A (Polemical) Critique of S. Huntington's "A Clash of Civilizations?" (original) (raw)
Related papers
"The Clash of Civilizations?": reality or approach 25 years later. Review of Samuel Huntington's idea of identity, ethnicity and religion from several theoretical stances, 2019
After 25 years, Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations?'" continues to ignite debates around concepts like culture, ethnicity and religion which, for five 'reasons', the author considers realities doomed to be at the origin of conflict among civilizations: differences among civilizations, the increasing interactions of a smaller world; unfitting sense of belonging to the civilizational consciousness in the West-East debate and the resilience of cultural characteristics. In this review, I present Huntington's 'realities' approached by authors that, from five different theoretical standpoints, add to the debate on the origin of cultural, ethnic and religious conflicts. Do these realities, in their ontological position, become factors of conflict, or, depending on the angle authors give them, can (and actually do) have other destinies?
THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS; A CRITIQUE
In Huntington's article, which he refined and expanded in his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, he argued that " the clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. In the book, Huntington said that " culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world. In this Article critically three important issues regarding Huntington's the clash of civilization, have been addressed. These include conceptual weakness of his thesis. Second to critically examine the hypothesis and empirical evidences of his thesis and finally layout the immoral and unethical implications of Huntington's thesis. To conclude Huntington's civilizational identity is an archetype of such ill definition, without providing clear guidelines how to define and find civilization in real life. His hypothesis is not supported by empirical evidences. Culture is not prime source of conflict, scarce resources, economic, military and geographical proximity are also a stronger factor than culture to urges conflicts. Finally clash of civilization is infact an enemy discourse that looks for new enemy Huntington overgeneralizing divide world into a " black and white or good and evil scheme.
The Ideological Function of the Huntington's Thesis about Clash of Civilizations
Kosovo and Metohija: Past, Present , Future. , 2006
This paper calls into question the fruitfulness as well as the ability of Huntington’s thesis about the clash of civilizations to offer an adequate conceptual, theoretical and methodological framework for explaining the armed conflicts at the end of the XX and the beginning of the XXI century, using the analysis of the war in Kosovo and Metohija as an example. On the basis of evidence of cooperation between members of different “civilizations,” of conflict between members of the same “civilization,” as well as on the basis of declarations by the transnational actors themselves about the real causes of the war in Kosovo and Metohija, this paper shows that Huntington’s thesis about the clash of civilizations has a twofold ideological function. The first is to divert attention from fundamental geo-strategic and political economic interests of transnational financial and corporate capital, militarily organized into NATO and under the leadership of the US, and the second is to turn the victims of recolonization against each other, in accordance with the age-old imperial rule –divide et impera.
2006
This article presents a discussion of Samuel Huntington's well-known paradigm based on a philosophical reasoning and cognitive proofs. The authors propose to replace the "clash of civilizations" with the clash of perceptions, a paradigm that better reflects the complexity of individual and collective interactions. This latter paradigm builds upon both case studies and the latest findings in cognitive science and informatics. In the first section, the authors explain the conceptual and methodological limits of Huntington's paradigm before proposing, in the second section, a new approach to cultural and personal phenomena aiming to model the clash of perceptions. New concepts introduced to explain this complex process include: percepts, misperception, misconception and perception prototypes. These concepts help to better understand the complexity of conflict situations between individuals and between groups or States. The Limits of Huntington's Paradigm In 1993, the Foreign Affairs quarterly published an article by Samuel Huntington on "The Clash of Civilizations." In response to the significant criticism waged against the article, Huntington published a book by the same title in 1996 in which he further detailed his thesis. (Huntington 1993, 1996) While Samuel Huntington's work on "the clash of civilizations" has become a noted reference as certain international events could be seen to prove his theses, the author's overall approach can still be criticized, especially through an in-depth study of phenomena related to the "clash." A re-examination of Huntington's theories demonstrating their limits is therefore necessary before presenting a paradigm that more accurately reflects individuals' cognition and political realities. The "Clash of Civilizations" Thesis Samuel Huntington's theses are based on a cultural approach. According to this approach, the world has experienced several successive stages of different types of divisions. Furthermore, Huntington suggests that major distinctions between civilizations became cultural starting in the late 1980s, the beginning of the civilizational era. The dissolution of the two Cold War blocks marks the beginning of this era of civilizations. The major differences between human beings are no longer ideological, political or economic, but basic cultural differences. Huntington assumes that international relations are thereon formed from civilizational fractures or conflicts, and that religion is the primary criteria defining 1 Dr. Mathieu Guidère is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a national security group that applies the intent-centric paradigm to promote research, innovation and education in information sciences, cognitive studies and global security. Dr. Guidère was awarded a Fulbright Grant to pursue research at the Center's Radicalization Watch Project.
Intercivilizational Conflict: Some Guidelines and Some Fault Lines
Intercivilizational conflict has prospered in public and academic discourse since Samuel P. Huntington’s 1993 essay, “The Clash of Civilizations?” which gave new currency to a far older theme. It spread independent wings as fundamentalist Islam, and the fear thereof, peaked on and after September 11, 2001. This article offers several points of order. It examines the historical semantics of both “culture" and “civilization,” tracing the conceptual tension between them in the history of European thought. Along the way, it dwells on philosophers, social theorists and novelists from the eighteenth century to the present. It then proposes a reconsideration of the early 19th-century distinction between culture and civilization, associating the merits and tensions of distinctiveness with the former and allotting universal values to the latter. Finally, it considers contemporary problems weighing on the useful distinction between––and desirable cohabitation of––cultural pluralism and civil universalism.