Western cultural anthropology, sociological and feminist perspectives on development have been adopting an essentialist standpoint. The question, what do natives really mean?, how do they internally perceive themselves?, has become a major concern in Third World sociological and anthropological studies. On the other hand, social scientists in the Third World, and specifically in Arab countries, have called for the `indigenisation' of the social sciences for the creation of analytical and theoretical concepts which are meant to be applicable to local and `indigenous' cultures. This essay attempts to confront the new Western `essentialism' in the social sciences with the call for `indigenisation' in the East. We wish to suggest that, due to the paradox of Western secularisation, namely, that it has been created by religious fundamentalism - a process discovered by Nietzsche and Weber - religion remains an absent centre of Western anthropological and sociological discourse. Owing to a process of growing cultural globalisation the call for `indigenisation' remains a result of intra-cultural discourse and not of any serious attempt to rationalise the modern heritage of history and culture.
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