Central Civilization

= hypothesis by David Wilkinson : " "Central Civilization," born regionally in the Middle East about 1500 B.C. in the collision of two smaller, expanding local civilizations, expanded throughout the globe, engulfing all competing civilizations to become the unique global social system in the last 100-150 years". [1]

Introduction

Video by Robert Conan Ryan via https://www.facebook.com/robert.ryan.9279/posts/pfbid02jYEawSjq29D6Y1kvrLqnMwuYf7jqha7vH6voMRN1EqNh7QiiZ1GiUu1yJ1JL9ZUHl

"In this short video I briefly explain how world systems theory 3.0 is different from other approaches to analyzing civilization I stress the fact that there has never been a full collapse of the Magisteria. Civilizations come and go but the Magisteria only gets bigger and absorbs everything. Since the 20th century the world Magisteria has absorbed all Civilizations. All!! No civilization has ever fully collapsed that has joined the world Magisteria. Sure individual governments have fallen and borders are redrawn. But all Civilizations who joined the Magisteria have lived on through a shared system of knowledge. In other words, there won't be any civilization collapse because we are already in a post-civilization global landscape. Any local collapses will simply be restored by the world system as a whole - the Magisteria is a single global Knowledge system that already penetrates all major governments.. As such, reconstruction of smaller parts of "collapsed" world system is inevitable. Instead of thinking in terms of civilization collapse, we should be thinking in terms of a post civilizational world and the transhuman construction of posthuman creations. Even if the world goes through wars and resource shortages, the world will not lose the Magisteria (knowledge won't collapse). We should be more worried about the justification of HUMANS in a world where we can genetically modify and digitally augment the agents within this magisteria to posthuman statuses."

Description

1. David Wilkinson:

"Today there exists on the Earth only one civilization, a single global civilization. As recently as the nineteenth century several independent civilizations still existed (i.e. those centered on China, Japan, and the West); now there remains but one.

Central Civilization. The single global civilization is the lineal descendant of, or rather I should say the current manifestation of, a civilization that emerged about 1500 B.C. in the Near East when Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations collided and fused. This new fusional entity has since then expanded over the entire planet and absorbed, on unequal terms, all other previously independent civilizations.

I label this entity "Central" civilization."

(https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&context=ccr)

2. Wikipedia:

"Wilkinson redefines civilization on connectedness criterion, not cultural criterion, as "a city-state, cities-state, or tightly linked politico-military network of such states that are not a part of a larger such network", and considers civilizations as world-systems.

Wilkinson introduces the idea of "Central Civilization" or "Central World-System", which he argues emerged about 1500 BC with the integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, and then engulfed the Aegean civilization in 560 BC, Indic civilization in 1000, the New World after the Age of Discovery, and finally the Far Eastern civilizations in 1850. This idea has been followed and developed by other scholars.

The notion that the Middle East and Europe are in the same system was also adopted by Ian Morris's award-winning book Why the West Rules—For Now, which defines the West as all civilizations descending from the Fertile Crescent, rather than just the traditional Western world."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wilkinson_(political_scientist))

Discussion

David Wilkinson:

"CIVILIZATIONS ARE WORLD SYSTEMS!" [2]

The title of this article states my position in the rieh and burgeoning civilizationist/world-systems debate about as succinctly as possible.

Civilizationists and world-systems analysts should be studying the same entities. This will occur if and when civilizationists accept that the many local civilizations of the past have become the single global civilization of today; and when world-systemists accept that the single, global world-system of today is the fusion product of a substantial number of smaller-scale world systems of the past; and when both accept that the plural civilizations of the past, and the plural urbanized world systems of the past, were, and that today's singular civilization and singular world system are, identical.

A joint intellectual undertaking could then be pursued, probably with different but complementary emphases. Civilizationists might cluster their efforts more (but not exclusively) toward the earlier, more pluralistic epochs of civilizational evolution, world-systemists toward the later, more monistic.

Civilizationists already tend, I think, to interest themselves more in the cultural aspects of a society than in the political. and more in the political than in the economic; world-systemists tend oppositely; neither group need surrender its inclinations, though each would have to take account of the other's propositions.

Few readers will he shocked to learn that my proposals suit my own established predilections; tor their benefit I should place my cards face up on the table. In 1966 I was urging my graduate students in international relations to find ways of integrating the work of Spengler and Toynbee with what was then called a systems analysis approach to international relations theory, whose chief representatives then were Morton A. Kaplan (1957) on the deductive. theoretical. normative side, Stanley Hoffmann (1960, 1965) on the historical-sociological side, Richard N. Rosecrance (1963) combining hoth - all three were my teachers -- and George Modelski (1961). This is the kind of assignment which one usually winds up having to carry out oneself. That duly occurred, and in 1967 I found myself producing for my students' henefit, or dismay. a manuscript called "Civilizations and World Politics:' whose then incarnation drew on most of the aforementioned. plus Charles McClelland (195R). A.F.K. Organski (195R. esp. chs. R. 12, and 17).

It didn't work because it vacillated between accepting the assumption of the international-systems analysts that the contemporary globe contained one and only one system, which produced the interesting and important phenomena of balance-of-power, states-system-and-empire, order-and disorder, peace-and-war, and the assertion of the civilizationists that the contemporary globe contained several distinct civilizations, defined by common cultural forms, for which the above-mentioned phenomena were the results of their internal processes.

Examining that manuscript at this distance in time, I am struck by the fact that I had all that I needed to reach the resolution I in fact accomplished much later. On the systems side, Modelski had drawn attention to "homogeneity"' (one vs. many parallel "traditions") in a social system as an important variable (1961: 126-30). Aron, following Papaligouras' (1941: 174) contention that multiple parallel international legal processes had authoritatively posited mutually contradictory international legal norms, had argued that "the distinction between homogeneous systems and heterogeneous systems" was fundamental (Aron, 1966:99-100), and had defined as "heterogeneous" those international systems in which states were organized according to different principles and obeyed different values (1966:94,98-100, 128). Hoffmann, extending Papaligouras' argument of (1941: Ch. VII -VIII), had argued that heterogeneous or "uneven" international systems were also unstable or "revolutionary," because the stakes of conflict therein were unlimited (1965:92-93). In contrast, Rosecrance, following Ashby's cybernetics, had contended that the degree of "variety" in international systems' disturbance and regulation was an important empirical variable in accounting both for breakdown and for stabilization (1963:220 ff). On the civilizationist side, Toynbee, in his Reconsiderations, had defined "society" as the total network of relations between human beings, "societies" as particular networks that are not components of any larger network, "civilization" as a state of society in which a minority of the population is liberated from economic activities, and "civilizations" as that species of the genus society whose members are particular historical exemplifications of the abstract idea "civilization" (1961:271,278,280,282,287). I also had Quigley's preliminary criterion of cities (and writing) as the external identifiers of a civilization (1961 :31-32). But I tried to compromise among incompatible world-views by adopting the criteria of all simultaneously. I proposed to examine, as civilizations and world systems: large and coherent social areas with a large and fairly dense population, cities, and writing; which comprised social-transactional network structures with closed boundaries; in which wealth is created, savings accumulated, a nonproducing class supported, and economic inventions created and exploited; and having unity of cultural form. These criteria simplified empirical and comparative study famously, as nothing got past them.

My work along these lines accordingly stagnated, though I watched with interest the extension of Kaplan's model to a smaller scale by my then colleague Anthony Martin (1970), the new work of Modelski (1972, 1987) and Modelski and Thompson (1988) on the evolution of the world system, and the beginning of what was to prove continuous development of the world systems approach of Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), none of which, however, could quite resolve my difficulties. Martin was examining a regional subsystem, a core, rather than a whole system. Modelski and Thompson brought a very useful reflection on geopolitics, and particularly the changing meaning of naval power in systems of different sizes and hence spatial configurations, without resolving for me the problem of the unit of analysis. Wallerstein (like Modelski) went farther back in search of relevant history than most systems analysts, but not as far as Quigley, whose political economy seemed more persuasive.

After participating in the refoundation of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations in the United States (Philadelphia, December 1971), and in response to the dialogic initiative of Matthew Melko, reading Melko's 1969 work The Nature of Civilizations and the manuscript works of John Hord (q.v.), and having a 1977 redraft of "Civilizations and World Politics" (which tried to produce a Quigleyan model, but in process found coherence and closure to be incompatible criteria and ended by proposing that the contemporary world constituted a single incoherent civilization with a core-periphery structure) commented on by both, I was impelled, in Melko's ISCSC "Boundaries" sessions of 1978-1983 (documented in Melko and Scott, eds., 1987), to a reaffirmation, a radical simplification, a change of direction, a complete abandonment of the coherence criterion, and new conclusions, as follows.

1. Civilizations are world systems.

2. Their relevant criteria are cities and closed transactional networks, not size, nor writing, nor a Quigleyan "instrument of expansion," nor cultural coherence/homogeneity (Wilkinson, 1987b).

3. On applying these criteria to the roster of candidate civilizations, we find that many of the "usual suspects" - Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Far Eastern, Indie, Japanese, Peruvian, Mexican - pass muster. But many others - Western, Islamic, Russian, Greco-Roman, Medieval - are not closed societies; they are parts of a larger, culturally heterogeneous network-entity. This civilization, of which these other putative "civilizations" are then regions or epochs, needs a name. I have called it "Central" civilization".

4. There was a plurality of civilizations/world systems on the globe until the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Now there is only one survivor, Central civilization, whose network expanded to global scale and absorbed all others (Wilkinson, 1987a).

5. Civilizations typically show the alternation between political disunity and political unity posited by Toynbee in his revised "Helleno-Sinic model" (1961:157, 170-209). However, the unity - the phase of the "universal state" (Toynbee), "universal system" (Kaplan), "world state," "universal empire" (Quigley), or "world empire" (Wallerstein) - is usually brief and fragile, for reasons having to do with the structure and succession of leadership (Wilkinson, 1983, 1988).

6. The chief social bond scaled to the dimensions of the civilization is politico-military-diplomatic. Cultural bonds have smaller scales. Until the growth of Central civilization to global scale, economic bonds had larger scales, and defined oikumenes, trading areas that were larger than the areas in which states could rule, fight or ally (Wilkinson, 1992, 1993).

7. Central civilization is only the most blatantly heterogeneous of civilizations. Other civilizations too are polycultures (Iberall and Wilkinson, 1993), though when (e.g., Japan) they have possessed a universal state of long duration it has usually had a homogenizing ideology and utopia (cf. Mannheim, 1936) and policy.

8. The civilization-formation process was still continuing - that is, cities were appearing on preurban social terrain, not as extensions of or reactions to the political impingements of neighboring cities, hut often as reactions to the economic impingements of oikumenes - perhaps as late as the 17th, even the 18th century in Africa (Wilkinson, 1993, 19(4). 9. Central civilization formed in the first instance in the mid-2nd millennium BC, in consequence of the expansion, collision and fusion of two pre-existing civilizations, Mesopotamian and Egyptian. It grew by expanding against, and engulfing, other civilizations, without ever fully homogenizing them or itself (Wilkinson, 1984).

10. The heterogeneities of other civilizations may be the result of the same processes. That is, a trade network extends itself into a preurban social terrain; a city forms, perhaps so that a local political elite can avail itself of the local surplus thereby generated; but a larger expanding civilization, its familiars driven by similar motives, in due course recruits the new city to its polity. The motives to recruit it to its (anyway heterogeneous) culture are weaker, and a diversity of languages (and dialects), religions (and cults and schisms), races (and physiognomies and ethnicities and families), apparels, etc. persists. Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Indic, Far Eastern, Mexican, and Peruvian civilization could fruitfully be examined comparatively, with a view to relating their various heterogeneities to the order and independence of their urbanization processes. "

(https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1312&context=ccr)

More information

• "Civilizations as Networks: Trade, War, Diplomacy, and Command-Control", 8 Complexity no.1 (September–October 2002), pp. 82–86.
• Wilkinson, David (1987). "The Connectedness Criterion and Central Civilization". In Melko, Matthew; Scott, Leighton (eds.). The Boundaries of Civilizations in Space and Time. University Press of America. pp. 17–21. ISBN 0819164925.
• "Civilization: Definitions and Recommendations". International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilization. Archived from the original on October 1, 2014. Retrieved August 27, 2014.
• Wilkinson, David (Spring 1994). "Civilizations Are World Systems!". Comparative Civilizations Review. 30 (30): 59–71. Retrieved November 24, 2017.
• Wilkinson, David (Fall 1987). "Central Civilization". Comparative Civilizations Review. 17 (17): 31–59. Retrieved November 24, 2017.
• Wilkinson, David (Fall 2004). "The Power Configuration Sequence of the Central World System, 1500-700 BC". Journal of World-Systems Research. 10 (3): 654–720. Retrieved November 24, 2017.

Abstracted Articles

* Article: Wilkinson, D. (1996). World-Economic Theories and Problems: Quigley vs. Wallerstein vs Central Civilization. Journal of World-Systems Research, 2(1), 117–185. doi

URL = https://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/63

"This is one in a series of papers on civilizational issues. Its predecessors have argued for the existence of a world system/civilization, "Central Civilization," born regionally in the Middle East about 1500 B.C. in the collision of two smaller, expanding local civilizations, expanded throughout the globe, engulfing all competing civilizations to become the unique global social system in the last 100-150 years. If continuing social struggles both are and imply continuing social entities, there is social continuity-stabilities, trends and cycles--in the struggles forming and maintaining Central Civilization. A consequence of accepting Central Civilization as a genuine entity, or a reason for treating it as a fruitful heuristic, is, in particular, the finding that it possesses a political cycle (states system--universal empire) characteristic of other entities commonly treated as civilizations (Wilkinson, 1986; 1987, 53-56; 1988) as well as a political evolution (from multistate anarchy to balance-of-power) incipient but never successfully established in other world systems (Wilkinson, 1985)."