Oryantal Bağlamda Doğu Antropolojisi: Sankt-Petersburg Üniversitesinin Doğu Bilimleri Fakültesinde “Asya ve Afrika halklarının sosyo-kültürel antropolojisi” adlı yeni yüksel lisans programı

In the article, V.V. Bocharov, the director and scientific adviser of the new master's program: “Socio-cultural anthropology of the peoples of Asia and Africa”, which opens at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of St. Petersburg State University in 2021, shares the motives that prompted its creation. In his opinion, the aim of the program is to return the study of “modernity” to the bosom of oriental studies, as a science about the cultures of the East. Scientific researches in this direction should contribute to the creation of a development theory of the East, since the accumulated material on the socio-political practices of modern states in this region clearly show the existence of universality, on the one hand, on the other hand, they differ significantly from Western processes identical in form. Otherwise, countries, even those that have surpassed the West in many respects, are doomed to remain in the “underdeveloped” status. The reason is the dominance of the evolutionist paradigm (“savagery-barbarism-civilization”), where “civilization” is the standard of society's progressiveness, which actually turned it into ideology. The development of such a theory also has an important socio-political significance, since the discourse of “underdevelopment” in many ways rises revolutionism characteristic to East, under the slogans of overcoming it.