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Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism) refers to viewing Western world as the center of world events or superior to other cultures. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world to just the continent of Europe or even more narrowly, to Western Europe (especially during the Cold War). When the term is applied historically, it may be used in reference to the presentation of the European perspective on history as objective or absolute, or to an apologetic stance toward European colonialism and other forms of imperialism. Eurocentrism and its discontents, American Historical Association
The term "Eurocentrism" dates back to the late 1970s but it did not become prevalent until the 1990s, when it was frequently applied in the context of decolonization and development aid and humanitarian aid that industrialised countries offered to developing countries. The term has since been used to critique Western narratives of progress, Western scholars who have downplayed and ignored non-Western contributions, and to contrast Western epistemologies with indigenous epistemologies.
The -ism Eurocentrism (French eurocentrisme, earlier europocentrisme) as the term for an ideology was coined in the 1970s by the Egyptian Marxian economist Samir Amin, then director of the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. "Anciens directeurs", uneca.org ("Samir Amin (Egypte) 1970–1980"). Amin used the term in the context of a global, core–periphery or dependency model of capitalist development. English usage of Eurocentrism is recorded by 1979.Alexandre A. Bennigsen, S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World (1979), p. 19. According to Amin, Eurocentrism dates back to the Renaissance, and did not flourish until the 19th century.
The coinage of Western-centrism is younger, attested in the late 1990s, and specific to English."pluralistic cultural coexistence as opposed to Western centrism and Asian centrism" (unhyphenated) in: Mabel Lee, Meng Hua, Cultural dialogue & misreading (1997), p. 53. "our incomplete perception of Chinese behavior, which tends to be 'Western-centric' " (using scare-quotes) in: Houman A. Sadri, Revolutionary States, Leaders, and Foreign Relations: A Comparative Study of China, Cuba, and Iran (1997), p. 35. "Euro- or western-centrism" in the context of the "traditional discourse on minority languages" in: Jonathan Owens (ed.), Arabic as a Minority Language (2000), p. 1. Use of Latinate occido-centrism remains rare (e.g. Alexander Lukin, Political Culture of the Russian 'Democrats' (2000), p. 47).
Thus Johann Heinrich Zedler, in 1741, wrote that "even though Europe is the smallest of the Four continents, it has for various reasons a position that places it before all others.... Its inhabitants have excellent customs, they are courteous and erudite in both sciences and crafts"."[] "Europa". In: Zedlers Universal-Lexicon , Volume 8, Leipzig 1734, columns 2192–2196 (citation: column 2195).
The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie (Conversations-Lexicon) of 1847 still expressed an ostensibly Eurocentric approach and claimed about Europe that "its geographical situation and its cultural and political significance is clearly the most important of the five continents, over which it has gained a most influential government both in material and even more so in cultural aspects"."[] Das große Conversations-Lexicon für die gebildeten Stände, 1847. Vol. 1, p. 373.
European exceptionalism thus grew out of the Great Divergence of the Early Modern period, due to the combined effects of the Scientific Revolution, the Commercial Revolution, and the rise of colonial empires, the Industrial Revolution and a Second European colonization wave.
The assumption of European exceptionalism is widely reflected in popular genres of literature, especially in literature for young adults (for example, Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel Kim) and in adventure-literature in general. Portrayal of European colonialism in such literature has been analysed in terms of Eurocentrism in retrospect, such as presenting idealised and often exaggeratedly masculine Western heroes, who conquered "savage" peoples in the remaining "dark spaces" of the globe.Daniel Iwerks, "Ideology and Eurocentrism in Tarzan of the Apes," in: Investigating the Unliterary: Six Readings of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, ed. Richard Utz (Regensburg: Martzinek, 1995), pp. 69–90.
The European miracle, a term coined by Eric Jones in 1981, refers to the surprising rise of Europe during the Early Modern period. During the 15th to 18th centuries, a great divergence took place, comprising the European Renaissance, the European Age of Discovery, the formation of European , the Age of Reason, and the associated leap forward in technology and the development of capitalism and early industrialization. As a result, by the 19th century European powers dominated world trade and Global politics.
In Lectures on the Philosophy of History, published in 1837, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel describes world history as starting in Asia but shifting to Greece and Italy, and then north of the Alps to France, Germany and England. Hegel interpreted India and China as stationary countries, lacking inner momentum. Hegel's China replaced the real historical development with a fixed, stable scenario, which made it the outsider of world history. Both India and China were waiting and anticipating a combination of certain factors from outside until they could acquire real progress in human civilization. Hegel's ideas had a profound impact on western historiography and attitudes. Some scholars disagree with his ideas that the Oriental countries were outside of world history. (2025). 9781137290007 ISBN 9781137290007
Max Weber (1864-1920) suggested that capitalism is the speciality of Europe, because Orient such as India and China do not contain the factors which would enable them to develop capitalism in a sufficient manner. Weber wrote and published many treatises in which he emphasized the distinctiveness of Europe. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), he wrote that the "rational" capitalism, manifested by its enterprises and mechanisms, only appeared in the Protestant western countries, and a series of generalised and universal cultural phenomena only appear in the west. (2017). 9781912282708 ISBN 9781912282708
Even the state, with a written constitution and a government organised by trained administrators and constrained by rational law, only appears in the West, even though other regimes can also comprise states.
(2025). 9781442212398, Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781442212398
("Rationality" is a multi-layered term whose connotations are developed and escalated as with the social progress. Weber regarded rationality as a proprietary article for western capitalist society.)
Orientalism developed in the late 18th century as a disproportionate Western interest in and idealization of Eastern (i.e. Asian) cultures.
By the early 20th century, some historians, such as Arnold J. Toynbee, were attempting to construct multifocal models of world civilizations. Toynbee also drew attention in Europe to non-European historians, such as the medieval Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun. He also established links with Asian thinkers, such as through his dialogues with Daisaku Ikeda of Soka Gakkai International.
In football, the term Eurocentrism is used to critique the economic dominance UEFA has over club football teams from the rest of the world and how it negatively impacts the sport.
In treatises on historical or contemporary Eurocentrism that appeared since the 1990s, Eurocentrism is mostly cast in terms of dualisms such as civilised/barbaric or advanced/backward, developed/undeveloped, core/periphery, implying "evolutionary schemas through which societies inevitably progress", with a remnant of an "underlying presumption of a superior white Western self as referent of analysis." Eurocentrism and the dualistic properties that it labels on non-European countries, cultures and persons have often been criticised in the political discourse of the 1990s and 2000s, particularly in the greater context of political correctness, race in the United States and affirmative action.Green, John. Crashcourse "Eurocentrism" (2012)Loewen, James "Lies My teacher told me" (1995)
In the 1990s, there was a trend of criticising various geographic terms current in the English language as Eurocentric, such as the traditional division of Eurasia into Europe and AsiaMartin Lewis and Kären Wigen. The Myth of Continents (1997): "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. A better (if still imperfect) analogy would compare France, not to India as a whole, but to a single Indian state, such as Uttar Pradesh." or the term Middle East. ("unedited paper as given at the Oslo conference. An updated and edited version has been published in Utvik and Vikør, The Middle East in a Globalized World, Bergen/London 2000, 1–9. Please quote or refer only to the published article") "The expression Middle East is an old British label based on a British Western perception of the East divided into middle or near and far".
Eric Sheppard, in 2005, argued that contemporary Marxism itself has Eurocentric traits (in spite of "Eurocentrism" originating in the vocabulary of Marxian economics), because it supposes that the third world must go through a stage of capitalism before "progressive social formations can be envisioned".
Andre Gunder Frank harshly criticised Eurocentrism. He believed that most scholars were the disciples of the social sciences and history guided by Eurocentrism. (2025). 9780333740729, Macmillan Education UK. ISBN 9780333740729 He criticised some Western scholars for their ideas that non-Western areas lack outstanding contributions in history, economy, ideology, politics and culture compared with the West. (1998). 9780520921313, University of California. ISBN 9780520921313 These scholars believed that the same contribution made by the West gives Westerners an advantage of endo-genetic momentum which is pushed towards the rest of the world, but Frank believed that the Oriental countries also contributed to the human civilization in their own perspectives.
Arnold Toynbee in his A Study of History, gave a critical remark on Eurocentrism. He believed that although western capitalism shrouded the world and achieved a political unity based on its economy, the Western countries cannot "westernize" other countries. (1987). 9780195050813, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195050813 Toynbee concluded that Eurocentrism is characteristic of three misconceptions manifested by self-centerment, the fixed development of Oriental countries and linear progress.
There has been some debate on whether historical Eurocentrism qualifies as "just another ethnocentrism", as it is found in most of the world's cultures, especially in cultures with imperial aspirations, as in the Sinocentrism in China; in the Empire of Japan (c. 1868–1945), or during the American Century. James M. Blaut (2000) argued that Eurocentrism indeed went beyond other ethnocentrisms, as the scale of European colonial expansion was historically unprecedented and resulted in the formation of a "colonizer's model of the world".
Indigenous philosophies have been noted to greatly contrast with Eurocentric thought. Indigenous scholar James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson states that Eurocentricism contrasts greatly with Indigenous worldviews: "the discord between Aboriginal and Eurocentric worldviews is dramatic. It is a conflict between natural and artificial contexts." Indigenous scholars Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Linco state that "in some ways, the epistemological critique initiated by Indigenous knowledge is more radical than other sociopolitical critiques of the West, for the Indigenous critique questions the very foundations of Western ways of knowing and being." (2025). 9781412918039, SAGE Publishing. ISBN 9781412918039
The terms Afrocentrism vs. Eurocentrism have come to play a role in the 2000s to 2010s in the context of the academic discourse on race in the United States and critical whiteness studies, aiming to expose white supremacism and white privilege.Alison Bailey, "Philosophy and Whiteness" in Tim Engles (ed.) Towards a Bibliography of Critical Whiteness Studies, Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society (2006), p. 9.:
"Philosophical methods are well suited for unpacking the political, ontological, and epistemological conditions that foster racism and hold white supremacy in place. However, on the whole, philosophy as a discipline has remained relatively untouched by interdisciplinary work on race and whiteness. In its quest for certainty, Western philosophy continues to generate what it imagines to be colorless and genderless accounts of knowledge, reality, morality, and human nature".
In an article, 'Eurocentrism and Academic Imperialism,' Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi at the University of Tehran states that Eurocentric thought exists in almost all aspects of academia in many parts of the world, especially in the humanities. Edgar Alfred Bowring states that in the West, self-regard, self-congratulation and denigration of the 'Other' run more deeply and those tendencies have infected more aspects of their thinking, laws and policy than anywhere else.E. C. Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Blackwell, 1997) Luke Clossey and Nicholas Guyatt have measured the degree of Eurocentrism in the research programs of top history departments.
Some authors have focused on how scholars who denounce Eurocentrism often inadvertently reproduce Eurocentrism through culturally biased norms. The methodologist Audrey Alejandro refers to this process as a "recursive paradox": "It is a methodo-epistemological recursive paradox that International critical scholars experience, producing a discourse that is implicitly counter-productive to the anti-Eurocentric values they advocate."
African historiography became organised at the academic level in the mid 20th century. Despite a movement towards utilising oral sources in a multidisciplinary approach and their growing legitimacy in historiography, contemporary historians are still tasked with decolonising African historiography, building the institutional frameworks incorporating African epistemologies, and representing an African perspective.
Stemming from Eurocentrism's innate bias towards Western civilization came the creation of the concept of the "European Society," which favoured the components (mainly Christianity) of European civilization and allowed eurocentrists to brand diverging societies and cultures as "uncivilized". Prevalent during the nineteenth century, the labelling of uncivilised in the eyes of eurocentrists enabled Western countries to classify non-European and non-white countries as inferior, and limit their inclusion and contribution in actions like international law. This exclusion was seen as acceptable by individuals like John Westlake, a professor of international law at the University of Cambridge at the time, who commented that countries with European civilizations should be those which comprise the international society, and that countries like Turkey and Persia should only be allowed a part of international law.
With those wanting to represent the eurocentric ideals better by way of orientalism, there came a barrier of languages, being Arabic, Persian, and other similar languages. With more researchers wanting to study more of Orientalism, there was an assumption made about the languages of the Islamic world: that having the ability to transcribe the texts of the past Islamic world would give great knowledge and insight on oriental studies. In order to do this, many researchers underwent training in philology, believing that an understanding of the languages would be the only necessary training. This reasoning came as the belief at the time was that other studies like anthropology and sociology were deemed irrelevant as they did not believe it misleading to this portion of mankind.
Another study questioning the impact of Eurocentric beauty ideals in South Asia noted that Indian women won a relatively high number of international beauty pageants, and that Indian media tends to use mostly Indian female models. The authors cite the dominance of the Bollywood film industry in India, which tends to minimize the impact of Western ideals. "One reason for this may be the recent globalization of Indian beauty as affirmed by a number of Indian winners of such global beauty contests as Miss World and Miss Universe. From 1990–2006 Indian models won 11 of these titles. The dominance of Bollywood film in India also diminishes the impact of Hollywood ideologies in Indian culture. Indian celebrities appear to be the dominant body ideals for Indian women."
In Singapore, a country with a large population of Chinese people. European women are ranked below Chinese women in the female beauty hierarchy. According to the author, the blonde hair of Swedish women reduced their femininity, because it was racialized as a Western trait. The authors also noted that these women's Swedish husbands were highly attracted to local East Asian women, which further reduced the self-esteem of the blonde Swedish women living in Singapore.
The use of European female models has actually declined within Japan, and some Japanese skincare companies have discontinued the use of Western female models entirely, while others have even portrayed white women as explicitly inferior to Asian women, on the basis of their lighter hair color. "Pola discontinued the use of foreign models in 2000. Kao undertook a successful launch of Asience shampoo with television advertisements of Zhang Ziya, who became the first Chinese Miss World in 2007, showing off her long black hair to the jealous gasps of Western women. In 2007 Shisedo launched the blockbuster shampoo brand Tsubaki with a $40 million advertising campaign which featured famous Japanese women and the slogan 'Japanese women are beautiful'." There is a widespread belief in Japan that Japanese women's skin color is "better" than white women's, "My informants, mainly women insisted that Japanese skin was superior to Caucasian skin. Although many of my informants had little personal contact with Westerners, they all made more or less identical negative comments about Caucasian women's skin, saying, for example, that it was rough, aged quickly and had too many spots. Ashikari (2005) p. 82" ... "When my informants look at a beautiful young Caucasian model in an advertisement with a slogan, such as, 'for making your skin beautiful and young', they can simply see 'young' and 'beauty' in the model's face. They are looking at a beautiful woman in the advertisement, but not particularly a beautiful Caucasian woman. p. 82" and the placement of European female models in local advertisements does not reflect any special status of white women within Japan. "The partial dethroning of European-heritage people as representatives of a superior 'white race' does not necessarily imply the abandonment of whiteness as an ideal or model in Japan." ... "The ugliness of European whiteness as compared with Japanese whiteness was mentioned by several of his informants. More specifically it was argued that 'European-heritage people do not possess white skin but transparent skin.' " "Three respondents' views are cited below: This may be completely unscientific but I feel that when I look at the skin of a Japanese woman I see the whiteness of her skin. When I observe Caucasian skin, what I see is the whiteness of the fat underneath the skin, not the whiteness of the skin itself." I have seen Caucasians closely only a few times but my impression is that their skin is very thin, almost transparent, while our skin is thicker and more resilient. The Caucasian skin is something like the surface of a pork sausage, while the skin of a Japanese resembles the outside of 'kamaboko' a (cited by Wagatsuma, 1968, pp. 142–143)"
In Erica Lorraine William's Sex Tourism in Bahia: Ambiguous Entanglements, Williams notes that there is no Eurocentric beauty ideal for women in Brazil. White Brazilian women are aware that foreign male sex tourists are not interested in them, and that they prefer brown and black women over white Brazilian women. One white woman in Brazil complained that she is not noticed by "Gringo" and that they prefer black and Mestiza women for sexual liaisons.
/ref> Similarly, Yoshitaka Miike, the founding theorist of Asiacentrism, has critiqued theoretical, methodological, and comparative Eurocentrism in knowledge production about Asian societies and cultures.Yoshitaka Miike, "Beyond Eurocentrism in the Intercultural Field: Searching for an Asiacentric Paradigm," in William J. Starosta and Guo-Ming Chen (Eds.), Ferment in the Intercultural Field: Axiology/Value/Praxis (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003), pp. 243–276.Yoshitaka Miike, "An Anatomy of Eurocentrism in Communication Scholarship: The Role of Asiacentricity in De-Westernizing Theory and Research," in Wimal Dissanayake (Ed.), Communication Theory: The Asian Perspective (2nd Ed.) (Manila, Philippines: Asian Media Information and Communication Center, 2022), pp. 255–278.Yoshitaka Miike, "What Makes Multicultural Dialogue Truly Multicultural? Rethinking Cultural Convergence, Theoretical Globalism, and Comparative Eurocentrism", Journal of Multicultural Discourses, vol. 17, no. 1 (January 2022), pp. 34–43. He claims that "looking at Asia only with a Eurocentric critical eye and looking at the West only with a Eurocentric uncritical eye poses a serious problem in understanding and appreciating the fullest potentials of humanity and communication."Yoshitaka Miike, "Can Asian Communicators Think? Asiacentricity as a Paradigm for Decolonizing the Asian Mind", Bodhi: An Interdisciplinary Journal
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Africa
Colonial historiography
Since most African societies used oral tradition to record their history, there was little Recorded history of the continent prior to the colonial period. Colonial histories focussed on the exploits of soldiers, colonial administrators, and "colonial figures", using limited sources and written from an entirely European perspective, ignoring the viewpoint of the colonised under the pretence of white supremacism. Colonial historians considered Africans Racism, uncivilised, Exoticism, and historically static, viewing their colonial conquest as proof of Europe's claims to superiority. The most widespread genre of colonial narrative involved the Hamitic hypothesis, which claimed the inherent superiority of light-skinned people over dark-skinned people. Colonisers considered only "Hamites Africans" to be "civilisation", and by extension all major advances and innovations in Africa were thought to derive from them. Oral sources were deprecated and dismissed by most historians, who claimed that Africa had no history other than that of Europeans in Africa. Some colonisers took interest in the other viewpoint and attempted to produce a more detailed history of Africa using oral sources and archaeology, however they received little recognition at the time.
Latin America
Eurocentrism affected Latin America through colonial domination and expansion. This occurred through the application of new criteria meant to "impose a new social classification of the world population on a global scale". Based on this occurrence, a new social-historic identities were newly produced, although already produced in America. Some of these names include; 'Whites', 'Negroes', 'Blacks', 'Yellows', 'Olives', 'Indians', and 'Mestizos'. With the advantage of being located in the Atlantic basin, 'Whites' were in a privileged to control gold and silver production. The work which created the product was by 'Indians' and 'Negroes'. With the control of commercial capital from 'White' workers. And therefore, Europe or Western Europe emerged as the central place of new patterns and capitalist power.
Islamic world
Eurocentrism's effect on the Islamic world has predominantly come from a fundamental statement of preventing the account of lower-level explanation and account of and their social evolution, mainly through eurocentrism's idealist construct. This construct has gained power from the historians revolving their conclusions around the idea of a central point that favours the notion that the evolution of societies and their progress are dictated by general tendencies, leading to the Islamic world's evolution becoming more of a philosophical topic of history instead of historical fact. Along with this, eurocentrism extends to trivialise and marginalise the philosophies, scientific contributions, cultures, and other additional facets of the Islamic world.
Orientalism
Eurocentrism's reach has not only affected the perception of the cultures and civilizations of the Islamic world, but also the aspects and ideas of Orientalism, a cultural idea that distinguished the "Orient" of the East from the "" Western societies of Europe and North America, and which was originally created so that the social and cultural milestones of the Islamic and Oriental world would be recognised. This effect began to take place during the nineteenth century when the Orientalist ideals were distilled and shifted from topics of sensuality and deviating mentalities to what is described by Edward Said as "unchallenged coherence". Along with this shift came the creation of two types of orientalism: latent, which covered the Orient's constant durability through history, and manifest, a more dynamic orientalism that changes with the new discovery of information. The eurocentric influence is shown in the latter, as the nature of manifest Orientalism is to be altered with new findings, which leaves it vulnerable to the warping of its refiner's ideals and principles. In this state, eurocentrism has used orientalism to portray the Orient as "backwards" and bolster the superiority of the Western world and continue the undermining of their cultures to further the agenda of racial inequality.
Beauty standards and the cosmetic industry
Due to colonialism, Eurocentric beauty ideals have had varying degrees of impact on the cultures of non-Western countries. The influence on beauty ideals across the globe varies by region, with Eurocentric ideals having a relatively strong impact in South Asia but little to no impact in East Asia. However, Eurocentric beauty ideals have also been on the decline in the United States, especially with the success of Asian female models, which may be signaling a breakdown in the hegemony of White American beauty ideals. "The dawning of the new millennium may signal a shift in the cultural importance of racialized gendered bodies. On October 14, 2000, a Filipina American, Miss Hawaii Angela Perez Baraquio, was crowned Miss America for 2001. A few years earlier another Miss Hawaii, a mixed-race part-Asian American woman named Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee, won not only the Miss USA competition but the title of 1997 Miss Universe. Such victories do not necessarily mean full acceptance for Asian Americans into the American body politic. However they do signal a breakdown in the hegemony of European-American cultural standards of beauty." In Vietnam, Eurocentric beauty ideals have been openly rejected, as local women consider Western women's ideal of beauty as being overweight, masculine and unattractive. "In fact, the women made it very clear to me that they considered Western and Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) women's ideals of beauty unattractive, overweight and masculine." "Dai describes a regional standard of beauty that is much more nuanced than a simple aspiration to Western ideals. Indeed, the tone of Dai's comments illustrates how sex workers use distinctly Asian standards of beauty to resist the ideals of the West. Women's deliberate rejection of Western standards illustrates how local, regional, and global ideals converge in their practices."
Clark doll experiment
In the 1940s, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted experiments called "the doll tests" to examine the psychological effects of segregation on African-American children. They tested children by presenting them with four dolls, identical in all but skin tone. The children were instructed to choose which doll they preferred and were asked the race of the doll. Most of the children chose the white doll. The Clarks stated in their results that the perceptions of the African-American children had been altered by the discrimination they faced. The tested children also labelled the white dolls with positive descriptions.
Mexican doll experiment
In 2012, Mexicans recreated the doll test. Mexico's National Council to Prevent Discrimination presented a video where children had to pick the "good doll", and the doll that looks like them. By doing this experiment, the researchers sought to analyse the degree to which Mexican children are influenced by modern-day media accessible to them. Most of the children chose the white doll; they also stated that it looked like them. The people who carried out the study noted that Eurocentrism is deeply rooted in different cultures, including Latin cultures.
Skin lightening
Skin whitening has become a common practice in some countries. A 2011 study found that, in Tanzania, motivation for the use of skin lightening products is to look more 'European'. However, in East Asia, the practice began long before exposure to Europeans – tan skin was associated with lower-class field work, and thus constant exposure to sun, while having pale skin signified belonging to the upper-class. Skin bleaching can have negative health effects. One study observed that, among the female population of Senegal in West Africa, 26% of women were using skin lightening creams at the time. The most common products used were hydroquinone and corticosteroids. 75% of women who used these creams showed adverse cutaneous effects, mainly acne.
East Asia
In East Asia, the impact of Eurocentrism in beauty advertisements has been minimal. Anti-European undercurrents in local advertisements for female-oriented products are quite common. European models are hired for around half of advertisements made by European brands such as Estée Lauder and L'Oréal, while local Japanese cosmetics brands tend to use exclusively East Asian female models.
Brazil
The beauty ideal for women in Brazil is the morena; a mixed-race brown woman who is supposed to represent the best characteristics of every racial group in Brazil. "In Brazil and Jamaica, national discourses of race mixture shaped alternative beauty ideals. For example, the morena (mixed race brown woman) is the quit-essential icon of a longstanding ideology of racial democracy in Brazil, portrayed in eroticized images of carnival, samba, and football. The morena supposedly embodies the positive characteristics of each race in Brazil." According to Alexander Edmond's book Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil, whiteness plays a role in Latin American, specifically Brazilian, beauty standards, but it is not necessarily distinguished based on skin colour. Edmonds said the main ways to define whiteness in people in Brazil is by looking at their hair, nose, then mouth before considering skin colour. Edmonds focuses on the popularity of plastic surgery in Brazilian culture. Plastic surgeons usually applaud and flatter mixtures when emulating aesthetics for performing surgery, and the more popular mixture is African and European. This shapes beauty standards by racialising biological and popular beauty ideals to suggest that mixture with whiteness is better. Donna Goldstein's book Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence, and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown also addresses how whiteness influences beauty in Brazil. Goldstein notes that in Brazil, there is a hierarchy for beauty that places being mixed race at the top and pure, un-admixed black characteristics at the bottom, calling them ugly. "A purely African appearance with no mixture of white characteristics is perceived as ugly in Brazil (Goldstein 2003; Wade 2009)."
See also
Pro-Eurocentrism
Anti-Eurocentrism
Other centrisms
Related topics
Further reading
(1978). 9780883570715, NOK. ISBN 9780883570715
External links
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Critiques of Eurocentrism Bibliography
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