1. Huntington, “Clash of
Civilizations?”
CLASS LECTURE PREPARED BY REFERRING DIFFERENT BOOKS AND
WEBSITES
Main Thesis: “The most important
conflicts of the future will occur along
the cultural fault lines separating
civilizations from one another” - 25
2. What is a Civilization?
• A Cultural Entity, at the level of a village
• A Nation, with which villages share significant
features
• A Religion, which links nations together
• A Language, usually (not always) shared by
different nations
• A Worldview, one constituted by culture,
nation, religion and language
3. A Civilization is:
• “...thus the highest cultural grouping of people
and the broadest level of cultural identity
people have...” – 24
• “...defined both by common objective
elements, such as language, history, religion,
customs, institutions...”-24
4. Civilizations are Different
• “The people of different civilizations have
different views on the relations between God
and man, the individual and the group, the
citizen and the state, parents and children,
husband and wife, as well as differing views of
the relative importance of rights and
responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality
and hierarchy.” 25
5. Questions to ponder
• Is the United States a “civilization” according
to Huntington’s definitions?
• When we say “Western Civilization” today,
what exactly do we mean by that?
• Are there any flaws to his argument?
6. • The Clash of Civilizations is a theory that people's cultural and
religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in
the post-Cold War world.
• It was proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in
a 1992 lecture[1] at the American Enterprise Institute, which
was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled
"The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to his former student
Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the
Last Man.
• Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The
Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
7. • Huntington began his thinking by surveying the
diverse theories about the nature of global politics in
the post-Cold War period.
• Some theorists and writers argued that human
rights, liberal democracy, and capitalist free market
economy had become the only remaining ideological
alternative for nations in the post-Cold War world.
8. • Specifically, Francis Fukuyama argued that the
world had reached the 'end of history’.
• Huntington believed that while the age of
ideology had ended, the world had only
reverted to a normal state of affairs
characterized by cultural conflict.
9. • The clash of civilizations, for Huntington,
represents a development of history.
• In the old time, the history of international
system was mainly about the struggles
between monarchs, nations and ideologies.
• Those conflicts were primarily seen within
Western civilization.
10. • But after the end of the cold war, world
politics had been moved into a new aspect in
which non- Western civilizations were no
more the exploited recipients of Western
civilization but become another important
actor joining the West to shape and move the
world history.
11. • Huntington divided the world into the "major
civilizations" in his thesis as such:
• Western civilization, comprising the United States
and Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia
and Oceania. Whether Latin America and the former
member states of the Soviet Union are included, or
are instead their own separate civilizations, will be an
important future consideration for those regions,
according to Huntington.
12. • Latin American. Includes Central America, South America (excluding
Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana), Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and
Mexico. May be considered a part of Western civilization. Many people of
the Southern Cone regard themselves as full members of the Western
civilization.
• The Orthodox world of the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia
(except Croatia and Slovenia), Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Romania.
– Countries with non-Orthodox majority are usually excluded (Shia Muslim
Azerbaijan, Sunni Muslim Albania and most of Central Asia, Roman Catholic
Slovenia and Croatia, Protestant and Catholic Baltic states), still Armenia
(where Armenian Apostolic Church is a part of Oriental Orthodoxy rather than
Eastern Orthodox Church) is included.
13. • The Eastern world is the mix of the Buddhist, Chinese, Hindu,
and Japonic civilizations.
– The Buddhist areas of Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar,
Sri Lanka, and Thailand are identified as separate from other
civilizations, but Huntington believes that they do not constitute a
major civilization in the sense of international affairs.
– The Sinic civilization of China, the Koreas, Singapore, Taiwan, and
Vietnam. This group also includes the Chinese diaspora, especially in
relation to Southeast Asia.
– Hindu civilization, located chiefly in India, Bhutan and Nepal, and
culturally adhered to by the global Indian diaspora.
– Japan, considered a hybrid of Chinese civilization and older Altaic
patterns.
14. • The Muslim world of the Greater Middle East (excluding
Armenia, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Georgia, Israel, Malta and South
Sudan), northern West Africa, Albania, Bangladesh, Brunei,
Comoros, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Maldives.
• The civilization of Sub-Saharan Africa located in Southern
Africa, Middle Africa (excluding Chad), East Africa (excluding
Ethiopia, Comoros, Kenya, Mauritius, and Tanzania), Cape
Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Considered as a possible 8th civilization by Huntington.
15. • The central thrust of the thesis is suggested by the
subtitle of this book: ‘On the Exhaustion of Political
Ideas in the Fifties’. Bell 's argument is that the great
political ideologies of the nineteenth century,
liberalism and socialism especially, each of which he
conceives of as ‘a set of beliefs, infused with passion,
and seek[ing] to transform the whole of a way of life’,
finally lost their ability to mobilize the people of the
advanced industrial societies in the 1950s
16. Why Civilizations will Clash
Huntington offers six main explanations for why civilizations will clash:
• Differences among civilizations are too basic in that
civilizations are differentiated from each other by history,
language, culture, tradition, and, most important, religion.
These fundamental differences are the product of centuries,
so they will not soon disappear.
• The world is becoming a smaller place. As a result, the
interactions across the world are increasing, and they
intensify civilization consciousness and awareness of
differences between civilizations and commonalities within
civilizations.
17. • Due to the economic modernization and social change,
people are separated from longstanding local identities.
Instead, religion has replaced this gap, which provides a basis
for identity and commitment that transcends national
boundaries and unites civilizations.
• The growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the
dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak
of power. At the same time, a return-to-the-roots
phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations.
18. • A West at the peak of its power confronts
non-Western countries that increasingly have
the desire, the will and the resources to shape
the world in non-Western ways.
19. end-of-ideology
• Although not originated by the American
sociologist Daniel Bell, this very controversial
thesis is commonly identified with him, thanks
to the publication in 1960 of a book of his
essays entitled The End of Ideology.
20. • . This, he suggests, happened for two main
reasons.
• First, because of the failure of these
ideologies to prevent war, economic
depression, and political oppression. And
second, because of the modifications to
capitalism brought about by the changes
summarized by the term welfare state.
21. • Although Bell acknowledged the continuing
and indeed increased importance of ideology
in ‘the rising states of Asia and Africa’, his
conclusion was that in the industrialized West,
social improvement would and could only
come through what he was later to term
‘“piecemeal” change in a social-democratic
direction’.
22. • The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in
the Fifties is a collection of essays published in 1960 by
Daniel Bell, who described himself as a "socialist in
economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture".
• He suggests that the older, grand-humanistic ideologies
derived from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
had been exhausted, and that new, more parochial ideologies
would soon arise.
• He argues that political ideology has become irrelevant
among "sensible" people, and that the polity of the future
would be driven by piecemeal technological adjustments of
the extant system.
23. • At the time, Bell was attacked by critics, left-wing
and otherwise. Broadly speaking, hostile criticism of
The End of Ideology boiled down to five general
concerns:
• It was a defense of the post-1945 status quo
• It was downplaying genuine political debate in favor
of "technocratic guidance" from social and cultural
elites
24. • It was substituting consensus for moral discourse
• Its intellectual honesty was compromised by its author's
outspoken anti-Stalinism. (He had been a social democrat in
his youth.)
• It was disproven by the return of radical discontentment in
politics, marked by the 1960s and 1970s youth agitations in
the West and the rise of extremist politics in the third world.
(Actually, Bell anticipated this in his book. He did, however,
fail to anticipate the resurgence of "free market" ideology in
the 1970s.)
25. Theory
• A variety of theories have emerged, even before Daniel Bell's
work. Karl Marx, influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, stated that once a state progressed from capitalism, a
classless society would emerge, rendering ideology irrelevant
(cite?).
• Daniel Bell, in the 1950s, is often seen as the standard-bearer
for the theory. James Burnham, a philosopher and political
theorist as well as senior editor of National Review, proffered
a similar thesis that foresaw the advent of a state of
technocrats, all capable of finding the best answers to political
and social problems, making ideology extinct.
