ABSTRACT
In order to help ‘dismantle’ the East-West dichotomy I draw on my
research with Latin Americans living in Japan. First, I describe the slant on this dichotomy that has pervaded the world since the end of Cold War.
Then I show how this slant seems to erase Latin America from the planet
and how Latin American ‘deterritorialisation’ (Castells 1996: 378) and
‘translocalities’ (Appadurai 1996a, 1996b) challenge these binary percep-
tions. The third part introduces the concept of ‘the West in the head’ to
explain how Latin Americans locate themselves vis-a`-vis Japanese nationals
and other foreigners. Finally, the last section highlights the implications of
‘the West in the head’ for politicians, laypeople and scholars in understanding social reality divided into pairs. Scholars taking advantage of ‘the
West in the head’ produce a jejune vision of society which is difficult to
support either theoretically or practically, and which leaves aside the rich-
ness and complexity of the current social state of the affairs.
