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

scholarship with the traditional concerns and considerations of academic International
Relations.
Arguably, the most important of these concerns is, and remains, the (sovereign,
territorial) state. The field of International Relations has been grappling with sovereign
states and the anarchy that they produce in relation to one another since its earliest
beginnings in international law, history, and political science (Schmidt 1998). Despite
numerous attempts to broader the field’s focus, and efforts to introduce different actors
(firms, transnational social movements, global classes) onto the world stage, the field’s
concerns remain stubbornly intertwined with what states do and how other actors
influence state action. Whether this reflects an empirical acknowledgment of the
continued importance of states (Wendt 1999:8-10) or some kind of collective failure or
repression of theoretical innovation (Zehfuss 2002) is somewhat beside the point. What
matters is that the field of International Relations is largely defined as a separate field of
academic inquiry by its concerns with sovereignty, territoriality, and the relations
between units constituted on such principles, whatever else might affect those relations.
Indeed, Huntington’s initial call for renewed attention to civilizations explicitly
made space for this state-centrism. “Civilizations are cultural not political entities,”
Huntington declared; this means that “they do not, as such, maintain order, establish
justice, collect taxes, fight wars, negotiate treaties, or do any of the other things which
governments do” (1996:44, emphasis added). In other words, for Huntington, civilizations
are not actors in their own right, but are instead elements of a global political
environment within which states remain “the primary actors in world affairs” (ibid.: 34-
How to Think About Civilizations • P. T. Jackson • Page 39