Deconstructing the Eurocentric Clash of Civilizations: De-Westernizing the West by Acknowledging the Dialogue of Civilizations

Abstract

This chapter contributes to the “civilizational turn” that is currently impacting the discipline of IR by developing an alternative civilizational approach to that pioneered by Samuel Huntington. Patrick Jackson (1999) has usefully differentiated two forms of civilizational analysis— substantialist and processual/relational—and argues that Huntington’s analysis fits firmly into the former category (see also this volume’s introduction). A substantialist approach is essentialist, wherein civilizations are thought to display essential characteristics that are largely static or unchanging. By contrast, a relational approach conceives of civilizations as sets of social practices such that their boundaries are written or drawn and redrawn over time. However, while Huntington might baulk at being placed in the substantialist category since he does in fact argue that civilizations change over time (e.g., 1996: 43, 44), nevertheless the logic of his position remains otherwise, given that the traditional and primordial cultural/religious values that he focuses upon are by definition unchanging. Moreover, the second defining feature of substantialism seals his position within this category. This concerns the point that substantialist accounts view the reproduction of civilizations as endogenously generated. By contrast a relational approach—as the term properly implies—insists that civilizations are shaped and constituted, reshaped, and reconstituted, through iterated interactions with others around and beyond them (see also Barkawi and Laffey, 2006).