occidentosis

English

Etymology

From occident (“west”) +‎ -osis; calque of Iranian Persian غرب‌زدگی (ğarb-zadegi).

Noun

occidentosis (uncountable)

1. (rare, dated) An increase in social inequality that occurs when the widespread adoption of Western technology results in job losses and factory owners gaining wealth.

   When a factory rapidly producing cloth opened in the village, many people lost their jobs from the resulting occidentosis.

   • 1984, Jalal Al-i Ahmad, Hamid Algar, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West, Indiana University Press, page 63:

     To follow the West—the Western states and the oil companies—is the supreme manifestation of occidentosis in our time.

   • 2019, Vali Mahlouji, “occidentosis, Vali Mahlouji”, in Glossary of Common Knowledge‎^[1]:

     Occidentosis epitomises the idea that there is a “Western sickness” from which the Third World must rise to detox and strive to cleanse itself.

   • 2023, Sushil Jain, “"Westoxification" or "Garbzadhigi": Occidentosis or Hatred of the West”, in Centre for the Study of Minority Cultures & Law‎^[2]:

     Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s critique of this imitation—which was manifested not only in Iran’s ‘White Revolution’ under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi but also under the dictatorship of his father Reza Shah—in his Gharbzadegi, written originally in Persian in the 1960s but translated later into English by others, gave rise to a number of equivalent terms in English, such as Occidentosis, Westoxification, West struckenness, Westitis and Westomania.