Most social theorists of modernity have been Westerners, precisely because social theory is a product of the Western experience of modernity. Despite the fact that diversity has undoubtedly played a constitutive part in the formation of human history, the convergence thesis has gained a prominent place in social theory, because of the claims for Western modernity as the ‘universalizing phenomenon’ of human societies. For the same reason, modernity has been associated with the advent of ‘Reason’, bringing human beings to believe that it is possible for different cultures to live harmoniously together. Viewing modernity as identical with Reason gave rise to entirely Western-based ethnocentric social theorizings. For example, Weber's (1958) analysis of the uniqueness of the West influenced many later social theorizings. A key element of modernity, rationality, was seen as unique to the West; therefore, what seemed to be at stake was the weakness of the East in giving shape to history.

However, rather than producing simple convergence, Western modernity also led to the radicalization of dualities, oppositions and differences. In order both to support its own self-image and to legitimize its imperialist ambition, the West constructed the East as ‘uncivilized’ (Said, 1994). Western modernity saw colonization as a crucial method for shaping the world in its own image. By means of colonization, in the eyes of Western imperialists, civilization would be brought to Eastern countries, while, in fact, this imperialism was distancing the West further from the East. In stark contrast to Western hope, a different reality was to emerge: some societies were not manageable along the lines of Western modernity. Self-defensive liberation movements came about as reactions to Western rupture: Western modernity challenged its others in the name of civilization, but this challenge created reactions that resulted in different modernities.

We can therefore understand the rise of the West as a double-edged phenomenon. On the one hand, the West killed some of the particular traits of the countries it colonized but, on the other hand, the rise of the West played a part in the radicalization of some Eastern self-questioning and the problematization of Eastern countries’ worldviews, despite the claim of dependency theory (which emerged as a reaction against modernization theory) that the rise of the West had a totally negative effect on ‘underdeveloped’ countries (see Amin, 1976).