Critique of clash of civilization WVLS 313 17-Apr-15 N .MKIZE 23684879 The theory of clash of civilization The clash of civilization is a theory by Samuel Huntington which states that peoples cultural and religion identities are the root source of conflict in the post-cold war. Clash of civilization is a theory referencing the clash of cultures ( Choeung.slide share).according to Huntington ( 1996,p84) “the most pervasive, important, and dangerous conflicts will not be between social classes, rich, poor, or other economically defined groups, but between peoples belonging to different cultural entities” . Huntington also states that conflicts between civilizations are likely to be caused by religious means. And this is to the fact that civilizations are distinguished from other culture through history, language, culture and most important religion (Huntington, 1993, 25). Huntington states that people’s culture and religion will be the main cause of conflict from onward.
For ‘New Wars’ theorists, modern conflicts have a series of important similarities, which at the same time are different from traditional conflict therefore; a categorization of identifiable variables could be constructed. More precisely, by describing the characteristics of these new forms of violence, it intends to create a common theory of why wars are developing the way they are doing now and how does this development takes place. Indeed in her thesis she punctuates how in the ‘New Wars’ actors, objectives, finances and tactics are not anymore the ones that use to be found in ‘Old Wars’. The dichotomy between traditional wars and contemporary wars is the core subject of this work. With this conceptualization, Kaldor has brought a new way of thinking about war and opened up more possibilities for the theorization and comprehension of wars.
He further elaborates that the increasing interaction between seven or eight civilizations and their basic differences will be the reasons of clash. The increasing interaction intensifies civilization consciousness and awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities within civilizations resulting the widening differences between civilizations and alliance within civilization (Huntington 23). He also adds, the revival of religion for fulfilling the gap of weakened nation state identity by the process of economic modernization and social change will also play the role. Furthermore, a west in the peak of its power confronts non-west that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-western ways through Asianization, Hinduization and re-Islamization (Huntington 26). Huntington further explains, cultural characterises and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones.
Clash of civilization by Samuel Huntington is believed to be containing facts about the political scene during the cold war era and stated or hypothesized that there is a new order prior to the end of the cold war. Societies and civilizations were divided by ideological differences. Political struggle between the ideologies of democracy and communism fueled Huntington’s arguments within the book. To begin his argument, Huntington classified civilization as the broadest cultural entity he also stated that civilizations are mortal but endures for a very long time and evolves overtime. Huntington also refutes some of the past paradigms that have been ineffective in explaining or calculating the reality of the global political order.
HUNTNGTON KIN-COUNTRY SYNDROME IN U.S ATTITUDES TOWARDS PALESTINIAN –ISRAELI ISSUE Written by Yuliana Dolok Saribu-016201400179-IR Diplomacy 2 Batch 2014 ________________________________________ Introduction The theory of clash of civilizations was brought by Samuel P. Huntington in the year of 1993. In his theory, Huntington believe that the world is reaching a new stage of conflict called the conflict/clash of civilizations with the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be based on cultural (Huntington, 1993). What does Huntington means by a civilization here? A Civilization is the highest cultural groupings based on common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people which differentiate humans from another species (Huntington, 1993). Thus, Huntington emphasized that in understanding the world politics in the twenty first century is in the civilizations rather than the nation-states.
In recent times, hybridity and hybridization have been extended to encompass many senses that are tied with postcolonial studies and to exhibit the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized. The postcolonial theorists and critics differ in their understanding of the term hybridity/hybridization from cultural perspective and its consequences and connotations that could be valued by some theorists as positive alteration while the others look at this sort of modification as negative because they see in this sort of change a deliberate transformation into the third space that combines between two or more cultures. Definitely one of such cultures will be prevailing and controlling the indigenous identity. It is found that hybridization has its colonial connotations. My argument is about the course of hybridity concept development and how this transformation has been assessed by the colonizers and the colonized alike.
In the following sections our choice of theories are presented and their relevance to the project, are discussed. The theories tend to provide us a guideline, which helps in relation to organize, select, and analyse our data. We have decided to use political, economical theories as well as a sociological theory, for the reason we aiming to obtain a broader image of the topic, not only one segment. Foucault Foucault theory of power is aiming to challenge the “mainstream”, Western concepts of the world and stimulate people to have a new way of comprehension about the notion of power and power relation. (Taylor, 2004) It advices an empirical analyses of power, with an analytical understanding rather than theoretical, where the perception of
Such an approach can prevent readers from mixing up the information and main concepts of this article. Likewise, they evidently use quotations from experts to support and clarify their argument. For instance, they refer to a quote that says “It is important to build our understanding of conflict in this population because Arab cultural norms and family dynamics differ from European American, Asian, and Latino cultures” (p. 1). Such a quote points out why it is important to discuss this topic in-depth to know the cultural variations in the Arabic culture. Additionally, the authors provide many statistical evidences and outcomes to improve their study.
According to Samuel Huntington, a popular though controversial Harvard-based professor, international conflicts in the Post-Cold War era will be initiated by conflicts in culture and cultural identities between civilizations. In particular, he cites the differences between Muslims and the West as the source of a prolonged and irreconcilable conflict which he terms ‘The Clash of Civilizations’. The first part of this essay will evaluate assertions made in ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ thesis as well as discuss if the said ‘clash’ is a reality or a flawed conjecture.
First they state that more research is needed to differentiate among various types of shame and guilt observed in different cultural settings. Secondly they argue that more researches are needed to prove that the differences in the valuation, view, behaviour, consequences of guilt and shame in collectivistic as well as in the individualistic cultures described by many scholars are in fact due to the difference in the concept of self in these cultures. Thirdly they suggest that more studies are needed to measure the physiological and behavioural components of shame and guilt. Forth suggestion they put forward is that future research should examine the development of shame and guilt across cultural contexts. Fifth suggestion is that because within each culture there exists variation in models of shame and guilt and future research is needed to test this hypothesis.