The Civilizational Orientation in the Making of the New World

• Main Author: Anouar Abdel-Malek
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh 2015-08-01
• Series: Journal of World-Systems Research
• Online Access: http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/196

The historical moment of the position of the problem, from the onset, leads to the heart of the sudden perplexity about the nature, rôle and prospect of the civilizational question in our times. While the very category of civilization was avoided until recently, a ?urry of amazement-cum-disquiet has been pervading the public mind, more speci?cally the intellectual circles used to the long-prevailing dichotomies of social thought (left and right; developed and under-developed; center and periphery; conservative and radical; reactionary and progressive; religious and secular). All of a sudden, as it were, on the morrow of the implosion of the former U.S.S.R., the end of the bi-polar system, the advent of unipolar world hegemonism in 1989-1991, a resounding essay in 1993 came as a shock. Civilizations, ?nally in the limelight, were deemed to clash.