Cultural Conflicts In Samuel Huntington's The Clash Of Civilizations

In the second part of the book titled The Shifting Balance of Civilizations, the author expands upon the idea that due to modernization cultures become increasing similar. The author begins with an explanation on the decline of Western power and influence in the world. He also explains that religion has an increased role in politics throughout the world. According to the author, major religions around the world "experienced new surges in commitment, relevance and practice by erstwhile casual believers." The author stated, People "need new sources of identity, new forms of stable community, and new sets of moral precepts to provide them with a sense of meaning and purpose." This ideas reinforced the authors beliefs and views that religion can and will meet the needs of people, and religion was the byproduct of increased communications among different societies and cultures. One of the most interesting chapters of this part is chapter five where the author discusses how

Living demands an identity. A sense of self, which defines who a person is and the means that they exist in the larger macrocosm of the world. The great diversity present on earth derives from the perception of the world that is unique to each individual based on their culture, experience, and impressions. Yet, when variation is compromised, the idea of the uniformity of a global identity spurs the threat of a world conforming to the same ideals that is not exposed to innovation and change. The encroachment of Western powers in the 20th century upon smaller nations demonstrates that globalization spurs arrogance as Western countries, chiefly the United States of America, exert their culture and way of life upon foreign societies. The potential of far reaching development and dominance of individual civilizations world-wide perpetuates instability to cultural sustainability as native lifestyles, traditions, and values cannot withstand external pressures and can deteriorate.

In Samuel P. Huntington’s article “The West: Unique, Not Universal,” he addresses his audience with a very controversial question: Is Western Culture universal or unique? Huntington elaborately opens up this question with research and examples to explain and persuade readers that the West will never be a universal culture for all, but rather a unique culture that will be accepted by those who appreciate it. For decades now, historians and scholars have debated with one another to determine who is right and wrong. However, from a handful of articles from different scholars, Samuel Huntington’s statement that the West is unique rather than universal is supported and even further elaborated on by these particular sources. A common understanding between all the sources, that must be noted, is that a civilization’s culture is not comprised of material goods but rather their culmination of their religion(s), values, language(s) and traditions. While although there are scholars out their that negate the West is unique, a large amount of scholars still argue and strengthen Huntington’s argument that the West has unique and exclusive characteristics that make them distinctive and rare.

This new sort of contentions restricts the seven or eight noteworthy developments, i.e. Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and conceivably African human advancement. With the end of political philosophies, the people would above all else feel a nearby recognizance as respects shared social components (i.e. religion, ethnicity), and, as a result, would recognize their having a place with one of the Huntington's societies, or civic establishments. That supposition is moderately solid on the grounds that, successfully, the organization of people into ethno-national gatherings, because of tribalism in the wake of the breaking down of political solidarity, profoundly impacts world governmental issues. In any case, he mindfully declares that the distinctions recognizing his human advancements don't as a matter of course infer the development of contentions between them. On the other hand, Huntington additionally adds to a totally inverse contention. To be sure, he announces that his human advancements are inherently in strife since they are driven by inconsistent good and political qualities, the need to survive, and the will to command. That normal for the new world request would be all the all the more aggravating in light of the fact that the human advancements would carry on as indicated by the "family nation disorder", in particular those developments would associate with pretty much kinfolk civic establishments. Accordingly, clashes would basically break out "along the deficiency lines between human advancements". The Huntington's clarification of contentions everywhere throughout the world might appear to be cognizant since, in influence, various clashes have emerged along his shortcoming

These new features can be attributed to Globalization which has brought with it, the collapse of traditional cleavages such as class and ideology, as a result war has been induced by culture and identity clashes. According to Baylis et al. “globalization has weakened the national forms of identity that

Reacting to the theory of Fukuyama, Samuel P. Huntington resumed the expression "Clash of civilizations" in 1993 and speculates that it is mainly cultural and religious identities

In 1992, Samuel Huntington had suggested his idea on the Clash of Civilizations (COC) which he later, in 1996, discussed in more detail in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Huntington 1996). The most popular inference made from his thesis is the idea that post-Cold War conflicts will be due to cultural difference and religion rather than cooperation. Huntington surrounds this idea around eight major civilizations which are: Western, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Latin American, Islamic, Salvic-Orthodox, and African (Payne 2013). However, although there are individuals that support this idea, there have been many criticisms to Huntington’s thesis. This paper will critically evaluate Huntington’s thesis in relations to the Muslim-U.S. relations. Huntington refers to certain cultures being totally different whereas the culture of the United States is not that much different to that of the Muslim. Also, paper will address a study that provides qualitative data that proves that Muslim-U.S. cultural differences are unlikely to be the cause of conflict and other studies show that it more likely to be caused by other situations. Huntington also fails to provide a link between cultural characteristics and behavior as well as civilization and foreign policies.

Political scientist Samuel Huntington in his article, ‘The Clash of Civilisations ', argues a new concept predicting the primary origin of future conflicts. His hypothesis follows the idea that the cause of conflict will fundamentally begin due to the clash of people 's cultural and religious identities. Written from a post cold war perspective in 1993, Huntington discusses how future wars will follow a similar pattern. He focuses especially on the impact of the ‘dominant civilization ' of the West against the world 's contrasting civilizations. Huntington 's primary focus of the West as a dominating force against the rest is one critique of his argument. In addition, Huntington 's definition of a civilization is also very open-ended and takes an idealistic approach to what a civilization is. His single-minded hypothesis often ignores evidence of past conflicts and takes a very black and white approach to ‘us versus them '. However, ignorance fueled acts towards different cultures have caused conflicts, and Huntington does hold merit in terms of conflict being caused by clashing cultures in his argument.

He hypothesized that “the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.” Meaning the class of civilizations will be the main focus of conflict in the international system. He believes that there is no universal civilization. Instead, he divides the world into eight major civilizations, each with its own distinct set of values and beliefs. These major civilizations are Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Western, Latin American and Africa. And according to Huntington, the West clashing with another civilization is “the greatest threat to world peace, and an international

Huntington credited the Cold War with bringing global stability. Because the world was split into Capitalist and Communist, countries of different cultures and background united under one cause: defeat the other side. In addition, the concept of “Mutually assured destruction” protected us from the prospect of destructive, nuclear war between countries on the Capitalist side and countries on the Communist side. However, after the Cold War ended, people needed to find new lines to identify themselves with: cultural lines. In Clash of Civilizations, Huntington outlines 3 ways in which civilizations will clash: core state conflicts, fault line conflicts, and “The West Versus the Rest.”

Samuel Huntington, the author of the clash of the civilisations believes that the World will eventually divide in accordance with cultural lines, and not political lines. According to Huntington, “the thriving East Asian and Muslim societies will soon challenge Western dominance, and the United States being the World leader will need to reevaluate its policies on foreign invention and domestic immigration to remain a major player.” During the Cold War, the world was divided into the First, Second and Third Worlds. Huntington views these ties as insignificant now and states that the remaking of the World order will be based upon cultural similarity. The different thriving civilisations according to him today are the Western civilisation comprising of North America and Western Europe, the Muslim civilisation, the Orthodox Civilisation led by Russia, the Chinese civilisation, the Hindu civilisation, the Japanese civilisation, the Latin American civilisation and the African civilisation. Huntington’s proposition of the division of the World according to cultural lines has been backed by the use of various examples by him; examples of events that have taken place in the past.

Another point of Wolf’s argument that agrees with Said’s perspective is that non-Western nations were not isolated and static entities before Western colonialism. Wolf, like Said, challenges the notion that Western intervention into the cultures of these peoples is necessary and without it, these societies would be hopeless and have no part in the global economy. Ultimately, Wolf understands that non-Western societies are just as intertwined into the workings of global processes and that they significantly contribute to history and the global economy. Capitalism has been allowed to emerge as a dominant mode of production, however, Wolf challenges the notion that non-Western cultures and people were isolated and static entities before the advent of European colonialism and imperialism. Before active colonization, these societies possessed changing reactionary cultures and were just as intertwined into the processes of the global economic system as European counterparts. The problems that the non-West experiences are a result of the unbalanced power structures developed by the West. The West does not seek to understand, or accept, the broader connections and relationships between cultures, especially between the West and the non-West.

In Amartya Sen's book, Identity and Violence, he discusses an article that was written by Samuel Huntington, called Clash of civilizations. The article Clash of Civilizations is Huntington's take on how violence will be caused post Cold War. . He argues that the cause of violence after the Cold War will be due to differences within cultural and religious identities. However, this article was written in 1993, and surely times have changed from then. There's been quite a few articles written critiquing Huntington's, Clash of Civilization since it was written. Of those critiques, I will be using Edward Said's article “The Clash of Ignorance,” and of course Sen’s discussion of the Clash of Civilizations in Identity and Violence.

Some of the main features of cultural globalization that will be discussed in this paper include, homogenization which, in the context of cultural globalization, is the spread of Western consumer culture that could eventually lead to the end of cultural diversity, hybridization which is the blending of elements of many different cultures and conflict intensification which relates to the “Clash of Civilizations” theory, that cultural globalization could result in an escalation of tensions between various culturally different regions of the world, that could lead to violence.

When unequal relationships, favouring the more powerful civilization, form between cultural groups, eventually the other group faces the unbeatable pressures of assimilation. Furthermore, cultural interaction typically causes the destruction of Native cultures, destining the planet’s vital cultural diversity to vanquish. In addition, prolonged cultural interaction leads to deadly homogenization ramifications. Homogenization and the destruction of Native cultures are the legacy of cultural communication, as well assimilation, as explored accordingly.