In his critique of Eurocentrism, Immanuel Wallerstein has provided a useful discussion of a major issue for contemporary left politics and critical social science.footnote1 By contrast with the higher-profile subject of ‘multi-culturalism’, to which it is of course related, the Eurocentrism question has received less considered debate. Wallerstein’s contribution is therefore very welcome, providing a proper delineation of the problem and some firm steering away from false solutions towards a better approach. In this brief analysis, I want to draw attention to an important line of argument that would see Wallerstein’s own position, in spite of its crusading tone, as one which has insufficiently broken with Eurocentric thought patterns. However, I also want to suggest that such a critical line tends to promote an excessively moralistic climate of political debate, and also fails itself to escape the Eurocentric dilemma. In that context, it may be appropriate for social theorists of Wallerstein’s sort to step forward more boldly in acknowledgement, and perhaps even in defence, of those ‘universalist’ aspects of ‘Eurocentrism’ that are unavoidably part of their explanatory and political projects.

Wallerstein’s article contains two slightly different characterizations of Eurocentrism. One of these presents Eurocentrism as an allembracing epochal Weltanschauung, leaving it well-nigh impossible for social scientists or anyone else to escape its contamination, whilst the other framing of Eurocentrism portrays it more narrowly as a—dominant but optional—Western ideology. In the first vein, Wallerstein describes Eurocentrism as the ‘constitutive geoculture’ of the modern world, a culture whose values—humanism, secularism, modernism and so forth—altogether ‘permeate social science’.footnote2 This way of identifying Eurocentrism is to be found in many current texts of ‘post-colonial’ critical theory, challenging to the core the major assumptions and pretences of Anglo-American social thought—including radical currents like Marxism or feminism. The argument is that whilst there are certainly a number of important sub-traditions which are aware of the ‘downside’ of European modernity, these strands nevertheless remain part of The Tradition insofar as they merely offer variations on the definitive modernist themes of universal progress and scientific knowledge. Apparently radical, these sub-traditions nevertheless share in the cultural specificity, and thus the cultural imperialism, of their Eurocentric mainstream.

Wallerstein’s endorsement of the ‘gestalt’ approach to Eurocentrism is further evident in his notable emphasis on the need to avoid ostensibly anti-Eurocentric positions which in fact turn out to be nothing of the kind. For example, there are scenarios whereby Europe’s being first past the post of capitalist modernity is seen as a contingent and inglorious achievement, rather than a necessary and glorious one, because nonWestern civilizations either already contained significant modem/capitalist elements, or would have substantially developed them were it not for Europe’s ruthless cashing in on its accidental historical windfall. But such scenarios are still Eurocentric, Wallerstein accuses, and they are deviously so, because they continue to privilege modernist and capitalist mores, either as the historical end-point for all cultures, or as eternally present components of them.