alter, change, modify - cause to change; make different; cause a transformation; "The advent of the automobile may have altered the growth pattern of the city"; "The discussion has changed my thinking about the issue"
While it would be wrong to romanticize or "orientalize" the social fabric of those communities, which was often torn apart along lines of confession, tribe, and family, there is no doubt that the towns were the fruit of a long experience of settlement and neighborliness.
If Western audiences find it hard to not Orientalize this story of a man's final days, Weerasethakul himself describes his narrative and formal decisions in straightforward terms.
Luckhurst demonstrates how many of these works, including Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars, Richard Marsh's The Beetle, and particularly Rider Haggard's novels (all of chapter seven is devoted to Haggard's Egyptian-themed works) Orientalize Egypt as a locale of forbidden desires, powerful magic, and unspeakable horrors.
Perhaps in an effort to de-emphasize its modernity (and thus its economic power and political otherness which have become points of contention), Confucius Institutes, in Canada at least, tend to orientalize China.