Research on Civilization
Discussion
Matthew Melko:
"Is There a Civilizational Paradigm? ...
There does appear to be a civilizational paradigm. Possibly the science has become too normal. Perhaps the paradigm has been taken too much for granted. The International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (ISCSC) moved from Austria to the United States in 1971. After a few years in which methods and theory papers predominated, papers presented at annual meetings covered a wide range of subjects involving comparisons of political, economic, social, cultural, aesthetic, religious, philosophical, literary and other aspects of civilizations; examinations of particular problems within a civilization, often Western; looking back to the civilizational roots; explorations of the primitive precursors of civilizations; and examinations of the interactions between civilizations. But the civilizationists who continued to be interested in the overall processes of civilizations — e.g. David Wilkinson, David Richardson, Roger Wescott, Gordon Hewes, John Hord, Lee Snyder, Corinne Gilb, Ross Maxwell — seemed to constitute just another aspect of the normal science, and they were not getting many books published on this subject, only papers and articles. The paradigm was sufficiently understood. We knew what we meant by civilizations, we used familiar examples. We compared philosophies and religions. When we did a session on Hadrian and I set out to look for the Chinese Hadrian (1996), I knew I was looking for an emperor who set limits on the expansion of the Han or Tang or Ming Empire, preferably one who traveled its borders. I didn't find him, but I would have recognized him if he existed.
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Meanwhile, the World Historical Association came into existence and grew rapidly, meeting the needs, not only of researchers, but of the growing number of teachers of world history in undergraduate colleges and high schools in a time of increasing sensitivity to multiculturalism. World history text books tended to be divided into historical periods. Scholarly books, the sources for the text books, could take a section of period and area, more than a nation, less than the world, for instance considering the Asian world before industrialization [e.g. Chaudhuri, 1990], Another area of study with a world scope was initiated in the 1970's by the world systems analysts (wearing black hats). To a civilizationist, the analysis of macrosystems relationships might be perceived as a kind of intercivilizational encounter, but after it was introduced by Immanuel Wallerstein in 1974, it developed a life of its own. While world systems analysts could teach only college classes at the major or graduate level, they were spinning off a new research area, playing off one another. Their paradigm was tighter, more coherent than that of the civilizationists, and more focused on world economy. They were much more successful at getting books published and reviewed, and were pioneers of the Internet. A pair of well known debates occurred in the nineties between civilizationists and world systems analysts [Sanderson 1994, 1996], but the real focus of the debates was world systems, with the civilizationists serving as foils to criticize the world systems approach and set up rebuttals. The only major attention drawn to civilizations since the founding of the ISCSC was created by a civilizational outsider (though a political science insider), Samuel P. Huntington [1996], who got considerable attention by taking civilizational theory and applying it to the future, warning of potential major conflicts involving the West, Islamic Civilization, and China. While some civilizationists sniffed at Huntington's more popular approach and sometimes debatable conjectures, others acknowledged that he was doing what more civilizationists should be doing: applying the lessons of the past to the contemporary world and to the future [Drew, 2001]. So, yes, there is a civilizational paradigm. By 1970 the mapping was sufficient to allow civilizationists to take off in different directions.
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What might be helpful now, it seems to me, is a reconsideration of the central problems dealt with by civilizationists, a firm (nay a dogmatic) statement of probability, and—instead of a debate about the superiority of civilizational study to anything else—a linking of civilization-al theory to world history and world systems analysis, perhaps under the generic heading preferred by Lee Daniel Snyder [1999]: Macrohistory."
(https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1551&context=ccr)
Who Are the Civilizationists?
Matthew Melko:
"Much begins with Oswald Spengler. He had his predecessors, but he put together the first civilizational theory. He stressed the plurality and autonomy of high cultures, which we now call civilizations. He placed great emphasis on what A. L. Kroeber would call style and David Richardson, worldview. And he perceived a pattern of rise and fall that would be accepted and modified by other civilizationists. He has been much maligned as a dogmatic, racist Nazi, but in Charles Atkinson's translation, his Decline of the West [1980, (1932)] still reads well and often leaves the reader saying, yes, that's how it is (not every reader in the same sections, of course). Recently, Spengler has been incisively reassessed by John Farrenkopf [2001],
Arnold J. Toynbee's famous (or infamous) Study [1934-1961] expanded and rounded off Spengler's ideas. He insisted that his approach was different, but civilizationists have linked the two. It could be said that most civilizationists who have written since Spengler have been expanding on or reacting to the perceptions of these two scholars. Toynbee wrote at great length and seemed to have had an aversion to editing. But his much amended list of civilizations comes closer to the lists we accept today, his theory of peripheral domination has proved valuable to civilizationists and world systems analysts alike, his concept of general war has invoked a lively sub-discipline in political science. His variations on Spengler's ideas, e.g. Times of Troubles and Universal States, seem to have been more acceptable to English writing succes-sors. Both Spengler and Toynbee, damned in their own time, seem to have provided fruitful hypotheses that are still being explored. While Pitirim A. Sorokin's Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937-41, 1957) strongly discounted the whole civilizational idea, much that he has written can be fitted into the civilizational paradigm.
Ironically, Sorokin first attempted to establish a paradigm [1963, (1950)], though it wouldn't have been so called at the time it was published, reviewing the work of authors who pursued broad social philosophies. His own basic model, however, provided a broader cyclical perception, a different macrohistorical interpretation. He did agree with Spengler that there were cyclical patterns in history, and that historical epochs, like Spengler's cultures, had distinctive characteristics. A. L. Kroeber, in Configurations of Culture Growth [1944], presented a cooler, less dogmatic approach to civilizational questions. His concept of pattern or style was closer to Spengler's presentation of cultural creativity, and he was interested in the rise and decline of such pat-terns. But he was less insistent on finding recurrent durations. Like Sorokin, he also wrote about what we would now call a paradigm of historical writing [1957]. Indeed, it could be argued that Kuhn's paradigm for science, which we all love to expand, is an example of a Kroeberian pattern, which the latter used to describe configurations of related work in art, literature and philosophy.
Carroll Quigley, intending to take a fresh and incisive approach to civilizational questions, also provided a brief and clear summary of civilizational problems. His answers, like Spengler's and Sorokin's, were dogmatic but clarifying. Probably his Evolution of Civilizations [1979 (1961)], which he said he thought about for 30 years and wrote in six weeks, is the best starting point for anyone who would like a readable introduction to the study of civilizations.
Rushton Coulborn, a student of Kroeber's and friend of Toynbee and Sorokin, applying Kuhn's idea of paradigm, in retrospect saw him-self as an early normal scientist focusing on the initial stages of civilizational development [1969]. But, like Quigley, he was also one of the paradigm creators [1956, 1958, 1966]."
(https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1551&context=ccr)
Defining Civilizations
Matthew Melko:
"Civilizationists tend to agree that civilizations are distinct from primitive cultures. Spengler saw these high cultures being born, having a soul, emerging in a very short period of time. Others have insisted that it is not a matter of civilizations gradually evolving from primitive cultures. Coulborn sees them on several occasions emerging relatively quickly and decisively, replacing a multiplicity of primitive societies on several occasions with unified cultures that are entirely different [1958: 3-30], Civilizations are perceived to be a great deal larger than primitive cultures, usually incorporating a great number of primitive cultures, but in so doing, transforming them. Civilizations are characterized by new religious forms, "higher religions" that contribute to civilizational unity, religions that are qualitatively different from those of primitive cultures [e.g. Spengler 1980: I, 399-402; Toynbee 1934-1961: XII, 68-102; Coulborn 1958: 129-171; 1966:412-413,417-421], Economically civilizations exercise greater control of the environ-ment, practicing agriculture, domesticating animals, employing metals, building surpluses. Civilizations are also characterized by new political forms that unify much larger areas and bring about more centralized political unification which is often not to the benefit of most of the people who experience this transformation. It is a matter of debate whether the building of economic surplus is a cause of the political transformation, or whether the religious, economic and political transformations are themselves integrated responses to another challenge, such as desiccation or population pressure. The developing political and economic forms enable civilizations to build cities and lead them to develop methods of record keeping that often, but not always, include writing. Invariably the development of cities, and the intense change involved in the whole process induces a need for new expressions of art, manifested particularly in the architecture of the cities, which in turn provide scope and need for sculpture, engraving and painting. Warfare, as a means of controlling territory, was seen as a phenomenon of civilization. Primitive societies did fight one another, but not for the control or acquisition of territory. Civilizations have much more elaborate systems of stratification, with a small minority of religious and political leaders dominating a powerless and subordinate majority. Regardless of civilizational characteristics, there must be universals. Technologies, irrigation for instance, can be operated only in a limited way, or they will not work. Much of the difficulty with definition has come from the critical thinking capacities of our scholars. If you start to list the characteristics of a civilization, the critical thinker will show you that primitive societies have these characteristics, they have horticulture if not agriculture, centers if not cities, often war over similar issues to those of civilizations, some way of keeping records if not writing. But civilizations have a mass, style, economy and sets of internal relationships that make them distinctly different from primitive cultures. There may be marginal cases, primitive cultures that were coalescing and on their way to becoming civilizations, but for one reason or another didn't get there. We debate about these, but that need not get in the way of our acceptance of a number of mainstream civilizations, not only by civilizationists, but by librarians in their cataloging, by journalists in their reporting, by all of us. And this shows that I still cannot get away from the plurality of civilizations, even while trying to frame a definition. For now, then, let's say a civilization is a large society possessing a degree of autonomy and internal integration, an agricultural economy, religion, stratification, warfare, usually cities and writing, or some other method of keeping long term records, and central government at least at a regional or urban level."
(https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1551&context=ccr)
Are Civilizations Integrated?
Matthew Melko:
"It is difficult to develop a civilizational theory without civilizations. Spengler didn't use the term as we use it now, but it was central to his thesis that the "high cultures" he wrote about were very large, autonomous, durable societies that had their own histories. Toynbee agreed with Spengler about the identity of several of these societies, but he called them civilizations and that is the name that has come to be used. Toynbee agreed with Spengler, however, that these civilizations had considerable autonomy, lasted for many centuries, and had their own histories. Spengler was more insistent on this autonomy, arguing that once established, these societies were virtually impenetrable. Others have modified this, but the idea that a civilization maintains its identity over a long period of time, resisting or transforming external influences, is crucial to civilizational theory, and one area in which it is distinct from world systems analysis. Spengler, much more than Toynbee, saw the unity of a civilization formed around its soul, what later Kroeber would describe as pattern or style. It was this internal style that distinguished a civilization and gave it the power to resist the influence of others. If one civilization bor-rowed ideas from another, the borrowed idea or technology would be modified so as to fit the pattern of the borrowing civilization. If the boundaries of civilizations were not always clear, the styles were. The idea of individual civilizational styles suggests that civilizations have a degree of internal integration. This is perceived to be particularly strong in the early centuries of a civilization's development. Members of the civilization are ordinarily more influenced by the internal patterns of the civilization than they are by external events. As Toynbee put it, civilizations are institutions "that comprehend without being comprehended by others" [1934-61: I: 455 n. 1]. The extent and intensity of integration varies. In times of transition, the integration is looser, as change in core area requires change in other areas. Does the loosening follow change or does change follow loosening? This seems like a 19th Century question. Even if we could deter-mine the change that preceded others, this would not tell us whether it caused the loosening or was permitted by the loosening, not to mention that the determination of the precipitating event leading to the first change depends so much on the observer's theoretical framework. At all times, but especially when integration is tight, there tends to be a relationship of components. Aesthetics relate to one another, so that if forms of literature become freer, and more latitude is allowed in verse forms, this is likely to be reflected in art and music. Economic forms relate to political forms. If central government is powerful, economies are likely to be more tightly controlled, as are religions. If, like Southeast Asia and Europe, a civilization tends to be organized in state systems, it is likely to experience more organized internal wars [e.g. Melko, 2001a, Table 10], Sorokin's contention [1963: 209-217] that civilizations are mere congeries seems considerably exaggerated. These internal relationships become obvious when considered from the perspective of another civilization. The perception of a plurality of civilizations owes much to the integrating of internal relationships. Each civilization has a culture. Within the civilization are subcultures, French and German, or Hindu and Muslim, that will be perceived as cultures within the civilization, but appear as variants from without. Culture helps maintain integration and provides limitations on change. It is extremely powerful in a civilization, may seemingly disappear for decades, and then reemerge. as we have seen recently in the case of Russian Orthodox religion.
Worldview is an aspect of culture, and it can be said that each civilization has a worldview that is determined by that culture. Even political and economic choices are determined by culture. The Chinese worldview limited the capacity for trade in the Ming Empire. Even though the Chinese had ocean-going ships more than a century before the West, and even though they actually got to India rather than to islands off a continent in another hemisphere, the West and not China experienced a great burst of world trade. How deep into a civilization does culture penetrate? Quigley mentions that in the case of Classical civilization, only superficially, only to a small elite. It affected the upper classes who built the buildings and wrote the writings, but the peasants and proletariat, who cared about neither, were everywhere pretty much alike [1979: 276-278].
Does this apply to all civilizations? Certainly poverty and illiteracy continue to create a world population in the 21st century that has many features in common. But if comparative studies are made of peasant or poor rural populations, it becomes apparent that the peasants of one civilization do differ from those of another in many significant ways, and those ways usually relate to the respective integrations of the civilizations."
(https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1551&context=ccr)