This study employs a cross-disciplinary approach and applies multiple methods of inquiry as a plural analytic, to explore, identify, and present Eastern perspectives of western discourses of the East.  It intends to show how the East (as located in Asia) perceives of the ways in which the West presents or represents, and reproduces or reconfigures, both the material and transcendental cultural influences of the East, in the form of civilisational impacts and as forms of contemporary culture, in discursive constructions as narratives of the West. It contends that the ways in which the West imbibes and partakes of these cultural influences of the East reflects and represents Western attitudes towards the East as exemplified in ‘the gaze’ of the West; a gaze that has a historical resonance, a prescient presence and the pragmatic utilitarianism of profitable enterprise. The last is more than evident in the packaging of the products of the praxis of Easternisation and in their repackaging as deliverable, saleable and consumable goods and services in life spheres such as philosophies/belief systems, leisure and recreation, management and training, architecture, design and iconography, and alternative therapies and remedies to name some of the more apparent. We hypothesise therefore that the main consequences of Easternisation as cultural change will be the prevalence of the praxis of Easternisation as evident in the ways in which the West imbibes and partakes of these cultural influences. We further hypothesise that the main ramification of this phenomenon would be a cultural refashioning of the West as a corollary to the intellectual fashioning of the East by the West as Orientalism. To that end we ask if we can define and assess the ‘gaze of the West’ to be evidence of the praxis of Easternisation, identify specific practices in some spheres of human life, experience and activity as evidence of such praxis, investigate the praxis as the ways in which the West imbibes and partakes of Eastern cultural influences, critically evaluate the ways in which the West presents or represents, and reproduces or reconfigures the cultural traditions of the East in its discursive constructions of the East and ultimately ask if we can then posit that the praxis of Easternisation reflects and represents Western attitudes towards the East as exemplified in the ‘gaze of the West’? The study will culminate in a publication entitled The Gaze of the West: Framings of East. A symposium to be held in August 2009 will provide perspectives of praxis in ten spheres of human life, experience and activity identified for the study, as chapters for part 3 of the book which will be the main outcome of the research project (UKM - GUP - JKKBG - 08 - 01 – 001) entitled Eastern perspectives of Western discourses of the East. 
Lead by Prof. Dr. Shanta Nair-Venugopal

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