Shock of civilizations

The theory of the shock of civilizations defended by Samuel Huntington is disputed in the intellectual and university mediums North-American.

It constitutes one holding of the base Idéologique of the Guerre against terrorism.

Deliver of Samuel Huntington

For professor Huntington, the fall of the Berlin Wall announces the passage of a world characterized by ideological cleavages , between Communisme and Capitalisme, or Impérialisme and Anti-impérialisme, in a world marked by cleavages Culturel S. to support this thesis, Huntington shows that the fall of the ideologies was accompanied by a resurgence of the identity feelings, that it is in the Muslim world, with the alarm clock of the radical Islam, that in Asia or in the countries of Eastern Europe, which made their revolution in the name of their nation and of their Culture, as in Poland.

The second time of the thesis of the large lord of Huntington consists in advancing that this identity alarm clock is not affirmed any more by the means of the nations, as with the XIX {{E}} and at the 20th century, nor of the ethnos groups, but on the scale nelle Civilization, because of Mondialisation of the exchanges. However, for Huntington, civilizations very originate in large a Religion, which made the moral base of it and Politique.

Cuttings according to Huntington

In its book, Huntington describes the following Civilization S:

the Western Christendom (Europe of the West, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), founded on the catholic Christianity and protesting;
orthodoxe civilization (Russia, Ukraine, Balkans Eastern, Greece…), founded on orthodoxe Christianity ;
Latin-American civilization (of the Río Large with the Ground of Fire), founded on Catholicism and the Latin-American political structures supporters of corporatism inherited the Colonization;
African civilization (without the North Africa and the Corne of Africa), civilization for which Huntington recognizes that there is no dominant religion, but rather a whole of practices animists;
the Islamic Civilization (of the Senegal to the New Guinea), founded on the Islamic religion;
the Hindu civilization (centered on the India, the Sri Lanka and the Indian diaspora), based on the religion hindouist;
the Chinese Civilization (China, Korea and Vietnam, but also Filipino included);
civilization Japan ease.

Note: Huntington specifies that one cannot speak about Buddhist or Jewish civilization. The Bouddhisme is a great religion but the extinction of Buddhism in India and its capacity to be melted in preexistent models do not make it possible to make of it the base of a great civilization. With regard to the Jewish religion, its demographic weakness is paradoxical with the definition even of civilization and the subjective identification of the Jews is complex: many Jews of the diaspora recognize themselves like Jews but not like Israeli and thus claims fact like members of their civilization of fastening .

The conflicts civilisationnels can according to Huntington appear several manners:

between two civilizations on their border: case of Islam in contact with other civilizations (Bosnia-Herzégovine, Cashmere, Nigeria…) ;
between civilizations because of domination of the Occident: other civilizations seek to continue vis-a-vis a dominating Occident;
inside a civilization: fight of being able for the control of a civilization, like the fight between islamist and reformers in the Islamic world;
fight inside a country: case of a country torn between several civilizations (Huntington quotes the Turkey, the Mexico, the Russia and the Australia).

Criticisms

Among the detractors of Mr. Huntington and his geopolitical thesis appear Naipaul, to which joint Edward Saïd in the introduction to the new edition of its work Orientalism ; they are registered out of forgery compared to this definition of the reports/ratios of the World.

Remarks

One of the first main works on the questions of the Identity S and the Civilization S.A. be that of the French historian Fernand Braudel ( Grammar of civilizations , 1987). Samuel Huntington is strongly pressed on the work of Braudel, quoted with many recoveries.

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