How to Think About Civilizations - The Watson Institute for ...

The point here is that advocates of a dialogue among civilizations have to
establish the efficacy of their proposals and accounts against both civilizational
essentialism and the kind of post-essentialist view of civilizations upheld by some of the
most recent work on civilizations in world politics (Martin Hall and Jackson 2007). In
the effort to do so both theoretically and empirically, novel positions are adopted, novel
combinations of commitments are forged, and the discussion proceeds into new
directions. And perhaps, along the way, clashes of civilizations are avoided—but only
time will tell.
Substantive Overlaps
The attraction of extreme positions within the civilizations debate helps to
provide an “internal” explanation for the future course of the discussion—internal, in
this case, to the debate itself. But discussions and debates do not simply unfold in
splendid isolation; “external” factors always intervene and shape the course of
conceptual refinement and academic research in important ways. There are many such
factors, ranging from the distribution of research funding to the organization of the
contemporary academy itself, but for the moment I want to focus on one context in
particular: the context of academic International Relations scholarship, which claims for
itself the right and the capacity to focus on global issues in a way that other academic
fields and disciplines often do not. Hence, the future course of the academic debate
about civilizations will be shaped, at least in part, by the interaction of civilization
How to Think About Civilizations • P. T. Jackson • Page 38