Pathways to Civilization

Abstract

Postmodernists caution us about the inevitable indeterminateness of language and concepts, and, to be sure, social scientists have to wrestle with more than our share of weasel words: state,¹ nation, culture, society, class, democracy, globalization. Yet it is perhaps correct to suggest that few terms are quite so murky and recently controversial as “civilization,” to such a degree that it is tempting to agree with Fernández-Armesto’s comment (quoted in the introduction to this volume) that it may be impossible to restore any useful meaning at all in the term. So why not forget it? The answer, of course, is, like Everest, civilization as a notion is “there” and, moreover, thanks to Huntington and the current Bush administration, it looms larger than ever and thus is increasingly hard to ignore.