clash of civilizations? a critical perspective
Post on 15-Apr-2017
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The Clash OF Civilizations
Impressions and Critique
In the post cold-war era, there have been numerous attempts at trying to straighten-out the state of world-politics • The End of History and The Last Man – Francis Fukuyama (Universalisation of Western Liberal Democracy) – 1992
• The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World-Order – Samuel Huntington (Perpetual Clash) – 1993
• Jihad vs. McWorld – Benjamin Barber (Struggle between Globalization and Tribalism)- 1995
Who is Samuel Huntington?
Political Scientist
White-House coordinator (Carter Administration)
Professor at Columbia And HarvardUniversities
Genesis of the idea of Clash • This notion of “Clash of Civilizations” is not original in Huntington
• In a sort of classic ‘orientalist’ gesture , he took it from a 1990 Atlantic Magazine article – The Roots of Muslim Rage by Bernard Lewis
• Its also suggested that Huntington’s proposition was an attempt to ‘academically’ validate the fictitious Islamic ‘Green Threat’ for the sustenance of Euro- American military-industrial complex
Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations
- First presented as a lecture in 1992 at American Enterprise Institute
- Foreign Policy Magazine carried it as a long-read in 1993
- Huntington later expanded it into a book in 1996
Basic Premises
Dividing the World into ‘Civilizations’
• Western• Confucian• Japanese• Islamic• Hindu• Slavic-Orthodox• Latin-American • African
The faultlines between civilizations will be the battle lines of future
- Misappropriating diversity into conflict
- Faultlines don’t necessarily devolve into battle lines
Civilization is the broadest concept of cultural identity
- Identities can traverse the boundaries civilization - People can, for example, be western-muslims, latin-american hindus, Japanese-muslims etc.
Increase inIntra-Civilization Consciousness due to increasing interactions within the civilization
- What about the inter-civilizational exchanges? - There is a healthy socio-cultural, economic and political exchange between civilizations, cutting across Huntington’s “battle lines”
West, at the peak of its power confronts NON-WESTS that increasingly have a desire, the will and the resources to shape the world into non-western ways
- Creating a “non-western” demon - A demon that “we” are in “confrontation” with
Economic Regionalism is increasing amongst civilizations. It can only succeed only when its rooted in common civilization- Inter-Civilizational trade organizations
- BRICS
- Trans-Pacific Partnership
- BRICS contains five different ‘civilizations’
First Arab Nationalism then Islamicfundamentalism manifested themselves-As if so called Islamic Fundamentalism is a successor of Arab Nationalism
- Arab Nationalism was mainly anti-colonial in nature
- Islam has bloody borders. Classic example of Islamophobic bigotry
Aggrandizing the west
West Versus the Rest Most of the attention is given to West
West propounds a “universal civilization”
Right-Wing Neocon Agenda
Alarmist Themes - The Islamic-Confucian alliance has emerged to challenge western interests, values and power
- Western countries are decreasing their military power while non-western ones are increasing it. Only west promotes non- proliferation
- Flow of weapons is generally from East-Asia to Middle-East?
Sounds more like policy-recommendation than a genuine academic research - To create a “western block”, by roping-in Latin-America, Europe, Russia and Japan, against “Confucian and Islamic States
- Maintain Western Military Superiority in East and South-West Asia - To “exploit” differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic States. To support, in other Civilizations, groups sympathetic to the West- Divide and Rule
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