by Routledge

    Especially since the end of the Cold War, the concept of ‘civilization’ has been frequently deployed by those who seek to describe and explain the world in which we live. The events of 11 September 2001, and the subsequent ‘war on terror’, have further elevated the concept's use in the discourse of politics and international relations. There has, for instance, been feverish speculation and increasingly heated rhetoric about struggles ‘for civilization’ or a possible ‘clash of civilizations’, particularly between the West and the Islamic world. The term is used both to describe—and to cast value-laden judgements about—people, places, and events. It is often misinterpreted and misapplied, with sometimes dangerous consequences.

    In response to the revival and misuse of ‘civilization’, this new four-volume collection from Routledge Major Works meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a vast and growing scholarly literature. It brings together canonical and the best cutting-edge research to provide a comprehensive overview of the origins, contested meanings, contextual applications, and general history of this critical concept.

    Volume I (‘The Origins and Meaning of Civilization’) is made up of the best work from a distinguished line-up of political scientists, philosophers, historians, sociologists, and linguists. It outlines the origins of the concept and its many and disputed meanings. This first volume establishes the foundations on which much of the analysis included in the three subsequent volumes is based. Volume II (‘Civilization, Civilizations, Progress, and History’) includes a range of materials that intimately outline the relationship between the ideal of civilization and the idea of progress, including progress in the social, cultural, moral, scientific, and political realms. Research gathered here further examines how the concepts of civilization and progress in turn relate to the more general passage of history, particularly the idea of history with a purpose. Volume III (‘Civilization and its Others’) brings together the best scholarship to explore what civilization is not. The scholarship collected here comes from some of history’s most distinguished political scientists, leading international lawyers, anthropologists, and controversial ethnologists. Can one, for example, usefully draw a distinction between civilized, savage, and barbarian peoples? The final volume (‘Civilizational Relations: Past, Present, and Future’) enables researchers and students to navigate through the equally sensitive field of historical and contemporary relations between the world’s major civilizations or religio-cultural groups. It includes the catalysts of debates such as ‘the clash-of-civilizations thesis’ and the responses it has provoked.

    With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Civilization is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers of politics, political philosophy, and international relations—as well as those working in allied disciplines such as security studies and international law—as a vital research resource.

    Volume I: The Origins and Meaning of Civilization

    1. Raymond Williams, ‘Civilization’, Keywords (Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 57–60.

    2. Will Durant, ‘What is Civilization?’, Ladies’ Home Journal, LXIII, Jan. 1946, 22–3,103–4, 107.

    3. R. G. Collingwood, ‘What Civilization Means’, in David Boucher (ed.), The New Leviathan (Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 480–511.

    4. François Guizot, The History of Civilization in Europe [1828–30] (Penguin, 1997), pp. 9–26.

    5. John Stuart Mill, ‘Civilization’, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson [1836] (University of Toronto Press, 1977), pp. 119–47.

    6. Lucien Febvre, ‘Civilisation: Evolution of a Word and a Group of Ideas’, A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Febvre, ed. Peter Burke, trans. K. Folca (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), pp. 219–57.

    7. Emile Benveniste, ‘Civilization: A Contribution to the History of the Word’, Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (University of Miami Press, 1971), pp. 289–96, 312–13.

    8. Zygmunt Bauman, ‘On the Origins of Civilisation: A Historical Note’, Theory, Culture & Society, 1985, 2, 3, 7–14.

    9. Jean Starobinski, ‘The Word Civilization’, Blessings in Disguise; or The Morality of Evil, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 1–35, 215–19.

    10. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process [1939] (Blackwell, 2000), pp. 5–35.

    11. Robert P. Kraynak, ‘Hobbes on Barbarism and Civilization’, Journal of Politics, 1983, 45, 1, 86–109.

    12. Anthony Pagden, ‘The "Defence of Civilization" in Eighteenth-Century Social Theory’, History of the Human Sciences, 1988, 1, 1, 33–45.

    13. George C. Caffentzis, ‘On the Scottish Origin of "Civilization"’, Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and its ‘Others’, ed. Silvia Federici (Praeger, 1995), pp. 13–36.

    14. Fernand Braudel, ‘The History of Civilizations: The Past Explains the Present’, On History, trans. Sarah Matthews (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), pp. 177–218.

    15. Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, ‘Note on the Notion of Civilization’, Social Research, 1971, 38, 4, 808–13.

    16. Robert K. Merton, ‘Civilization and Culture’, Sociology and Social Research, 1936, 21, 2, 103–13.

    17. Robert Bierstedt, ‘Indices of Civilization’, American Journal of Sociology, 1966, 71, 5, 483–90.

    18. Brett Bowden, ‘The The Ideal of Civilisation: Its Origins and Socio-Political Character’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2004, 7, 1, 25–50.

    19. Bruce Mazlish, ‘The Origins and Importance of the Concept of Civilization’, Civilization and its Contents (Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 1–19.

    20. Johan Goudsblom, ‘Civilization: The Career of a Controversial Concept’, History and Theory, 2006, 45, 2, 288–97.

    21. Roland Robertson, ‘Civilization’, Theory, Culture & Society, 2006, 23, 2–3, 421–7.

    22. Wolf Schäfer, ‘Global Civilization and Local Cultures: A Crude Look at the Whole’, International Sociology, 2001, 16, 3, 301–19.

    23. Stephen Mennell, ‘American Civilization’, The American Civilizing Process (Polity Press, 2007), pp. 23–39.

    Volume II: Civilization, Civilizations, Progress, and History

    24. George G. Iggers, ‘The Idea of Progress in Historiography and Social Thought Since the Enlightenment’, in Gabriel A. Almond, Marvin Chodorow, and Roy Harvey Pearce (eds.), Progress and its Discontents (University of California Press, 1982), pp. 41–66.

    25. Friedrich von Schiller, ‘The Nature and Value of Universal History: An Inaugural Lecture’ [1789], 1972, History and Theory, 11, 3, 321–34.

    26. Edward B. Tylor, ‘The Science of Culture’, Primitive Culture, Vol. I (Henry Holt and Company, 1874), pp. 1–25.

    27. Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1907), pp. v–vii, 3–18, 59–60.

    28. Friedrich Engels, ‘Barbarism and Civilization’, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Progress Publishers, 1948), pp. 154–75.

    29. Fernand Braudel, ‘The Continuity of Civilizations’, A History of Civilizations, trans. Richard Mayne (Penguin, 1995), pp. 24–36.

    30. Arnold J. Toynbee, ‘The Shape of History’, A Study of History (Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 30–53.

    31. Arnold J. Toynbee, ‘My View of History’ and ‘Civilization on Trial’, Civilization on Trial (Oxford University Press, 1948), pp. 3–15, 150–63.

    32. Oswald Spengler, ‘Introduction’, Decline of the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 3–40.

    33. John Farrenkopf, ‘Spengler’s Theory of Civilization’, Thesis Eleven, 2000, 62, 1, 23–38.

    34. Geoffrey Barraclough, ‘Is there a European Civilisation?’, History in a Changing World (Basil Blackwell, 1956), pp. 46–53.

    35. Norbert Elias, ‘The Social Constraint towards Self-Constraint’, The Civilizing Process (Blackwell, 2000), pp. 365–79.

    36. Norbert Elias, ‘Technization and Civilization’, Theory, Culture and Society, 1995, 12, 3, 7–42.

    37. Stephen Mennell, ‘Decivilizing Processes: Theoretical Significance and Some Lines of Research’, International Sociology, 1990, 5, 2, 205–23.

    38. Robert L. Carneiro, ‘A Reappraisal of the Roles of Technology and Organization in the Origin of Civilization’, American Antiquity, 1974, 39, 2, 179–86.

    39. S. N. Eisenstadt, ‘The Civilizational Dimension in Sociological Analysis’, Thesis Eleven, 2000, 62, 1, 1–21.

    40. Daniel Chirot, ‘A Clash of Civilizations or of Paradigms? Theorizing Progress and Social Change’, International Sociology, 2001, 16, 3, 341–60.

    41. Roland Robertson, ‘Civilization and the Civilizing Process: Elias, Globalization and Analytic Synthesis’, Theory, Culture and Society, 1992, 9, 1, 211–27.

    42. Brett Bowden, ‘In the Name of Progress and Peace: The "Standard of Civilization" and the Universalizing Project’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 2004, 29, 1, 43–68.

    Volume III: Civilization and its Others

    43. Bruce Mazlish, ‘Civilization in a Historical and Global Perspective’, International Sociology, 2001, 16, 3, 293–300.

    44. Frank H. Hankins, The Racial Basis of Civilization (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), pp. 3–13, 372–5.

    45. I. Harris, ‘Race’, Race and Civilisation (Williams & Norgate, 1939), pp. 19–34.

    46. Mark Francis, ‘The "Civilizing" of Indigenous People in Nineteenth-Century Canada’, Journal of World History, 1998, 9, 1, 51–87.

    47. Robert van Krieken, ‘The Barbarism of Civilization: Cultural Genocide and the "Stolen Generations"’, British Journal of Sociology, 1999, 50, 2, 297–315.

    48. Bruce Buchan, ‘The Empire of Political Thought: Civilization, Savagery and Perceptions of Indigenous Government’, History of the Human Sciences, 2005, 18, 2, 1–22.

    49. Brett Bowden, ‘Civilization and Savagery in the Crucible of War’, Global Change, Peace & Security, 2007, 19, 1, 3–16.

    50. Charles H. Alexandrowicz, ‘The Juridical Expression of the Sacred Trust of Civilization’, American Journal of International Law, 1971, 65, 1, 149–59.

    51. Antony Anghie, ‘Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law’, Harvard International Law Journal, 1999, 40, 1, 1–80.

    52. Brett Bowden, ‘The Colonial Origins of International Law: European Expansion and the Classical Standard of Civilisation’, Journal of the History of International Law, 2005, 7, 1, 1–23.

    53. Jessica Blatt, "‘To Bring Out the Best that is in Their Blood": Race, Reform, and Civilization in the Journal of Race Development (1910–1919)’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2004, 27, 5, 691–709.

    54. Prasenjit Duara, ‘The Discourse of Civilization and Decolonization’, Journal of World History, 2004, 15, 1, 1–5.

    55. Prasenjit Duara, ‘The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism’, Journal of World History, 2001, 12, 1, 99–130.

    56. Georg Schwarzenberger, ‘The Standard of Civilisation in International Law’, in George W. Keeton and Georg Schwarzenberger (eds.), Current Legal Problems (Stevens & Sons Ltd, 1955), pp. 212–34.

    57. Gerrit W. Gong, ‘The Standard of "Civilization"’, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 3–23.

    58. Jack Donnelly, ‘Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization’, International Affairs, 1998, 74, 1, 1–24.

    59. David P. Fidler, ‘The Return of the Standard of Civilization’, Chicago Journal of International Law, 2001, 2, 1, 137–57.

    60. Gerrit W. Gong, ‘Standards of Civilization Today’, in Mehdi Mozaffari (ed.), Globalization and Civilizations (Routledge, 2002), pp. 75–96.

    61. Mehdi Mozaffari, ‘The Transformationalist Perspective and the Rise of a Global Standard of Civilization’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 2001, 1, 2, 247–64.

    62. Richard A. Shweder, ‘On the Return of the "Civilizing Project"’, Daedalus, 2002, 131, 3, pp. 117–21.

    63. Hamid Dabashi, ‘For the Last Time: Civilizations’, International Sociology, 2001, 16, 3, 361–8.

    Volume IV: Civilizational Relations: Past, Present, and Future

    64. Lester B. Pearson ‘Relations Between Civilizations’, Democracy in World Politics (Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 82–95.

    65. Robert W. Cox, ‘Thinking about Civilizations’, Review of International Studies, 2000, 26, 5, 217–34.

    66. Andrew Linklater, ‘Norbert Elias, the "Civilizing Process" and the Sociology of International Relations’, International Politics, 2004, 41, 1, 3–35.

    67. Donald J. Puchala, ‘International Encounters of Another Kind’, Global Society, 1997, 11, 1, 5–29.

    68. Cho-Yun Hsu, ‘Chinese Encounters with Other Civilizations’, International Sociology, 2001, 16, 3, 438–54.

    69. Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, 1993, 72, 3, 22–49.

    70. Samuel P. Huntington, ‘If Not Civilizations, What? Samuel Huntington Responds to His Critics’, Foreign Affairs, 1993, 72, 5, 186–94.

    71. Jacinta O’Hagan, ‘Civilisational Conflict? Looking for Cultural Enemies’, Third World Quarterly, 1995, 16, 1, 19–38.

    72. Akira Iriye, ‘The Second Clash: Huntington, Mahan, and Civilizations’, Harvard International Review, 1997, 19, 2, 44–5, 70.

    73. John Gray, ‘Global Utopias and Clashing Civilizations: Misunderstanding the Present’, International Affairs, 1998, 74, 1, 149–64.

    74. Michael J. Schapiro, ‘Samuel Huntington’s Moral Geography’, Theory & Event, 1999, 2, 4.

    75. William E. Connolly, ‘The New Cult of Civilizational Superiority’, Theory & Event, 1999, 2, 4.

    76. Christopher S. Jones, ‘If Not a Clash, Then What? Huntington, Nishida Kitarô and the Politics of Civilizations’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 2002, 2, 2, 223–43.

    77. Andrej Tusicisny, ‘Civilizational Conflicts: More Frequent, Longer, and Bloodier?’, Journal of Peace Research, 2004, 41, 4, 485–98.

    78. Jonathan Fox, ‘Ethnic Minorities and the Clash of Civilizations: A Quantitative Analysis of Huntington’s Thesis’, British Journal of Political Science, 2002, 32, 3, 415–34.

    79. United Nations, ‘United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations’, Report of the Secretary General, GA/56/523 (2 Nov. 2001).

    80. United Nations, ‘Alliance of Civilizations’, Report of the High-Level Group, 13 Nov. 2006.

    81. G. Herd and Martin Weber, ‘Forging World Order Paradigms: "Good Civilization" vs. "Global Terror"’, Security Dialogue, 2001, 32, 4, 504–6.

    82. Wendy Brown, ‘Tolerance as/in Civilizational Discourse’, Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History, 2004, 8, 52–84.

    83. Brett Bowden, ‘The River of Inter-Civilisational Relations: The Ebb and Flow of Peoples, Ideas and Innovations’, Third World Quarterly, 2007, 28, 7, 1359–74.

    84. John M. Hobson, ‘Reconstructing International Relations Through World History: Oriental Globalization and the Global–Dialogic Conception of Inter-Civilizational Relations’, International Politics, 2007, 44, 4, 414–30.

    85. Mary Catherine Bateson, ‘Beyond Sovereignty: An Emerging Global Civilization’, in R. B. J. Walker and Saul H. Medlovitz (eds.), Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political Community (Lynne Reinner, 1990), pp. 145–58.

    86. Roman Herzog, ‘Towards a Universal Civilization’, Preventing the Clash of Civilization: A Peace Strategy for the Twenty-First Century (St Martins Press, 1999), pp. 49–52.

    87. Hans Küng, ‘Towards a Universal Civilization’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 2000, 11, 2, 229–34.

    88. Mohd Kamal Hassan, ‘Towards a Common Civilization’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 2000, 11, 2, 235–42.

    89. Robert W. Cox, ‘Civilizations and the Twenty-First Century: Some Theoretical Considerations’, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, 2001, 1, 1, 105–30.

    90. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ‘Civilization Need Not Die’, Harvard Magazine, July–Aug. 2002, 67–69.

    91. Fred Dallmayr, ‘Empire or Cosmopolis? Civilization at the Crossroads’, Globalizations, 2005, 2, 1, 14–30.

    Biography

    Brett Bowden is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. He is co-editor (with Leonard Seabrooke) of Global Standards of Market Civilization (Routledge/RIPE Studies in Global Political Economy, 2006). Bowden’s essays have appeared in Counterpunch and Online Journal, while his commentary and opinion pieces have appeared in The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and Sunday Age in Melbourne and The Canberra Times.

    His scholarly publications include:

    Brett Bowden, The Empire of Civilization: a story about making History and influencing Peoples (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2008, forthcoming).

    Brett Bowden and Leonard Seabrooke (eds), Global Standards of Market Civilization (London & New York: Routledge/RIPE Series in Global Political Economy, 2006).

    Brett Bowden, ‘The River of Inter-civilisational Relations: the Ebb and Flow of Peoples, Ideas and Innovations’, Third World Quarterly, 28(7), 2007, pp. 1359-1374.

    Brett Bowden, ‘Civilization and Savagery in the Crucible of War’, Global Change, Peace & Security, 19(1), 2007, pp. 3-16.

    2008, ‘The Ebb and Flow of Peoples, Ideas and Innovations: Towards a Global History of Political Thought’, in Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia, T. Shogimen and C. Nederman (eds) (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, forthcoming).

    Brett Bowden and Leonard Seabrooke, ‘Global Standards of Market Civilization’, in The Production and Reproduction of 'Civilizations' in International Relations, M. Hall and P.T. Jackson (eds) (New York & London: Palgrave, 2007), in press.

    Brett Bowden, ‘Civil Society, the State, and the Limits to Global Civil Society’, Global Society, 20(2), 2006, pp. 155-178.

    Brett Bowden, ‘The Colonial Origins of International Law: European Expansion and the Classical Standard of Civilisation’, Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d'histoire du droit international, 7(1), 2005, pp. 1-23.

    Brett Bowden, ‘The Ideal of Civilisation: Its Origins and Socio-Political Character’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 7(1), 2004, pp. 25-50.

    Brett Bowden, ‘In the Name of Progress and Peace: the "Standard of Civilization" and the Universalizing Project’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 29(1), 2004, pp. 43-68.

    Brett Bowden, ‘Global Civil Society’, in Routledge Encyclopedia of International Relations and Global Politics, Martin Griffiths (ed.) (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 318-320.

    Brett Bowden, ‘Standard of Civilisation’, in Routledge Encyclopedia of International Relations and Global Politics, Martin Griffiths (ed.) (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 776-778.