Re: dialogue of civilizations?

Why are civilizations equated with Huntington's civilizations?  Don't
Braudel, McNeill, Hodgson use the term in fruitful ways?

Isn't the term world-system (hyphenated or not) often a reified
abstraction?  Why isthe tendency to reify particular characteristics
attributed to the civilization concept alone?


Aren't the two concepts genetically related (as per Wallerstein's
explicitly stated organic metaphor in Volume I of _The Modern
World-System_?)

On Thu, 2 May 2002 KSamman@aol.com wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> In agreement with Frank, the Huntingtonites of the world assume that a 
>"people" or culture possess distinctive and fixed attributes and beliefs that 
>can be neatly bounded as self-sustaining islands.
>
> I find Edward Said useful in this respect.  The civilizational discourse is 
>situated in a context of power. It is a form of a discourse, a way of dealing 
>with the Other "by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, 
>describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it... an accepted grid 
>for filtering the Orient into Western consciousness."  On the other side of 
>this construction, the "oriental," in his essentialist response, filters the 
>"West" in an effort to create an authentic self.
>
> Hence, the civilization under discussion is produced not from some internal 
>or essential, compartmentalized container called Islam or the West, but from 
>the back and forth traffic, or structures, that bind these two entities 
>together.  There is no occident without the orient just like there is no 
>capital without labor.  To separate the two as separate structures is to miss 
>the power and inequality that shaped and formed them. This is the problem with 
>the Huntingtonites.  By missing the link (power), you are in fact politically 
>favoring those who have power: they are who they are (underdeveloped, 
>uncivilized, nonscientific, religious, fundamentalist, antimodernist, 
>collectivist, antiliberal) and we are who we are (civilized, developed, 
>scientific, secular, democratic...).  The "other" is a civilization with its 
>own cultural logic.  It is where it is because of its own internal 
>characteristic.  Leave me, "the West," out of it.
>
> I'll see you all next Tuesday.
>
> Best,
> Khaldoun
>
>
>
>

-- 
Boris Stremlin
bstremli@binghamton.edu