ABSTRACT
Mikhail Maslovskiy’s chapter explores civilization as a sociological concept. Rooted in the works of Norbert Elias, Shmuel Eisenstadt, and Johann Arnason, civilization has been used by sociologists to describe processes of modernization and the condition of modernity. During the last decade, this current has received some attention in Russian sociology. In sociological use, civilizational analysis has offered an alternative to the politicized, Huntington-inspired civilizationism, which many of the contributions to this volume address. Maslovskiy provides an introduction to civilizational analysis surveying its recent impact on Russian sociological scholarship. Maslovskiy suggests that the current use of civilizational rhetoric by Russian political leaders may be fruitfully analyzed from the viewpoint of sociological analysis as a product of intercivilizational encounters, i.e., Soviet encounter with Western modernity and its ideas of universality. Thus, sociology, by means of civilizational analysis, may offer a critique of the very ideology of civilizationism itself.
