Introduction

Abstract

We intend to show in this volume how the East (as locatable in Asia) perceives the ways in which the West (Anglo- American for our purposes) presents or represents, and reproduces or reconfigures, its material and transcendental cultural influences and other flows as impacts on civilization or as aspects of contemporary culture in discursive constructions about the East. We contend that the ways in which the West imbibes and partakes of these material and cultural influences of the East reflects and represents Western attitudes towards the East that may be exemplified as ‘the gaze of the West’; a gaze with a historical resonance, a prescient presence, a pragmatic disposition and a utilitarian philosophy of profitable enterprise. The last is more than evident in the repackaging of the products of the praxis of Easternization as deliverable, saleable and consumable goods and services in life spheres, such as those of leisure and recreation, management and training, fashion and iconography, architecture and design, gastronomy and the culinary arts and alternative therapies, to name some of the most apparent. Islam , Taoism and Hinduism, Krishna Consciousness, Zen Buddhism and Sufism, Judo, Tai Chi Chuan and Yoga, Ayurveda, Reiki and acupuncture, Feng Shui, chakras and numerology, curry, sushi and kebabs have all invaded the ‘discursive, practical and aesthetic spheres’ (Dawson, 2006, p. 1) of human life and experience in the West and the world at large: a world in which Al Jazeera competes ceaselessly with CNN and BBC World for our seemingly insatiable attention, while Bollywood and Hollywood offer competing Eastern and Western celluloid fares for consumption.