History Commons^™

Amanda H. Podany. Weavers, Scribes, And Kings: A New History Of The Ancient Near East, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

Professor Amanda Podany’s massive survey of ancient Near Eastern history reflects her commitment to interpreting and presenting the information revealed about the ancient history of this region by the cuneiform script etched on clay tablets and other mediums, the oldest examples dating back to 3000 BCE. She has endeavored to shed light on the details of the lives of ordinary people and day-to-day events by inserting microhistories of beer brewers, laundrymen, gardeners, slaves, as well as diviners, scribes, and priests into accounts of the rise and fall of kingdoms, empires, and their rulers. She declares that her book “…has been …

Michael Farmer. An Atlas Of The Tibetan Plateau. Volume 50 In Brill’S Tibetan Studies Library Series, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

An Atlas of the Tibetan Plateau is a masterful melding of science and art created by British architect and cartographer Michael Farmer. Based on extensive contemporary data painstakingly woven from satellite imagery, the intrepid and apparently indefatigable Farmer has, over decades, produced a unique and indispensable reference work.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

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President's Message, Lynn Rhodes

Comparative Civilizations Review

Throughout 2023 and into 2024, the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations has been extremely busy in the furtherance of our vision. Here are some of the highlights.

The Rise Of China And The Concept Of Civilization: Constructing Conceptual Apparatus For Cross-Civilizational Comparisons, Liah Greenfeld

Comparative Civilizations Review

The paper argues that the rise of China to a position of prominence in the contemporary world offers Western scholars a greatly expanded comparative perspective and, thus, an opportunity to re-assess their fundamental view of social reality. This comparative perspective draws attention to supra-national cultural unities, “civilizations,” first suggested by both Durkheim and Weber.

There are deficiencies in the current understanding of “civilization” in the social science literature, among others exemplified by “civilizational analysis,” and so this paper proposes a new concept which adds to the conceptual apparatus of sociological theory a new — fully independent of others — variant …

The Heritage Of The Reincarnated Lama Of The Gobi, Mend-Ooyo Gombojav

Comparative Civilizations Review

In Mongolia’s Gobi desert, at the beginning of the 19th century, a remarkable boy was born. This boy was Danzanravjaa, the Fifth Noyon Hutagt of the Gobi. He became a man of extraordinary ability — a talented poet, a Buddhist teacher, a meditator and philosopher, the creator of a nomadic theater, a dramatist and lyricist, a composer of songs, a craftsman of religious objects, a natural scientist, and a traveler.

Michael Boym: The Polish Marco Polo, Agnieszka Couderq

Comparative Civilizations Review

The following is a selection drawn from Ms. Couderq’s written proposal for a television series based on the book she has published. It offers a summation of the life of this remarkable cross-civilizational traveler.

Military Comparison Of The Han Dynasty And The Roman Republic, Jack Tribolet

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Middle and Late Roman Republic (264 BCE - 27 BCE) and the Han Dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE) characterized two concurrent military superpowers of the ancient world. Anchoring opposite ends of the Eurasian continent, the two powers shared structural similarities that enabled their longevity and resilience to ruination.

From Compromise To Confrontation: The American Secretary Of State James F. Byrnes And His Attempts To Mitigate Disagreements With The Soviet Union As The Cold War Began, John Karl

Comparative Civilizations Review

James F. Byrnes as United States Secretary of State pursued a policy based on compromise with the Soviet Union during the first year following the end of the Second World War. He was determined to use his political skill for engineering compromise in order to bring about an agreement with the Soviet Union which would lead to an era of peace. While the crucial question facing American policymakers in the wake of World War II was the creation of a new world order, a most important part of this question was the future of American-Soviet relations, the two nations that …

Culture-Oriented Interpretations Of Corporate Responsibility, Berkay Orhaner Phd

Comparative Civilizations Review

Classical narratives of corporate responsibility reflect the cultural values of Western industrialized countries. Meanwhile, the understanding of corporate responsibility has been disseminated by globalization and this has resulted in culture-oriented interpretations of corporate responsibility from non-Western contexts.

This article aims to investigate the multidimensional relationship between corporate responsibility and globalization and outline culture-oriented corporate responsibility interpretations as a global phenomenon.

Apotheosis Of The State And The Decline Of Civilization: A Systems Approach, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Humanity is undergoing a second Axial Age. The first, as described by Karl Jaspers, brought transcendence into the vision and self-understanding of humans and the world. The rise of secularism and “Death of God” is dissolving and fragmenting that transcendence — a vital subsystem of the civilization system. Economy, knowledge and government comprise three additional subsystems and have coalesced to form the modern sovereign state, diminishing the traditional place of religion, art and philosophy in civilizations. An example of a state lacking common institutions of transcendence was the Mongol empire. Ruling Russia for a quarter millennium, its state form was …

Reading A Global Landscape, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

It seems a truism that while our grasp of the world is at best inconclusive, it is attended by a pressing desire to articulate the ultimate context in which our lives are set. Here, my remarks focus on the limits of our ability to explicate that context or landscape, suggesting that any attempt to de-confuse our world will be inherently inconclusive, indeterminate, and undefined. In other words, I want to encourage a little cognitive dissonance regarding our ability to make sense of the globe.

Esra Özyürek. Subcontractors Of Guilt: Holocaust Memory & Muslim Belonging In Postwar Germany, Stefan Gunther

Comparative Civilizations Review

As early as 1995, James E. Young, referring to the “social effects of public memorial spaces” (p.20) in Germany, stated that “Holocaust memorial work in Germany today remains a tortured, self-reflective, even paralyzing preoccupation.” (p.21) He continues with a series of questions: “How does a state recite, much less commemorate, the litany of its misdeeds, making them part of its reason for being? Under what memorial aegis, whose rules, does a nation remember its own barbarity? Where is the tradition for memorial mea culpa, when combined remembrance and self-indictment seem so hopelessly at odds?” (p.22)

Raphael Patai. The Hebrew Goddess, Third Enlarged Edition, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

According to the famous French philosopher and revolutionary, the Marquis de Condorcet, we can look back to history and discern therein a number of phases, stages through which the human mind evolves. The number of these is fixed as is the succession of them; progress and human perfectibility always dominate the movement. The progress of the human mind, Condorcet wrote in the Tableau des Progrès Historiques de l’Ésprit Humain, is reflected invariably in the successive stages of society. We move upward and onward, ineluctably.

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Unique Collections And Digital Humanities Initiatives: From Concept To Creation–Exploration And Practice At The University Of Pittsburgh Library System, Edward Galloway, Haihui Zhang

Journal of East Asian Libraries

This report provides a overview of the Digital Humanity projects undertaken by the East Asian Library within the University of Pittsburgh Library System over the past decade. The review encompasses the genesis and original objectives behind initiating these projects, the challenges and difficulties encountered, the procedural aspects of implementation, and the insights gained.

The Possibility Of A Global Civilization, Robert Elliott Allinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

This article inquires into the question of what is civilization. It considers that a sine qua non of a civilization is a non-violent culture. It investigates the concept of violence and extends the concept to cover examples of citizens who live in conditions of poverty, ill health, lack of food, lack of education, lack of adequate housing, and inadequate living conditions. The argument in the article is that a civilization that allows such conditions to exist perpetrates violence upon its citizens and therefore does not deserve the appellation, ‘civilization.’ Those citizens who do not protest against such violence are not …

The Theoretical Status Of The Concept Of Civilization, Roger W. Wescott

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper may be regarded as an effort to answer some questions concerning the conceptualization of civilization.

1. Whether or not concepts are essentially verbal, is the concept of civilization primarily denotative (referential) or connotative (emotive) in meaning?

2. If the concept of civilization is primarily emotive, is its emotive force predominantly laudatory or derogatory in effect?

3. When the concept of civilization is derogatory, is it decadence or outdatedness that is primarily derogated?

4. If the concept of civilization is primarily denotative, is its denotation primarily abstract (referring to culture and associated mentifacts) or primarily concrete (referring to people …

The Mything Link: Why Sacred Storytelling Is A Key Human Survival Strategy, Ken Baskin

Comparative Civilizations Review

For several decades, societies across the globe have faced a real existential threat with challenges such as global warming. Yet no one in the elite has been able to do anything to improve conditions. We seem to be trapped in the kind of situation that Einstein described when he discussed problems that can’t be solved with the logic that created them.

Book Review: Steven Sabol. The Touch Of Civilization: Comparing American And Russian Internal Colonization, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

America and Russia are derivative civilizations from the same Greco-Roman source, with very different results. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, Russia proclaimed itself to be the Third Rome as it lifted the Tatar yoke. Although the U.S. did not become a country for another three centuries, the colonial experience and culture remained closer to England’s – a nation proudly conscious of its lineage.

Is Civilization A Good Thing?, David Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

How do we feel about “Civilization”? What emotions does the idea of “civilization” evoke from us? Why are these emotions attached to that idea? In more technical terms, what are the “connotations” of “civilization”? Laudatory or derogatory? And why do we feel the way we feel about it? What makes us welcome civilization, fear it, praise it or shun it?

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

Claude-Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon, a father of modern sociology, observed that the history of the world alternated between two poles: organic periods (in which the social and political institutions are in harmony with the state of civilization), followed by critical periods, which are transitional and marked by conflict and destructive criticism.

Rector's Welcome, Robert Kosowski Phd

Comparative Civilizations Review

With immense pleasure, we welcome the beginning of cooperation of the War Studies University with the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (ISCSC). As an Organizing Partner of the 2023 ISCSC annual conference entitled "Civilizational Security", we will facilitate solutions to make the conference impactful, memorable and internationally fruitful.

Here, There, And In-Between: On The Civilizing Process And Civilizational Analysis, Michael Palencia-Roth

Comparative Civilizations Review

This essay presents a cautionary tale about certain problems with systematization and abstraction in comparative civilizational studies. It advocates instead for the analysis of single works, limited events, or particular figures, within larger issues pertaining to what is understood as a “civilization” or “culture”. It prioritizes certain aspects of the civilizing process: the here, or the civilizing and interpretive gaze; the there, or the Other that is the object of that gaze; and the in-between. It further suggests that insights and methods from Mikhail Bakhtin, Hans-Georg Gadamer and others from the humanities, social sciences, and philosophy can …

Monitoring Wise Civilization By Creating An Index, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Wise Civilization Index will assess how wise we are in developing and living in a sustainable civilization.

Recently, people have started to worry about the state of the climate. This has been reflected in the finding that the climate temperature should be kept to a growth of below two degrees Celsius by 2100 to save our species from a slow death (The Paris Agreement of 2015). After all, raising the human body temperature by two degrees threatens illness and even death by four degrees. The same (relatively) can be done with Earth. However, apart from the climate, the problem …