Political Science Commons^™

Book Review: Robert Irwin. Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

Robert Irwin (b. 1946), a British historian, novelist, and essayist, became so enthralled by Arabic Muslim society, politics, language, literature, and culture that while reading modern history at Oxford University in the 1960’s, he became a Muslim during his first summer vacation which he spent at a Sufi Alawi foundation in Algeria. In parallel, he developed a fascination for the Tunisian polymath, Wali al-Din ‘Abd al Rahman Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) who has been variously described as the greatest Muslim intellectual, the greatest social scientist of the Middle Ages, the founder of Sociology and the critical study of history, and a …

Family Therapy And Civilization And Its Discontents, Bonnie K. Lee

Comparative Civilizations Review

Myth or history, the origin of civilization was ascribed in the Hebrew scriptures to the first couple, Adam and Eve, and to the intergenerational saga of their descendants. Civilization has been a concern of psychoanalysts since the time of Freud and Jung, the fathers of depth psychology. In their mature years, they applied their theories and observations of human nature to the tumultuous events of the First and Second World Wars.

Taking their cues, the author utilizes key concepts and insights from family therapy on couple conflict as a lens for analyzing international relations, with the goal for finding their …

What Constitutes Evidence For An Historical Explanation?, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

What constitutes evidence for an historical explanation? What constitutes evidence for the explanations of the falls and rises of civilization? Better, what constitutes evidence for the best explanation of this phenomenon?

The purpose of this article is to acquaint the readers of the Comparative Civilizations Review with the work of a philosopher of history, Raymond Martin. In particular, I will present his approach on what constitutes how a decision should be made as to which explanation of an historical event is superior to another and why this is so.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Book Review: Hans-Joachim Gehrke, Ed. Making Civilizations: The World Before 600, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Studying ancient civilizations is not a precise enterprise, and many statements are approximations, subject to validation or dispute. Several key concepts describe the flow and progress of collective human development. Individuals, families, clans, and tribes precede formation of civilization, which provides the foundation for states. Governments are managerial organizations of more complex societies, providing concentrated focus on defense, currency and infrastructure. Civilizations improve life security as urbanization, innovation, and division of labor increase, requiring more complex and powerful governing institutions.

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Comparative Civilizations Review

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Two Modes Of Cyclicality In The Ancient World, Yanming An

Comparative Civilizations Review

The cyclical view of time and history appears in two modes represented respectively by the Indo-Hellenic and the Chinese tradition. The former contains a conception of Mahayuga or Great Year, which signifies the periodic destruction and reconstruction in the cosmos and human world. In addition, it analogizes human affairs to the celestial cycle and therefore generalizes the mode of cyclical movements in both the cosmos and the human world as “uniform rotation.” In contrast, the Chinese tradition incorporates Heaven and human into a unity, containing no conception of periodic interruption in the movement of Heaven-human unity. At the same, it …

Book Review: Mokhtar Mokhtefi. I Was A French Muslim: Memories Of An Algerian Freedom Fighter; Benjamin Stora. Les Clés Retrouvées: Une Enfance Juive À Constantine, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

If one were to choose two words to characterize the books under review, they would be ambiguity and nostalgia. Both are personal reflections of how the final years of Frenchruled Algeria affected the authors.

Mokhtar Mokhtefi (1935-2015) was an Algerian Muslim freedom fighter who, in 1956, having completed high school at the Lycée Aumale in Constantine, enlisted in the National Liberation Army (ALN) of Algeria. We follow his story from early childhood in Berroughaia, a small town south of Algiers, to his re-entry into Algeria from Tunisia in July 1962, just as Algeria achieved independence.

Benjamin Stora (1950- ) …

Book Review: Zheng Wang. Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory In Chinese Politics And Foreign Relations, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

“Never Forget National Humiliation!”? Really? Yes. This is Zheng Wang’s very interesting study of the post-Mao Chinese Communist Party’s massive re-education campaign. It was created in the years following the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 when post-Mao CCP hard-liners approved a military response to civilian protesters that would crush China’s emerging pro-democracy movement.

Hope And Pessimism In ‘Classical’ 20th Century Civilizational Theory, David J. Rosner

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper will involve an analysis of the relation between optimism, pessimism, and realism in 20th century classical civilizational theory, through the perspective offered specifically in Ernst Bloch’s magnum opus The Principle of Hope. Bloch, a German Jew and unorthodox Marxist, wrote The Principle of Hope during 1938–1947 in exile fleeing the Nazi holocaust. Today, humanity in its entirety now faces another set of crises — pandemic, overpopulation, climate change, political impasse, economic inequality, social unrest, growing lawlessness and nuclear threat. One can easily be tempted to give up on the future of our increasingly fragile and endangered world. …

Nationalism In The Context Of Globalization, Mariana Tepfenhart, M.A.

Comparative Civilizations Review

To understand the connection and consequences between nationalism and globalism, I will start with a basic definition of nationalism. According to Websters Dictionary, nations that are focused on national, not international goals, are nationalistic. A nation comprises the same language, customs, and traditions.

Some scholars have argued that nationalism has historical roots. People have been bonded by ethnicity and politics from ancient times. Others consider nationalism as a modern phenomenon due to industrialization, democratization, and modern technology. Jonathan Hearn1 from the University of Edinburgh has argued that some states are more homogeneous than others and they have strong senses of …

Pointers From Sociology: Looking At Trevor Noah’S Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

The book is a study of a basic change in social stratification. It is also a study of poverty in South Africa. Plus, it is a study of the changing nature of community and society in that land.

We know that almost every society organizes inequality by ranking categories of people in a hierarchy. Four important principles of social stratification are:

• Social stratification is inclusive of all, not a reflection of individual differences, and shapes our lives.

• Social stratification carries over from generation to generation.

• Social stratification is universal but variable.

• Social stratification involves both inequality and beliefs about the …

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End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

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The Psychology Of Fascism: Wilhelm Reich Et Al, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

There are innumerable definitions and explanations of fascism in the literature of the social and behavioral sciences. This paper only explicates one: the concept of a fascist personality. It focuses on the early work by scholars in this area, beginning with the writings of the 20th century psychiatrist and student of Sigmund Freud, Austrian and American intellectual, Dr. Wilhelm Reich.

In the short story/essay that follows this article, allusion is made by the author — the late writer and United Nations staff member Shawna V. Tropp — to the circle which grew up around Wilhelm Reich. This was a significant …

Small Claims, Shawna V. Tropp

Comparative Civilizations Review

Had Laura Davidov not been a heavy woman in her late fifties, she would have thought that she had made a conquest. A golden young man appeared to have been following her through the Musée Rodin for over an hour; his eyes were turquoise, and he was quite old enough to be her son. There was also something disturbingly familiar about him. She therefore beamed her most maternal smile upon him and took a hesitant step in his direction.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

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The Future Of Civilization: A Systems Approach, Robert Bedeski, Ph.D.

Comparative Civilizations Review

Civilization is one of several stages of human evolution and forms a system of interaction. Its past dominance is now challenged by growth of three subsystems — state, economy, and science/technology. These three subsystems have matured through application of rational knowledge. The vertically integrated state now dominates society and demarcated territory. The horizontally integrated global economy and global science/technology society have become worldwide in scope. State domination is reinforced by autonomous global science and international capital. The remaining subsystem of Moral Knowledge occupies present non-material civilization and is characterized by organic knowledge and embracing the unprovable, which includes religion, art, …

Editor's Note, John Berteaux, Executive Editor

Comparative Civilizations Review

From July 28 to July 30, 2022, it was my pleasure to serve as the Program Chair of the 51st International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations conference — The Future of Civilization(s). This issue of the Comparative Civilizations Review contains a selection of articles presented at the conference.

Our New Iscsc Social Media Presence, Bibi Pelić

Comparative Civilizations Review

Social media presence is essential, we could say even critical to any organization today. Social media can for itself be a topic for a discussion on civilization, as social media is today shaping mindsets, for better or worse.

Realizing this major development in our ever-more digitalized world, the ISCSC has undergone, in the past year, significant changes in the direction of establishing its social media presence.

Book Review: Michela Coletta. Decadent Modernity: Civilization And ‘Latinidad’ In Spanish America, 1880-1920, Jeremy Smith

Comparative Civilizations Review

There are too few perspectives in civilizational analysis that examine Latin America. One exception is found in the work of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt on multiple modernities and the Americas. Eisenstadt’s research is a point of departure for Michela Coletta’s Decadent Modernity: Civilization and ‘Latinidad’ in Spanish America, 1880-1920. Through chapters on the so-called Latin Race, rural and metropolitan identities, national education, and what Coletta calls the ‘aesthetics of regeneration’, the author explores cultural, sociological, and political trends in Southern Cone countries Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina in the fin de siècle era of European and American modernities. This is a …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

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The Developing Global Crisis And Survival Of Human Civilizations, Michael M. Andregg Ph.D.

Comparative Civilizations Review

For over thirty years, we have used a phrase “the Developing Global Crisis” to identify a cluster of recurring causal factors of chaos that are especially difficult to deal with. These are: population pressure (not simply growth), corruptions of governance (hard to study in democracies much less in police-states), authoritarian political systems, and militant religions. The West has failed to control these recurring causes of chaos, often by imperial patterns of behavior instead of more enlightened governance. Civilizational scholars in Japan might be able to find better solutions to these problems for Asia and the world if they try hard. …

Strategy Vs. Humanity? American Corporations May Be Facing A Momentous Paradigm Shift In The Age Of Diversity, Equity And Inclusion, Mark Rennella

Comparative Civilizations Review

The business discipline of strategy was born at Harvard Business School in the America of the 1970s, an era of disorienting economic fluctuations and sometimes naked vulnerability that was punctuated by disturbing events like the OPEC oil embargoes and the Iran hostage crisis. By the end of the decade, strategy claimed the imaginations of business executives and relegated its predecessor, marketing, to a distant second place. Marketing, whose focus was serving customer needs to grow demand, was neither tough enough nor quick enough to deal with the sudden appearance of economic and cultural monsters invading American life.

The Russian Sphinx: Contemplating Danilevsky’S Enigmatic Magnum Opus Russia And Europe, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

The relations between Russia and the West have never been particularly easygoing or unambiguous, and, presently, they are yet again at an all-time low. The way to better understand, as well as to successfully communicate and cooperate with another society is through learning about evolution (and revolutions) of their (as well as one’s own) history and culture. Are there any important sources in the Russian cultural heritage that could illuminate these ages-old problems, tendencies, and trends? The year 2021 marks 150 years since publication of Nikolay Danilevsky's book Russia and Europe (1871), while the next one, the year 2022, denotes …

The Architecture Of The Universe: A Look Into Extraterrestrial Civilizations, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

The article advances a synthesized view of the world based on an intelligently communicated undivided Universe. It presents a fundamental component-based architecture and characterizes the controlling role of info-communication processes in the interplanetary system. The Fermi Paradox is then considered, which leads to a discussion about the concept of God as it pertains to Albert Einstein’s and Stephen Hawking’s theories. The article next introduces the author’s own understanding of God. The approach adopted in this study situates Earth’s civilization within the broader context of extraterrestrial civilizations, and it considers what this means for modern humans. Further research is also suggested …

Ccr Style Guide For Submitted Manuscripts

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Call For Papers/Abstracts And Announcement Of The 2022 Iscsc Conference The Future Of Civilization(S)

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

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