Culture And Ideologies Shape Relationships And Define Who One Associates With Essay

In fact, while the distinctive ideologies and religious groups still exist, the clear boundaries of different civilizations characterized by Huntington have blurred. When this dichotomy to recognize the world as direct confrontations between ideology and culture groups becomes no longer valid, the theory of the inevitability of the clash of civilization, thus, are now flawed, because it is realistically unreasonable, ethically wrong, conceptually biased and historically inaccurate. These problems regarding the clash of civilizations embody a misleading western supremacy shown in Bush’s speech as well as the war on terror on a larger

The civilizations, as identified by Huntington are Sinic [Chinese or Confusious], Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox [Russian], Western [Europe, North American, Australia, New Zealand], Latin American and possibly African. And it is among these groups that share a “common interest and common values” and have a “common culture or civilization” that will lead to more interdependence on members of the same civilization and less dependent on the West. Huntington’s theory is that the West has had [at one time or another] a negative impact on every other civilization, and this has led to a decline of power and influence around the world, especially the Islam civilization. Therefore he predicts, “the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

With the great diversity in the world disagreements over race and religion are ubiquitous. Consequently, opinions over these subjects are the biggest contributors to war and bloodshed. Changes made in long standing traditions were greeted with hostility. Religion and Absolutism caused disharmony in European countries as well as strife over religion and government.

Each one of the claims will go onto support the overall issue that culture will cause the clash of civilizations. A great support Huntington uses is that no matter what we think of cultures each one is different in many ways. If its religion, language, or different historical backgrounds these will cause conflict to arise. With each civilization being different it can be hard to get along with other people because of how different their views might be. Another issue that arises is that not all, but many civilizations are influenced by the west. This is where the idea of westernization comes into play. Each community is trying to improve and be bigger and better themselves, they are trying to be better than their neighbors. If one civilization improves the surrounding groups will want to be the same. This means they will compete to be the same or even better than the civilization that already made it. This can lead to conflict and death between civilizations. Another reason is that when conflicts arise between civilizations it is a lot harder to resolve than a political or economical one. Like stated before it is very difficult to change someone’s beliefs, that means there is very little wiggle room for negotiation. The final example that Huntington writes about is that the economic regionalism is increasing. This means that more cultures and civilization are trading between themselves, but

Huntington also does not see westernization as a desirable surge that engulfs world politics. Conflict is very natural and history proves that argument. The author takes away focus from states as a foundation of war in the future and more on conflict between major culture regions. He states that peoples cultural and religious identities will be the primary bases of conflict post cold war. The world is becoming a smaller place with modernization and technology; thus, relations between people of different civilizations deepen consciousness and awareness. Post cold war, the role of the Western society enhances the growth of civilization. Unlike Fukuyamas argument, Huntington states that cultural characteristics and differences are more complex to solve than political and economical

More so than that, Huntington was writing during a time when the United States was the world’s only military superpower which lead to the idea that America should take the lead in establishing the “new world order”, one which would be dominated by the United States and their allies. Because of this, American diplomats and officials were faced with regional, religious and ethnic conflicts that, as Huntington argues, could not be easily solved. During this time the United States were making major decisions about the layout and status of the new world order. It becomes clear that Huntington would believe future conflicts would arise from cultural differences due to previous cultural clashes and that the most powerful country in the world, the United States, was also unable to create solutions for conflicts fueled by cultural differences.

Huntington that hypothesised a new post-Cold War world order. Prior to the end of the Cold War, societies were divided by ideological differences such as the struggle between democracy and communism. Huntington’s primary thesis argues, “The most important distinctions among peoples are [no longer] ideological, political or economic. They are cultural.” Huntington makes a very persuasive argument as to how new patterns of conflict will occur along the boundaries of different cultures and patterns of cohesion will be found within the cultural boundaries. The book goes into extensive detail of how world systems between civilizations, which he divides by culture into 7 main global civilizations, are impacted on an international relations scale by this changing nature of conflict. He focuses a great deal on the West’s ability to maintain military superiority through the nonproliferation of emerging powers. In particular relation to 9/11 he focuses on the emerging influence of Islamic culture (which he classifies as it’s own civilization) being quintessential in the emerging new global conflict arisen out of hundreds of years of conflict, military and cultural, between Western civilization and Islamic civilization. The clear limitation of this work is that it is based on his own perception of history and is purely a hypothesis, however it clearly has a great degree of validity to it as we have already seen through the last decade in the rise of terrorism as the new global conflict. This book will assist my essay writing particularly in analysing how 9/11 marked the beginning of a new era of global conflict between powers larger than nation states alone, and thus how this has created increasingly complex paradigms of unprecedented effects on international

Following the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, questions regarding what the new world order would began to arise. In the article published in 1993 “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Samuel Huntington predicts that the conflicts of the new world order would be between civilization and based in culture, rather than in ideology or economics (22). In his paper, he identifies seven (or possibly eight) civilizations that will interact with each other, provided six reasons as to why these civilizations will clash, recognizes the idea that civilizations other than the West are on the rise and makes suggestions as to how the West should act if his initial is to become true. Since the publication of his article over 22 years ago, Huntington

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.

Human history has demonstrated that conflict is inevitable. As long as there are differences of opinion, there is fuel for anything from a brief argument to a war that lasts for years. This truth prevails through ancient history and modern day issues. Over time, conflicts grow, compound, and set the archetypal stages for new issues to be born: conflicts between the rich and poor, the religious and political, the loyalists and rebels, and particularly, the East and West. Since people acknowledged those living in opposite sides of the world, the assumption that they themselves were opposites followed. Often, each thought the other was barbarian, an enemy, and would

Samuel Huntington has made famous his thesis "the clash of civilizations", which was developed in his article in Foreign Affairs in 1993 and in the book that followed, in which the author expanded his thesis and reaffirmed the validity of his theory after the success and controversy that followed the publication of his article. In fact, the “civilizational” approach of conflicts today is now intrinsically linked to a comprehensive theory of international relations, which Samuel Huntington has developed by giving it an important value and a dominant paradigm

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.”

The end of the Cold War was not just a politically significant event but also an important intellectual milestone, where academics, researchers and intellectuals examined the consequences that its end would concur. Fukuyama’s The End of History and Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations are two of such explorations but contrast each other significantly. Fukuyama predicts a future of peace, or minimal conflict, amidst the spread of Western liberal democracy, a system of government he believes has been actualized as perfect in Hegel’s realm of consciousness whereas Huntington argues that conflict will stem from civilizational differences, owing to the rise in civilization-consciousness. I will start my essay by briefly summarizing the main arguments of each article, after which I will attempt to critique each one before drawing comparisons between the two.

As being stated by Samuel P. Huntington, the Clash of Civilization is a hypothesis in which the primary sources of conflicts in the post-cold war era are more dominant to the people’s cultural and religious identities. Civilization has three attributes which are the objective elements – language, history religion, customs, and institution; the subjective elements – variable levels of self-identification; and civilization itself is dynamic – they rise and fall, divide and merge. Dialogue between civilizations are also needed and will give significant impacts for not only both civilizations but also for the world. This paper would like to discuss and analyze two cases about the possibility of Post-American World Order towards the potential Dialogue between Civilizations or the Clash of Civilizations theory; and the contribution of Dialogue between Civilizations towards the management of negative impact in this globalization era.

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.