PRECEDENT CONDITION OF CONTINENTALIZATION IN ASIA FOR AN ACQUAINTANCE OF CIVILIZATIONS OVERCOMING THE DILEMMA OF ETHNOCENTRISM VERSUS XENOCENTRISM

VEHBİ BAŞER

ABSTRACT

Based on the perspective of the continentalization in which the acquaintance and
cooperation are going to develop inside and among the Asian societies, in Asian
participation into glocalization of the world, it is handled in this paper the problem
of ethnocentrism and xenocentrism as biased cultural attitudes, giving birth to a
dilemma preventing Asian societies from getting into closer contacts with “the others”,
the communities living inside a society and other peoples both in the Asian and other
continents. After the discussion on conceptual problems, it was analyzed, as a tangible
result of modernization through western permeation how the eurocentrism cherished,
improved and expanded the prejudices interpenetrated, and how the close encounter
among societies prevented by inner and outer orientalist forms of information. To
develop an effective intercultural and intercivilizational companionship among Asian
societies, taking the consideration of insufficiency of occasional political efforts into
account, this paper above all emphasizes the importance of developing a comprehensive
research program to determine the forms and prevalence of the biased attitudes in
these societies; and in addition to this program, aims to set up a discussion about the
possibility of developing application projects, in the way to overcome those attitudes and
their negative effects, for improving intersocieatal and intercultural dialog.