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Full-Text Articles in Political Science
The Possibility Of A Global Civilization, Robert Elliott Allinson
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 …
Book Review: Walter Scheidel. The Great Leveler: Violence And The History Of Inequality From The Stone Age To The Twenty-First Century, Leland Conley Barrows
Book Review: Walter Scheidel. The Great Leveler: Violence And The History Of Inequality From The Stone Age To The Twenty-First Century, Leland Conley Barrows
Comparative Civilizations Review
Inspired by the work of Thomas Piketty, particularly his Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century (2013), and Albrecht Dürer’s 1497-1498 woodcut, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Dr. Walter Scheidel, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University, argues in his massive 521-page volume that for most of human history reductions in socio-economic equality, supposedly a positive good, have resulted from more-or-less violent compressions entailing destruction and death. The implication is that in “normal” times, societies are characterized by inequality even though it is not perceived as a positive good.