Thoughts on when aspects of culture become 'synthetic'
The west may have invented the study of 'anthropology', with an interest in cultures found during the era of empire. In a globalized world this is no longer only academic study in the west, the "hegemony of Anglo Saxon discourse" writes Gustavo Lins Rioberio: which has led to asymmetrical ignorance of other cultures. Anthropological studies published in English get translated into other languages for anthropologists of other countries to read, but other language works are not published in English. This could cause a gap in cultural understanding, and at least seems to show an unwillingness to study cultures from their own first hand viewpoint.
"This asymmetrical ignorance may express itself in such curious albeit common situations as the fact that the history of universal anthropology (i.e. of hegemonic anthropologies) is known and studied by non-hegemonic anthropologists but the reverse is true"
Metropolotian Provincialism
'The ignorance that hegemonic centres usually have of the production of non-hegemonic centres'
Provincial Cosmopolitanism
'The knowledge that non-hegemonic centres usually have of the production of hegemonic centers.'
Book: Anthropology - Section 17: Anthropologizing Ourselves [link]
