Culture, Civilization, and Theories

Culture, Civilization, and Theories Mukesh Williams Abstract The changing meaning of culture and civilization has made it rather difficult to place the twin concepts within a globally accepted context. Once we used these words for territorial and ideological conquests but now we use them for cultural domination expressed in the phrases such as ‘clash of civilizations’ and ‘incommensurable universe.’ Though cultures, languages and civilizations have been interacting and influencing each other from time immemorial, the recent belief that they are windowless entities has gained currency. There is also talk of a clash of civilizations between the Christian West and Islamic East. This ideological conflict has given rise to change, transformation and deconstruction. The traditions of western philosophy had further hardened exclusionist attitudes. Philosophers central to the western tradition such as Husserl, Heidegger and Hegel have thought within a Greek framework appropriating the identity of the ‘Other’ as ‘Sameness.’ This belief in turn has led to domination, conquest and colonization by the West in the nineteenth century and continues to shape the attitudes of many nations today. This false picture of culture and civilization that philosophy, ontology, politics and ethics give us makes us captives and prevents us from jumping － 19 － out of it. But postmodern philosophers have questioned transcendental constructs or graspable artifacts? There is no clear agreement amongst scholars universalism underpinning the cultural discourse by introducing relativism as to what they imply. There is only an ongoing debate on the subject. Modern and autoimmunity. The rise of Anglo-American universities in modern times academic disciplines such as anthropology, literary criticism, history, media has made the two notions both a transmitter and interpreter of culture, while studies, sociology and political science are all involved in analyzing the process literary studies and cultural ideologies have given a new significance to and representation of culture and civilization. Skeptics, cosmopolitans and cultural representation. The rise of cultural studies in the west and in Asia fundamentalists have all argued on the subjects and developed their own has been a reaction to the appropriating of culture in the name of strategies to further their agenda. Globalization and the digital media have consolidation. The essentialist way of constructing culture has given way to a further spread the ideas connected to the twin concepts, conflating them further. historicist perspective of visualizing culture. In India the Nehruvian cultural policies of censorship and patronage during the 1950s and 1960s and the Today there is a surfeit of information on the subject creating confusion and clampdown on cultural and political freedom of the mid-1970s led to the anxiety in our minds as to which culture we belong to and which civilization we growth of cultural studies in the 1980s. The rise of popular culture to define inherit. The skeptics believe all the talk about these concepts is humbug. national space can also be seen as a reaction to cultural regimentation. Inter- Civilizations have always interacted and collided with each other, transforming cultural dialogues may be an ongoing process but cultures exist in a lived and getting transformed in the encounter. All the talk about the two concepts can global experience and not in the politics of nations. be dismissed with the words ‘this always happened, what’s new?’ The cosmopolitans welcome the spread of different cultures enjoying the rich Our understanding of culture and civilization is of recent origin and dates back multiplicity of the encounters. It is the fundamentalists who react with deep to the late eighteenth century. But during this time everyone who wanted to anxiety. The loss of traditional ways of life to forces of western culture and think, from philosophers to academics, have been involved in defining the two civilization is rather disturbing to them. Society needs traditions to sustain itself terms and have tried to understand what make them work. No study today is especially in a world of bewildering change. They feel it is important to return to complete without a discussion of these concepts. And why should it not be. Lots purified traditions. We need to bring the runaway world to its heels. But can we? of things we do, most of our institutions we create, the way we imagine our world are all connected to these twin concepts. No we cannot. The world we inherit has been shaped by the twin forces of American globalization and digital mass media. Aided by these two forces, the The terms culture and civilization are the two most debated words in modern spread of the capitalist neoliberal ideology has been swift and pervasive creating thought and practice and have been used by nations, communities and individuals a new form of universalism. Many react to its intense force with overwhelming as notions to create histories, identities and hegemonies. Are these terms residual confusion and elemental violence. But the imprint of Americanism is essences, literary imaginings, philosophical discourses, anthropological inescapable. The incommensurability rather than symbiosis of culture and － 20 －－ 21 － civilization is the new political imaginary amongst the intellectuals and the Giambattista Vico in his New Science published in 1723 claimed that cultures fundamentalists. passed through three different stages of development moving from religious and poetic to mundane and prosaic. As cultures passed through these three stages The battle over the definition and representation of the twin concepts of culture they moved from primitivism to high culture. In all these three stages, which also and civilization, which began in the Anglo-American world before the 1940s, possessed sub-phases, a distinctive human nature survived. Vico’s dialectics was and heated up in the 1950s, still lumbers on (Geertz, 2000 12-19). Old stalwarts less to do with syllogism and more to do with the representation of reality like Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski and through language. The transition from one phase to the other was embodied in Edward Sapir have given way to scholars like Arif Dirlik , Arjun Appadurai, transformations in the figurative language which in turn conducted certain James Clifford, Sidney Mintz, George Marcus, Eric Wolf, Michael Taussig, “modifications of the human mind” (Vico, 1913). Vico’s categorization of Philip Bourgois and Nancy Scheper-Hughes. But there is no agreement amongst cultures implied a belief in human progress and an intrinsic human nature scholars as to what the twin terms imply. We need to interrogate these concepts leading to violent conflicts in history ranging from discrimination and culture as best as we can and once again in the light of new advances in critical theory wars to ethnic cleansing and holocausts. and philosophy make some sense of both. The paper intends to show some of the debates associated with culture and civilization and the problem of arriving at a The word culture slips, elides and metamorphoses making it difficult for us to commonly-agreed definition despite the fact that dictionaries have defined them pin it down. It comes from the Middle English word culter or coulter which quite exhaustively. means a blade of a ploughshare. It was given a special meaning by the fourteenth century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer who talked about the coulter of destiny DEFINING THE TERMS falling upon people thereby underscoring the unpredictable nature of life. The In order to understand the concepts of culture and civilization better let us turn Latin roots colere implies religious authority while colonus invasion or to their dictionary meaning. Both in the world of scholarship and media the occupation. Shakespeare saw culture coming from nature and in turn attempted terms culture and civilization are used interchangeably without the nuances that to transform nature. Thomas Jefferson once quipped that, “No occupation is so etymology provides. Hornby’s Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of culture as involving “customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social the garden.” The connection of culture to agriculture and its subsequent organizations of a particular country or group.” It further defines civilization as transformation into civility is part of the changing social priorities of centuries. “a state of human society that is very developed and organized.” Civilization seems to posses normative standards expressed in the phrase “very developed The idea of culture as a way of life was connected to the Romantic anti-colonial and organized” and is therefore highly subjective, value-based and given to belief in privileging suppressed societies. These meanings resurfaced in the manipulation. twentieth century modernism in two opposing trends—first a belief in － 22 －－ 23 － primitivism and second the rise of cultural anthropology. In postmodern times western ones. culture was romanticized through an emphasis on popular culture. Today culture is often linked to issues relating to freedom, determinism, endurance, identity The western method of creating cultural hierarchy was said to lack cultural and change. coherence and homogeneity. Together with this, uneven economic development and desire for a high standard of living gave rise to pan-cultural and religious Culture

Load more