long as these characteristics inform the social sciences
it would be practically impossible to introduce the themes of intercivilizational
encounters – the multicultural origins of modernity, and the variety of points of
view – into social science education. In the next section I will show that this is
indeed the case. The traits of Eurocentrism as outlined above are defining features
of the social sciences as they are taught in universities around the world.

Ibn Khaldnjn in the social science curriculum

In the teaching of both the history of sociological theory and sociological theory
itself, four characteristics of Eurocentrism are evident.

The subject–object dichotomy

In the vast majority of sociological theory textbooks or works on the history of
social theory, the subject–object dichotomy is a pervasive theme. Europeans are
the knowing subjects, that is, the social theorists and social thinkers. To the extent
that non-Europeans figure in these accounts they are objects of the observations
and analyses of the European theorists, appearing as Marx’s Indians and Algerians
or Weber’s Turks, Chinese and Jews, and not as sources of sociological concepts
and ideas. In one historical account, “early social theories” in the so-called “sim-
pler” or non-literate societies, as well as ancient Egypt, ancient Babylon, the Greek
city-states, Japan and China, were covered under the category of religious theo-
ries.46 This discussion is obviously founded on the old scientific–mythic dichot-
omy that is supposed to separate the West from the East. The fact that there
existed, in parts of the Muslim world, India, Japan and China from the fourteenth
century onwards, what would be considered positive, scientific thought that
approximated to what was regarded as sociology in the West was not discussed
even though the relevant works have been known to the Europeans since the
nineteenth century.47 In works on the history of social thought that chart the