Suppose there are two lines on a graph, close together and moving in thesame general direction and that at one point one of them begins to divergefrom the other. After some time the gap between them will have widenedvery considerably. This simple image would command general agreementas an illustration of the different paths taken by Western and MiddleEastern or Islamic civilizations in the course of the last thousand years.

Orientalism is a study of the genesis, evolution, and reproduction of aspecific Western tradition of knowledge concerned with the Mashreq, orthe eastern part of the Arabo-Islamic world. This tradition, however, isnot one of pure and objective knowledge; rather it is the elaboration of aset of fantasies and beliefs that is subsequently used as the basis forWestern colonial enterprise.

Gilbert Durand, the theorist of the imaginary, is fond of saying that the study of human beings is “like being in a room and watching yourself go by in the street:” what is said of the object is always applicable to the subject. That is why the discourse of academic disciplines concerned with humans is peculiarly vulnerable. If you produce a theory of the imaginary, like Gilbert Durand, that theory will also be applicable to the discourse which produces it, immediately relativizing the theory as an imaginary product. If you study a culture or group of cultures having the character of the “Oriental,” your study, as Edward Said's book points out, is itself open to analysis as a manifestation of “Western” culture. A book which indicates, as his does, that “Western” representations of the East (beginning with the notion of the East itself) have purposes which relate to purely Western needs and projects can be seen in its turn as a representation of Orientalism having purposes of its own, such as the furtherance of Arab politial causes. A review which points these things out is itself asking to be reviewed in terms of its own representations and purposes. And so on.

Past studies of modernization have assumed that intellectuals adhering toWestern values would be conduits of rational, scientific norms deemednecessary to the structuring of modern, complex societies. Littleconsideration was given to the attitudes of these intellectuals towards thesocial change presumably resulting from the distribution of rationalvalues. Modernization theorists supposed a positive relationship betweenrationalism as a mode of thought and social change, a suppositionreflecting their own expectations of a progressive and relativelypredictive evolution of traditional societies toward more modern and intricate social systems.

The history of collective attitudes about death, a branch of the newhistory of mentalités, was until recently considered a speciality, or even acuriosity that was peculiarly French, or so at least, E. Le Roy Laduriewrote with reference to the work of Philippe Aries, Francois Lebrun and myself in his Territory of the Historian.

Cults of saints in traditional rural society or in European societies of thepast have been studied by scholars in various disciplines.1 But lessattention has been paid to such cults in modern urban settings, where theyare also an important part of ‘popular’ Catholicism, and an example of thecontinuing vigour of ‘popular’ or ‘folk’ culture in industrial society.

The course of events leading up to 1947, when independence and partition came to the Indian subcontinent, has colored retrospectiveassessments of Hindu-Muslim relations in many perceptible ways.Polarities in religion and culture receive inordinate attention as theharbingers of the great divide yet to come, as do political developments asturning points in the eventual separate destinies of many Hindus and Muslims in South Asia.

Always have Indians identified themselves by their caste, by theirancestral village: “Our family were Khatris from the West Punjabcountryside.” “Murud, at one time a fairly prosperous village, is mynative place.” In the late nineteenth century, however, an important new process of forging group identities which transcended these local attributions came to characterize South Asian social history. This was in part prompted by the efforts of an alien British administration to identify the constituent units in Indian society. Drawing on European historical experience, the administrators applied the collective labels "Hindu" and "Muslim" to groups who were far from homogeneous communities.