ABSTRACT
Among the most striking features of post-cold war debate about international politics has been the revival of talk about ‘civilization’ and ‘civilizations’. Much of it has been stimulated by the publication of Samuel Huntington’s argument, first as an article in the influential periodical Foreign Affairs (1993) and three years later as a book.1 His argument was both simple and provocative. ‘It is my hypothesis’, he wrote, ‘that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among mankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural’. Nation states would continue to be important but ‘the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations’.2
Commentary on Huntington’s argument has reached almost biblical proportions. There are few studies of post-cold war international politics that do not address Huntington’s views, and discussion of his theory has extended well beyond the academy.3 The authors of the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy, for example, felt it necessary to point out that ‘the war on terrorism is not a clash of civilizations’, indicating that Huntington’s formulation had become common currency.4
