World Historical Association

Context

By Matthew Melko:

(in the context of Research on Civilization)

"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."

(https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1551&context=ccr)