Hi John,

Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
So, how does Huntington's theory do as a predictor? So far, it is pretty good at identifying what he called "fault lines." Despite my friend Marct's correctly stated objections, I think we have to take this Huntington theory seriously and seek to test it on its own terms - that is, how well does it predict future events/explain (macro) past events.
On the whole, I would agree with you about testing out. I do think we have to make a distinction between predictive validity and post-dictive validity (i.e. "explanation"). The lack of such a distinction was one of the main problems with the Sociology of Tacott Parsons during the 1950's and 1960's - great at post-diction (if you could get through the language!) and terrible at prediction.

Given the time scale implicit in Huntingtons' model, we may have some trouble with checking its predictions. I think Marks' question was bang on - "Which Islamic culture?".

How do we operationalize a "civilization" so that we can test it? Let's look at Huningtons' definition

What do we mean when we talk of a civilization? A civilization is a cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity. The culture of a village in southern Italy may be different from that of a village in northern Italy, but both will share in a common Italian culture that distinguishes them from German villages. European communities, in turn, will share cultural features that distinguish them from Arab or Chinese communities. Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader cultural entity. They constitute civilizations. A civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. People have levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he intensely identifies. People can and do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change.
Let me highlight a few phrases
Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader cultural entity. They constitute civilizations.
and
It [a civilization] is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people.
To the first point, I would note that there are cultural commonalities arising out of the shear fact of humanity. To the second point, I would note that his so-called "civilizations" actually do not all share the same language - Chinese and Westerners being good examples, or necessarily the same religion. His definition of civilization in severely flawed not only theoretically but, also, operationally.

One of the reasons why I compared it with de Gobineaus' work was to highlight part of these problems. But there is another problem that also ties back to de Gobineaus' successors and shows up in Huntingtons' work - when you assume an absolute break between taxonomic categories, there must be
  1. some point of absolute, essential difference between the members of those categories, and
  2. this point of difference must act as a causal explanation for the observed differences.
This just isn't the case. None of the factors he lists ("language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people") is an essential difference since each of these factors is subject to individual choice and/or circumstance. The classic example of this is simple: take a new born child from any culture and raise them in another culture. Unless Huntington wants to postulate the existence of a "race memory" that operates at a "civilization" level, or the existence of some type of super-organic "civilization consciousness". his definition just won't hold water and can't be operationalized.

The only part that does hold any validity to my mind is "the subjective self-identification of people", and this is flawed because it misses its complement - the "definition of people by other people".

Marc