Occidentalism (istighrāb) refers broadly to stereotyped images of “the West” as a metageographical concept. Studies of occidentalism are few, compared with the many studies reflecting on orientalism and its cultural reifications. A reason for this lies in the imbalance of power that leads academics to study the orientalist discourse in its context of Western hegemony, more than occidentalism in its various contexts of relative marginalisation. This has, in turn, produced an imbalance of knowledge about the means and functions of othering in various parts of the world.

Since the la…