Originally Posted by
SteveMetz
But we have to recognize that there is ideological content in using tribes as a universal model for human society. It was a rejection of the idea that there are "advanced" and "less advanced" societies, or "civilized" and, at least, "less civilized." Of course, this idea has been common in Western culture since the ancient Greeks (and in other cultures like the Chinese).
Beginning in the 1960s (if not earlier) there was an intellectual movement, leftist in ideology, which rejected this idea, stressing that all cultures were more alike than different.
This debate has intensified again as people have sought to place the "war on terror" (and I personally hate that phrase an refuse to use it without quotation marks) in context. Once school of thought attributes it to shortcomings or flaws in Islamic culture. The other--popular within the ideology that dominates many academic disciplines--rejects this explanation and seeks others, most often the idea that violent extremism from the Islamic world is a defensive response. Downplaying the structural and functional differences between Islamic and Western cultures is an element of this explanation.
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