Question 1

What is a culture according to Huntington?

Huntington defines culture by assimilating it to civilisation and calling it "cultural identity". He identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts it with "nature." According to this way of thinking, one can classify some countries as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. Some cultural theorists have thus tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture. For Huntington, culture is what distinguishes humans from other species. That implies a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of items and arts that make it unique. (Huntington 1993:2). But he emphasizes more on the religion as a determinant factor of cultural identities. He mentions a western, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-orthodox, Latin American and possible African cultures. According to Huntington, people of different civilisations have different views on the relations between God and man and therefore different views on the relations between the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife and many other things. (Huntington 1993:3)

How are cultures constructed and reproduced? Do they converge?

When we think of cultures in the way Huntington does, we could say that there are numerous factors involved in the creation of culture.

One of them seen as a precondition is the existence of human beings, since without human beings there is no civilisation thereby any culture. (Huntington 1993:2). Another factor which plays a significant role here is the religion. Most of the time, people sharing the same religious beliefs tend to have similarities in their cultural identities.

World politics is entering a new phase, in which the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of international conflict will be cultural. Civilizations-the highest cultural groupings of people-are differentiated from each other by religion, history, language and tradition. These divisions are deep and increasing in importance. From Yugoslavia to the Middle East to Central Asia, the fault lines of civilizations are the battle lines of the future. In this emerging era of cultural conflict, the United States must forge alliances with similar cultures and spread its values wherever possible. It has been claimed that values are more easily transmitted and altered than Huntington proposes. Nations such as India and Japan have become successful democracies, and the West itself was rife with despotism and fundamentalism for most of its history.

With alien civilizations the West must be accommodating if possible, but confrontational if necessary. In the final analysis, however, all civilizations will have to learn to tolerate each other despite all the divergences. (Huntington 1993:21)

What political effects might his ideas have?

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Huntington is increasingly regarded as having been prescient as the United States invasion of Afghanistan, 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the 2005 cartoon crisis, and the ongoing Iranian nuclear crisis fueled the perception that Huntington's Clash is well underway.

Some maintained that the 1995 and 2004 enlargements of the European Union brought the EU's eastern border up to the boundary between Huntington's Western and Orthodox civilizations; most of Europe's historically Protestant and Roman Catholic countries (with the exception of Croatia and countries like Switzerland and Norway who voluntarily opted out of EU membership) were now EU members, while a number of Europe's historically Orthodox countries (with exceptions such as longtime EU member Greece and newly accepted Cyprus) were outside the EU. As others have noted, however, the NATO and EU membership of Romania and Bulgaria (since 2004 and 2007, correspondingly) present a challenge to some of Huntington's analysis and the line he drew throughout Romania failed to materialize. Some also see Huntington's thesis as creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and reasserting differences between civilizations.

Question 1

What is a culture according to Huntington?

Huntington defines culture by assimilating it to civilisation and calling it "cultural identity". He identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts it with "nature." According to this way of thinking, one can classify some countries as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. Some cultural theorists have thus tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture. For Huntington, culture is what distinguishes humans from other species. That implies a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of items and arts that make it unique. (Huntington 1993:2). But he emphasizes more on the religion as a determinant factor of cultural identities. He mentions a western, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-orthodox, Latin American and possible African cultures. According to Huntington, people of different civilisations have different views on the relations between God and man and therefore different views on the relations between the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife and many other things. (Huntington 1993:3)

How are cultures constructed and reproduced? Do they converge?

When we think of cultures in the way Huntington does, we could say that there are numerous factors involved in the creation of culture.

One of them seen as a precondition is the existence of human beings, since without human beings there is no civilisation thereby any culture. (Huntington 1993:2). Another factor which plays a significant role here is the religion. Most of the time, people sharing the same religious beliefs tend to have similarities in their cultural identities.

World politics is entering a new phase, in which the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of international conflict will be cultural. Civilizations-the highest cultural groupings of people-are differentiated from each other by religion, history, language and tradition. These divisions are deep and increasing in importance. From Yugoslavia to the Middle East to Central Asia, the fault lines of civilizations are the battle lines of the future. In this emerging era of cultural conflict, the United States must forge alliances with similar cultures and spread its values wherever possible. It has been claimed that values are more easily transmitted and altered than Huntington proposes. Nations such as India and Japan have become successful democracies, and the West itself was rife with despotism and fundamentalism for most of its history.

With alien civilizations the West must be accommodating if possible, but confrontational if necessary. In the final analysis, however, all civilizations will have to learn to tolerate each other despite all the divergences. (Huntington 1993:21)

What political effects might his ideas have?

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Huntington is increasingly regarded as having been prescient as the United States invasion of Afghanistan, 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the 2005 cartoon crisis, and the ongoing Iranian nuclear crisis fueled the perception that Huntington's Clash is well underway.

Some maintained that the 1995 and 2004 enlargements of the European Union brought the EU's eastern border up to the boundary between Huntington's Western and Orthodox civilizations; most of Europe's historically Protestant and Roman Catholic countries (with the exception of Croatia and countries like Switzerland and Norway who voluntarily opted out of EU membership) were now EU members, while a number of Europe's historically Orthodox countries (with exceptions such as longtime EU member Greece and newly accepted Cyprus) were outside the EU. As others have noted, however, the NATO and EU membership of Romania and Bulgaria (since 2004 and 2007, correspondingly) present a challenge to some of Huntington's analysis and the line he drew throughout Romania failed to materialize. Some also see Huntington's thesis as creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and reasserting differences between civilizations.

Question 1

What is a culture according to Huntington?

Huntington defines culture by assimilating it to civilisation and calling it "cultural identity". He identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts it with "nature." According to this way of thinking, one can classify some countries as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. Some cultural theorists have thus tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture. For Huntington, culture is what distinguishes humans from other species. That implies a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of items and arts that make it unique. (Huntington 1993:2). But he emphasizes more on the religion as a determinant factor of cultural identities. He mentions a western, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-orthodox, Latin American and possible African cultures. According to Huntington, people of different civilisations have different views on the relations between God and man and therefore different views on the relations between the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife and many other things. (Huntington 1993:3)

How are cultures constructed and reproduced? Do they converge?

When we think of cultures in the way Huntington does, we could say that there are numerous factors involved in the creation of culture.

One of them seen as a precondition is the existence of human beings, since without human beings there is no civilisation thereby any culture. (Huntington 1993:2). Another factor which plays a significant role here is the religion. Most of the time, people sharing the same religious beliefs tend to have similarities in their cultural identities.

World politics is entering a new phase, in which the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of international conflict will be cultural. Civilizations-the highest cultural groupings of people-are differentiated from each other by religion, history, language and tradition. These divisions are deep and increasing in importance. From Yugoslavia to the Middle East to Central Asia, the fault lines of civilizations are the battle lines of the future. In this emerging era of cultural conflict, the United States must forge alliances with similar cultures and spread its values wherever possible. It has been claimed that values are more easily transmitted and altered than Huntington proposes. Nations such as India and Japan have become successful democracies, and the West itself was rife with despotism and fundamentalism for most of its history.

With alien civilizations the West must be accommodating if possible, but confrontational if necessary. In the final analysis, however, all civilizations will have to learn to tolerate each other despite all the divergences. (Huntington 1993:21)

What political effects might his ideas have?

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Huntington is increasingly regarded as having been prescient as the United States invasion of Afghanistan, 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the 2005 cartoon crisis, and the ongoing Iranian nuclear crisis fueled the perception that Huntington's Clash is well underway.

Some maintained that the 1995 and 2004 enlargements of the European Union brought the EU's eastern border up to the boundary between Huntington's Western and Orthodox civilizations; most of Europe's historically Protestant and Roman Catholic countries (with the exception of Croatia and countries like Switzerland and Norway who voluntarily opted out of EU membership) were now EU members, while a number of Europe's historically Orthodox countries (with exceptions such as longtime EU member Greece and newly accepted Cyprus) were outside the EU. As others have noted, however, the NATO and EU membership of Romania and Bulgaria (since 2004 and 2007, correspondingly) present a challenge to some of Huntington's analysis and the line he drew throughout Romania failed to materialize. Some also see Huntington's thesis as creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and reasserting differences between civilizations.