Egypt
Said expounds, “As Balfour justifies the necessity for British occupation, supremacy in his mind is associated with “our” knowledge of Egypt and not principally with military or economic power. Knowledge to Balfour means surveying a civilization from its origins to its prime to its decline- and of course, it means being able to do that…Balfour nowhere denies British superiority and Egyptian inferiority; he takes them from granted as he describes the consequences of knowledge." Egypt is an Oriental nation that Balfour deems to be inferior to British. According to Balfour the perceived inferiority justifies the British colonization of the country. Balfour regards Britain as a powerful and supreme nation with a prerogative to colonize inferior countries especially those classes as Oriental.
Orientals
Said expounds, “If he (Balfour) he does not speak directly for all Orientals, it is because they after all speak another language; yet he knows how they feel since he knows their history, their reliance such as he, and their expectations. Still, he does speak for them in the sense that what they might have to say, were they to be asked and might they be able to answer, would somewhat uselessly confirm what is already evident: that they are a subject race, dominated by a race that knows them and what is good for them better than they could possibly know themselves.” Orientals are subjugated by colonization due to alleged lowliness. Balfour is ethnocentric for he attempts to explain the Orientals’ needs, yet he cannot comprehend their language. Racism contributes to the blatant suppression of the Oriental nations.
“Science of the Concrete”
Said elucidates, “The mind seems persistently to formulate what Claude Levi-Strauss has called a science of the concrete. A primitive tribe for example assigns a definite place, function, and significance to every leafy species in its immediate environment…This kind of rudimentary classification has a logic to it, but the rules of the logic by which a green fern in one society is a symbol of grace and in another is considered maleficent are neither predictably rational nor universal.” “Science of the concrete” fosters uniformity in terms of how individuals in a specified setting interact and interpret symbols within their environment. Uniform interpretations result in an orderly culture. Interactionist perspectives such as in the case of the fern vary among cultures; accordingly, there is no singular universal interpretation that is ascribed to a fern; its implications differ depending on cultural environments.
