Critters, Tim...
Additionally, and tentatively, on civilisation and the process(es) of
civilisation.
Perhaps Tim's excellent entry could have a little more on process
and contingency? I am aware that Norbert Elias has been
influential with research on the constituency of 'civilising'. Noting
here how civilisation is linked to processes or flows of regulation
prevailing in particular cultures. Hence my addition is that
civilisation can be seen (defined, surely not...) as a subjectively
understood threshold of control prevailing with or without the
consent of the people that come under the ambit of such
mechanisms of control.
Those mechansims are of course numerous; overt/covert/by
type/by process/by belief or fear etc etc. They may also be
unevenly enforced or regarded. Hence the idea of civilisation is an
appropriation of power and a contested concept deployed to justify
action and behaviour - 'bombing is holy and... civilised'; removing
'terrorists' is 'to the benefit of 'civilisation''... Perhaps as certain
actions are taken and reactions formed, the parameters of the
envelope of the 'civil' is altered...and contested.
Another question then - is the entry to relate to 'global civilisation'?
G.
On 19 Sep 01, at 10:09, Tim Cresswell wrote:
> Civilization
> An achieved state or condition of organized social life. Originally
> referred to a process of making things civil - i.e. taking them out of the
> context of criminality and violence. First appeared in the eighteenth
> century. Now more likely to be used as a noun that can be simply
> descriptive as in "comparative civilizations" but is usually a relative and
> hierarchical term which depends on an abject other (i.e. barbarism). This
> form appears for instance in Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis
> (1893) "the frontier is the outer edge of the wave - the meeting point
> between savagery and civilization". Civilization also has an ideal and
> progressive sense (popular in the nineteenth century among liberals). Mill
> wrote "Take for instance the question of haw far mankind has gained by
> civilizationŠthe decline of war and personal conflict; the progressive
> limitation of the strong over the weak; the great works accomplished
> throughout the globe by the co-operation of multitudes" (cited in Williams
> Keywords 1976 page 58). Conventionally (and ironically) the first
> "civilization" is said to have appeared in Mesopotamia - in what is now
> Iraq. Civilization often appears now in the term "Western civilisation"
> which is an amorphous term referring to cultures which subscribe to notions
> of "democracy", "freedom" and, increasingly, capitalism and can trace their
> heritage to the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Ironically the Renaissance
> is widely thought to have arisen from the rediscovery of knowledge, lost to
> Europe, but cultivated by the Arabs of North Africa.
>
> Tim
>
> Tim Cresswell
> Senior Lecturer
> Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences
> University of Wales, Aberystwyth
> Aberystwyth
> Ceredigion SY23 3DB
> United Kingdom
> Tel: 44 (0)1970 622782
> e-mail [log in to unmask]
>
Dr Gavin Parker
Lecturer in Planning Studies
Centre of Planning Studies,
Department of Land Management,
University of Reading,
Whiteknights, PO Box 219,
Reading.
RG6 6AW
UK
Tel: +44 (0)118 931 6460
Fax: +44 (0)118 931 8172
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