History Commons^™

Comment By Connie Lamb, Connie Lamb

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Coronavirus pandemic put a halt to many normal activities. One of the institutions heavily impacted by the virus is libraries.

Comment By David Wilkinson, David Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

In his life, Sorokin was variously a starving peasant orphan, an itinerant icon gilder, a self-taught bookworm, a political activist, a six-time political prisoner, an empirical penologist, a quantitative sociologist, a Socialist Revolutionary, a starving intellectual worker, an involuntary passenger on the Ship of Expelled Russian Thinkers, a founding comparative civilizationist, a conservative Christian anarchist, a Tolstoyan believer that “the Kingdom of God is within you,” and an elected write-in candidate for President of the American Sociological Association.

Civilizational Dynamics Of "Hybrid Warfare", Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

Since the end of the Cold War, analysts have struggled to make sense of the proliferation of smaller scale conflicts. Several labels have been used to describe this phenomenon, the most recent being “Hybrid Warfare.” This paper attempts to analyze them through the perspective of civilizational theory.

Very rarely, however, have the civilizational dimensions to these "Hybrid Wars" been extensively addressed. Considering that civilizations represent collective identities on perhaps the most macro-scale, they play an important potential dimension in this ongoing debate. Avoiding any gross simplified variation of a "clash of civilizations" type thesis, a civilizational perspective into this debate …

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Comment By Michael Andregg, Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

We have already determined that global civilization is experiencing a flurry of interrelated crises that challenge many things we hold dear, in extremis, human survival.

St. Thomas Aquinas And The Third Hellenization Period, Demetri Kantarelis

Comparative Civilizations Review

In this paper, I assert that currently the world has been experiencing the Third Hellenization Period that started with the Italian Renaissance, instigated by the teachings of the theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE). Unlike philosophers in previous periods (First and Second Hellenization as well as Medieval), St. Thomas preached that Truth is a function of both Natural Revelation and Supernatural Revelation. This resulted in, simultaneously, Christianizing Aristotle (St. Thomas’ most referenced philosopher) and Aristotleizing Christianity, thus opening up the doors to human reason that had been muted during the Medieval centuries.

I also assert that the basic …

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

The ferocity of Covid-19 has struck worldwide this year. In the process, all of humanity has been affected. Civilizations and societies, and nations large and small, have responded to the challenge, some with more success than others.

Comment By David Rosner, David Rosner

Comparative Civilizations Review

Human beings need to “make sense” out of the world, but our world is sometimes unintelligible.

Comment By John Grayzel, John Grayzel

Comparative Civilizations Review

There is no question that pandemics can shake up a seemingly stable set of circumstances and, in that way, affect history.

Comment By Andrew Targowski, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Pandemic 2020, triggered by the coronavirus, reminds us that life on Earth has been evolving for 3.5 billion years from a virus, which is just a deficient bacterium.

Comment By John Berteaux, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

In discussions of how the state should react to the current pandemic, one controversial issue has involved whether it should force citizens to wear masks when in public. As a matter of fact, from New Orleans, Louisiana to Turlock, California, and from Aurora, Colorado to San Antonio, Texas, individuals asked to put on a mask have occasionally turned violent.

Comment By Tseegai Isaac, Tseegai Isaac

Comparative Civilizations Review

Ethiopia is celebrated for its ancient biblical civilization. Its political traditions for centuries blended Old and New Testament tenets, creating templates for daily social and religious life.

Comment By Rosemary Gillett-Karam, Rosemary Gillett-Karam

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Department of Homeland Security, with its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS) arms, announced unexpectedly on July 6 of this year that international students studying in the United States at universities and colleges which were converting to all-online instruction because of the pandemic would become immediately ineligible to continue their enrollment in their college or university courses if their own countries had similar programs available.

Pestilence And Other Calamities In Civilizational Theory: Sorokin, Mcneill, Diamond, And Beyond, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper analyses the phenomenon of pestilence through paradigmatic and methodological lenses of several outstanding social scholars, including Pitirim A. Sorokin, William H. McNeill, and Jared M. Diamond. All three thinkers have advanced original, fundamental, and revolutionary paradigms regarding the profound role which infectious diseases played, are playing, and will continue to play in world history and culture. The phenomenon of pestilence is studied in the context of other major calamities. The relevant historic, as well as contemporary macro-level and long-term sociocultural research, is reviewed. The author advances a number of original concepts, as well as makes relevant projections into …

William Of Rubruck: Cosmopolitan Curiosity And Restraint In An Age Of Conquest And Mission, Duncan Weaver

Comparative Civilizations Review

William of Rubruck’s account of journeying to Mongolia (1253-55) remained relatively elusive in scholarly and popular discourses. A Franciscan friar, his mission helped tentatively acquaint two (literally/figuratively) distant civilizations, Latin Christendom and the Mongol Empire. We may assess the extent to which a critical reading of Rubruck can propel knowledge of a Christian Eastward mission. Rubruck’s account was found to evince a degree of restraint and cosmopolitan curiosity that not only went against the grain of Christendom’s exceptionalism and expansionism, but also enabled the pursuit of a rudimentary inter-civilizational dialogue.

Political Power Of Iranian Hierocracies, János Jany

Comparative Civilizations Review

The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that the current Iranian regime is no novelty in Iranian history and political thinking, but has two antecedents: the rule of the Sasanians in late Antiquity (3rd–7th centuries) and that of the Safavids (16th–18th centuries) in modern times. After a brief outline of relevant historical events the paper scrutinizes the common features of these three regimes. The comparison includes the analyses of foreign policy, its scope, aim and direction, cultural policy and the relevance of political ideologies, socio-economic policy, religious policy, political structure and mechanisms of decision-making. The results of the comparison …

The Psychology Department, Brandeis University In The 1960s: A Comment On Feigenbaum’S Memoir, David Lester

Comparative Civilizations Review

Kenneth Feigenbaum has written a colorful account of his time as a faculty member of the Department of Psychology at Brandeis University from 1962-1965 and his interactions with Abraham Maslow (Comparative Civilizations Review: No. 82. 63-73, 2020). This view, from the perspective of the graduate students, supplements Feigenbaum’s account.

Response To Prof. Ernest B. Hook’S Comments On “So-Called Euroasianism”, Dimitry Shlapentokh

Comparative Civilizations Review

I was quite pleased by the fact that a professor, a full professor from the prestigious University of California Berkeley, not only read my article, but commented on it. (Comparative Civilizations Review: No. 82. 129, 2020) Indeed, millions of articles are published every year, and the vast majority are absolutely ignored.

J. C. Sharman. Empires Of The Weak: The Real Story Of European Expansion And The Creation Of The New World Order, Niv Horesh

Comparative Civilizations Review

Warfare had undergone many revolutionary changes over the centuries. Hittite chariots, for example, are said to have spread east and south bolstering aristocracies at the dawn of urbanization some three thousand years ago. Then, the quality of swords and armouries infinitely improved, as the infantry steadily took centre stage, and the Iron Age swept across Eurasia and, later on, Africa. The Chinese invented the crossbow as early as the 7th Century BCE, and Hannibal surprised the Romans with elephants few centuries later.

Philipp Ammon. Georgia Zwischen Eigenstaatlichkeit Und Russische Okkupation (Georgia Between Nationhood And Russian Occupation), Andrew Andersen

Comparative Civilizations Review

The book provides detailed analysis of political, historical, religious and cultural roots of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia, which started more than 200 years ago in what is now a strategically important area of the world – the South Caucasus. That region, which includes Georgia alongside Armenia and Azerbaijan, serves as a natural corridor through which Western countries can get access to the vital hydrocarbon resources of Central Asia, bypassing Russia. At the same time, after the disintegration of the USSR, the South Caucasus turned into one of the “hot zones” where polar ideologies and economic interests of …

John Vincent Bellezza. The Dawn Of Tibet: The Ancient Civilization On The Roof Of The World, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Dawn of Tibet: the Ancient Civilization on the Roof of the World by John Vincent Bellezza is a unique work by an intrepid explorer-scholar who, purely from his own inspiration, spent decades doggedly tracking down traces of the prehistoric Zhang Zhung civilization, a Metal Age culture (famed for making iron weapons of war) and a polity that dominated the remote northwestern plateau of Upper Tibet until the 7th century CE.

Chogyal Namkhai Norbu. The Light Of Kailash, A History Of Zhang Zhung And Tibet, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Light of Kailash : A History of Zhang Zhung and Tibet is a three-volume series by the late Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, former professor of Tibetan and Mongolian Language and Literature at the University of Naples L'Orientale. Born in Derge, Tibet, he spent much of his career researching the origins of pre-Buddhist Tibetan culture, finding sources in an ancient civilization, Zhang Zhung1, and an indigenous ritual tradition, Bon2.

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Iscsc Celebrates The 130th Birth Anniversary Of Pitirim A. Sorokin, The Founding President, With A Contemporary View Of His Legacy, Andrew S. Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

This study analyzes the legacy of Pitirim Sorokin, founding President of the ISCSC, in terms of his methodology, the scope of his works, and his acceptance by his American peers. He was perceived as a prophet rather than a scientist. Furthermore, he was a hidden anti-Leninist who lived through and was obsessed with crises, and, being spiritually cultivated, he perceived altruism, the Absolute, God, love, duty, sacrifice, grace, and justice as the only solutions that can reconstruct and save humanity. His theory of social and cultural dynamics is like Marx’s socioeconomics; however, it was reconfigured to sound different, since he …

Applying Wisdom When Civilization Is At A Crossroads, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

Whether we are talking about the ongoing climate crisis, the global wave of street protests, the plastic in our bodies, food, and water, or the near world financial meltdowns that seem to occur with increasing frequency, it appears for many a coming apocalypse is a real possibility. Journalist and author Jean-Baptiste Malet (2019, 16) reports, “Prophesying the end of the world is now fashionable.” In current parlance apocalyptic talk is called collapsology. Of course, there is nothing new about collapsology. After all, there was the Flood, the plagues in Egypt, and Christians have been predicting the Rapture or Second Coming …

Guest Editor’S Note

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

In The Brandeis University Psychology Department, 1962-65: Recalling A Great American Social Theorist, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

Abraham H. Maslow is one of the best known psychologists of the 20th century. His theory of motivation, most cogently expressed in his hierarchy of needs, is based upon biological assumptions mainly devoid of cultural influences, and it is not sensitive to the role of civilizations effecting intellectual development and ideology. Critiques of these possible shortcomings in his theory are abundant (Trigs, 2004).

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

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