A Convergence of Civilizations
A Convergence of Civilizations

Author: Youssef Courbage

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011-06-07

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0231527462

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We are told that Western/Christian and Muslim/Arab civilizations are heading towards inevitable conflict. The demographics of the West remain sluggish, while the population of the Muslim world explodes, widening the cultural gap and all but guaranteeing the outbreak of war. Leaving aside the media's sound and fury on this issue, measured analysis shows another reality taking shape: rapprochement between these two civilizations, benefiting from a universal movement with roots in the Enlightenment. The historical and geographical sweep of this book discredits the notion of a specific Islamic demography. The range of fertility among Muslim women, for example, is as varied as religious behavior among Muslims in general. Whether agnostics, fundamentalist Salafis, or al-Qaeda activists, Muslims are a diverse group that prove the variety and individuality of Islam. Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd consider different degrees of literacy, patriarchy, and defensive reactions among minority Muslim populations, underscoring the spread of massive secularization throughout the Arab and Muslim world. In this regard, they argue, there is very little to distinguish the evolution of Islam from the history of Christianity, especially with Muslims now entering a global modernity. Sensitive to demographic variables and their reflection of personal and social truths, Courbage and Todd upend a dangerous meme: that we live in a fractured world close to crisis, struggling with an epidemic of closed cultures and minds made different by religion.

The Convergence of Civilizations
The Convergence of Civilizations

Author: Emanuel Adler

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2006-12-15

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 1442657308

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Recent efforts by the United States and its allies to promote democracy, security, and stability in the Middle East owe much to the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) – also known as the Barcelona Process – an important region-building plan in the Mediterranean region since 1995. The Convergence of Civilizations represents the output of an innovative and much needed collaborative project focused on the EMP. Editors Emanuel Adler, Beverly Crawford, Federica Bicchi, and Rafaella A. Del Sarto have set out to show that regional security and stability may be achieved through a cultural approach based on the concept of regional identity construction, and aim to take stock of the EMP in relation to this goal. The contributors to this collection focus on the obstacles Mediterranean region construction faces due to post 9/11 regional and global events, the difficulties of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, tensions between the EU and the US over Iraq, and the expected consequences of EU enlargement. They also seek to bring the EMP and region-making practices to the attention of American scholars in order to promote a more fertile academic exchange. Ultimately, the contributors demonstrate that the EMP and related region-making practices, while failing so far to promote the development of a Mediterranean regional identity and to achieve regional stability, suggest nonetheless a viable model for regional partnership and cooperation, and thus, for preventing a 'clash of civilizations' in the long haul. The Convergence of Civilizations will be an important tool for meeting the current global challenges being faced by nation-states as well as those in the future.

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

Author: Samuel P. Huntington

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2007-05-31

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 1416561242

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The classic study of post-Cold War international relations, more relevant than ever in the post-9/11 world, with a new foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Since its initial publication, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has become a classic work of international relations and one of the most influential books ever written about foreign affairs. An insightful and powerful analysis of the forces driving global politics, it is as indispensable to our understanding of American foreign policy today as the day it was published. As former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski says in his new foreword to the book, it “has earned a place on the shelf of only about a dozen or so truly enduring works that provide the quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.” Samuel Huntington explains how clashes between civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace but also how an international order based on civilizations is the best safeguard against war. Events since the publication of the book have proved the wisdom of that analysis. The 9/11 attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated the threat of civilizations but have also shown how vital international cross-civilization cooperation is to restoring peace. As ideological distinctions among nations have been replaced by cultural differences, world politics has been reconfigured. Across the globe, new conflicts—and new cooperation—have replaced the old order of the Cold War era. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order explains how the population explosion in Muslim countries and the economic rise of East Asia are changing global politics. These developments challenge Western dominance, promote opposition to supposedly “universal” Western ideals, and intensify intercivilization conflict over such issues as nuclear proliferation, immigration, human rights, and democracy. The Muslim population surge has led to many small wars throughout Eurasia, and the rise of China could lead to a global war of civilizations. Huntington offers a strategy for the West to preserve its unique culture and emphasizes the need for people everywhere to learn to coexist in a complex, multipolar, muliticivilizational world.

Convergence of Catastrophes
Convergence of Catastrophes

Author: Guillaume Faye

Publisher: Arktos

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1907166467

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Faye rigorously examines today's escalating crises one by one. He reminds readers they should not give in to pessimism, that what is being experienced is not an apocalypse, but a metamorphosis of humanity.

Script Effects as the Hidden Drive of the Mind, Cognition, and Culture
Script Effects as the Hidden Drive of the Mind, Cognition, and Culture

Author: Hye K. Pae

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-14

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 3030551520

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This open access volume reveals the hidden power of the script we read in and how it shapes and drives our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures. Expanding on the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (i.e., the idea that language affects the way we think), this volume proposes the “Script Relativity Hypothesis” (i.e., the idea that the script in which we read affects the way we think) by offering a unique perspective on the effect of script (alphabets, morphosyllabaries, or multi-scripts) on our attention, perception, and problem-solving. Once we become literate, fundamental changes occur in our brain circuitry to accommodate the new demand for resources. The powerful effects of literacy have been demonstrated by research on literate versus illiterate individuals, as well as cross-scriptal transfer, indicating that literate brain networks function differently, depending on the script being read. This book identifies the locus of differences between the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and between the East and the West, as the neural underpinnings of literacy. To support the “Script Relativity Hypothesis”, it reviews a vast corpus of empirical studies, including anthropological accounts of human civilization, social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, applied linguistics, second language studies, and cross-cultural communication. It also discusses the impact of reading from screens in the digital age, as well as the impact of bi-script or multi-script use, which is a growing trend around the globe. As a result, our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures are now growing closer together, not farther apart.

A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation
A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation

Author: Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Publisher: Pluto Press

Published: 2010-09-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780745330549

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It often seems that different crises are competing to devastate civilization. This book argues that financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages need to be considered as part of the same ailing system. Most accounts of our contemporary global crises such as climate change, or the threat of terrorism, focus on one area, or another, to the exclusion of others. Nafeez Ahmed argues that the unwillingness of experts to look outside their specialisations explains why there is so much disagreement and misunderstanding about particular crises. This book attempts to investigate all of these crises, not as isolated events, but as trends and processes that belong to a single global system. We are therefore not dealing with a "clash of civilizations," as Huntington argued. Rather, we are dealing with a fundamental crisis of civilization itself. This book provides a stark warning of the consequences of failing to take a broad view of the problems facing the world.

From International Relations to World Civilizations
From International Relations to World Civilizations

Author: Shannon Brincat

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-01-23

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9780367143121

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This volume explores the work of Robert W. Cox across International Relations, International Political Economy, and International Historical Sociology. Robert W. Cox has been a key figure in so-called critical approaches to world politics, contributing to the inter-paradigm debate in IR, pioneering the Gramscian approach to IPE, developing key insights into international institutions, and the changing nature of capitalism and the state. His more recent work on intercivilizational encounters and intersubjectivity has been no less influential. This comprehensive collection provides an entry-point into Cox's work across these themes of history, theory, political economy, and civilizations, offering a way for researchers and students to engage with Robert W. Cox's rich legacy and deploy the many insights of his thought into contemporary scholarship.This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics working within world politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Globalizations.

Easternization of the West
Easternization of the West

Author: Colin Campbell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-11-17

Total Pages: 693

ISBN-13: 1317260902

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In this provocative and groundbreaking book, Colin Campbell shows that the civilization of the West is undergoing a revolutionary process of change, one in which features that have characterized the West for two thousand years are in the process of being marginalized, to be replaced by those more often associated with the civilizations of the East. Moving far beyond popular trends, Campbell assembles a powerful range of evidence to show how "Easternization" has been building throughout the last century, especially since the 1960s. Campbell demonstrates how it was largely in the 1960s that new interpretations in theology, political thought, and science were widely adopted by a new generation of young "culture carriers." This highly original and wide-ranging book advances a thesis that will be of interest to scholars in many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

Civilizations in Embrace
Civilizations in Embrace

Author: Amitav Acharya

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 9814379735

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This study revisits one of the most extensive examples of the spread of ideas in the history of civilization: the diffusion of Indian religious and political ideas to Southeast Asia before the advent of Islam and European colonialism. Hindu and Buddhist concepts and symbols of kingship and statecraft helped to legitimize Southeast Asian rulers, and transform the political institutions and authority of Southeast Asia. But the process of this diffusion was not accompanied by imperialism, political hegemony, or "colonization" as conventionally understood. This book investigates different explanations of the spread of Indian ideas offered by scholars, including why and how it occurred and what were its key political and institutional outcomes. It challenges the view that strategic competition is a recurring phenomenon when civilizations encounter each other.

Islam and the West
Islam and the West

Author: Bernard Lewis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1994-10-27

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0198023936

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Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis has been for half a century one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, the author of over two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe. Eminent French historian Robert Mantran has written of Lewis's work: "How could one resist being attracted to the books of an author who opens for you the doors of an unknown or misunderstood universe, who leads you within to its innermost domains: religion, ways of thinking, conceptions of power, culture--an author who upsets notions too often fixed, fallacious, or partisan." In Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis brings together in one volume eleven essays that indeed open doors to the innermost domains of Islam. Lewis ranges far and wide in these essays. He includes long pieces, such as his capsule history of the interaction--in war and peace, in commerce and culture--between Europe and its Islamic neighbors, and shorter ones, such as his deft study of the Arabic word watan and what its linguistic history reveals about the introduction of the idea of patriotism from the West. Lewis offers a revealing look at Edward Gibbon's portrait of Muhammad in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unlike previous writers, Gibbon saw the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the church, but simply as a part of human history); he offers a devastating critique of Edward Said's controversial book, Orientalism; and he gives an account of the impediments to translating from classic Arabic to other languages (the old dictionaries, for one, are packed with scribal errors, misreadings, false analogies, and etymological deductions that pay little attention to the evolution of the language). And he concludes with an astute commentary on the Islamic world today, examining revivalism, fundamentalism, the role of the Shi'a, and the larger question of religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews. A matchless guide to the background of Middle East conflicts today, Islam and the West presents the seasoned reflections of an eminent authority on one of the most intriguing and little understood regions in the world.