CIVILIZATIONS IN DISPUTE: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions JOHANN P. ARNASON BRILL ICSS-8-arna.qxd 20/08/2003 15:19 Page i CIVILIZATIONS IN DISPUTE ICSS-8-arna.qxd 20/08/2003 15:19 Page ii IINTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE SOCIAL STUDIES EDITORIAL BOARD Duane Alwin, Ann Arbor, USA - Wil Arts, Tilburg, The Netherlands Mattei Dogan, Paris, France - S.N. Eisenstadt, Jerusalem, Israel Johan Galtung, Versonnex, France - Linda Hantrais, Loughborough, UK Jim Kluegel, Urbana-Champaign, USA Chan Kwok Bun, Hongkong, China - Frank Lechner, Atlanta, USA Ron Lesthaeghe, Brussels, Belgium - Ola Listhaug, Trondheim, Norway Rubin Patterson, Toledo, USA - Eugene Roosens, Leuven, Belgium Masamichi Sasaki, Tokyo, Japan - Saskia Sassen, New York, USA John Rundell, Melbourne, Australia - Livy Visano, Toronto, Canada Bernd Wegener, Berlin, Germany - Jock Young, London, UK VOLUME VIII ICSS-8-arna.qxd 20/08/2003 15:19 Page iii CIVILIZATIONS IN DISPUTE Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions BY JOHANN P. ARNASON BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2003 ICSS-8-arna.qxd 20/08/2003 15:19 Page iv This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Árnason, Jóhann Páll, 1940- Civilizations in dispute : historical questions and theoretical traditions / by Johann P. Arnason. p. cm. – (International comparative social studies, ISSN 1568-4474 ; v. 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-13282-1 (alk. paper) 1. Civilization. 2. Civilization–Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series. CB19.A78 2003 901–dc21 2003050216 ISSN 1568-4474 ISBN 90 04 13282 1 © Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Cover design by Thorsten’s Celine Ostendorf All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands ARNASON_f1-v-xvi 8/19/03 12:43 PM Page v v Without metaphysical presupposition there can be no civilization. A.N. Whitehead ARNASON_f1-v-xvi 8/19/03 12:43 PM Page vi vi In memoriam Cornelius Castoriadis 1922–1997 ARNASON_f1-v-xvi 8/19/03 12:43 PM Page vii vii CONTENTS Preface ........................................................................................ ix Acknowledgements .................................................................... xiii 1. The Rediscovery of Civilizations ........................................ 1 1.1 Civilizational claims and counter-claims .................... 6 1.2 Legacies and trajectories ............................................ 13 1.3 Civilization and modernity .......................................... 34 1.4 Rethinking basic concepts .......................................... 51 2. Classical Sources .................................................................. 66 2.1 Durkheim and Mauss: The sociological concept of civilization .................................................................... 67 2.2 Max Weber: The comparative history of civilizations .................................................................... 86 2.3 From Spengler to Borkenau: Civilizational cycles and transitions .............................................................. 105 3. Patterns and Processes .......................................................... 125 3.1 Exits and openings ...................................................... 126 3.2 Benjamin Nelson: Civilizational contents and intercivilizational encounters ...................................... 139 3.3 S.N. Eisenstadt: Civilizational breakthroughs and dynamics ...................................................................... 157 3.4 Jaroslav Krej‘í: Civilizations as paradigms of the human condition .......................................................... 179 4. Meaning, Power and Wealth: Changing Constellations .... 195 4.1 Domains and dimensions of socio-cultural analysis ...... 195 4.2 Theorizing civilizations ................................................ 216 4.3 Configurations of meaning, I: Cultural articulations of the world ................................................................ 220 4.4 Configurations of meaning, II: Religious traditions and civilizational trajectories ...................................... 232 ARNASON_f1-v-xvi 8/25/03 6:26 PM Page viii viii 4.5 Institutional patterns, I: Politics and ideology ........ 247 4.6 Institutional patterns, II: The historical forms of economic life .............................................................. 261 4.7 Culture, institution and organization: The case of science ........................................................................ 280 4.8 Intercivilizational encounters .................................... 287 4.9 Civilizational groupings ............................................ 296 4.10 Traditions in transformation .................................... 304 4.11 Civilizations and regions .......................................... 314 5. Questioning the West: The Uses and Abuses of Anti-Eurocentrism ................................................................ 323 5.1 Images of otherness .................................................. 326 5.2 The post-mode and its pretensions .......................... 339 5.3 Rescuing postcoloniality from postcolonialism ........ 346 Reference list .............................................................................. 360 Index of Names ........................................................................ 369 Index of Subjects ...................................................................... 371 ARNASON_f1-v-xvi 8/19/03 12:43 PM Page ix ix PREFACE This book was written between 1997 and 2002. The four main chap- ters deal with central problems of civilizational theory, in different contexts and from various angles; they are perhaps best read as the- matically interconnected essays with relatively self-contained argu- ments. Even if a more systematic treatment were to be envisaged (such projects are not equally compatible with all versions of civi- lizational theory), extensive preparatory work would still be needed. The first chapter traces the re-emergence of civilizational themes and perspectives in contemporary social theory. Although the most explicit and controversial claims of that kind have to do with chang- ing patterns of international relations (the ‘clash of civilizations’), more instructive connections can be established in other fields—espe- cially in relation to the ongoing transformations of modernization theory, but also on the level of basic concepts and efforts to redefine them. The second chapter surveys the classical sources which remain essential to further theorizing of the civilizational dimension. Within the sociological tradition, two main lines of inquiry and reflection must be distinguished. On the French side, the brief but exception- ally suggestive programmatic statements by Durkheim and Mauss were not accompanied by any corresponding substantive studies; but some aspects of the problematic were explored by later French writ- ers. On the German side, Max Weber’s pioneering exercises in the comparative analysis of civilizations tower above all other work of that kind, but their conceptual foundations leave much to be desired. Neither the Durkheimian nor the Weberian approaches were, how- ever, integrated into the mainstream of sociological inquiry. The questions neglected by sociologists—in the course of what Norbert Elias described as their ‘retreat into the present’—were taken up, in another context and with very different aims, by metahistorians such as Oswald Spengler and Toynbee. A short and inevitably selective discussion of their work is followed—in a separate chapter—by a critical analysis of later attempts to revive civilizational approaches on a more solid sociological basis. The most systematic arguments in that vein can be found in the writings of S.N. Eisenstadt, but those of Benjamin Nelson and Jaroslav Krej‘í also stand out as major contributions to the field. ARNASON_f1-v-xvi 8/19/03 12:43 PM Page x x The fourth chapter should be seen as the most central part of the book: it outlines a conceptual framework for civilizational analysis, based on more general theoretical premises and linked to more con- crete historical perspectives. The model presented here draws on a variety of classical and contemporary sources, but synthesizes them in a distinctive way, with particular emphasis on the interrelations of cultural premises—operative on a civilizational scale—and politi- cal as well as economic institutions. In addition to these constitutive core structures of civilizations, comparative analyses must deal with the more outwardly visible patterns which have often served to iden- tify the specific objects of civilizational analysis: the multi-societal complexes as well as the traditional and regional configurations that we usually have in mind when we speak of civilizations in the plural. Finally, the fifth chapter is a postscript to the main argument, intended to situate the proposed version of civilizational theory with regard to some other contemporary trend. If a multi-civilizational frame of reference is by definition opposed to Eurocentric