ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches as briefly as possible the various dimensions and component parts of Orientalism. It sketches the various positions with regards to Eastern agency in the racist-imperialist and racist anti-imperialist literature while it does the same for the imperialist and anti-imperialist Eurocentric institutionalist literature. The development of postcolonial/non-Eurocentric challenges to Western international theory has gained rapid pace within international relations (IR) studies since the late 1990s. Eurocentric institutionalism locates difference to the degree of rationality found within a society's institutions and culture. Imperialist Eurocentrism embodies a strong dose of paternalism, which awards Western societies a pioneering agency such that they can auto-generate or auto-develop through "Eurocentric logic of immanence" into modernity. Conversely, Eastern societies are granted conditional agency and are unable to auto-generate or self-develop. The West must deliver the necessary rational institutions to the Eastern societies so as to surface their latent reason, thereby kick-starting their progressive development into modernity - otherwise known as the "white man's burden".
