Eurocentrism, Modern Knowledges, and the "Natural" Order of Global Capital

Abstract

In recent debates about hegemonic knowledge in the modern world, a number of basic assumptions have emerged that allow us to characterize the dominant conception of knowledge as Eurocentric (Lander 2000a). After providing a concise description of its main assumptions, Iwill explore here the pervasiveness of the Eurocentric perspective in the principles or fundamentals that guide current practices by which the global order of capital is planned, justified, and naturalized (i.e., made less artificial). Along these same lines, Iwill demonstrate the presence of the fundamentals of Eurocentrism in the international norms of protection of private investment in the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and in the protection of intellectual property set out by World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. The perspective of Eurocentric knowledge is the central axis of a discourse that not only naturalizes but renders inevitable the increasingly intense polarization between a privileged minority and the world’s excluded, oppressed majorities. Eurocentric knowledge also lies at the center of a predatory model of civilization that threatens to destroy the conditions that make life possible on Earth. For this reason, the critique of Eurocentrism and the development/recovery of alternate knowledge perspectives cannot be interpreted as merely an esoteric intellectual or academic preoccupation, or for that matter as a topic for interesting debates within a narrow community of scholars working on epistemological problems. In reality, these issues are closely related to vital political demands, both local and global, which are linked in turn to communities, organizations,