Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ Is Incoherent but Useful

Huntington’s ideas have been saved and sarcasm by those who insist that his concept of civilization is very incoherent, confused or “soft” to explain global conflict lines useful. But then perhaps this is the point.

Not only that the last major conflicts such as the Syrian civil war and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have occurred within the categories of civilization in Huntington. The same categories throughout the map. Some civilizations, such as Islamic and Hinduism, are wide religious identities, while Orthodoxy (as a sub -group of Christianity) is high into its own identity. In turn, East Asia is uncomfortable between sin, Buddhism and Japanese simply – a secondary result of the book that is formed in the early 1990s, when Japan was widely seen as a wonderful power.

Finally, the wide appointment of the “African” claims to be a crude geographical category with even summoning a racist category. As the political scientist Anjali Dayal notes, Huntington’s civilizations are somewhat similar to the imaginary division of Burjis animals in a fictional Chinese encyclopedia: “(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalming, (c) taming, (d) absorbs pigs … (k) with a very high -end brush, (l).

Unfortunately, in the wrong hands, an inconsistent idea can be a strong idea. Winning in Huntington’s sections makes it ideal as a rhetorical device to frame conflicts in ways to serve political ends. Human cultures are constantly complex and changing, consisting of an endless group of religious, technical, linguistic, historical and ideological affiliations.

Civilizational discourse gives critics and politicians the flexibility they need to cut and reshape this fabric in any way that suit their agenda. One day, Russia is a Slavic country that challenges the West; Next, Vladimir Putin is guarding the Christian civilization against its many enemies. In the West, racist concerns were reformulated as ideological letters, and then reformulated again in the Huntington world after the Cold War as a civilized leader. The yellow risks have become the red China, which in turn became the “wrong” world. If we are always in an earlier era with East Asia, now East Asia has always been our civilized enemy.

The susceptibility to civilization brings other benefits. It has maintained a coalition committed to defending the “Western civilization” that determines those who see the secular West mainly and who see that the West is mainly Christian, while providing a cover for those who see the West as a basic white.

This ability to abandon countries such as Russia, China, India and Turkey helped to raise their level of nationalism by renaling themselves as “civilized states”.

However, the concept did not escape the feeling of hierarchy. Those who speak in civilization always assume that they are more moral or technological progressive – while others can be classified according to their wealth or geopolitical power. Many people also assume that, as in the game, all civilizations will eventually follow the pioneering path by the West, even if the textual programs or architectural motifs differ.

A section of a map of Lievi Walter Yaji, from Yaggy geographical wallet (1893).David Romsie’s historic map collection

Inevitably, some civilizations are more civilized than others. Consider this elegant clarification of the geography scheme in semester 1893. Civilization may be built with constellations, or perhaps with the temple graves or onion domes. But those that have towers in the foreground, and they seem to have all factories.

This built -in chauvinism makes it easy to move between different versions of your civilization with a very confident survival. Putin, among other things, did this well. While Putin has greatly appealed to the idea of ​​Russian civilization to justify the invasion of Ukraine, this is just one of the many civilization exchanges at his disposal. There is also Russia as a defender of the Orthodox civilization, and emphasized Moscow’s communication with Greece and Russia as a defender of Slavic civilization, which is an essential element in Russian appeal to Serbia.

Of course, Putin’s ambitions extend beyond these limited urban identities. As has also been widely documented, Russia has achieved successes with the right -wing and Evangelical movements in Europe and the United States by summoning a joint Christian civilizational identity. It is also reported that in 2013: “We see many European countries in the Atlantic Ocean in reality their roots, including Christian values ​​that are the basis of Western civilization. They deny moral principles and all traditional: national, cultural, religious, and even nationality.”

And Muslims feel involved, the civilizational discourse in Russia also has something for them. While defending the Christian roots of Western civilization in the West, Russian diplomats appealed to a common European identity in Türkiye. The cultural and historical basis for European values ​​can be mysterious – something about the steps and the strong state – but it finds its foot in a common hostility towards Western domination.

Türkiye is another country that has adopted the contradictory capabilities of the civilized discourse. As the heir who declared itself to the Ottoman civilization, Türkiye can simultaneously offer a more comprehensive face to the world with the doubling of ethnic and religious nationalism at home. In the aftermath of 11/9, for example, Türkiye and Spain cooperated to launch the Alliance of Civilizations, as they celebrated the heritage of religions in Andalusia and the Ottomans without mentioning the catastrophic sectarian violence in 1492 or 1915.

In a similar context, Istanbul submitted a request to be a European capital of 2010 for culture with a video of a spot that includes a rich collection of historical churches, temples and mosques. After that, after winning, the Tayyip Erdogan government took the accompanying grant funds and spent it on the restoration of mosques alone.

These retreaizers are not completely new. Historical empires are often known in multiple fashion. The Cheng Empire can simultaneously put itself as a heir of Geneghis Khan, as a “hurricane king” ownership to Southeast Asians, and the inheritance of Confucian traditions in China itself. The Ottomans also claimed the title of Central Asia for “Khan”, in addition to the Islamic “Caliph” and “Caesar Rome”. Now, the civilizational version of this game extends beyond the referees themselves to throw the entire nation in terms of any stronger identity – or useful – at that time.

In fact, despite all this noise about the rise of the urban state, the term tends to be used by those who promote a more exclusive form of nationalism. For example, the leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party who announce India are not seeking a “civilized state” to celebrate the rich group of religious and linguistic influences that contribute to modern Indian culture. On the contrary, they seek to exclude this diversity in favor of Hindu superiority.

In Europe and the United States, the idea of ​​”Western civilization” helped to weld competition forms of cultural chauvinism. During the era of this sign, the new atheists who condemn Islamic integration can a threat to secularism enlightenment to join ranks with Christian fundamentalists who see Islamic immigration as a new front in the Crusades. If you are not in particular invested in the actual history of enlightenment or Christianity, you can try to retreat the circle by indicating that Christianity has always been uniquely secular. Instead, if your real goal is to talk about white people without actually saying that, you can back down from the “Western Civilization” version developed by former MP Steve King when Tweet, “We cannot restore our civilization with the children of another person.”

Ultimately, the civilizational discourse presents a new form of ethnic nationalism for countries, which publicly embraces historical complications: the United States with its ideology in its bouzhi; European Union countries with competing nationalism; Russia and China with the structures of the multinational state inspired by communism; India with its diverse inheritance after colonialism; And even Türkiye, where nationalism was a traditional secular. Now, under the model of civilization, nationalists in all these lands can celebrate their favorite linguistic, religious and cultural identities without apology.

For the most committed defenders, “Western civilization” can mean many things, but it rarely means “Western democracy.” In fact, in all these countries, the concept of civilization was passed passionately by those who explicitly reject the comprehensive democracy. The term itself, which is a small historical paradoxical, is a little pyramid, stands in opposition to liberal global aspirations in the twentieth century. Instead, a specific shine at the national level is presented on an amazingly repeated model for authoritarianism.

In this sense, the appointment of categories of civilization in Huntington or overcoming their inability is absent from this point. From a civilized perspective, the lines draw less important than the act of drawing it. Choufinia is the point.