SAMUEL PHILLIPS HUNTINGTON

The Clash of Civilizations Remaking of World Order

The Clash of Civilizations Remaking of World Order By Samuel P. Huntington

Outline

Introduction

One of the dominant narratives in cosmopolitan thought today is that of Samuel Huntington's “clash of civilizations” thesis.

The Challenge to Eurocentrism and the Discourse of the Clash of Civilizations

Huntington assumes that civilizations are concatenations of primordial cultural/religious values which, by definition, do not exhibit large changes over time.

Eurocentrism in World History/Historical Sociology and the Clash of Civilizations Discourse

All critics share the claim that Huntington's framework is Eurocentric. The major theories of the rise of the West, as well as the major theories of IR, endogenized this discourse into the heart of their accounts.

Conclusion

Samuel Huntington, one of the most renowned analysts currently recommend a solid understanding of non-Western civilizations in order, paradoxically, maximizing Western influence.

Introduction

One of the dominant narratives in cosmopolitan thought today is that of Samuel Huntington's “clash of civilizations” thesis. Though typically assumed to apply only to the post-1989 era, it is a thesis that Huntington uses to characterize the bulk of world history. Although his thesis spawned a cottage industry of critiques within International Relations (IR), it has also constituted a target, implicitly or explicitly, in the development of the non-Eurocentric world history/historical sociology; a development which has gone largely un-noticed by IR scholars. This relatively new body of work, which focuses on the development of civilizations in the world-historical context, provides an important critique of Huntington's thesis in a number of ways. In general it critiques Huntington's thesis for its Eurocentrism/Orientalism.

The Challenge to Eurocentrism and the Discourse of the Clash of Civilizations

Samuel Huntington's famous thesis regarding the “clash of civilizations” (1993) has often been read by IR scholars as diagnosis of the post-1989 international situation. This is differentiated from the Cold War period, 1947-1989, when “ideological conflicts” within the West dominated world politics. However, for Huntington, the so-called “civilizational turn” following the end of the Cold War, was, in fact, a return to the normal inter-civilizational foundations of international relations. In this way, the Cold War period of intra- Western ideological difference marked the exception to the historical norm of inter-civilizational conflict between East and West. Huntington's thesis is well-known for outlining eight dominant civilizations; something which he does in order to avoid the potential charge that an East/West dualistic definition of civilizations would be too simplistic, reductionist and essentialist. This turns out to be a clever sleight of hand given that the East-West division forms a key aspect of Huntington's approach. Borrowing the conceptual language from one IR scholar, it is clear that Huntington adopts a “substantialist” approach to civilizations; one that defines civilizations in terms of an essentialist cultural core that changes very little over time. Thus, he assumes that civilizations are concatenations of primordial cultural/religious values which, by definition, do not exhibit large changes over time.

Crucial to this substantialist approach is the notion that civilizations are autonomous, self-constituting entities that are rigidly differentiated from each other and develop endogenously, free of interactions between each ...