The Clash of Civilization (Samuel Huntington Article Review) Essay

Civilization: The West and the Rest is a documentary based on a book of the same name written by Niall Ferguson and was published in 2011. It basically talks about the reasons why Western civilization came to dominate the rest of the world since the 15th- century and the process of the rise of the West. It introduces killer applications as the West's success. The documentary was divided into six episodes, which were exactly based on the six killer applications, competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism and work. A couple centuries ago, the East was still dominating over the world. However, until around 1500, the West’s exploration and colonization brought them a victory and a chance

Civilization: The West and the Rest, presented by Niall Ferguson, is a documentary in which Ferguson reveals what he calls the six killer applications which has helped Western civilization dominate over everyone else. These six applications are competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism, and work. Ferguson asks many questions over the course of the series as well as provides examples as to how Western civilization has surpassed other nations and empires. Ferguson’s main question in each episode is, “If we lose our monopoly over apps like these, could Western civilization be consigned to history.” This paper will analyze Ferguson’s questions and the examples he provides for the killer applications of competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism, and work, as well as his conclusions as to why the West has risen to the top, how the rest are passing up the West, as well as his conclusions to if the West can remain above the rest.

types of culture will thrive. It is this societal happening that he calls hegemony, which

First, I agree that the Western civilization has a clear lineage that focuses on the majority of the following attributes: competition/innovation, science, property rights, personal freedoms, and a free-market economy. Ferguson (2014) points out that competition, property oriented government and science are some of the unique attributes that enabled the West rise to power. As a result of competition, the western people became more innovative and business-oriented, thus, making them aggressive in areas

In Sigmund Freud’s book Civilization and Its Discontents, he defines that civilization is a whole sum of individuals and regulation and development of society force individuals to against their inner desire and sacrifice some personal happiness. In drama breaking bad, Walter White is a chemistry teacher in high school who lives in New Mexico with his wife and son who has cerebral palsy. Walter is diagnosed with a terminal lung cancer. For leaving money to his wife and children, he has to enter the drug trade with his student, Jesse Pinkman. This drama shows the changes of the characters and conflicts between individuals and society. In the process of improvement of civilization, people should sacrifice personal happiness to meet the demands

Huntington’s initial article argued that in the post-Cold War era the fundamental source of conflict would not be ideological or economic, but cultural. He continues by arguing that nation states will continue to be the most powerful actors in global affairs, but the conflicts of global politics that are to occur in the future will happen between

The New Western Historians such as Patricia Nelson, William Cronon, Donald Worster, Walter Webb and Walter Nugent have different views of the West. They believe the West is not a process and not a place that civilization took a place. The West is the place that like other regions such as the South, the Midwest we can set no boundaries. As Patricia Nelson mentioned, “recognized the history of the West is a study of a place undergoing conquest and never fully escaping its consequences” (Patricia Nelson, p. 8). The West as a place instead of process explains the migratory. Immigration could never have been explained by calling the West as a process or the frontier. Patricia Limerick sees the West as another chapter in Europe’s enlargement

The argument Huntington is giving is that there will not be near as many fights over politics and economic values but more of culture and religious values. Throughout the article he talks a lot about what he believes will happen but one thing that we can be sure is he believes that there will be war over culture. “As people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they are likely to see an “us” versus “them” relation existing between themselves and people of different ethnicity or religion.” This quote from the article shows us that he does believe people will fight because they see it as it is their culture against everyone else’s. It is hard to talk things out with people who believe the complete different things you believe.

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

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.

Apart from that, Huntington is an ideologist that tries to put things the way he sees it. In this context, “civilization” and “identities” are defined and described by Huntington besides they are made into something that they are not. Apart from that, Huntington observations on wars that happened in the past are just on the basis of religion clashes without considering the other major aspects that contribute towards modernization process. In addition, the incident like mass killing by group of militants has become one of the proof of Huntington thesis as he just see the big idea or the surface of that particular incident without considering the element that lies behind it. Another aspect that comes into consideration is the way Huntington views

Western culture and policies have shaped the modern world, especially the Middle East, in many ways. Since the sixteenth century, the nations of Western civilization have been the driving wheels of modernization. Globalization is simply the spread of modern institutions and ideas from one high power to the wider world. Technological innovation and economic growth along with such concepts as democracy, individualism, and the rule of law administered by an impartial judiciary, set Western societies above and beyond any possible rival. Other cultures looked to the West as a model, a threat, or some combination of both. One country that was most successful in their confrontations with Western states was Japan, who incorporated Western

Samuel Huntington sees an emerging world organized on the basis of "civilizations". Societies that share cultural affinities cooperate with each other and the efforts to force a society into another civilization will fail; countries gather around the leading States of their civilization. This description of the process of new structures of international relations that Huntington sees developing, leads him to consider that the greatest risks of violence and confrontation lie in the Westerns’ claims to universality, which are leading them to increasingly get into conflict with other civilizations, particularly Islam and China; local conflicts, especially between Muslims and non-Muslims, generate new alliances and lead to an escalation of violence, which will usually lead the dominant states to make an attempt to stop them.

So what exactly is the clash of civilizations? This was briefly addressed in Samuel Huntington’s paper “The clash of civilizations?”. In order to explain the term, let’s first look into what civilization is. Person does not simply get to choose the civilization he/she simply belongs to. Communists can become democrats and vice versa, but Russians can never become Americans or Arabs cannot become European. In the conflict between civilizations the question is “What are you?”, it is something given and cannot be changed. Conflicts between countries are inevitable and with the way things work it is just a matter of time, before one country would not be comfortable with what other country is doing. In that case, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones [1]. The clash of civilizations often occurs on two levels. Micro-level is when small

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.