Analyzing Huntington's Article

804 Words2 Pages

Colton Hamel
Modern World
Professor Miller
22 November 2014
Huntington’s Article Huntington’s Article, named The Clash of Civilizations is an article written by Samuel P. Huntington in 1993. Huntington was trying to address his concerns for future conflicts that he believed would come into place. Huntington believed that now that the USSR had been taken down (1992), and the “West vs. East” was over, that civilization differences would come in to play. He had the idea that, because everyone was worried about tension between the bigger powers of the U.S. and USSR, civilizations put their differenced aside, but now that the tension was over, the differences were going to cause problems. Most people during this time didn’t see these things …show more content…

He sees that, as the world is becoming a smaller place via immigration and increasing technology, different civilizations are beginning to mix together. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, as differences between each civilization such as their history, language, customs, and culture can cause fighting and strong opinions against each other. He also states that “the processes of economic modernization and social change throughout the world are separating people from longstanding local identities.” This could be bad, because things that are special and only found in one place, could be found all over the world because of advance in technology such as shipping via plane or boat. For example, Italy is known for pizza and for Italian food, but because of technology, we are able to order a pizza whenever we want to now. When these advancements started, it could have led to a loss of identity for that civilization and frustration by the …show more content…

His example for micro level is the fault lines between two different civilizations, which struggle violently over the control of their territory. He says that the fault lines are replacing the political boundaries of the Cold War, and these are small areas that were struggling, but not many people were paying attention to it (Border issues in America with Mexico). At the macro level, different states with different civilizations will compete for military and economic power (Germany and Hitler’s reign, Japan’s attempt to take over natural resources). This is a more obvious and global example, but different cultures and civilizations will compete to have their beliefs win and be on top. He points out two different civilizations, by saying that the West is the Catholic or Protestant, and they had plenty of money, but the East and South was Orthodox or Muslim and were less advanced

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