“Western Civilization”

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What is a ‘Westerner’?
A dialog from Bob Corbett's Haiti-L, December 1995. The dubious assumptions often implied by the word, but it has some use as a cultural label.
The Idea of the West
By David Gress, Foreign Policy in Focus, August 1998. A new interest on the part of social scientists in the big questions and the long sweep of history. The critical demarcations of today are not national borders, but lines of confrontation. The new scholarship on global change understands this but lacks a historical understanding of the identity of one of the major players in the emerging world—the West.
On Essentialism and ‘Western Civilization’
By Haines Brown, 24 November 1999. Response to a question regarding the cultural influences that constituted Western Civilizaiton.
The Rise of the West—or Not? A Revision to Socio-economic History
By Jack A. Goldstone, University of California, Davis, February 2001. What is not often undertaken is a rigorous, step-by-step interrogation of how history unfolded in various regions from a global viewpoint. Such an approach is particularly important for the history of Europe's industrial development.
The Origins of Occidentalism
By Ian Buruma, Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 February 2004. Something else is going on, Occidentalism: a war against a particular idea of the West, which is neither new nor unique to Islamist extremism. The West is seen as something less than human, to be destroyed, as though it were a cancer.
The greatness of western civilization
By Edwin A. Locke, 2005. There are three fundamental respects in which Western culture is objectively the best. These are the core values or core achievements of Western civilization, and what made America great. Therefore we have the moral imperative for destroying any peoples that deserve to be destroyed. Appended is a critique by Haines Brown.