Enlightenment social science mapped all world societies onto one West-modeled progress scale

Evidence

First, it allows us to characterize and classify societies into different categories—i.e., “Western,” “non-Western.” It is a tool to think with. It sets a certain structure of thought and knowledge in motion. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 509 (#expands, via linked claim)

In transformed and reworked forms, this discourse continues to inflect the language of the West, its image of itself and “others,” its sense of “us” and “them,” its practices and relations of power toward the Rest. It is especially important for the languages of racial inferiority and ethnic superiority which still operate so powerfully across the globe today. So, far from being a “formation” of the past, and of only historical interest, the discourse of “the West and the Rest” is alive and well in the modern world. And one of the surprising places where its effects can still be seen is in the language, theoretical models, and hidden assumptions of modern sociology itself. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 688 (#expands, via linked claim)

By the nineteenth century, however, this Enlightenment universalism was rapidly being replaced by an emphasis on differences between people and civilizations. Europe developed what Etienne Balibar calls an “imperialist superiority complex.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 119 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Enlightenment social science ranked all societies on one West-defined developmental scale; Eighteenth-century theory posited four subsistence stages governing all social institutions; The ignoble savage concept helped launch Enlightenment theories of social development (+7 more)

Related

• Enlightenment social science ranked all societies on one West-defined developmental scale (similarity 0.92)
• Enlightenment thought ranked all societies on one universal civilizational scale. (similarity 0.87)
• The Enlightenment’s self-image required the Rest as its suppressed opposite. (similarity 0.85)
• The Enlightenment provided both the explanation and the measure of human progress (similarity 0.85)
• The West concept classifies, represents, compares, and evaluates societies (similarity 0.82)
• Early social science absorbed West-versus-Rest civilizational stereotypes into its frameworks. (similarity 0.82)
• Nineteenth-century Europe traded Enlightenment universalism for imperialist superiority (similarity 0.81)
• The Enlightenment assumed European society was the apex of human achievement (similarity 0.81)
• Eighteenth-century thinkers believed in one universal French-inspired civilization. (similarity 0.79)
• The West’s entitlement to own the nonwhite world rests on defining it as subhuman (similarity 0.79)
• Nineteenth-century theory defined every civilization in relation to a singular Western ideal (similarity 0.79)
• The noble-savage ideal served as a Western vehicle for self-critique (similarity 0.78)
• A shared East-West binary grounds vast and diverse bodies of thought (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The West concept classifies, represents, compares, and evaluates societies #expands (0.90) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 509
• The West-Rest discourse persists and still shapes modern sociology #expands (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 688
• Nineteenth-century Europe traded Enlightenment universalism for imperialist superiority #qualifies (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 119
• Nineteenth-century Orientalism traded Enlightenment universalism for a hierarchy of civilizations. #exemplifies (0.75) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 193
• The West’s self-conception formed only in relation to the Rest #qualifies (0.75)
• Enlightenment environmentalism furnished a rationale for colonial hierarchy #expands (0.70) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 232