Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

On Gary Snyder’S Tradaptation Of Cold Mountain Poems And Its Spiritual Salvation And Literary Enlightenment In Postwar America, Hu Anjiang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cold Mountain Poems (CMPs), which have been neglected in the history of Chinese literature for ages, captured the attention of most Americans immediately after its being translated into America by the American poet Gary Snyder in 1950s, however. It is Snyder that reconfigured and recreated a sagacious Chinese Chan Buddhist poet Han-shan (literally, Cold Mountain), the acknowledged author of Cold Mountain Poems, in his translation for the postwar Americans in the midst of varied social problems and cultural identity crisis after World War II. Snyder eventually found in his translation of Cold Mountain Poems a back-to-nature remedy of …

Topological Tropology Of V.S. Naipaul’S Islamic Travelogues And Daniel Pipes’ Islamic History: Ahistorical Historicism, Md. Habibullah

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s (1932-2018) first Islamic travelogue Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981) contains his experience of a visit from August 1979 to February 1980 to the four non-Arab Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Similarly, his last Islamic travelogue Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples (1998) has a description of another visit to the same countries for five-month in 1995. Concurrently, Daniel Pipes (1949-), an American historian, published his doctoral dissertation, Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System (1981), which represents Islamic culture as the first instigator of …

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 …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

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.

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.

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 …

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

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?

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 …

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 …

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.

Civilizational Security: Why The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine Shows That ‘National Security’ Is Not Enough To Understand Geopolitics, Greg (Grzegorz) Lewicki

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper argues that the idea of “national security” is sometimes overwritten by “civilizational security” in security-related considerations. Civilizational security, as understood in this paper, refers to a country's security stemming from its belonging to a cultural zone or a civilization. The author clarifies the terms “a civilization,” “civilizational identity,” and “civilizational security.” Citing the examples of Poland, Ukraine, and Russia when considering the parameter of civilizational security allows us to better analyze and predict some processes, including geopolitical dilemmas and civilizational trends. It is argued that prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia misunderstood its own civilizational security …

Global Security In The Third Millennium Of The Common Era, Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

The primary purpose of this short essay is to catalyze discussion among security professionals about how perspectives on ‘global security’ and ‘wise civilizations’ might affect military affairs during a time of great, interdisciplinary stresses that impact everyone on earth today.

Global civilization faces two main existential threats this century. The first is a quick death from general thermonuclear war or release of other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) like exotic, genetically engineered biological weapons. The second is a slow death from incremental destruction of the living system that supports all civilizations, wise or unwise, by mechanisms like deforestation, desertification, climate …

The Applicability Of Lessons From American Society For The European Union: Tolerance, Demographic Change, And Social Structure, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

While Americans have long tended to see our society and civilization as exceptional, in fact the civilization is primarily based on European precedent. We see ourselves, in the words of one of our most significant poets, Emma Lazarus, as the new colossus, “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp cries she... I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” We claim to be an exception; that means that we are unique, different, what many, alluding to the New Testament as viewed by the Pilgrim founding fathers, have called “a shining city upon a hill.”2 And as “a beacon of hope.”

Buber The Radical Egalitarian And Buber And Psychology, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

My first iteration for this paper was to present Martin Buber in the context of radical politics in Germany and to focus upon his relationship to the anarchist Gustav Landauer. After a brief search, I found too few sources that were easily accessible from here in the United States, so as part of this presentation I situate Buber in the radical politics extant mostly during his time in Germany and in Berlin. I focus here on Buber’s psychology but include several intellectual side trips visiting aspects of Buber’s philosophy and his politics. I cannot separate them in discussing Buber and …

Book Review: Erich S. Gruen. Cultural Identity In The Ancient Mediterranean, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

Erich S. Gruen’s edited collection Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean first appeared in 2011. I feel the significance of this collection is that it teases out and asks us to assess unreflective assumptions that inform not only our vision of the past, but also our grasp of present-day collective identities. Early on Gruen reports that while moderns tend to focus on difference, dissimilarity, or contrast when distinguishing cultures, in the eight sections of this text scholars identify and investigate complex connections that resulted in the cultural identities we associate with the ancient Mediterranean world. The essence of Gruen’s argument …

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Philip Ball. The Water Kingdom: A Secret History Of China, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Over centuries scores of sinologists have sought to define the essence of China. Philip Ball addresses and goes well beyond the materialist paradigm of Karl Wittfogel’s hydraulic thesis, which described the role of water management in China as stimulating state development. In his theory, government emerged as the central institution to manage transportation, flood control and irrigation. Ball also sees water management as critical in Chinese civilization and injects his description with spiritual and moral content, drawing on poetry, art, biography and extensive reference to historical events. His book is an exploration of the role of water in China’s culture, …

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.

The Economic Regions Of Chinese Civilization: A Gis-Based Analysis Of Grain Markets In China, 1736-1842, Karl Ryavec, Mark Henderson, Rocco Bowman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: 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 Mr. Farmer has, over decades, produced a unique and indispensable reference work

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

Iconoclasts And Counter Terrorism Against State Organized Terror: A Study Of Perspectives In Nigerian History And Drama, Adebisi Ademakinwa, Saheed Bello

International Review of Humanities Studies

The paper assesses the issue of terrorism as a social reality present in the Nigerian state from its origination and the questions treated by the paper among others include: what dimensions did the occurrences of terrorism take on Nigerian socio-political sphere? What are the counter measures taken by individual and groups in dealing with state organized terrorism? What are the dimensions state organized terrorism take in the modern Nigerian state? Lekan Balogun‟s Ogun Skugga is used primarily while other literary works are used to supplement. The paper argues that the state organized terrorism was a surreptitious method of coercion adopted …

Moving At The Speed Of Trust, Sun Ho Lee

Masters Theses

Moving at the Speed of Trust is a workbook of strategies — practices, definitions, and techniques — to nurture community-building in support of inbetweeners who live between power structures and cultures and are often left out. Inbetweeners are those individuals whose lives are in transition through recent immigration or forced translocation from Asia to America.

These strategies revolve around threads of trust: kin, giggles, vulnerability, and shared experience. With these threads, we can question power. We can preserve stories, expand the ways we connect, shift perspectives on what is “standard,” and cultivate a community rooted in understanding. To understand each …

Dispositif, Biopolitical Governance, And Significance Of Genealogical Approach In Navigating Refugees’ Experiences Of Camp And Community, Rabindra Chaulagain

Critical Humanities

Foucault’s distinction between biopolitics and biopower is significant to society, a normative body in terms of seeing biopower as the practical production of the visible and invisible poles of the dispositif through interdependent discursive and institutional practices of administration. This paper fundamentally discusses two theoretical ideas ingrained with the notion of Foucauldian biopolitics---dispositif and genealogy that Foucault brought into account for merging them into modern biopolitical administrative forces. First, it discusses the idea of dispositif as a mechanism of governance and critically examines its connection to biopower and biopolitics. Second, it analyzes the notion of genealogy as a tool to …

Who Am I?: How Natives’ Mental Trauma Develop During Precolonial And Colonial Eras As Seen In Achebe’S Things Fall Apart And Fanon’S The Wretched Of The Earth, Sophia D. Casetta

Pepperdine Journal of Communication Research

Colonialism is a long, brutal process, where natives’ identities are uprooted as colonizers establish their influence in a foreign land. Consequently, through the exploration of the natives’ response to this upheaval throughout the precolonial and colonial eras, the psychological toll that is placed on the colonized is evident. Such mental trauma that is incited is explored in Chinua Achebe’s fictional novel Things Fall Apart, which unveils the slowly lost of the natives’ identities during the precolonial shift, and the non-fiction work of Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth that details psychological disorders of the colonized due to colonization. …

On Civilizational Strategic Studies, Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

Given the on-going crises around the world, especially the current war in Ukraine, it has become imperative to analyze the strategic interests of the major geopolitical players in the world. Samuel P. Huntington formulated his controversial “Clash of Civilizations” thesis almost thirty years ago, but this topic has received a resurgence of interest due to Christopher Coker’s research on “civilizational states.” Coker takes this concept a bit further by arguing that different geopolitical actors disagree on how the world should be ordered.

Now is perhaps the most opportune time to examine the relevance of civilizations as well as civilizational theory …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.