[lit-ideas] Re: Huntington's thesis
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 06:55:44 -0800
Andreas,
You seem to be slowly moving into Fukuyama's camp. You should read
Fukuyama. I suspect you'd like him. You'd probably love his latest book
which I disagreed with, America at the Crossroads.
There is no doubt that Huntington is a controversial figure - rather his
thesis is controversial (and also his thesis about immigration). His book
is sort of like Spengler's Decline of the West. Lots of people disagreed
with Spengler, but no one dealing with such matters could ignore him.
Huntington is a Political Scientist and I'm not sure what historians think
of him. I do know that those who refer to him in Political Science journal
articles I've read treat him with respect. The back of his book says,
"Samuel P. Huntington is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor
at Harvard University, where he is also the director of the John M. Olin
Institute for Strategic Studies and the chairman of the Harvard Academy for
International and Area Studies. He was the director of security planning
for the National Security Council in the Carter Administration, the founder
and coeditor of Foreign Policy, and the president of the American Political
Science Association. He is the author of many books and scholarly articles.
Huntington lives in Boston, Massachusetts."
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Andreas Ramos
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 11:55 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Huntington's thesis
> The Japanese/American war did represent a Huntington Clash of
Civilizations.
> The use of weaponry doesn't enter into his thesis. That Japan has
mastered
> technology doesn't either.
I understand quite well that Huntington didn't consider the technological
status of Japan.
That's precisely my point.
Huntington defines "civilizations" as religious-cultural units, but he
ignores their
economics: agrarian, industrial, digital tech, etc. This is the fundamental
error in his
idea.
This type of history was done a hundred years ago: Toynbee and others tried
to explain
history in various ways: geological determinism (people in warm climates had
it too hot,
therefore they were lazy; people in cold climates had it too harsh,
therefore they struggled
to survive, and Europeans had it "just right" so they vigorously conquered,
er, colonized
the planet), religious determinism (Buddhism is passive, Christianity is
open, etc.) , and
so on. And there were racial theories as well. Huntington's idea seems close
to racial
theories (Chinese are different from Europeans, etc.) such as Gobineau and
others. If you
want a thrilling history, read Herder.
But these differences disappear when you look at the actual history of the
area (as I
pointed out, India has been three different "civilizations"). Give it a try:
describe
Mexico. They've had practically every form of revolution and government ever
invented, even
royalist revolutions, all in 200 years.
Furthermore, Huntington's differences between civilizations are superficial.
The Japanese
eat sushi; Americans eat burgers, therefore, they are different
civiliations? Or, as Eric
points out, Japanese commit seppuku (it's seppuku, not hara-kiri, that he's
thinking of) and
Americans don't. But both militaries were based on the very same form of
industrialized
economy. Some details are different (Californians eat sushi and Japanese eat
pasta), but
they both live in the same kind of post-industrial digital economy. They
commute to work in
office buildings, they worry about credit card bills, they talk on their
cell phones, and so
on. Japanese and Americans, even in the 1920s, were more alike than
different. Read Soseki's
novels; you can switch out names and place it in London or Chicago. Read Ryu
Murakami (50s
and 60s) or Haruki Murakami (90s and present); there's nothing "foreign"
about any of those
novels.
Look: what was the Japan/US war about? Why did they fight? Did both sides
have radically
different understandings over the goals? The Spaniards vs. the Aztec was
indeed two totally
different cultures with different agendas. The Aztecs went into their
standard war and got a
big surprise.
But both sides in the US/Japan war had identical goals: colonization,
control of shipping,
control of oil supplies (which triggered the war), and so on. Both sides
used the same
technology. It was fundamentally an economics war, over money and power.
Clash of
civilizations? Or clash of siblings?
This is why Huntington and others have remained pop history, read by
non-historians. It's
not taken seriously among historians. There's no deep theory, differences
evaporate in the
details, the difference disappear in comparison, and so on.
Lawrence, I think you would do much better if you looked at economics, how
globalization
functions, the impact of digital technology on a region, and so on. It would
explain much
more.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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