The Evolution of Human Society - Literature review Example

Is Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis correct? Introduction In 1989 Francis Fukuyama asked if the world had seen “The End of History?”. Fukuyama argued "that a remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government had emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as it conquered rival ideologies..." Fukuyama goes on to insist that he does not "mean that the natural cycle of birth, life, death would end, that important events would no longer happen," but rather, "that there would be no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all the really big questions had been settled."1 Fukuyama concludes that this does not "mean that the natural cycle of birth, life, death would end, that important events would no longer happen," but rather, "that there would be no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all the really big questions had been settled."2 Samuel B Huntington responded that the really biggest question had yet to be debated. “The Clash of Civilizations” is the issue that will be the big question in the future. Huntington asserts that,“the great. divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.” He acknowledges that “nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs,” but in future their conflicts will “occur between nations and groups of civilizations”. Following from these assumptions he concludes that “the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”3 Fukuyama took the very narrow view that the end of the struggle between between capitalism/liberal-democracy and communism/command economy was over with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that that was the defining conflict of the evolution of human society. It is either a hyperbolic or a foolish suggestion. Huntington proposes that the epic struggle of the twentieth century has imply been displaced by this centurys theme, the clash and conflict between rival cultures. His claim can be criticized form numerous angles. This discussion will begin with a concise outline of Huntingtons theory. Then its weaknesses and alternate explanations will be examined. The clash of civilizations “A civilization is a cultural entity, “ Huntington writes.4 It is a meta-entity, “the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species.”5 The taxonomy of civilizations takes into consideration history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion. Huntington also points out that there is an objective and a subjective aspect to civilizations. The objective elements of society are the five factors identified previously. The subjective, psychological aspect of civilization is self-identification: the broadest level of cultural identity The current dynamic of the clash of civilizations is defined by a western civilization at the peak of its power,but increasingly threatened by numerous other civilizations, “that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways.”6 He describes at as the West versus the Rest.7 Along the borders of civilizations “adjacent groups... struggle, often violently, over the control of territory and each other.” On the global level, “states from different civilizations... competitively promote their particular political and religious values.”8 Geo-politically civilizations compete on the highest level, regionally disputes and civil war characterize the dynamic border areas. Civilizations are like tectonic plates and where the plates collide and grind together on their edges there is volcanic activity. The Religious Roots of Civilizations In 1993 Huntington saw a Confucian-Islamic combination challenging the supremacy of Western civilization. Islamic civilization is the cross hatched area extending from western Africa to Malaysia (the only interruptions are Hindu India and the small Buddhist node in southeast Asia. The Confucian civilization is the red in the area of China. Israel and Japan are each deemed to be civilizations on the basis of their uniqueness. Huntingtons thesis is multi-polar with civilizations maneuvering to protect and promote their interests. Major Civilizations of the World Returning to the earlier metaphor each colored area is a civilization plate and their edges, presumably characterized be elevated levels of conflict, are the volcanic and tectonic fault lines of the global population in the clash of civilizations thesis. These emerging challenges will, according to Huntington, “require the West to maintain the economic and military power necessary to protect its interests in relation to these civilizations.”9 Implicit in that prescription is that every other civilization is pursuing the same Machiavellian strategy to promote its interests using economic and military power . Analysis of the clash of civilizations Edward W. Said is one of the harshest critics of the clash of civilization thesis. In 2001 in The Nation he suggested that Huntingtons thesis had “immediately attracted a surprising amount of attention and reaction”. He dismisses it as Cold War rhetoric reformulated and notes that it is also offensive and combative:10 International luminaries from former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have pontificated about Islams troubles, and in the latters case have used Huntingtons ideas to rant on about the Wests superiority, how "we" have Mozart and Michelangelo and they dont. (Berlusconi has since made a halfhearted apology for his insult to "Islam.") In this case it would seem that Huntingtons thesis, inherently conflict oriented, is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that it incites negative reactions from Huntingtons non-western civilizations. The very title of Saids article captures a second flaw about Huntingtons thesis. Inter-civilizational conflict, if one accepts Huntingtons paradigm, does occur. Al Qaedas jihad and the International presence in Iraq and Afghanistan are examples of the Western-Islamic cultural, civilization conflict. However, the conflict is actually only supported and engaged in by a very small, extremist segment of the population. Every cultures extreme elements have a chauvinistic and consequently aggressive view of their superiority. They pursue their interests using power as leverage. However, the violent extremists are fundamentalists and ignorant chauvinists, that is as true of Christian militias in the United States as it is suicide bombers in Afghanistan. Violent fundamentalism is an extreme that no civilization is free of it, nor is it the exclusive modus operandi of only one civilization. Extremists are not the majority or even a significant minority in any civilization. Huntingtons rather arbitrary determination of the parameters of various civilizations also seems inconsistent. If Israel constitutes a civilization why do the Kurds in Kuirdistan not constitute the status of a civilization. Also, it is difficult to see the isolated Buddhist enclaves throughout Asia as a unified civilization. Beyond national boundaries they do not share history, language, culture, tradition and many practitioners would hesitate to call Buddhism a religion. Huntingtons taxonomy of civilizations lacks any consistent justification. In many physical or geographic particulars the clash of civilizations thesis has not fared well. Islam-Western conflicts are clearly one of the key conflicts in the clash of civilization model. However, they do not share a border anywhere on the globe. In the Balkans the the Orthodox civilization abuts the Islamic but not the Western. Further, returning to the map on page 4, the fault lines bordering civilizations do not seem to be significantly more violent or conflicted. Indeed, the most violent areas in the world today are not the borderlands of civilizations and some of the most violent struggles are intra-civilizational not inter-civilizational. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq are on the edge of the Islamic civilization yet they are the heart of the Islam-Western confrontation. In Nigeria the country is divided between two cultures: Islamic in the North and African in the south. However, within Nigeria the most violent fault line in society is between the southeast where oil is produced and the southwest where the government is located and the profits flow. The violence is between subunits of Huntingdons African civilization not between the Islamic and African civilizations.11 Similarly, the conflicts within Iraq between Sunnis and Shia and the conflict between predominantly Sunni Iraq and predominantly Shiite Iran. That region is also struggling with the Kurdish drive for autonomy. The division of the Korean Peninsula into two states that have maintained a wary peace for 55 years is a conflict contained within the Sino civilization as are China and Vietnams simmering border tensions. All of these struggles are intra-civilizational. Huntingdons theory also seems to downplay intra-civilizational cultural differences. This is most evident in Huntingdons portrayal of a unified Buddhist civilization. However it is equally untrue of Islamic civilization. A Berber in North Africa, a Pakistani and a Malaysian share little in common but their religion and might not even recognize one another as all Muslim. Similarly, the Orthodox civilization extends from Serbia to Siberia, from Finland to central Asia and includes fractious Chechnya. Further, it would seem that the Orthodox civilization coincides with the aspirations of the Soviet Union with a dose of Balkan pan-Slavismpan-Slavism thrown in. To call these disparate groups one civilization seems problematic. Huntingdons theory seems to downplay intra-civilizational violence. It also seems improbable that most areas of conflict are on civilizations boundaries as Huntington predicts. Also other conflicts have no connection to boundaries and many civil violence is intra-civilizational. Finally, the clash of civilizations is uni-causal and rarely is a thesis so simple, as all encompassing as it hopes to be or presumes to be. The violence within Nigeria is ethnic and it is economic and it is intra-civilizational. The civilizational borderline that does divide the country is silent into Muslim and African civilizations is calm. The Balkan strife that was omnipresent in the early 1990s in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the devolution of Yugoslavia certainly made that seem like a boundary powder keg when Huntington was writing. However, the situation is considerably more stable today than it was twenty years ago. In fact for the last decade the war on terror and other interventions throughout Central Asia waged against threatening Islam have pushed the Balkans out of the news cycle. Now the key civilizational battle, if there is such a thing, is between two civilizations with no mutual physical borders. This flies in the face of Huntingdons analysis of the process of the clash of civilizations. The violent conflict is being waged by American expeditionary forces in Islamic states that are not on the borders of the Islamic civilization. Conclusions Huntingdons clash of civilization thesis has not stood the test of time. Huntington presented an elegant model of a quilt of civilizations extending over the face of the globe interacting in predictable, if conflict-oriented ways. Twenty years later the quilt is in tatters; there are holes in it, it is stretched out of shape and the colours have faded. The very paradigm, that the world is a quilt of civilizations is problematic. Forcing reality to conform to the theory demands that inter-civilizational differences be accentuated and intra-civilizational disputes be minimized. Huntington predicted that civil strive and violence would be concentrated on the abrasive boundaries between civilizations. This has not been the case. Further the contending Western and Islamic civilizations at the focus on civilization conflict do not even share a border, they strike directly at one another rendering the geography of national boundaries irrelevant. References Fukuyama, Francis. (Summer 1989). "The End of History?" The National Interest 16: 3-17; Fukuyama, Francis. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. London: 1992. Heriot, Peter. (2009). Religious Fundamentalism: Global, Local and Personal. New York: Routledge. Huntington, Samuel P. (Summer 1993). “The Clash of Civilizations”. Foreign Affairs. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Acrobat/Huntington_Clash.pdf. Ibekwe, Nicolas. (5 December 2010). “The Mercenaries Take Over”. Next. http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5258469-146/The_mercenaries_take_over__.csp. Lewis, Bernard. (1990). “The Roots of Muslim Rage”. The Atlantic Monthly. http://www.sjweb.info/Documents/dialogo/theroots.doc. Said, Edward W. (October 22, 2001). “The Clash of Ignorance”. The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/article/clash-ignorance. Read More