Search results

This book examines the role of civilizations in the context of the existing and possible world orders from a cross-cultural perspective. Seeking to clarify the meaning of such complex and contested notions as "civilization," "order," and "world order," it takes into account political, economic, cultural, and philosophical dimensions of social life.

Rethinking Civilization offers an alternative view of human civilization in a globalizing age. Majid Tehranian analyses the transition from nomadic, to agrarian, commercial, industrial, and digital civilizations and argues that the growing gaps among the five major civilizations have led to terror operating as a form of global communication. This new book explores the uneven pace of development of human societies, particularly in the last two centuries, and argues that this is leading to a global civil war. Taking a long-term historical perspective, and developing a model that explains how emp.

This collection of essays provides an analysis of the dynamics of Civilizations. The processes of globalization and of world history are described from a comparative sociological point of view in a Weberian tradition. These essays were written between 1974 and 2002 by one of the most eminent sociologists of today. The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004129931)

No one would, probably, doubt that Muslim civilization is facing a serious crisis since the 18th century. It first resulted in political chaos and ultimately colonization of Muslim lands by Western powers. Later, Muslim civilization faced serious cultural and intellectual onslaught from the West which intensified and deepened the crisis. Though the period of Western colonization ostensibly came to an end in the middle of the 20th century, Muslim lands did not come out of the crisis. Despite some sincere efforts for Islamic revivalism, Muslim civilization has failed to respond to the modern crisis, particularly 9/11 incident has exposed the vulnerability of the Muslim world to Western political agenda, and its failure to respond effectively to Western civilizational challenges. The scholars are divided as to the cause of this crisis of the Muslim world and consequently, as to the measures to remedy the problem.Abdur Rehman Ibn Khaldun, a 13th century Muslim historian and intellectual, emerged at a time when the Muslim states in the Maghreb (North Africa) and Muslim Spain were passing through a phase of decline. His critical thoughts on the society (Al-Imran) and particularly his concept of social solidarity (Al-asabiyah), as propounded in his magnum opus, Maqaddimah (Prolegomena to History), can provide important insights into the present crisis of the Muslim Civilization. The present paper seeks to understand and explain this crisis with the help of the social analysis and critical ideas of Ibn Khaldun.

Invocation: Dionysos, how it all began : a ritual invocation for the 2012 Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche conference / Craig San Roque -- 1. The hero who would not die : warrior and goddess in Ancient Greek and modern men / Virginia Beane Rutter -- 2. Beauty and the psychoanalytic enterprise : reflections on a rarely acknowledged dimension of the healing process / Donald Kalsched -- 3. Introduction to the Kore Story/Persephone's Dong / Craig San Roque -- 4. Death and necessity at the threshold of new life / Richard Trousdell -- 5. How Hermes and Apollo came to love each other in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes : imagination and form in Ancient Greece and modern psyche / Jules Cashford -- 6. Penelope scapes / Melina Centomani Rutter -- 7. Dreaming in place : Santorini, Greece / Robin van Loben Sels -- Closing: travelling Ariadne : a romance / Craig San Roque.

The Atlantic World was an oceanic system circulating goods, people, and ideas that emerged in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. European imperialism was its motor, while its character derived from the interactions between peoples indigenous to Europe, the Americas, and Africa. Much of the everyday workings of this oceanic system took place in urban settings. By sustaining the connections between these disparate regions, cities and towns became essential to the transformations that occurred in this early modern era. This Element, traces the emergence of the Atlantic city as a site of contact, an agent of colonization, a central node in networks of exchange, and an arena of political contestation. Cities of the Atlantic World operated at the juncture of many of the core processes in a global history of capitalism and of rising social and racial inequality. A source of analogous experiences of division as well as unity, they helped shape the Atlantic world as a coherent geography of analysis.

"The century that began in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War was catastrophic. Over the course of that one-hundred-year span, civilizations were destroyed in the Old World, the New World, and the Third World, the latter represented by China, India, and Islam.In Europe the main agent of destruction was totalitarianism; in America it was globalization, ushered in by modernity; and in the non-Western world it was colonialism, followed later by totalitarianism and globalization. Harry Redner examines each of these processes, providing theoretical and historical accounts of their emergence. He considers the effects of Nazism and Bolshevism on the morale and morals of Europe; studies the effects on the United States of the nation's emergence as a major world power; and describes the impact of modernization on China, India, and Islam as they underwent Europeanization, Sovietization, and Americanization.Redner confronts us with a paradox: in the midst of unprecedented material affluence and organizational efficiency, one that uses advanced technologies and cutting-edge scientific knowledge, we are also sinking into an unprecedented cultural, moral, intellectual, and spiritual decline. He locates the origins of this condition in the violently contradictory processes of the twentieth century."--Provided by publisher.

"Over the past five hundred years, historians and other social scientists have perceived an extraordinary occurance: the transition from the Middle Ages, via the Renaissance, to modernity. Equally remarkable has been the transition taking place in the last fifty years from modernity to globalization, a period marked by increasing interdependency and interconnectivity, as evidenced by events such as the advent of the computer. Bruce Mazlish argues that in order to understand ourselves in the world today we need to know more about the nature of both concepts. Mazlish discusses the transition in terms of "reflections." Rather than adding to the enormous amount of archival research that already exists, he instead examines slices of modernity-the way of seeing, the sense of self, for example-as if under a microscope. He sees modernity as strongly marked by its insistence on freedom of political and religious thought and the rights of man (later expanded to include women). Such changes did not happen all at once, but as a gradual development. While some prefer to contemplate the transition from the modern to the global as a continuous, seamless development, Mazlish argues that post-WWII developments are best understood in terms of a break or a "rupture." Illustrating that the process was further accelerated by the computer revolution and the launching of artificial satellites, Mazlish places the events of 1989 in the framework of globalization. He concludes by inquiring further into the significance of the transition from modernity to globalization and its impact upon thought and identity."--Provided by publisher.