Civilization

View on the origin of the concept of citizen and with him of civilization.

A civilization is a complex society, and therefore its defining features are its form of organization, its institutions and its social structure, as well as its available technology and the way in which resources are exploited. resources available.

Civilizations differ from tribal societies based on kinship by the predominance of the urban way of life (the city, which imposes more open social relations) and the sedentary lifestyle (which implies the development of agriculture and from it all kinds of technological and economic developments with the division of labor, the commercialization of surpluses and, later, industrialization and tertiarization). With few exceptions, civilizations are historical, that is, they use writing to record their legislation and their religion (appeared with political power -kings, states- and religious -temples, clergy-) and for the perpetuation of the memory of their past (including the appearance of the concepts of historical time and calendar).

If used in a broad sense, civilization becomes synonymous with culture (encompassing worldviews or ideologies, beliefs, values, customs, laws and institutions), which is often applied more generally.

Recently, a new concept of civilization arises: «civilization begins to appear when a feasible life system is established; that is, an appropriate relationship between man and nature, according to the characteristics of a given region." According to this new approach, industrial development only develops a civilization if it contributes to the well-being of society and the world. environment. From this definition, we see a deep relationship between civilization and sustainability. Going further, it can be said that progress is not always cumulative, but rather non-linear; The passage of time in a society can affect both the well-being of its members and the well-being of nature.

Etymologically, the word «civilization» derives indirectly from the Latin civitas (city) which connects with civitio or community feeling and from civis (citizen) through civil and civilize.

History of the concept

The English word civilization comes from early modern French (16th century century).) civilisé ("civilized"), from Latin civilis ("civil"), related to civis ("citizen") and civitas ("city"). The fundamental treatise is The process of civilization by Norbert Elias (1939), who traces social mores from the medieval to the 'early modern period'. In The Philosophy of Civilization (1923), Albert Schweitzer outlines two views: one purely materialistic and the other materialistic and ethical. He says that the world crisis comes from humanity's loss of the ethical idea of civilization, "the sum total of all the progress made by man in all spheres of action and from all points of view, to the extent that progress contributes to the spiritual perfection of individuals as the progress of all progress".

Related words like "civism" they were developed in the mid-16th century century. The abstract noun "civilization", meaning "civilized condition," arose in the 1760s, also from French. The first known use in French is in 1757, by Victor de Riqueti, Marquis de Mirabeau, and the first use in English is attributed to Adam Ferguson, who in his Essay Concerning the History of Civil Society of 1767 wrote, "Not only the individual advances from childhood to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilization." The word was thus opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active search for progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the French Revolution, "civilization" It was used in the singular, never in the plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French. The use of "civilizations" as a countable noun it was in occasional use in the 19th century, but has become much more common by the end of the XX, sometimes only meaning culture (in turn, originally an uncountable noun, converted into a countable one in the context of ethnography). Only in this generalized sense can one speak of a 'medieval civilization', which in Elijah's sense would have been an oxymoron.

Civilization in the singular or civilizations in the plural

Civilization, a foundational concept of the social sciences, has a conceptually different, even opposite, use when intentionally used in the singular, referring to the higher degree of development of human society, thereby that it is indicated that there is only one civilization; or when done in the plural, to indicate the plurality of civilizations through time, geographic space and different cultural traits (languages, religions, and even the controversial concepts of ethnic groups or human races), which indicates that there have been and are many: Mycenaean civilization, Andean civilization, Greco-Roman civilization -or Greek civilization and Roman civilization-, Chinese civilization, Islamic civilization, Christian civilization, Western civilization, etc., even those identified with the European nations that have had a greater weight in the historical formation of empires or have spread their language or culture (Portuguese civilization, Spanish civilization, French civilization, British civilization, Russian civilization, German civilization, Italian civilization).

Civilization as a state of cultural evolution

The traditional description of the cultural evolution of humanity included its passage through three stages: savagery, barbarism and civilization. This perspective implied the idea of progress, even though Rousseau was one of its founders, who saw no improvement, but degradation, in the transition from the state of nature of the noble savage to the state of civilization, in which man is perverted and corrupted by society. Rousseau's pessimism was surpassed by later intellectuals, clearly optimists (Auguste Comte's positivism).

European dominance since the Age of Discovery (15th century), but especially since the Industrial Revolution (15th XVIII) and the colonial division of Africa (XIX), in the phase of capitalism known as Imperialism (Lenin's definition), seemed to make evident to contemporaries the supremacy of all its particular forms of organization: economic, social, political, even their beliefs and their race (missionaryism and racism). From this point of view, the Enlightenment concept of universal civilization came to be imposed as a model to which all parts of the world had to conform, willingly or by force, for their own good; and the Western imperialist powers had to face, not because it was in their interest, but because it was their sacred mission, that burden of the white man (Rudyard Kipling).

Cultural Relativism

The emergence of doubts in the scheme is parallel to its own formulation, and can be located from the Junta de Burgos and the Junta de Valladolid, in which the debate of the just titles was held in which Bartolomé de las Casas took sides by the conquered rather than by his fellow conquerors (although of course he thought of his religion as the only true one). The cultural relativism that becomes scientific with modern anthropology (Franz Boas) will be extended to the concept of civilization, which begins to be used in the plural, and on a relative equal footing, to define each of the human organizations, linked to a way of understanding life, beyond even the concept of Religion or Culture.

Both the Oxford Dictionary and the DRAE agree that civilizing is to bring something or someone out of a barbaric or wild state, instructing him in the arts of life—into the English book—so that he can progress on the human scale. I mean, though. a civilization Whatever. the set of beliefs and values that make up a communityA civilization in itself we can define it as progress Dry. The civilizations, on the other hand, they constitute a more ambiguous and impure concept: they refer not only to cultural, ethical or other values that support society, but also to the systems or mechanisms of organization of the same. They have, therefore, to do with culture and education, but also, and to a great extent, with power. In the history of cultures it plays, without doubt, a relevant role of religions, and hence the frequent intellectual abuse that tends to confuse them with the civilizations themselves. It would be absurd to deny that religion, and its practice, have had enormous influence on the evolution of humans.

Understood in this way, in the plural, each civilization is a cultural entity that brings together a more or less conscious sense of unity, and that brings together several different nations and peoples.

Certain societies, due to their special cultural achievements and their ability to impose themselves as common to a more or less wide space, are considered by historians as independent civilizations. A clear example would be given by the amphictyony that unified all the Greek polis around certain places of worship (the oracle of Delphi), festivities (the Olympics) or texts (the works of Homer) and that opposed them to what they considered barbaric. (foreigner, who speaks with unintelligible sounds: bar-bar) and not Hellenic, like the Persians.

Evolution of ancient civilizations. It is appreciated that different historical civilizations (within one figure) share the same degree of political, social and cultural development.

• 

  Pyramid in Teotihuacan. The buildings of this size require the social organization that we find in civilizations. The impact that the discovery of this type of construction along with the complex societies that were associated with them, had on the Spanish conquerors and the theorists who reflected on the Fair titles about them; it is at the origin of the different considerations and descriptions of the Native Americans (from good savage to ruthless cannibal), of the intellectual debate that founded the right of peoples and of the European reflection on the very concept of civilization. Also in classical Greece, contact with other peoples of different languages and cultures had been the trigger that encouraged the emergence of critical reflection indispensable for the birth of philosophy and history (Tales de Mileto, Herodoto).

• 

  Frankfurt, the financial centre of the European Union (a successful example of supranational integration into the continent most devastated by wars until the first half of the 20th century), exemplifies the modern post-industrial society or information, the result of technological evolution in its final phase (massive application of computer and telecommunications).

Civilizations in historical perspective

The clash between rival groups according to Huntington (1996), as presented in the book. West (blue), Latin America (violet), Japan (red), Chinese world (granate), Indian world (naranja), Islamic world (green), Orthodox countries (celeste), Black Africa (brown), Buddhist countries (yellow). Other colors can indicate fault lines where the clash of civilizations can occur. Transylvania (in Romania), western Ukraine, northern Serbia and others are in the "Western world" according to the book. The author considers that instead of belonging to the "greater" civilizations Ethiopia and Haiti (in light brown) are "solitary" countries, and that Israel (turchess) can be considered a single state with its own civilization, very similar to the West. The Anglo-speaking Caribbean (clear violet), former British colonies, constitute a distinct entity.

The historical perspective used to classify a civilization (rather than a country) as a unit is of relatively recent origin. Beginning in the Middle Ages, most historians took a religious or national point of view. The religious point of view prevailed until the 18th century among European historians, who regarded the Christian revelation as the most important historical event., taking it as a reference for its classification. Early European historians did not study other cultures other than as curiosities or as potential areas of missionary activity.

The national, as distinct from the religious, point of view developed in the early 16th century out of philosophy politics of the Italian statesman and historian Nicholas Machiavelli, who argued that the proper object of historical study was the state. The Spanish Francisco de Vitoria, founder of international law, addressed the issue of the rights of the Crown of Spain in the conquest of America. However, the many historians who later chronicled the nation states of Europe and America only studied societies outside of European culture, to describe their submission to the European powers, in their opinion more progressive. A separate case is that of the Spanish missionaries and theologians who delved into the knowledge and analysis of recently discovered civilizations, sometimes difficult to characterize.

Arnold J. Toynbee typified 23 universal civilizations. MacNeill analyzed nine and Melko noted that there is reasonable agreement on at least twelve great civilizations of which seven no longer exist (Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Cretan, Classical Byzantine, Mesoamerican, and Andean). For Philip Bagby, the best defined and most accepted civilizations as such are the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Chinese, the Indian, the Greco-Roman, the Andean, the Central American and the Christian-Western. In his work Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington, basing himself on Toynbee, proposes a broader number of civilizations existing today: the Western (among which he distinguishes the Latin American and the Eastern European Orthodox as subcivilizations), the Muslim, the Jewish, the Hindu, the Sinic, the Japanese, the sub-Saharan African and the Buddhist.