David Christian. Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History

What is history? Or rather, what are the appropriate time-scales that can be constituted as “history”? The general consensus among scholars is that history is the study of approximately the last 5,000 years or so due to the existence of written records. Anything prior to that is generally considered pre-history,…

Community, Justice, And Jihad: Elements Of The Muslim Historical Consciousness

The Globalization of Parks – Public Trust Resource Protection Worldwide

Environmental Crime and Civilization: Identification; Impacts; Threats and Rapid Response

Civilizational and Environmental Effects of Monolia’s Transition from a Pastoral to a Market-Driven Economy

Verge of Collapse? Survival of Civilization in the Anthropocene

Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations

Islam and the Three Waves of Globalisation: The Southeast Asian Experience

This article is intended to comment on the civilisational history of Islam in Southeast Asia. The history is explained and accounted for in terms of the three major waves of globalisation that have impacted the region since the arrival of Islam as early as the eleventh century. The first wave,…

SCIENTIFIC HISTORY IN PRE-MODERN CIVILIZATIONS

The main arguments in this article pertain to the plurality of approaches in the study of nature in different human civilisations. In the popular Western narrative on scientific history, Greek science is presented as the first rational and empirically-established science in the world. Pre-Greek sciences were not rational in the…

Changing Perspectives on Maya Civilization

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Civilization

The Comparison of Civilizations: Louis Dumont on India and the West

The social anthropological/sociological oeuvre of Louis Dumont (1911-98) embraced continents: the contrast between the defining ideologies of traditional and modern societies was his central concern. Traditional society represented by India and modern society represented by the West were respectively considered by him to exemplify the principles of holism/hierarchy and individualism/equality.…

The Aquatic Civilization of Middle Africa

Between the ninth and third millennia B.C. wetter conditions prevailed over most of Africa. Lakes and rivers were fuller and some of the internal basins were temporarily linked, especially in the 'Middle African' belt. This comprises the southern Sahara and Sahel, stretching from the Upper Niger to the Middle Nile,…

The Enumeration of Civilizations

Modernity and civilization in Johann Arnason’s social theory of Japan

Johann Arnason’s exploration of the historical constellation of East Asia has helped reproblematize the conceptual framework of modernity and civilization. This article outlines Arnason’s innovations in civilizational analysis and social theory in the field of comparative studies of Japan. It sets out the terms on which a nuanced elaboration of…

Civilizations in History

Chinese Civilisation: Resilience and Challenges

Civilisation is usually not allotted the front seat in social science discourses except for being treated as a whipping boy. This is precisely what the ‘Clash-of-Civilisations’ school has done. Nevertheless, we should thank Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University for bringing ‘civilisation’ into sharp focus. Huntington and others have initiated…

RebarbariziCnigvi lization: Conrad’s African Fiction and Spencerian Sociology

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and "An Outpost of Progress" appropriate and subvert Herbert Spencer's influential "typology of civilization." While these fictions invoke Spencer's crucial opposition of "militant" and "industrial" society, they ultimately undermine his progressivistic theory by expunging the difference between these oppositions. They accomplish this by showing that,…