[lit-ideas] Clash of Civilizations a Basic Category Mistake

From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:52:19 +0900
Alfred North Whitehead talked about the fallacy of misplaced
concreteness. Here is what Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has too say
about "The Clash of Civilizations." Discovered just now on Slate.com.

"A remarkable use of imagined singularity can be found in Samuel
Huntington's influential 1998 book The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of the World Order. The difficulty with Huntington's approach
begins with his system of unique categorization, well before the issue
of a clash—or not—is even raised. Indeed, the thesis of a
civilizational clash is conceptually parasitic on the commanding power
of a unique categorization along so-called civilizational lines, which
closely follow religious divisions to which singular attention is
paid. Huntington contrasts Western civilization with "Islamic
civilization," "Hindu civilization," "Buddhist civilization," and so
on. The alleged confrontations of religious differences are
incorporated into a sharply carpentered vision of hardened
divisiveness.

"In fact, of course, the people of the world can be classified
according to many other partitions, each of which has some—often
far-reaching—relevance in our lives: nationalities, locations,
classes, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many
others. While religious categories have received much airing in recent
years, they cannot be presumed to obliterate other distinctions, and
even less can they be seen as the only relevant system of classifying
people across the globe. In partitioning the population of the world
into those belonging to "the Islamic world," "the Western world," "the
Hindu world," "the Buddhist world," the divisive power of
classificatory priority is implicitly used to place people firmly
inside a unique set of rigid boxes. Other divisions (say, between the
rich and the poor, between members of different classes and
occupations, between people of different politics, between distinct
nationalities and residential locations, between language groups,
etc.) are all submerged by this allegedly primal way of seeing the
differences between people.

"The difficulty with the clash of civilizations thesis begins with the
presumption of the unique relevance of a singular classification.
Indeed, the question "Do civilizations clash?" is founded on the
presumption that humanity can be pre-eminently classified into
distinct and discrete civilizations, and that the relations between
different human beings can somehow be seen, without serious loss of
understanding, in terms of relations between different civilizations.

"This reductionist view is typically combined, I am afraid, with a
rather foggy perception of world history that overlooks, first, the
extent of internal diversities within these civilizational categories,
and second, the reach and influence of interactions—intellectual as
well as material—that go right across the regional borders of
so-called civilizations. And its power to befuddle can trap not only
those who would like to support the thesis of a clash (varying from
Western chauvinists to Islamic fundamentalists), but also those who
would like to dispute it and yet try to respond within the
straitjacket of its prespecified terms of reference.

"The limitations of such civilization-based thinking can prove just as
treacherous for programs of "dialogue among civilizations" (much in
vogue these days) as they are for theories of a clash of
civilizations. The noble and elevating search for amity among people
seen as amity between civilizations speedily reduces many-sided human
beings to one dimension each and muzzles the variety of involvements
that have provided rich and diverse grounds for cross-border
interactions over many centuries, including the arts, literature,
science, mathematics, games, trade, politics, and other arenas of
shared human interest. Well-meaning attempts at pursuing global peace
can have very counterproductive consequences when these attempts are
founded on a fundamentally illusory understanding of the world of
human beings."

--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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[lit-ideas] Clash of Civilizations a Basic Category Mistake

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