Civilization: A Pathway to Peace?
MAJID TEHRANIAN
University of Hawaii at Manoa
ABSTRACT The concept of ‘civilization’ has been employed in contradictory ways—as an
ideological tool, as an analytical category and in reference to a long historical journey. In light
of its ideological abuses, is ‘civilization’ as an analytical category capable of salvation? This
paper takes a fresh look at an old problem. If ‘civilization’ is still a useful category of analysis,
are such partitions as the East and the West valid in the context of an emerging global
civilization? If not, how can we reconceptualize the common journey toward a more civilized
world order? The paper argues that human civilization is an imaginary fuelled by changing
technologies, mythologies and communication carriers. The transitions from nomadic to
agrarian, commercial, industrial and informatic civilizations may be considered as higher orders
of differentiation, complexity and integration. If so viewed, the journey appears as a single but
uneven and self-contradictory movement. In our own epoch, the global reach of informatic
technologies necessitates an integrating myth such as the Gaia Hypothesis, viewing the Planet
Earth as a single living organism transcending all boundaries. That myth would teach us to
value human unity in diversity. However, the current pathologies of commodity and identity
fetishism, expressed in state and opposition terrorism, are obstructing peaceful globalization.
‘We are the finest race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for thehuman race’ Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902), quoted by Bentley and Ziegler (2003, p. 933)
‘Today backward and deprived, we face an economic and military giant with the moral and spiritual scru-ples of a flea. It is not a pleasant encounter.’ Sadeq al-Mahdi, Prime Minister of Sudan (1966–1967)
‘Civilization as we know it, is a movement not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor’. ArnoldToynbee (1889–1975), 1948
The Problem
In the post-Cold War international discourse, two concepts have found great currency: globali-
zation and civilization. Both concepts have been often employed in the singular rather than
Globalizations
September 2004, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 82–101
Correspondence Address: Majid Tehranian, Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, University of Hawaii at
Manoa, 2500 Campus Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA. Email: [email protected]
1474-7731 Print=1474-774X Online=04=010082–20 # 2004 Majid TehranianDOI: 10.1080/1474773042000252174
plural.1 However, both concepts may be better understood in the plural. The two concepts gen-
erally refer to the material and cultural achievements by humanity through international
exchanges in science, technology and culture. In successive trials and errors at war or peace
throughout human history, technological and cultural exchanges have advanced human civiliza-
tion (Bentley, 1993; Frank and Gills, 1993).
Five major types of globalization can be easily discerned in written history, including (1)
nomadic conquests of sedentary population exemplified by the Aryan, Arab, Mongol, Teutonic
and Turkik tribes, (2) agrarian empires such as the Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Persian,
Greek and Roman, (3) commercial trade routes such as those of the Silk, Incense and Spice
Roads, (4) European, Russian, American and Japanese industrial empires, and (5) the current
round of an expanding informatic empire, encompassing nearly all parts of the world through
its global market and communication networks. In the current round, globalization also has
come to mean the promotion of a neoliberal economic and political agenda2 promoted by an
ideology of civilization.
Civilization has a longer history of discourse. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (2002, p. 12) has
gone through this history with gusty commentary. It is difficult to disagree with him that ‘Like
most terms calculated to evoke approval, such as “democracy”, “equality”, “freedom”, and
“peace”, the word “civilization” has been much abused.’ However, it is necessary to make a dis-
tinction between its ideological abuses by politicians to legitimate certain hegemonic policies, its
use by noted historians to designate certain types of society, and its more general use as a
common human journey. I use the term differently from most other commentators to designate
a normative aspiration to achieve a society in which rule of law and other methods of non-violent
dispute management are dominant. From this perspective, civilization is an unfinished journey.
Ideological discourses often see the world in self-righteous black and white terms. They
employ dichotomous categories in order to mobilize resources for the ensuing struggles. ‘Civi-
lization’ has been often employed as an ideological weapon to legitimate most globalization pol-
icies in the past and present. By making dichotomous distinctions between the so-called
‘civilized’ and ‘barbarian’, a presumed Axis of Virtue against an ‘Axis of Evil’,3 hegemonic
ambitions have tried to gain moral legitimacy. In the current round, opposition to the dominant
globalization policies has similarly employed ‘civilization’ as its ideological weapon of choice.
Witness the frequent use of ‘civilization’ in speeches by President George W. Bush as well as by
Osama Ben Laden.
The challenge is to understand the complex patterns of an emerging world civilization, par-
ticularly its globalizing and civilizing forces. Employing normative concepts without falling
prey to their ideological abuses is part of that challenge. Some may argue that ‘civilization’ is
analytically beyond salvation. However, the option to abandon normative concepts is not a rea-
listic one. Human societies are normative social constructions. In competition or in concert,
norms such as salvation, order, freedom, equality, solidarity, justice or civilization frame the
unwritten, and sometimes written, constitutions of society. Without such normative glues,
human societies would fall apart. Norms and values are in turn symbolically revealed in foun-
dation myths.
As the Biblical myth of creation reveals, once Adam and Eve ate the Apple from the Tree of
Knowledge, they were permanently thrown out of their conditions of ignorance and bliss in para-
dise. They attained the status of free agents who must choose, enjoy or suffer the consequences
of their choices. First, they became aware of their nakedness, i.e. they gained consciousness.
Second, they were faced with the struggles of living, such as labor in child bearing and toil in
the sweat of their brow. Third, they gained the freedom to choose between good and evil.
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 83
According to this Abrahamic foundation myth, the human condition entails struggle, learning
and freedom. Modern natural science also seems to confirm this finding. We seem to be hard-
wired for struggle, love, learning and creativity (Lewis et al., 2000). But we are also genetically
programmed for identity, territoriality and aggression (Ardrey, 1966).
In the Biblical myth of creation, God created man in his own image. That myth posits a pro-
found truth about consciousness in the human condition. The Gospel according to St. John
starkly states, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God.’ If we interpret ‘the Word’ as communicative competence in its broadest possible
terms or, better yet, consciousness or enlightenment, we can better understand the profound
meaning of the statement. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2003, p. 14) aptly put it
Consciousness, for traditional civilizations, for religions and traditional philosophies, is not only astate. It is a substance and not a process. It is something that is, like Being itself, which at itshighest level of reality is at once luminous and numinous. Consciousness at its elevated levels isat once knowing and knowing that it knows, knowledgeable of its own knowledge. It is at oncethe source of all sentience, of all experience, and beyond all experience of the knowledge that some-thing is being experienced. That is why even the more skeptical philosophers have had a great deal oftrouble negating it, even those who have been skeptics from a religious point of view.
The Purpose
This essay engages in a politics of discourse imposed by our historical circumstances. It begins
with a focus on the current conceptual quagmire. It offers seven propositions on the interactions
among three major historical forces, including technologies, mythologies and communication
carriers. By globalization, I simply mean an intensification of human interactions across territo-
rial boundaries. By civilization, I mean the unfinished journey that humanity has undertaken to
tame its aggressive impulses in order to achieve a peaceful management of conflicts through dia-
logue, negotiation, law, diplomacy, mediation, arbitration and Satyagraha. By technology,
I mean the hardware and software know-how of solving human problems. By mythology,
I mean the narratives that try to explain the unexplainable (Campbell, 1997).4 By communi-
cations, I am referring to those carriers of human messages that we commonly know as
verbal and non-verbal signs, transportation and the media.
The Argument
The essay argues that technologies, mythologies and communications are the perennial forces that
have shaped global history in the past and will probably continue to do so in the future. Civiliza-
tion clearly begins with the ingenious human uses of natural environment. Available natural
resources, their discovery through science and technology, and the ensuing struggles to control
them are the perennial saga of human history. But technology by itself cannot sustain human
societies. It takes shared foundation myths to build human societies. Human civilization has
been built through scientific, technological and cultural exchanges, achieved by means of expand-
ing global communication. Civilization may be thus viewed as a normative social construction to
manage human problems, drawing on technologies, mythologies, and communications.
Human civilization has evolved toward greater differentiation, complexity and integration
(Figure 1). Technological developments impose greater differentiation in social structures and
functions. Greater differentiation brings about more complexity and contradiction. Complexity
and contradiction necessitate higher orders of social integration. Social integration, in turn, calls
84 M. Tehranian
for new foundation myths relevant to the new material and cultural conditions. As technological
advances and cultural lags bring about greater complexity and contradiction between the old and
new paradigms, the crises of transition inevitably surface. In this respect, the movement of
human civilization is fundamentally no different from the revolutionary processes in scientific
progress (Kuhn, 1962). The revolutions from nomadic to agrarian, commercial, industrial and
informatic civilizations have been accompanied by great cultural transformations. However,
each revolutionary change has been followed by a long period of normalization of the values
of the new civilization’s modes of production, legitimation and communication.
Figure 1. Modes of globalization and civilization: technological, institutional, and cosmological perspectives
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 85
The Conceptual Quagmire
The Manichean dichotomies between civilized versus barbarian, or more generally ‘us’
versus ‘them’, seem to be a propensity of the human mind.5 Ideology as a modern discourse
and tool of political struggle often resorts to such dichotomies. In the modern world, with the
mass media playing a critical role, such dichotomies have become a common currency. State
and commercial media alike often engage in dichotomizing political struggles, demonizing
the perceived enemy, and dramatizing their own narratives to capture, manipulate and
entertain their audiences. For the commercial media, this strategy also maximizes audiences
and profits.
The exploding scholarly literature on globalization has been trapped in this ideological quag-
mire. In a moment of enthusiasm, for example, Francis Fukuyama (1989) declared that the twen-
tieth century has witnessed the triumph of liberal capitalism over communism and fascism. The
rest of human history, he argued, will be spent on the boring details of implementing the capi-
talist democratic regimes.6 A more pessimistic voice was aired by Samuel Huntington (1993a, b,
1996) during the 1990s. The wars in the Persian Gulf, Somalia and former Yugoslavia suggested
no easy victories. In his Clash of Civilizations, Huntington argued that the wars of the future will
be conflicts among civilizations, most notably between the West and the rest. He also singled out
an Islamic–Confucian alliance as the West’s main enemy. In a more critical vein, Benjamin
Barber (1995) identified the central problem of globalization as the ensuing conflict between
capitalist consumerism and tribalist militancy. However, by employing the metaphors of
McWorld vs. Jihad, he regionalized a global problem. The New York Times columnist
Thomas Friedman (2000) used the metaphor of The Lexus and the Olive Tree. That metaphor
may be more relevant to upwardly mobile upper middle classes rather than Barber’s lower
middle classes!
As Robert Cox (1997, p. 251) aptly put it, conceptual dualisms reveal a ‘culture of content-
ment’ challenging a culture of discontent. The ardent globalizers and the reluctant globalized
approach the same problems from different perspectives based on contradictory interests.
Those interests and perspectives are the dialectically interacting aspects of the same historical
dilemma.7 The dominant and dissenting views reflect different constructions of reality. From
the center perspective, the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US seemed to bear
out Huntington’s dark prophecy and Barber’s fearsome forebodings. It was ironic that 2001
was also declared by the United Nations General Assembly as the Year of Dialogue among
Civilizations. The terrorist attacks demonstrated that we live in a truly globalized world.
History’s greatest superpower was no longer protected by the two vast Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans.
The language of violence subsequently assumed a prominent position in international dis-
course. The US invasions of Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003 were the expressions of
a dual project: (a) to stem oppositional terrorism in its bud, and (b) to establish a New
American Century (NAC). In 1997, the Project for a NAC had been initiated by the
future leaders of the Bush Administration. It was to promote ‘a few fundamental prop-
ositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; that such lea-
dership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle; and
that too few political leaders today are making the case for global leadership’.8 The NAC
project pooled two American historical traditions into one ideological basket. The Bushists
have argued that, to promote democracy in the world, the US must be ready to employ
pre-emptive strikes.9
86 M. Tehranian
Seven Propositions in Search of Civilization
Proposition 1. There is one single human civilization, but there are numerous cultures
We may speak of many civilizations in human history, some dead, others living. But human civi-
lization also may be viewed as a grand old tree with many branches, flowers and fruits. The different
branches, flowers and fruits each have their own shapes, colors, aromas and tastes. But they are all
nurtured by the same earth, water, air and human ingenuity. There is a clear unity in diversity.
Although isolated for centuries from their Eurasian varieties, the American civilizations (including
the Native Americans, Aztecs, Incas and Mayas) also were based on technological advances and
mythological foundations. Cultivation of edible crops, domestication of animals, development of
media of communication and exchange, and the myth of sacrifice as a foundation for political
unity seem to be common to all human civilizations (Diamond, 1999).
Whether we speak of one singular human civilization or its many branches, history shows that
every new civilization has borrowed heavily from the past to build up its own achievements. The
invention of fire, wheel, compass, print, automobile, satellites and computers have been contrib-
uted by different nations. Comparable with the great technological breakthroughs in history, new
moral heights also have been envisioned by many peoples and traditions. No nation or combi-
nation of nations can claim a monopoly of civilization. Hammurabi (1792–1750 BCE) offered us
the first legal code. Moses gave us the Ten Commandments (thirteenth century BCE). Cyrus (fifth
century BCE) liberated the Jews and established a policy of cultural tolerance in his empire.
Buddha (563–483 BCE) and Jesus (first century CE) advocated a world ruled by love and com-
passion. Lao-tze (604 BCE) and Confucius (551–479 BCE) laid the moral and legal foundations
for the Chinese civilization. In accordance with Buddhist Dharma (principles of right life),
Emperor Ashoka (ruled 265–238 BCE) of the Mauryan dynasty in India renounced all violence.
Mahatma Gandhi struggled for Indian independence by non-violent means. In his campaign for
civil rights, Martin Luther King followed non-violent resistance strategies. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1945) combined the wisdom of European civilizations with
those inherited from others to establish a new and higher standard of ethical conduct by
states. The list can go on and on.
All civilizations are, to employ Benedict Anderson’s felicitous phrase (1983), ‘imaginaries’.
Since all civilizations in history have borrowed heavily from others, it would be inaccurate to
speak of them as disconnected imaginaries. Jared Diamond (1999) has argued that the Eurasian
East–West Axis allowed material and cultural exchanges greater than those in the North–South
axis of the Americas. But the propensity to travel, conquer, and exchange has been a perennial
force in history on the East–West as well as North–South axes. Native Americans, for instance,
are believed to have come mainly from Asia via Alaska (Diamond, 1999, pp. 36ff.). In Eurasian
history, the mythologies, sciences and technologies of the ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Persian,
Greek and Roman civilizations were passed on to modern Europe via the medieval Islamic civi-
lization. The same can be said of the Japanese and Korean civilizations that heavily borrowed
from China.
Proposition 2. Civilization may be considered as the increasing technological, mythological
and communicative capacity of human societies to manage human problems
In the Mediterranean world, civilization has been traditionally identified with city dwelling. In
the European languages as well as Arabic and Persian (madaniyya, tammadon), the word for
civilization suggests city life. Civitas, civility, civil and citizen are its derivations. By contrast,
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 87
in East Asian languages, the term for civilization (Wen Ming in Chinese; Bun Mei in Japanese)
suggests learning and enlightenment. The urban bias of the Mediterranean is historically under-
standable. To arrive at a global understanding, we need to emphasize what is common to all his-
torical experiences. Ecological diversity and technological change provide the most solid
footing for such an understanding. All human civilizations are founded on certain institutional
arrangements, including the organization of family, tribes, states and businesses. Moreover, all
civilizations are based on certain cosmologies or mythologies, focusing their attention on per-
ennial truths and changing historical challenges. The Biblical myths relate to nomadic and agrar-
ian societies, while the myths of Nationalism or Globalism concern industrial and informatic
civilization. As a result of uneven developments in the world, we are currently witnessing a
clash of mythologies. The myth of Divine sovereignty is encountering the myth of popular
sovereignty. The two myths have been reconciled in the doctrine of separation of church and
state, to wit ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God that what is God’s’. In theocratic
regimes, however, the issue remains unresolved.
As Joseph Campbell (1997) has argued, certain archetypical myths keep repeating themselves
under various guises in different cultures. The myth of sacrifice, for instance, runs through the
so-called ‘primitive’ as well as ‘advanced’ cultures. To pacify the angry Gods who presumably
caused natural catastrophes, many societies engaged in a variety of sacrificial rites. To satisfy the
male gods, in some societies, they even sacrificed their virgins. As an expression of his faith in
Yahweh in the story of Abraham, the myth of sacrifice is embedded in his willingness to sacrifice
his son Isaac.10 However, Angel Gabriel brought him a lamb to sacrifice instead. Millions of
Muslims today sacrifice a lamb on the last day of their pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca as a memorial
to that day. In the Christian mythology, Jesus offered himself as ‘the Lamb of God’ to be sacri-
ficed to redeem humanity from its sinfulness. In the modern nationalist states, young men and
women are called upon on times of war to sacrifice their lives at the altar of another God,
namely the State.
Myths are neither true nor false. They are relevant or irrelevant to changing historical circum-
stances, functional or dysfunctional in the management of certain social systems. The practice of
human sacrifices to appease gods took place in many ancient societies, but modern discoveries of
the causes of natural disasters have rendered that kind of myth highly irrelevant and dysfunc-
tional. Proposed by James Lovelock (1988), the Gaia Hypothesis, for instance, may be con-
sidered an appropriate myth for our own times. As a biologist, Lovelock has found
considerable evidence to suggest that the Planet Earth could be considered a living organism.
It breathes in and out, it can thrive in health or fall sick to pollutant toxins, it sustains life but
it also can kill, it is responding to the human impact on its environment (such as global
warming), and it may be considered to have a finite life. This intriguing hypothesis cannot be
proved or disproved beyond doubt. But it can constitute a mythological belief or scientific pos-
tulate on the basis of which environmental policies are formulated to achieve greater
sustainability.
Proposition 3. Human civilization has been driven by four major forces in history, including
ecologies, technologies, mythologies and communications
Jared Diamond (1999) has shown how diverse ecologies have led to differences among human
settlements and their respective advances in the military, economic and social fields. He also has
demonstrated how technological advances by certain nations have led to domination of other
nations. If we look carefully at human civilization as a whole, three other critical factors
88 M. Tehranian
stand out. Modes of production, legitimation and communication are driven by technological
innovations to homogenize the world. However, ecologies and mythologies are unique to par-
ticular times and spaces and can perhaps best explain the diversities in human civilization.
Technologies such as the invention of fire, wheel, compass, gunpowder, animal domesti-
cation, steam engine, assembly line or nuclear fission have always privileged those first
acquiring them. The desire to dominate and exploit seems to be a recurrent phenomenon in
history. Such desires are often supported by technologies, mythologies and communication car-
riers at hand. Technologies and mythologies of domination, however, have to be relevant to par-
ticular projects. The myth of racial purity and superiority, for instance, served the purpose of
Western and Japanese colonialism. The myths of civilization and democracy are currently fuel-
ling the American imperial ambitions.11
To be diffused worldwide, technologies and mythologies depend on communication carriers
(Denemark, 2000; McNeil, 1998; Fernandez-Armesto, 2002). From messenger pigeons to postal
systems, mass media and the Internet, the communication media have served such a function.
Camels, horses, automobiles, trains and planes also have served the same function. The
growing global communication networks are proliferating old and new technologies and mythol-
ogies. For centuries, the Chinese attempted to keep the production of silk a secret. In an act of
piety during the thirteenth century, two Nestorian Christian priests traveled from Beijing to Con-
stantinople, the Byzantine Imperial Court, and revealed the secret of silk production to the Eur-
opeans. Atomic weapons are currently in the exclusive possession of several countries. As a
young Swedish scientist has demonstrated, knowledge of production of atomic weapons can
be easily obtained in any good library. If libraries are not adequate, the black markets
for weapons of mass destruction have proved their efficacy. Witness Pakistan’s complicity in
selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.12 Following the massive air attacks
on the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, smaller countries have a great incentive to
develop nuclear weapons in the belief that they would provide deterrence against similar inva-
sions. A proliferation regime that privileges some states with nuclear weapons while denying
others is thus founded on delusion.
Proposition 4. Human civilization has gone through five major, overlapping technological
transformations, including nomadic, agrarian, commercial, industrial and informatic
Stage theories of history such as those of Marx and Engels (1848), Rostow (1960) or Bell (1973)
have one flaw in common. They more or less assume a universal and progressive evolution from
lower to higher levels of social and economic development. Cyclical views of history such as those
of Ibn Khaldun (1958), Toynbee (1962), or Sarkar (Galtung and Inayatullah, 1997, Chap. 2.18)
have another common flaw. They assume a universal repetition of similar cyclical patterns.
Much can be learned from the great scholars who have tackled universal history. But histori-
cal evidence and current world conditions do not justify inevitable universal progress or cyclical
patterns. In the postwar period, certain countries (notably in West Asia and Africa) have been
economically destroyed. In contrast, in some parts of the world, we have witnessed rapid econo-
mic progress. In still others, civil wars or political instability have produced economic stagnation
or regression, and increases in poverty (UNDP, 2003).
Layering of history, however, seems to be universally the case. An Israeli archeologist once
showed me 27 layers of human settlement in one of the archeological sites near Jerusalem. A
layering of global history thus seems closer to empirical realities than stages or cycles.
Table 1 presents such a view. However, a few caveats are in order. First, the table provides a
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 89
global view of long stretches of time and space. It should be taken seriously but not too
seriously! In other words, it should be considered heuristic rather than definitive. Second,
the dates should be considered suggestive. They mark historical watersheds that can be legiti-
mately debated. Third, because we witness today the presence of all five layers of human civi-
lization, all dates continue into the present. Fourth, the emergence of leading sectors such as
agriculture or commerce or manufacturing occurs in sequential historical epochs. Fifth, the
table provides a matrix of civilization layers and globalization processes, including modes of
production (economy and technology), legitimation (mythology and ideology), and communi-
cation (culture and its carriers).
Proposition 5. Each historical layer can be characterized by its leading modes of production,
legitimation, and communication
The transitions in the mode of production from hunting and gathering to agriculture, commerce,
manufacturing and informatics are rather well known. Each transition has involved major trans-
formations in the economy, polity and culture. The following account cannot be but a bird’s-eye
view of a complex history.
Changing modes of production. The nomadic layer in human civilization constituted
some 99% of the history of Homo sapiens. The major river basins pioneered the transition to
Table 1. Overlapping modes of civilization, globalization and empires: technological,
institutional and cosmological perspectives
Modes of imperial
civilizations:
globalization
processes
Nomadic
civilization
and empires
(7 million
years ago to
present)
Agrarian
civilization
and empires
(8000 BCE–
present)
Commercial
civilization
and empires
(500 BCE–
present)
Industrial
civilization and
empires
(1750–present)
Informatic
civilization and
empires (1971–
present)
Mode of production:
economy and
technology
Hunting,
gathering,
herding
Agriculture,
mining
Trade,
money,
banking
Manufacturing,
services
Information and
knowledge
industries
Mode of
legitimation: state
and mythology
Shamanistic Metaphysical Material Empirical Ecological
Mode of
communication:
culture and carriers
Orality Literacy Print Mass media Digital
Technology Ancestral Religious Imperial Secular Cosmopolitan
Identity Nomadic Territorial Mobile National Global
Community Chiefdom Temple Universities Mass
organizations
Networks
Institutions
leadership
Chief and
shamans
Kings and
prophets
Emperors
and
priesthoods
PMs,
presidents and
ideologues
CEOs and
technologues,
communologues
jestologues
90 M. Tehranian
agriculture only some 10 000 years ago. Agricultural surpluses made commerce possible and
desirable. Without political security, however, commerce could not have flourished. The
advent of multinational agrarian empires created common currencies, customs, laws and com-
merce. Whenever the Eurasian landmass was ruled by three contiguous imperial systems
in the East, West and Center, international trade flourished. The discovery of the New World
in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries by the Europeans inaugurated a new mode of production
which we may call industrial. It also radically changed the trade routes from land to ocean. Mon-
etization of the European economies through import of gold and silver from the New World
facilitated the rise of consumer markets and manufacturing. The technological inventions of
the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries led to an Industrial Revolution in England. Mainly
owing to changing trade routes and lack of access to the riches of the New World, some
Asian countries such as China that were equal if not ahead of Europe at the time were left
behind. The Industrial Revolution spread to other European countries and North America.
The role of European colonialism in this historical process was twofold. By facilitating
access to cheap labor (including slavery), raw materials and consumer markets, colonial dom-
ination augmented European industrial growth but, by spreading the European ideas of liberty
and equality, colonialism also dug its own grave. However, the global transition from industrial
to post-industrial, informatic societies has been as uneven as the spread of industrial system.
Changing modes of legitimation. Agricultural surpluses changed the modes of legitimation.
They led to the rise of multinational, agrarian empires. Such empires differentiated between
the temporal and spiritual authorities, undertook wars of conquest, established relative security
over vast expanses of territory, and thus encouraged technological and cultural exchange among
different peoples under their rule. They also facilitated the rise of Universalist religions such as
Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. These Universalist religions facili-
tated commerce and provided legitimation doctrines for the ensuring commercial empires
such as the Byzantium, Abbasid, Tang, Safavid and Ottoman. Under the industrial order,
secular humanism and its Enlightenment philosophy emerged as a dominant Universalist
mode of legitimation. Under the banner of ‘the white man’s burden’, it provided a doctrine of
legitimacy for the European and American empires. An emerging informatic empire is based
more on social class than ethnicity. To advance its cause, it employs the democratic doctrines
of legitimacy. By privileging liberty, equality and solidarity as their respective axial principles,
liberal, social and communitarian democratic doctrines provide contradictory policy perspec-
tives. Hence, the myth of democracy is both powerful and contentious.
Globalization has been always focused on the control of natural resources through conquest,
domination or trade. In this round, however, the encounter between secular and religious
doctrines of legitimacy has created a global, cultural civil war within and among nations.
Witness particularly the US, India, China, Israel and the Islamic world. In an increasingly ato-
mized world, the fetish of identity has focused on consumer commodities, for those with access
to material goods, and cultural identity for those without. Jihad vs MacWorld (Barber, 1995) is
not the peculiarity of Islamic and American worldviews. It is a more general phenomenon
reflecting the great material and cultural chasms that informatic imperialism is creating in the
world.
Changing modes of communication. Facilitated by improvements in transportation and
communication, technological and cultural exchanges have accelerated throughout history.
Through such technologies as domesticated animals (donkeys, horses and camels), the wheel,
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 91
carriages, ships, compass, writing, print, electronic media, satellites, computers and the Internet,
the world has become a global village. However, this village shows none of the cohesion and
intimacy of the traditional villages. There are some 10 billion pages on the World Wide Web
available to all those with computer and modem access. However, the divisions in their perspec-
tives demonstrate a materially and culturally divided world which is groping for order within
anachronistic political institutions. Technological advances in the global military, economic
and communication sectors have left the cultural and political sectors far behind. Hit–Kill
ratios, for instance, have steadily advanced in the last three centuries, but since the 1648
Peace of Westphalia, the nation-state system has dominated the world political order. Techno-
logical leads and cultural lags have created an ever-widening and alarming chasm.
In contrast, the democratizing impact of expanding markets, communication networks and
cultural exchanges cannot be ignored. In the rising environmentalist, civil society and ecumeni-
cal movements, we have witnessed antidotes to the prevailing hegemony. Awareness of the
global problems of pollution in congested cities, the ozone layer, and over-exploited forests,
rivers and oceans has affected the international discourse. Non-governmental organizations
such as the Greenpeace, Amnesty International and the Anti-Landmine movement have had
some measurable impact. Transborder communication networks have limited the ability of gov-
ernments to mislead the public.
Proposition 6. The current world conflicts stem from material and cultural gaps represented
by two global pathologies, namely commodity and identity fetishism
All historical transitions from one civilization layer to another have created zones of complexity
and contradiction. The modes of production, legitimation and communication of the old and
new inevitably collide. As a result of their collision, the established ‘truths’ of the old order
are challenged by ‘the truths’ of the new system. Such contradictions are the stuff of historical
transitions. As the pace of technological and economic change increases, we can expect the
expansion of zones of complexity and contradiction.13
Two examples of such zones may contribute to an understanding of the enormity of ensuing
social conflicts. The transition from an industrial to an informatic civilization in the US provides
an apt historical example. That transition may be generally dated to the postwar period (1945–
present). The mode of production under industrial civilization was best symbolized by the homo-
genizing influences of the assembly line and high mass consumption. The latter depended on an
acquisitive society promoted by commercial advertising. The pathology of such a society could
be identified as commodity fetishism, a tendency to evaluate the worth of an individual by the
commodities he or she consumes. The house, automobile, clothes and perfumes consumed
thus tend to define personal identities in high-consumption societies. In his theory of the
leisure class and conspicuous consumption, Thorstein Veblen (2001) had anticipated this patho-
logy. ‘To keep up with the Joneses’ became the prevailing social attitude in postwar American
society. The frugality of the earlier periods of industrialization and its heroes (e.g. John
D. Rockefeller) gave way to the rise of the new heroes of capitalism such as Donald Trump,
with his displays of glamour, consumption and television.
The Flower Revolution of the 1960s may be considered a reaction against the exacting
demands of an industrial civilization. Since it was led by a postwar affluent younger generation,
Peter Berger (1977) called it ‘the soft revolution’. The celebration of nature, sexuality, peace
and participatory democracy were part of a cultural revolution against the exacting indus-
trial demands for domination of nature and society based on competitiveness, elitism and
92 M. Tehranian
imperialism. Since the 1960s, American society has been torn between the two competing cul-
tural values of industrial and informatic civilizations. Increasing mobility and atomization has
resulted in a passionate search for identity focused on gender, ethnicity, and religion. Social
movements such as the feminist, gay, lesbian and Christian fundamentalism have become the
hallmark of American cultural conflicts. But so long as the economy can provide jobs, consu-
merism is the unifying social factor. Loss of jobs caused by the flight of American industries
to low-cost locations is producing class conflict, while loss or denial of social status is creating
identity anxiety and conflict. Commodity and identity fetishism in American society has thus
become the two dialectical sides of the same social coin.
Another example may focus on Iran. Under the monarchical regimes (1953–1979), Iran came
directly under American political, economic and cultural influence. With increasing oil reven-
ues, the country entered a period of rapid economic growth and widening disparities in
wealth, income and ways of life. The economic gaps increasingly sharpened the cultural
chasm between the secular and religious societies. The country was deeply divided into two
nations. Some 5% of the population seemed to have adopted secular values promoted by easy
access to consumer goods. The other 95% reacted to the conspicuous consumption of the
urban elite by resorting to their traditional identity as Shi’a Muslims. The social and cultural con-
flicts between commodity and identity fetishism generated the Islamic Revolution of 1979
(Tehranian, 1980). Since the revolution, the country has continued to be deeply torn between
the value systems of an industrializing and acquisitive society and the traditional agrarian
values of modesty, abstinence, and frugality. Put directly into the hands of the state and its cle-
rical-merchant rulers, oil revenues in Iran have widened the gaps and exacerbated the social con-
flicts. The conflict between the Iranian so-called conservatives and reformers may be viewed as a
conflict between tradition and modernity focusing on two contradictory doctrines of legitimacy.
The conservative clerics emphasize velayat-i-faqih, the doctrine of guardianship of the (Shi’a)
jurists (Tehranian, 1992). The reformers accuse them of akhundshahi, or clerical monarchy,
while calling for popular sovereignty.
On a global scale, the growing economic and cultural gaps within and among nations are
breeding an international and intercultural civil war without physical and moral boundaries. Glo-
balization forces are resulting in fragmentation and intense competition among ethnic, religious
and status groups (Chua, 2003). Once the traditional restraints on exercise of power are wea-
kened, the competition can erupt into bloody massacres of one group by the other. The genocide
of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda-Burundi, the Shi’a and Kurdish population by the Sunnis in
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and the Chinese minorities in Indonesia provide the most recent
examples.
Globalization also creates the insecurities of distant proximity (Rosenau, 2003). The 9/11
terrorist attacks on the US, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict can be better understood in this light. The presence of a global oil industry has system-
atically brought the Persian Gulf region into the vortex of globalization and proximity to the US
domestic politics. With over 60% of the world oil reserves and exports, local conflicts in the
Persian Gulf have inevitably become globalized. In the meantime, global forces have created
a wedge between the sectors of the population who benefit from the oil wealth and those who
do not. The terrorist attacks on the US were the culmination of several decades of convergence
of global and local forces.
Global forces thus tend to have a fragmenting impact on the social structures of developed
as well as developing countries. Deepening material and cultural divisions among communities
that are neighbors in urban America or in Israel/Palestine are resulting in gated communities
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 93
of the rich and the poor. Building a wall around the West Bank to cordon off the Palestinians
from Israelis serves essentially the same function as building gated communities in affluent
urban neighborhoods to protect them against threats from outside. Caught in the same territorial
space but with different cultural identities and styles of life, the confrontation between Israelis
and Palestinians has degenerated into an endless blood feud. This confrontation assumes greater
intensity when it concerns land rights between the lower strata of Israeli and Palestinian popu-
lation, namely the West Bank Jewish settlers and the Palestinian Jihad and Hamas organizations.
Similarly, at the global level, as physical distances diminish by the international communication
networks, cultural and political differences are magnified into security threats. As a security
measure, the initial response is to build physical and symbolic walls, to impose stringent visa
requirements and to enlarge surveillance.
Gated communities and the Berlin and Jerusalem Walls physically separate communities, but
they also antagonize and strengthen the will to destroy them in a next phase of struggle. Since
international disparities in wealth and income are often replicated domestically, these walls
cannot ultimately contain the two fetishisms of commodity and identity.
Proposition 7. A new global civilization and citizenship is beginning to respond to the
challenges of constructing a more peaceful, ecologically balanced, democratic and just world
Since the cultural revolution of the 1960s, a major paradigmatic shift has been taking place in the
dominant worldviews of industrial civilization. The fundamental assumptions of the Enlighten-
ment Project have been increasingly brought into question, among them the naı̈ve faith in (1) the
justice of the marketplace, (2) the infinite perfectibility of humankind, (3) the inevitability of
historical progress, (4) the moral legitimacy of human domination and exploitation of nature,
(5) the civilizing mission of the so-called advanced nations, and (6) the universal truth of empiri-
cal science. The anti-war, national liberation, environmentalist, feminist, phenomenology and
theology of liberation, and postmodernist movements each have contributed in their own
unique ways to undermine the dominance of the Enlightenment worldviews.
Meanwhile, informatic civilization has been emerging from the womb of industrial societies
(Tehranian, 1990, Chap. 2). It has been labeled Post-Industrial (Bell, 1973), Information (Porat,
1977), Knowledge (Machlup,1980), Postmodern (Harvey, 1990) and Network (Castells, 1996–
2000) Society. As in the Jain legend about the elephant and the blind men touching and describ-
ing different parts of a single creature, each of the above labels captures a different aspect of a
complex and evolving social system.
It is fairly clear, however, that the new modes of production depend on informatic technol-
ogies and significantly differ from the past industrial forms in several respects. First and fore-
most, the application of informatic technologies has made automation and robotics
increasingly possible. For example, in computer-assisted design and computer-assisted manu-
facturing (CAD–CAM), most industries have become increasingly automated. Second, the elec-
tronic transfer of news, data and images has led to new business organizations which have been
called multinational, transnational or global corporations. The global reach of some 1000 global
corporations annually reported by the Fortune Magazine has made it possible for them to spread
their manufacturing facilities around the world in order to minimize risks and maximize profits.
Lower labor, rent, tax and regulation costs have lured the global corporation from the old indus-
trial centers in North America and Western Europe to the industrializing countries in East Asia
and Latin America. Third, this kind of flexible accumulation (Harvey, 1990) has distributed the
production of the different parts of a single product among diverse locations while allowing for
94 M. Tehranian
‘just in time’ assembly to meet changing market demands. Finally, with the automation and
robotization of manufacturing and a consequent decline of demand for physical labor, the
national economies of the informatic world have shifted from agriculture and manufacturing
to services. For the US, this shift started in the late 1950s (Porat, 1977). The long-term trend
for all countries has been to shift from primary (agriculture and mining) to secondary (manufac-
turing) and tertiary (services) production. In industrial countries, agriculture contributes about
1–3%, manufacturing about 20–30% and services about 70–80% of Gross Domestic
Product. For middle and high income countries, the World Bank data show that the structures
of employment have significantly shifted from agriculture and industry to services (World
Bank, 2003, p. 48).
The most visible changes can be witnessed in the global and national communications
systems. Informatization has facilitated several other changes, including (1) convergence of tele-
communication and computers, (2) miniaturization of personal communication devices, (3)
rapid expansion of the wireless and (4) application of information storage, processing and retrie-
val in nearly all industries and services. Internet and News networks such as the CNN, BBC, Sky
TV and recently Aljazeera have provided more news and information accompanied by greater
international anxiety and stereotyping.14 Improving transportation facilities have made greater
international migration possible. Diasporic and cosmopolitan identities have been on the rise
among a population of global nomads, including immigrants as well as TNC, NGO and IGO per-
sonnel. In contrast to the priesthoods of the agrarian and commercial eras, and the ideologues of
the industrial epoch, a new class of technologues has emerged to lead the informatic revolution.
Figures such as Steve Job, Bill Gates and the teeming hardware and software engineers around
the world engaged in the informatic industries and services may be considered the new com-
munications elite.
In politics, however, two other types of figures have been privileged by the rise of informatic
civilization. For want of better terminology, we may call them communologues and jestologues
(Tehranian, 1990, p. 67). Communologues such as Ayatollah Khomeini, Zapatista leader Com-
mandant Marcos (Ronfedt et al., 1998), and Osama Ben Laden (Ronfedt and Arquilla, 2001) are
political leaders who have dipped into the rich mythological resources of particular nations to
frame their respective messages. When the power of the new communications technologies
are combined with the old mythologies of marginalized population, they can produce significant
social movements such as the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the
Al-Qaedeh in the Islamic world, or the Zapatista Movement in Mexico (Gills, 2000).
The global spread of television as a source of news and entertainment has also had another
interesting political consequence. It has reduced the importance of traditional political parties
and privileged those leaders who can use the medium for direct appeals to the electorate.
Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the US, Shintaro Ishihara in Japan, and
Joseph Estrada and Fernando Poe Jr in the Philippines provide the best-known examples of
actors who have made a successful transition from the world of entertainment to politics. We
may call such figures jestologues, because they intuitively understand that the new mediated
politics is primarily about entertaining your audience without alienating particular sets of
voters. Politics as bread, circus and roots has found a new meaning in the Informatic Age.
The emergence of communologues and jestologues as communication leaders in media-
intensive societies may have long-term consequences. It seems to encourage extremism. Alex
De Tocqueville’s (1956) warning about ‘tyranny of majorities’ seems to have taken a new
turn. With the decline of voluntary associations (Putnam, 2000) to act as a balancer, mass
audiences seem to be easily manipulated into believing the prevailing ideological propaganda.
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 95
In media-intensive societies, the fundamental assumptions of liberal democracy seem to have
become increasingly irrelevant to popular sovereignty. Manipulation of voter anxieties by poli-
tical advertising financed by special interests has left little room for the classical liberal view of
deliberate debate on public policies (Habermas, 1991). Voluntary associations and the public
sphere of discourse are increasingly shifting from the mass media to the interactive Internet
channels.
Informatic civilization is thus creating unprecedented challenges and opportunities. It is
laying the technological foundations for a truly global civilization. It is also forcing different
cultures and mythologies into direct contact, confrontation and dialogue. In the failing states
of Sub-Saharan Africa, war-torn countries (former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq), and all
other transitional societies, it has created zones of complexity, contradiction and chaos. Can
the world build international peace, security and order out of chaos, war and human suffering?
That question may be addressed by focusing on problems and prospects for more democratic
global governance.
The foundations of modern global governance were laid by the Peace of Westphalia (1648),
the Concert of Europe (1812–1914), the League of Nations (1918–1941), and the United
Nations (1945–present). It took the Thirty Years’ War between the Protestants and Catholics
to establish the Peace of Westphalia, recognizing freedom of religion and the existing boundaries
among the emerging secular European nation-states. It took the Napoleonic Wars to achieve a
precarious Concert of Europe focusing on the maintenance of the European status quo. World
War I led to the establishment of the League of Nations. But the failure of the US to join the
League significantly reduced its credibility and effectiveness. The League thus could not act
in the cases of German, Italian and Japanese aggression. World War II revived the League’s prin-
ciple of collective security, which was embodied in the United Nations Charter. However, the
onset of the Cold War in 1947 and the division of the world into the three conflicting camps
of capitalist, communist and non-aligned nations hampered the United Nations. The wars in
Korea, Vietnam, Africa and the Middle East reflected an unstable and divided world order.
The end of the Cold War in 1989, the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the effective
entry of China into the world markets in the 1990s placed the US in the position of a single
superpower. Since the 1990s, the US has fluctuated between three stark choices: (1) neo-
isolationism—to withdraw, as the Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush advocated
in 2000, from police actions and nation-building while focusing on the pursuit of its own nar-
rower economic and political interests; (2) multilateralism—to strengthen the multilateral insti-
tutions of global governance such as the United Nations or NATO in pursuit of its multilateral
objectives; (3) unilateralism—to act unilaterally to impose its will particularly in the zones of
contradiction and chaos such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel–Palestine and North Korea.
The terrorist acts of 9/11 led the Bush Administration to take the latter course. That policy,
however, has proved counterproductive. First, in an interdependent world, it lacks legitimacy.
Second, the resources of a single state, even if a superpower, are inadequate for the challenges
of state and nation building in countries that are in throes of a major historical transition to the
modern world. Third, the twenty-first-century conditions are radically different from those of the
nineteenth-century, when Britain could rule a vast empire with relatively docile populations.
The new informatic civilization has awakened millions of people around the world to their
basic human needs, including the rights of self-determination. Unilateral policies in such
context represent a historical regression.
In contrast, the current institutions of global governance are profoundly out of sync with the
technological and economic changes in the world (Aksu and Camilleri, 2002). The Charter of the
96 M. Tehranian
United Nations was approved in 1945. In the meantime, the composition of the Security Council
and the right of veto has lost much of its legitimacy. Important factors have changed the power
configuration of the world, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the decline of the UK,
France and Russia, the economic rise of Germany and Japan, the emergence of the European
Union, and the rise of heavily populated countries such as China, India, Brazil and Southeast
Asia. Although difficult to achieve, a revision of the UN Charter to take account of the new rea-
lities is called for.
Informatic civilization is creating a new global consciousness. That consciousness is based on
an increasing awareness of the world’s ecological and economic interdependence, cultural
clashes and the need for dialogue and democracy. Technological advances have shown their
Janus face. On the one hand, they have opened up new possibilities in mass production,
global communication, space, medicine, education, agriculture and services. On the other
hand, they have widened the economic and cultural gaps between the rich and poor within
and among nations. The technologies of violence have dramatically increased the levels of
kill by hits. The global institutions of governance have lagged far behind the technological
and economic transformations.
Conclusion
Instead of focusing on the trees, this essay has taken up the challenge of taking a snapshot of the
forest. If its analysis is anywhere close to the empirical realities of an increasingly complex and
contradictory world, the following concluding reflections may be worthy of consideration:
(1) If by ‘civilization’ we understand the human journey toward a more peaceful and just world,
the term continues to have relevance in any normative discussion of public policies.
Throughout history, however, civilization also has been employed as an ideological tool
to legitimate hegemonic rule by creating a wedge between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The challenge
is therefore to reclaim ‘civilization’ as global unity in diversity, the rule of law, and pacific
resolution of conflicts.
(2) Globalization has historically played a critical role in advancing human civilization through
technological and cultural exchange. However, it also has come about by nomadic, agrarian,
commercial, industrial and informatic empires. In the current round of globalization, a Pan-
capital Empire is employing the neoliberal doctrines of market competition and supremacy
to legitimate its global control of natural resources (Tehranian, 1999). Markets are clearly
necessary for the efficient allocation of resources, but they are not sufficient for the
welfare of human societies.
(3) Human civilization has been fuelled by the prevailing technologies, mythologies and com-
munication carriers of each age. If we consider technological change as a decisive engine of
change, human civilization has evolved from nomadic into agrarian, commercial, industrial
and informatic societies. While scientific and technological advances have accelerated, the
cultural lag in mythological narratives has often trapped human societies into anachronistic
laws and institutions. Technological globalization has thus advanced much more rapidly
than economic, political, or political globalization.
(4) Since technological advances have taken place unevenly, the world currently faces a double
jeopardy in technological and cultural leads and lags (Toffler, 1980). The increasing par-
tition of the world into premodern, modern and postmodern is producing some cultural
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 97
contradictions and clashes of its own. The most notable pathology of this transitional period
appears to be commodity and identity fetishism fueling state and opposition terrorism.
(5) The passage to a truly global civilization in which the development of each person is con-
sidered a condition for the development of all is a long cherished ideal. This ideal is perhaps
today the most relevant myth, or leap of faith, that the world needs for its survival and
welfare.
(6) The ideal of civilization at this critical period in human history may be best sustained by
democratizing local, national, regional and global governance institutions. However, in
the light of rapid technological changes that have taken place during the past 200 years,
the doctrines of liberal, social and communitarian democracy must be rethought and
revised to fit the specific local, national, regional and global conditions.
Acknowledgements
This paper summarizes the thesis of a forthcoming book, Civilization: A Universal Journey.
I should be grateful for any corrections of facts or interpretations. I am grateful to Jerry
Bentley and Barry Gills for their critical comments on earlier drafts.
Notes
1 Robert W. Cox (2002) extensively discusses the implications of the ‘s’ in civilizations. He traces the genealogy of
the concept of civilization to the Englightenment Movement and its zeal to spread the European rational–
scientific–technological civilization throughout the world. In due course, that worldview gave rise to Westen,
Russian and Japanese colonialism. De-colonization and globalization have brought us into contact with a
diversity of civilizations, each with their own claims to validity. Owing to rising global networks and problems,
we may be at another historical turning point, enabling us to speak of civilization in the singular: human
civilization. However, under the banner of globalization and civilization, that turn of events also has awakened
new hegemonic projects such as the Bush Doctrine. In this paper, I argue that it would be wiser to recognize
unity in diversity by acknowledging and respecting the differences.
2 In the literature of ‘globalization’, we can find many other plausible definitions. I have chosen the one that best
describes its contemporary economic and political agenda.
3 This is a reference to President George W. Bush’s address to the Joint Session of US Congress on 20 January
2002. Bush explicitly identified the Axis of Evil to consist of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, but he left the Axis
of Virtue rather implicit, presumably to consist of a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ that invaded Iraq in March
2003.
4 However, mythology is often understood as the antonym of reality. Mythologies are neither true nor false. They are
relevant or irrelevant, functional or dysfunctional, in the context of specific historical situations and tasks. Myths
are those narratives that explain the mysteries of nature, society and human destiny. Examples include the myths of
creation, origins of history and the purpose of human life. Such myths constitute an essential part of the human
condition. Science has uncovered many mysteries but it also has expanded the number of unknowns. In the face
of such uncertainties, mythologies perform important social functions such as (1) reducing human ontological
insecurities (Laing, 1969), (2) uniting societies around a common cause and (3) legitimating and challenging
power systems.
5 A nineteenth-century anthropologist Tylor, for instance, wrote that ‘Human life may be roughly classed into three
great stages, Savage. Barbaric, Civilized’, as quoted by Gould and Kolb (1964, p. 93).
6 Given the enormous diversity of capitalist democracies, it is not certain to what ‘capitalism’ Fukuyama is referring.
7 The elite consensus on ‘reality’ is increasingly tenuous. Witness the divergence between the American and the
European views on the nature of the terrorist threat; those differences are also visible among the Democratic
and Republicans in the US. Reflecting the increasing complexity and diversity of world society, the non-elite
greatly diverge in their interests and views. To some Europeans and Asians the new Bush Doctrine of
98 M. Tehranian
unilateralism, claiming the rights of pre-emptive strike, seemed arrogant and extremist. Any study of world order
must therefore take account of these complex varieties.
8 www.newamericancentury.org/
9 The Bush Doctrine seems to replicate the saga of Western films. It suggests that to promote law and order in a
civilized world, the US must be ready to shoot first.
10 In the Koran, it is Ishmael rather than Isaac who is to be sacrificed. The tribal rivalries between the Jews and Arabs
may be dated back to their common ancestor, Abraham. According to the Koran, when Abraham’s wife Sarah gave
birth to their son Isaac, she asked Abraham to banish his concubine Hagar and her son Ishmael. However, an angel
later appeared to Hagar with a message from God that they will have their own nation. The Biblical story provides a
slightly different myth: ‘The childless septuagenarian receives repeated promises and a covenant from God that his
seed will inherit the land and become a numerous nation. He not only has a son, Ishmael, by his wife’s maidservant
Hagar but has, at 100 years of age, by Sarah, a legitimate son, Isaac who is to be the heir of the promise. Yet
Abraham is ready to obey God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, a test of his faith, which he is not required to
consummate in the end because God substitutes a ram.’ ‘Abraham’, Encyclopædia Britannica from
Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service: khttp://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu ¼ 3413l[Accessed 21
February 2004].
11 Skeptics can always puncture a particular myth by deconstructing it. At a strategic level, opposition to the Bush
Doctrine can draw on American anti-colonial rather than imperial traditions. At a tactical level, the opposition
can puncture the myth by asking the American government to bring democracy first to its own electoral system
(e.g. in Florida or campaign financing). Nevertheless, the myth of democracy presents a powerfully relevant one
to the current imperial ambitions.
12 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3450317.stm
13 To cite a mundane example, my recent phone call to Microsoft to report problems with their Windows software led
me to Bangalore, India, where a courteous voice asked me to call Toshiba because the program had been bundled
with a Toshiba laptop computer. My call to Toshiba, in turn, led me to another courteous voice in Istanbul, Turkey,
by which I was informed to pay $25 in order to receive directions over the phone on how to deal with the problem.
When I found out, however, that there is no guarantee of a solution, I chose to hang up. In an informatic civilization,
my computer problem persists, while the TNCs outsource their functions to lower cost locations around the globe.
14 Dr Daniel Newbill, my wise physician, suggests that the media should make a habit of reporting a piece of ‘good
news’ for every ‘bad news’ about nation X that they transmit. That would perhaps give us a more realistic view of
the world than the current mediated distortions we receive. That may also produce greater international
understanding.
References
Aksu, E. & Camilleri, J. (eds) (2002) Democratizing Global Governance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso).
Ardrey, R. (1966) The Territorial Imperative; A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations, draw-
ings by Berdine Ardrey (New York, Atheneum).
Barber, B. (1995) McWorld vs. Jihad (New York: Random House).
Bell, D. (1973 & 1999) The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic
Books).
Bentley, J. H. (1993) Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York:
Oxford University Press).
Bentley, J. H. & Ziegler, H. F. (2003) Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past (Boston: McGraw-
Hill).
Berger, P. (1977) Facing Up to Modernity: Excursions in Society, Politics, and Religion (New York: Basic Books).
Campbell, J. (1997) The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959–1987, ed. Van Couvering, A. (San Francisco, CA:
Harper San Francisco).
Castells, M. (1996–2000) The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, Vols 1–3 (Oxford, UK: Blackwell).
Chua, A. (2003) World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability
(New York: Doubleday).
Cox, R. W. (ed.) (1997) The New Realism: Perspectives on Multilateralism and World Order (Tokyo: United Nations
University Press).
Cox, R. W. (2002) Civilizations and the twenty-first century: some theoretical considerations, pp. 1–23 in Mozaffari, M.
(ed.) Globalization and Civilizations (London & New York: Routledge).
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 99
Denemark, R. A. et al. (eds) (2000) World System History: The Social Science of Long-term Change (London/New York:
Routledge).
Diamond, J. M. (1997, 1999) Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W.W. Norton).
Fernandez-Armesto, F. (2002) Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature (New York: Free
Press).
Frank, A. G. (1998) Re-Orient (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Frank, A. G. & Gills, B. K. (eds) (1993) The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? (London:
Routledge).
Friedman, T. L. (2000) The Lexis and Olive Tree, rev. edn (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux).
Fukuyama, F. (1989) The end of history, National Interest, Summer.
Galtung, J. & Inayatullah, S. (1997) Macro History and Macro Historians: Perspectives on Individual, Social, and
Civilizational Change (Westport, CT: Praeger).
Gills, B. K. (ed.) (2000) Globalization and the Politics of Resistance; foreword by John Kenneth Galbraith (New York:
St. Martin’s Press).
Gould, J. & Kolb, W. (1964) A Dictionary of the Social Sciences (London, UK: Tavistock).
Habermas, J. (1991) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois
Society (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press).
Harvey, D. (1990) The Conditions of Post-Modernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA
& Oxford, UK: Blackwell).
Huntington, S. P. (1993a) The clash of civilizations, Foreign Affairs, Summer.
Huntington, S. P. (1993b) The clash of civilizations: a response, Foreign Affairs, November–December.
Huntington, S. P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster).
Ibn Khaldun (1958) The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, 3 vols, trans. Rosenthal, F. (New York: Taylor &
Francis).
Kuhn, T. S. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press).
Laing, R. D. (1969) The Divided Self (New York: Pantheon Books).
Lewis, T., Amini, F. & Lannon, R. (2000) A General Theory of Love (New York: Vintage Books).
Machlup, F. (1980) Knowledge, its Creation, Distribution, and Economic Significance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press).
Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1848) The Communist Manifesto.
McNeil, W. H. (1998) The World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Nasr, S. H. (2003) In the beginning of creation was consciousness, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, 23(1), p. 13.
Porat, M. (1977) The Information Economy (Washington: US Department of Commerce, Office of Telecommunication
Policy).
Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon &
Schuster).
Ronfedt, D. & Arquilla, J. (2001) Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (Los Angeles:
Rand Corporation).
Ronfedt, D., Arquilla, J., Fuller, G. E. & Fuller, M. (1998) The Zapatista ‘Social Netwar’ in Mexico (Santa Monica, CA:
Rand Corporation).
Rosenau, J. N. (2003) Distant Proxemities: Dynamics beyond Globalization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Rostow, W. W. (1960) The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press).
Tehranian, K. & M. (eds) (1992) Restructuring for World Peace: On the Threshold of the 21st Century (Cresskill, NJ:
Hampton Press).
Tehranian, M. (1980) Communication and revolution in Iran: the passing of a paradigm, Iranian Studies, 13(1–2),
Spring.
Tehranian, M. (1990) Technologies of Power: Information Machines and Democratic Prospects (Norwood, NJ: Ablex).
Tehranian, M. (1993) Fundamentalist impact on education and the media: an overview, in Marty, M. E. & Scott Appleby,
R. (eds) Fundamentalism and Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press).
Tehranian, M. (1999) Global Communication and World Politics: Domination, Development, and Discourse (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner).
Tocqueville, A. de (1956) Democracy in America, abridged and ed. Heffner, R. D. (New York: Mentor Books).
Toffler, A. (1980) Third Wave (New York: Bantam Books).
Toynbee, A. J. (1948) Civilization on Trial (New York: Oxford University Press).
Toynbee, A. J. (1962) A Study of History (New York: Oxford University Press).
100 M. Tehranian
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Report, annual reviews since 1990 (New York:
Oxford University Press).
Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class, introduction by Alan Wolfe; notes by James Danly. New York:
Modern Library, 2001.
World Bank (2003) World Development Indicators (Washington, DC: The World Bank).
Civilization: A Pathway to Peace? 101