The uses and abuses of civilizational analysis

The concept of ‘civilization’ carries all the weaknesses and strengths of the Enlightenment idea of progressive human development. It has been used and abused. Civilizations constitute a very particular form of socially framed entity: firstly, as entities that do not have, at least in their traditional sense, an integrating institutionalized polity; second, as not conforming to the dominant modern spatiality of clearly delineated territory; and third, as existing in time across different ontological formations. Over the years, the concept of ‘civilization’ has been so buried in sets of dubious distinctions such as primitive/savage/barbarian versus refined/ordered/civilized that even otherwise sophisticated writers find themselves treading though minefields of ethnocentrism and racism. From Sigmund Freud to Norbert Elias the concept has been misused. This chapter seeks to redefine the concept in a way that makes it again useable, while recognizing its ugly history. It develops a series of propositions that might serve as ways of operationalizing the positive use of the cluster of civilizational concepts.