Civilizations Research Paper

Another designation of the term, made famous by Norbert Elias in his Uber den Prozess der Zi ilisation (1939) focused on the ‘socializing’ process through which the image of the civilized person, as constructed in the courtly and also early bourgeois society in Europe, was promulgated and institutionalized. This designation of civilization was related to an earlier one rooted in the French Enlightenment, in which civilization was seen as the opposite of barbarism. However, in later works by Elias’s followers, for instance Goudsblom, this view of civilization was extended to cover many other societies and historical periods, going back even to the impact of the presumably first domestication of fire.

The third and most extensive designation of civilization was promulgated by scholars such as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, Arnold Toynbee, A.L. Kroeber, Carroll Quigley, Cristopher Dawson, Fernand Braudel, William H. McNeill, Adda Bozeman, or Immanuel Wallerstein, and lately very forcefully by Samuel Huntington. However great the differences in perspective, methodology, focus, and concepts that pervade the works of these scholars, they share the use of the term civilizations as distinct societal-cultural units which share some very important, above all cultural, characteristics. Here we shall use the term civilization in a way very close to, but also distinct from, such a designation.

Civilization as combination of ontological or cosmological visions, of conceptions of trans-mundane and mundane reality, with the definition, construction, and regulation of the major arenas of social life and interaction

The central analytical core of the term civilization as employed here—as distinct from such social formations as political regimes, different forms of political economy or collectivities like ‘tribes,’ ethnic groups or nations, and from religion or cultural traditions—is the combination of ontological or cosmological visions, of visions of trans-mundane and mundane reality, with the definition, construction, and regulation of the major arenas of social life and interaction.

The central core of civilizations is the symbolic and institutional inter-relation between the formulation, promulgation, articulation, and continuous reinterpretation of the basic ontological visions prevalent in a society, its basic ideological premises and core symbols on the one hand, and the definition and regulation of major arenas of institutional life on the other. Such definitions and regulations construct the broad contours, boundaries, and meanings of the major institutional formations and their legitimization, and greatly influence their organization and dynamics.

The impact of such ontological visions and premises on institutional formation is effected through the processes of interaction and control that develop in a society. Such processes of control—and the opposition to them—are not limited to the exercise of power in the ‘narrow’ political sense. Rather, they are activated by major elites in a society. The most important such elite groups are the political, the cultural, and the economic ones and those which construct the solidarity and collective images of the major groups, all of which have different cultural visions and represent different interests.

The structure of such elite groups is closely related, on the one hand, to the basic cultural orientations prevalent in a society; that is, different types of elite groups bear different orientations or visions. On the other hand, and in connection with the types of cultural orientations and their respective transformation into basic premises of the social order, these elite groups tend to exercise different modes of control over the allocation of basic resources.

Such combination of ontological visions and of structuration of institutional formations and collective identities constitutes an inherent component of the formation of any society, and is always closely interwoven with the more organizational aspect of any institutional formation—political, economic, or family and kinship.

The very implementation or institutionalization of such premises and the concomitant formation of institutional patterns through processes of control, symbolic and organizational alike, also generate tendencies to conflict and change. The crystallization of these potentialities of change usually takes place through the activities of secondary elite groups who attempt to mobilize various groups and resources to change aspects of the social order.

The full development of the distinct ideological and institutional dimensions, and of some awareness of their distinctiveness, has emerged in some very specific historical settings—namely, the so-called Axial Civilizations—even if some very important kernels thereof can be identified in some archaic civilizations such as those of ancient Egypt, Assyria, or Mesoamerica.

2. Axial Age Civilizations: The Reconstruction Of The World And The Crystallization Of Distinct Civilizational Complexes

By Axial Age civilizations (to use Karl Jaspers’ nomenclature), we mean those civilizations that crystallized during the thousand years from 500 BC to the first century of the Christian era, within which new types of ontological visions, of conceptions of a basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders, emerged and were institutionalized in many parts of the world. Examples of this include ancient Israel; later in Second-Commonwealth Judaism and Christianity; Ancient Greece; possibly Zoroastrianism in Iran; early imperial China; Hinduism and Buddhism; and, beyond the Axial Age proper, Islam.

The crystallization of these civilizations constitutes a series of some of the greatest revolutionary breakthroughs in human history, which have shaped contours of human history in the last two to three millennia. The central aspect of these breakthroughs was the emergence and institutionalization of new ontological metaphysical conceptions of a chasm between the transcendental and mundane orders.

The development and institutionalization of these ontological conceptions entailed the perception of the given mundane order as incomplete, inferior—oftentimes as evil and polluted. It gave rise in all these civilizations to attempts to reconstruct the mundane world, from the human personality to the sociopolitical and economic order, according to the appropriate ‘higher’ transcendental vision.

The revolutionary conceptions, which first developed among small groups of autonomous, relatively unattached ‘intellectuals’ (a new social element at the time), were ultimately transformed into the basic ‘hegemonic’ premises of their respective civilizations, and were subsequently institutionalized. That is, they became the predominant orientations of both the ruling elites and of many secondary elites, fully embodied in the centers or subcenters of their respective societies.

One of the most important manifestations of such attempts in all these civilizations was the strong tendency to construct societal centers to serve as the major autonomous and symbolically distinct embodiments of respective ontological visions, as the major loci of the charismatic dimension of human existence. But at the same time the ‘givenness’ of the centers could not necessarily be taken for granted. The construction and characteristics of the center tended to become central issues under the gaze of the increasing reflexivity which focused above all on the relations between the transcendental and mundane orders. The political dimension of such reflexivity was rooted in the transformed conceptions of the political arena and of the accountability of rulers. The political order as one of the central loci of the mundane order had to be restructured according to the precepts of the transcendental visions. The rulers were usually held responsible for organizing the political order according to such precepts.

At the same time the nature of rulers became greatly transformed. The king-god, embodiment of the cosmic and earthly order alike, disappeared, and a secular even if often semisacral ruler appeared. Thus there emerged the conception of the accountability of rulers and community to a higher authority, God, Divine Law, or a metaphysical vision. Accordingly, the possibility of calling a ruler to judgement appeared. One such dramatic appearance of this conception occurred in ancient Israel, in the priestly and prophetic pronunciations. ‘Secular’ conceptions of such accountability to the community and its laws appeared in both the northern shores of the eastern Mediterranean, in ancient Greece, as well as in the Chinese conception of the Mandate of Heaven.

Concomitantly with the emergence of these conceptions of accountability of rulers, autonomous spheres of law began to develop as somewhat distinct from purely customary law. Such developments could also entail some beginnings of a conception of rights even if the scope of these spheres of law and rights varied greatly. Of special importance from the point of view of our analysis is the fact that one of the most important manifestations of the attempts to reconstruct the social order was the strong tendency to define certain collectivities and institutional arenas as most appropriate for the implementation of transcendental visions.

3. Autonomous Elites As Bearers Of Civilizational Visions: Change, Protest, And Heterodoxies

The development of new ontological metaphysical conceptions in the Axial civilization was closely connected with the emergence of a new type of elite, carriers of models of cultural and social order. These were often autonomous intellectuals, such as the ancient Israelite prophets and priests, and later on the Jewish sages, the Greek philosophers and sophists, the Chinese literati, the Hindu Brahmins, the Buddhist Sangha, the Islamic Ulema. Initial small nuclei of such groups of cultural elites developed the new ontologies, the new transcendental visions and conceptions, and were of crucial importance in the construction of the new ‘civilizational’ collectivities.

The new type of elites differed greatly from the ritual, magical, and sacral specialists in the pre-Axial Age civilizations. They were recruited and legitimized according to autonomous criteria, and were organized in settings distinct from those of the basic ascriptive political units of the society. The acquired a potentially countrywide and also trans-country status of their own. They also tended to become potentially independent of other categories of elites, social groups, and sectors.

At the same time a far-reaching transformation of other elites, such as political elites, took place. All these elites saw themselves not only as performing specific technical activities—be they those of scribes, ritual specialists, and the like—but also as potentially autonomous carriers of a distinct order related to the prevalent transcendental vision. They saw themselves as the autonomous articulators of the new order, and rival elites as both accountable to them and as essentially inferior. Moreover, each of these groups of elites was not homogeneous, and within each of them a multiplicity of secondary influentials developed.

These new groups became transformed into relatively autonomous partners in the major ruling coalitions. They also constituted the most active elements in the movements of protest and processes of change that developed in these societies and which evinced some very distinct characteristics at both symbolic and organizational levels.

First, there was a growing symbolic articulation and ideologization of the perennial themes of protest found in any human society, such as rebellion against the constraints of division of labor, authority, and hierarchy, and of the structuring of time dimension, the quest for solidarity and equality, and for overcoming human mortality.

Second, utopian orientations were incorporated into the rituals of rebellion and the double image of society. It was this incorporation that generated alternative conceptions of social order and new ways of bridging the distance between the existing and the ‘true’ resolution of the transcendental tension.

Third, new types of protest movements appeared. The most important were intellectual heterodoxies, sects, or movements which upheld the different conceptions of the resolution of the tension between the transcendental and the mundane order, and of the proper way to institutionalize such concepts. Since then, continuous confrontation between orthodoxy on the one hand, and schism and heterodoxy on the other, has been a crucial component in the history of mankind.

Fourth, and closely related to the former, was the possibility of the development of autonomous political movements and ideologies usually oriented against an existing political but possibly also religious center.

All these developments ushered into the arena of human history the possibility of the conscious ordering of society, and also the continuous tension that this possibility generated. The new dynamics of civilization transformed group conflicts into potential class and ideological conflicts, cult conflicts into struggles be- tween the orthodox and the heterodox. Conflicts between tribes and societies could become missionary crusades. The zeal for reorganization informed by each civilization’s transcendental vision made the entire world at least potentially subject to cultural-political reconstruction.

4. The Expansion Of Axial Civilizations

Concomitantly with the institutionalization of Axial civilizations, a new type of intersocietal and intercivilizational world history emerged. To be sure, political and economic interconnection have existed between societies throughout human history. Some conceptions of a universal kingdom emerged in many post-Axial civilizations, like that of Genghis Khan, and many cultural interconnections developed between them, but only with the institutionalization of Axial civilizations did a more distinctive ideological and reflexive mode of expansion develop, with potentially strong semimissionary orientations.

It was indeed in close connection with the Axial civilizations’ tendency to expansion that there developed new ‘civilizational’ collectivities, distinct from political and from ‘primordial’ ones, yet impinging on them, continuously challenging them, and provoking continual reconstruction of their respective collective identities. Such processes were effected by the interaction between the new autonomous cultural elites and the various carriers of solidarity and political elites of the different continually reconstructed ‘local’ and political communities.

In the continuous encounter of Axial civilizations with non-Axial or pre-Axial civilizations it was usually the Axial that came out victorious, without however necessarily obliterating many of the symbolic and institutional features of the non-Axial. The most important case of an encounter of non-Axial with Axial civilization in which the former absorbed the latter has been Japan.

5. The Multiplicity Of Axial Civilizations And World Histories

The general tendency to reconstruct the world and to expand was common to all the post-Axial age civilizations. But the concrete implementation varied greatly. There emerged a multiplicity of different, divergent, yet mutually impinging world civilizations, each attempting to reconstruct the world in its own mode, and either to absorb the others or to segregate itself from them.

Two sets of conditions were of special importance in shaping these different modes of institutional creativity and expansion. One such set are variations in the basic cultural orientations. The other is the concrete structure of the social arenas in which these institutional tendencies can be played out.

Among the different cultural orientations the most important have been differences in the very definition of the tension between the transcendental and mundane orders and the modes of resolving this tension. There is the distinction between the definition of this tension in relatively secular terms (as in Confucianism and classical Chinese belief systems and, in a somewhat different way, in the Greek and Roman worlds) and those cases in which the tension was conceived in terms of a religious hiatus (as in the great monotheistic religions and Hinduism and Buddhism).

A second distinction is that between the monotheistic religions in which there was a concept of God standing outside the Universe and potentially guiding it, and those systems, like Hinduism and Buddhism, in which the transcendental, cosmic system was conceived in impersonal, almost metaphysical terms, and in a state of continuous existential tension with the mundane system. The ‘secular’ conception of this tension was connected, as in China and to some degree in the ancient world, with an almost wholly this-worldly conception of salvation.

A third major distinction refers to the focus of the resolution of the transcendental tensions. Here the contrast is between purely this-worldly, purely other-worldly, and mixed this-and other-worldly conceptions of salvation. The metaphysical nondeistic conception of this tension, as in Hinduism and Buddhism, tends towards an other-worldly conception of salvation, while the great monotheistic religions emphasize different combinations of this-and otherworldly conceptions of the transcendental vision.

Another set of cultural orientations which influenced the expansion of the various Axial civilizations was the extent to which the access to their centers and major attributes of the sacred within them was open to all members of the community or was mediated by specific institutions.

In addition, there are differences in the way in which relations between the attributes of cosmic and social order of civilizational collectivities and those of the major primordial ascriptive collectivities are conceived—the extent to which there is a disjunction between the two, to which these respective attributes are mutually relevant, each serving as a referent of the other.

But the concrete working out of all such tendencies depends on the second set of conditions—namely the arenas for their concretization. These conditions included, first, the respective concrete economic political-ecological settings, whether they were small or great societies, whether they were societies with continuous compact boundaries, or with cross-cutting and flexible ones. Second was the specific historical experience of these civilizations—especially in terms of mutual penetration, conquest, or colonization.

6. Internal Transformation Of The Axial Civilization: Secondary Breakthroughs And The Crystallization Of Modern Civilization

One of the most important aspects of the dynamics of Axial civilizations was the possibility of development within them of internal transformation, of what has been designated as secondary breakthroughs, the most important illustrations of which have been Second Temple Judaism and Christianity; later Islam, Buddhism, and to a lesser extent Neo-Confucianism, all of which developed out of heterodox potentialities inherent in the respective ‘original’ Axial civilizations.

But the most dramatic transformation from within one of the Axial civilizations has probably been that of modernity as it first emerged in Western Europe and as it expanded—encompassing most parts of the world, giving rise to development of multiple, continually changing modernities.

The cultural and political program of modernity constituted in many ways a sectarian heterodox breakthrough in the West and Central European Christian Axial civilization. Such transformation took place through the Reformation and in the Great Revolutions, in which there developed very strong emphasis on the bringing together of the City of God and the City of Man. It was in these revolutions that sectarian activities were taken out from marginal or segregated sectors of society and became interwoven not only with rebellions, popular uprisings, movements of protest but also with the political struggle at the center, and were transposed into the general political movements and the centers thereof.

It was above all in the French Revolution that the fully secular transformation of the sectarian antinomian orientation with strong Gnostic components took place. It was epitomized in the Jacobin orientations which became a central component of the modern political program—to reappear yet again forcefully, as Alain Besancon has shown, in the Russian Revolution, and later in the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions.

The strong sectarian roots of modernity and of the tensions between totalistic Jacobin and pluralistic orientations which developed in Europe find very strong resonance in the utopian sectarian traditions of the Axial civilizations. It is also the religious roots of the modern political program that explain the specific modern characteristics of what may be seen as the most anti-modern contemporary movements—namely the various fundamentalist movements which, contrary to the view which defines them as traditional, constitute a new type of Jacobin movement constructing tradition as a totalistic ideology.

7. The Cultural And Political Program Of Modernity: Premises And Antinomies

The cultural and political program of modernity, as it crystallized first in Western Europe from around the seventeenth century, was rooted in the premises of the European civilization and European historical experience and bore these imprints—but at the same time it was presented and perceived as being of universal validity and bearing.

The radical innovation of this cultural program as it developed in Europe lay first in the ‘naturalization’ of man, society, and nature; second in the promulgation of the autonomy and potential supremacy of reason in the exploration and even shaping of the world; and third the emphasis on the autonomy of man, of his reason and or will.

In connection with these orientations there took place far-reaching transformations of the symbolism and structure of modern political centers, as compared with their predecessors in Europe or with the centers of other civilizations. The crux of this transformation was first the charismatization of the political centers as the bearers of the transcendental vision of the cultural program of modernity; second the development of continual tendencies to permeation of the peripheries by the centers and of the impingement of the peripheries on the centers, of the concomitant blurring of the distinctions between center and periphery; and third was the incorporation of themes of protest as basic, legitimate components of the premises of these centers. These themes became central components of the project of emancipation—a project which sought to combine equality and freedom, justice and autonomy, solidarity and identity of modern political discourse and practice. The program also entailed a distinctive mode of the construction of the boundaries of collective identities. Such identities were not taken as preordained by some transcendental authority, but continually constructed and continually problematized, becoming also foci of political struggle by national and ethnic movements.

The civilization of modernity as it developed in the West was from its very beginning beset by internal contradictions, giving rise to critical discourse which focused on the tensions and contradictions between its premises, and between these premises and institutional development. The most important such tensions in this program were first that between totalizing and more pluralistic conceptions of its major components—of the very conception of reason and its place in human life and society, and of the construction of nature, of human society and its history; second, between reflexivity and active construction of nature and society; third, those between different evaluations of major dimensions of human experience; and fourth between control and autonomy.

These basic tensions, contradictions, and antinomies inherent in the cultural program of modernity were continually played and worked out in major institutional arenas.

8. Continually Changing Multiple Modernities

It was out of the conjunction of these cultural orientations with the development of market, commercial, and industrial economies; with the crystallization of a new political and state order; and with military and imperialist expansion, that the civilization of modernity emerged. Its crystallization and expansion were not unlike those of the expansion of all historical civilizations. What was new was first that the great technological advances and the dynamics of modern economic and political forces made this expansion, the changes and developments attendant on them and their impact on the societies to which it expanded much more intensive. The expansion, through the use of military, political, and economic forces, of modern civilization which took place first in Europe and then beyond it continually combined economic, political, and ideological aspects and forces, and its impact on the societies to which it expanded was much more intense than in most historical cases. It spawned a tendency—rather new and practically unique in the history of mankind—to the development of universal, worldwide institutional, cultural, and ideological frameworks and systems. Yet all of these frameworks were multicentered and heterogeneous, each generating its own dynamics.

Of special importance in this context was the relative place of the non-Western societies in the various— economic, political, ideological—international systems which differed greatly from that of the Western ones. It was not only that it was Western societies which were the ‘originators’ of this new civilization. Beyond this and above all was the fact that the expansion of these systems, especially insofar as it took place through colonialization and imperialist expansion, gave to the Western institutions the hegemonic place in these systems. Yet it was in the nature of these international systems that they generated a dynamics which gave rise both to political and ideological challenges to existing hegemonies, as well as to continual shifts in the loci of hegemony within Europe, from Europe to the United States, then also to Japan and East Asia.

But it was not only the economic, military-political, and ideological expansion of modernity from the West throughout the world that was important in this process. Of no lesser significance was the fact that this expansion has given rise to continual confrontation between the cultural and institutional premises of Western modernity and those of other civilizations. Thus, while the spread or expansion of modernity has indeed taken place throughout most of the world, it did not give rise to just one civilization, one pattern of ideological and institutional response, but to at least several basic variants—and to continual refracting thereof.

Consequently, multiple modernities have emerged. These civilizations, which share many common components and which continually constitute mutual reference points, have been continually unfolding, giving rise to new problematiques and reinterpretations of the basic premises of modernity. All these attest to the growing diversification of the visions and understanding of modernity, of the basic cultural agendas of different sectors of modern societies—far beyond the hegemonic vision of modernity that was prevalent before. The fundamentalist—and the new communal-national—movements constitute one of such new developments, in the unfolding of the potentialities and antinomies of modernity.

Such developments may indeed also give rise to highly confrontational stances—especially to the West—but these stances are promulgated in changing modern idioms, and they may entail a continual transformation of the cultural programs of modernity. At the same time the new diversity was closely connected—perhaps paradoxically—with the development of new multiple common reference points, and with a globalization of cultural networks and channels of communication far beyond what existed before.

Bibliography:

1. Breuer B 1994 Kulturen der Achsenzeit. Leistung und Grenzen eines geschichtsphilosophischen Konzepts. Saeculu 45: 1–33
2. Durkheim E, Mauss M 1971 Note on the notion of civilization. Social Researc 38: 808–13
3. Elias E 1939 Uber den Prozess der Zivilisation. Haus zum Falken, Basel
4. Eisenstadt S N 1973 Tradition, Change and Modernity. John Wiley & Sons, New York
5. Eisenstadt S N 1982 The axial age: the emergence of transcendental visions and rise of clerics. European Sociology 23(2): 294–314
6. Eisenstadt S N (ed.) 1986 The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations. State University of New York Press, Albany, New York
7. Eisenstadt S N 1982 Heterodoxies and dynamics of civilizations. Diogene 120: 3–25
8. Eisenstadt S N, Achlama R 1992 Kulturen der Achsenzeit II, ihre institutionelle und kulturelle Dynamik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 3 Vols.
9. Eisenstadt S N 1996 Japanese Civilization: A Comparative View. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
10. Eisenstadt S N 1999 Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolution. The Jacobin Dimension of Modernity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
11. Huntington S P 1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon and Schuster, New York
12. Kroeber A L, Kluckhohn C 1952 Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. The Museum, Cambridge, MA
13. MacIver R M 1931 Society: Its Structure and Changes. R. Long & R. R. Smith, Inc. New York
14. Melko M 1969 The Nature of Civilizations. Porter Sargent, Boston
15. Nelson B 1981 On the Roads to Modernity. Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, NY
16. Ogburn W F 1922 Social Change: With Respect to Culture and Original Nature. Huebsch, New York
17. Schluchter W 1979 Die Entwicklung des okzidentalen Rationalismus—Eine Analyse on Max Webers Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Mohr, Tubingen
18. Schluchter W 1981 (1985) The Rise of Western Rationalism, Max Weber’s Developmental History. University of California Press, Berkeley
19. Schluchter W 1989 Rationalism, Religion and Domination. A Weberian Perspecti e. University of California Press, Berkeley
20. Weber A 1921 Prinzipielles zur Kultursoziologie. Archi fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpoliti XL(VII): 1–49, J-C-B. Mohr, Tubingen
21. Weber A 1931 Kultursoziologie. In: Enke F (ed.) Handworterbuch der Soziologie. Alfred Vierkandt, Stuttgart, pp. 284–94
22. Weber M 1922–3 Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie. Mohr, Tubingen