A civilization is a society or culture group normally defined as a complex society characterized by the practice of agriculture and rural settlements and towns. Compared with other cultures, members of a civilization are organized into a department of the diverse workforce and a complex social hierarchy.
Definition
The civilization is often used synonymously with the broader term “culture” in the popular and academic circles. Each person takes a culture as “the art defines manners, customs … beliefs, values, behaviors and habits that constitute a material way of life of people.” However, in its most commonly used definition of culture is a descriptive term for a culture is relatively complex agricultural and urban. The cultures of other cultures can be distinguished by their high complexity and social organization, and its various economic and cultural activities.
In an older but still commonly used sense, the term “civilization” in a normative as well be used: in social contexts in which there is complex and urban cultures, that cultures are better than the other savages “or” barbarians “The concept of “civilization” is synonymous with “cultural (and often ethics) the superiority of certain groups are used.” In a similar sense of civilization can mean “refinement of thought, manners, or taste.
In his book “The Philosophy of Civilization, Albert Schweitzer called one of the leading philosophers of the concept of civilization, the idea that there are two opinions in society, a relationship with civilization as a purely material and other civilization on an ethical and material . He said that was the current global crisis, then, in 1923 due to a humanity that has lost the ethical concept of civilization. In this work, which he defines civilization, said:
”
It is the sum of all human progress in all areas of activity and from all angles and in so far as to help in the progress of spiritual perfection of the individual and the advancement of all progress.
In the sixth century, the Roman Emperor Justinian initiated the consolidation of Roman civil law. The resulting set is called the Corpus Juris Civilis. In the 11th Century rediscovered professors at the University of Bologna, the first university in Western Europe, the Corpus Juris Civilis, and he began to feel its influence in Western Europe. In 1388, the word civil appeared in English meaning “of or in connection with the citizens.” In 1704 began to understand the civilization, “not a law that makes the prosecution in a civil case. Civilization in the modern sense used as meaning” the opposite of barbarism “- as opposed to being”, ie, politeness or civil virtue – until the 18 . Century.
According to Emile Benveniste (1954), the occurrence of earlist in English civilization in the modern sense can be written to Adam Ferguson An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh, 1767 – to be found p. 2):
”
Not only the individual advances from infancy to adulthood, but the same kind of rudeness to civilization.
”
Note that this application of the concept of superiority and maturity of the “civilized” existence, as opposed to “rudeness” that is used to denote toughness implies a lack of refinement or “courtesy”.
Prior research Benveniste, cited the New English Dictionary conversation with Samuel Johnson James Boswell on the inclusion of Civilization in Johnson’s Dictionary:
”
) On Monday (1772 March 23, I found him busy, preparing a fourth edition of his folio Dictionary … It would not accept civilization, but only civility. With great respect for him, I thought to civilize civilization, is better in the opposite direction to the barbarism of courtesy, as it is better to have a different word for each meaning of a word with two meanings, that courtesy, the way of their use.
”
Benveniste demonstrated that previous occurrences can be found, which explains the rapid adoption of the definition of Johnson. In 1775, MTR Dictionary culture as “the condition of the civilized, the act of civilization is defined, and the term is frequently used by Adam Smith in a study on the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Along with Smith and Ferguson John Millar, too, in 1771, in his remarks on the distinction between different classes in society.
In the first appearance of French culture was discovered by Benveniste Mirabeau in L’Ami des hommes ou traité de la population (written in 1756 but released in 1757), Benveniste asks whether the English word derived from the French, or whether Both are independent – a question that need further investigation. According to him, the word civilization can, in fact, been used by Ferguson as soon as 1759th
Moreover, Benveniste notes that, in contrast to the civility, a term static culture provides a sense of momentum. He writes that …
”
It was not only a historical view of society, was also optimistic and unresolved theological interpretation of evolution, which has been imposed, sometimes on the insurance of those who proclaimed, and although some of them initially, Mirabeau, nor the religion as the first factor of “civilization. [5] l HYPERLINK” cite_note-5 “[6]
”
Another source for the word stands for chivalry: a set of rules for use, initially for men in the war, but later expanded to include the behavior of chivalry and nobility. The English cavalry comes from Chevalier French”: a rider. England and France have therefore resulted in the terms and conditions on similar occasions.
Cultures distinctly different settlement patterns in other societies. The word culture is sometimes simply as “a word that means” living in cities, “defined. No farmers gather in cities to work and act.
In comparison with other societies, cultures have a complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more complex than other societies, there is a greater difference between the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist, Elman Service, have an integration theorist, human cultures and political systems of social inequality classified. This classification comprises four categories:
StructuresCivilizations highly stratified,
with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments. or chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: the king, nobles, freemen, serfs and slaves. Horticulture or pastoral societies, where two inherited social classes; boss and citizens. The hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
Economically, civilizations show complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in a city can collect the personal belongings of the nomadic people. Some people acquire landed property, private property or land. As a share of the civilizations do not produce their own food, they should receive their goods and services in a market system of food, food stocks or through the collection of taxes, redistributive taxes, tarrifs, or tithing food production segment of the population. The first civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for these increasingly complex operations. For simplicity, in a village potter makes a pot for the brewery and the brewery is like the potter, with a certain amount of beer. In a city, the potter needs a new roof can, the roofer need new shoes, the shoe may need new shoes, the farrier may need a new layer, and the tanner may need a new boat. These people can not personally with each other and their needs can not know everything at once. A monetary system is a way to organize these commitments to ensure compliance with the law.
Cultural identity
“Civilization” can also describe the culture of a complex society, not just their own society. Every society, culture or not, has a specific set of ideas and habits, and a certain amount of elements and the arts, which make it unique. Civilizations have even more complex cultures, including literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, manners, and are complex, linked to the elite. Civilization is like in nature, distribute looking to have more, expand, and the means to do so.
However, some people have, or uncivilized tribes are still (2009). These cultures are called by some “primitive”, a term that is regarded by others as pejorative. “Primitive” somehow implies that one culture is “first” (Latin) = Primus, and since all cultures contemporaries now call primitive cultures are civilized in any way as on the previous history. Many anthropologists use the term “illiterate” to describe these people. In the United States and Canada, where people in these cultures, the original inhabitants were driven out before the European settlers, who use the term “First Nations” to. In general, the First Nations of North America hierarchical governments, religion, and a barter system and the oral transmission of traditions, cultures, laws, and thus respect the wisdom of the ancients and their natural environment (7 st generation of decision-making) sustained these cultures for more than 10,000 years.
The civilized world has been expanded by the invasion, the religious conversion of bureaucratis development and control of trade and the introduction of agriculture, and writing in non-literate peoples. Some people can volunteer to civilized civilized behavior. But culture is also spread by force: if a group does not want to read and accept a particular religion or agriculture use is often forced, by the way civilized people, and often unsuccessful because of its advanced technology and high population density. Civilization often uses religion to justify their actions, say for example that the uncivilized “primitive” savages, barbarians, or the like, must be submitted by civilization.
The complex culture is associated with a tendency to spread the culture and assimilating influence of other cultures and sometimes they to civilization (a classic example of Chinese culture and its influence on Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc, which they all share the fact that belonging to an East Asian culture, exchange of Confucianism, Mahayana Buddhism, a “Mandarin” class an educated understanding of Chinese characters and more). Many civilizations are actually large cultural area with many nations and regions. The civilization in which a person lives, the wider the cultural identity of this person.
The etiology of civilization is Latin or Roman, as the above, the application of the law by “civilian” to examine and reflect upon Jewish or Hebrew civilization. A “Jewish Civilization” is not defined as an expression or extension of the decorations subjective culture and society, but rather as a humane society and / or cultural expression is the objective moral and ethical moorings as they are known, understood and consistent with the Mosaic Covenant implemented. [Edit] A “human civilization, is in Hebrew, for example, conditions contrary to popular notions about” civilization. “A” human “civilization, there would be an expression and extension of the two pillars of human civilization.” These two pillars honest weights and measures standardized and a moral and healthy constitution. Everything else, whether technology, science, art, music, etc., by this definition, it is considered a comment. In fact, if the estate of a human society, namely culture, “civilized” is the degree of internal terrain (characteristics, personality or substance) of the people and leadership, it could also have been inoculated, and instilling a moral foundation. He describes the Bible, Sodom, for example, during a civilized society of people with a culture that has been made by Jewish or Biblical standards of “civility”. And while the Roman sense of justice is largely must “appear” in a “civilian” Hebrew or to focus on the biblical concept of justice, in principle, not merely subjective claims or appearance, but more importantly, attention must be right to objective principles will. Ultimately, no true and lasting “civility” for every person in the absence of a moral stance. [Edit]
Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and civilizations treated as separate entities. An example is the beginning of the twentieth century philosopher Oswald Spengler, in spite of the German word “culture”, “culture” for what we call “civilization”. He said that the coherence of a civilization is based on a single primary cultural symbol. Experience replaced Civilizations cycles of birth, life, transience and death, often by a new culture with a strong new culture, formed around a symbol of cultural weight.
This “unified culture” concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historian Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. The processes of civilization, Toynbee in a multi-volume study examines the history, which caused the rise and in most cases, the decline of 21 civilizations and five “arrested civilizations”. Cultures generally declined and fell to Toynbee, because the lack of a “creative minority” of religious or moral decay, just for any challenge, but as a mere economic or environmental causes.
Samuel P. Huntington defines a civilization similar to as “the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity of the people behind what distinguishes humans from other species.” Moreover, there is a definition of culture, Huntington proposed several theories about civilizations, under.
Complex Systems
Another group of theorists, the use of systems theory, offers a culture as a complex system, ie a framework that will be analyzed in which a group of objects that can work in concert to produce some results. The cultures can be seen as networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures, and defined by economic, political interaction, military, diplomatic and cultural relations between them. Each organization is a complex social system and a civilization is a great organization. Systems theory helps protect against superficial analogies, but also misleading the investigation and description of civilizations.
For example, the urban planner Jane Jacobs defines cities as economic engines that create the work, to large networks of people. The most important process that says this city-creating networks, it is, “import substitution”. Import substitution is the process by which peripheral cities begin to goods and services that were previously imported from more developed cities, which replaced it. The success of the produce import substitution, economic growth in these cities, and allows those cities to be in less developed cities in their own areas of influence to export new economic networks. So Jacobs explores economic development in large networks instead of treating each society as an isolated cultural sphere.
Systems theorists see many kinds of relationships between cities, including economic relations, cultural exchanges and political-diplomatic and military relations. These spheres often occur on different scales. Thus, for example, trade networks, until the nineteenth century, much bigger than the two cultural spheres or political spheres. Extensive trade routes, including the Silk Road through Central Asia and Indian Ocean sea routes between the Roman Empire, Persia, India and China, were also founded 2000 years ago, when these civilizations scarcely shared political, diplomatic, military and cultural relations. The first evidence for such a long-distance trade in the ancient world. During the Uruk phase Guillermo Algaz has argued that the trade relations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and Afghanistan combined. Resin found later in the Royal Tombs of Ur, it is suggested was traded to the north of Mozambique.
Many argue that the world is already integrated in a “world”, a process known as globalization. Different cultures and societies around the world are the economic, political, cultural and even each other in many ways. There is a discussion on this integration, if it is started, and what kind of integration – cultural, technological, economic, political, diplomatic or military – is the most important indicator for determining the degree of civilization. David Wilkinson has proposed that economic integration and military-diplomatic civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, to the creation of what he introduced as the “Central Civilization” around 1500 BC. Central Civilization later extended to cover the entire Middle East and Europe and expand globally, with European integration, the integration of North and South America, Australia, China and Japan in the nineteenth century. According to Wilkinson, civilizations can be culturally heterogeneous, like the Central Civilization, or relatively homogeneous, like the Japanese culture. What Huntington calls the “clash of civilizations” can be characterized by Wilkinson in a single global civilization as a struggle between the cultural field. Others point to the Crusades as the first step in globalization. Ever, more conventional view that the expanded network of companies and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism.
Future
The political scientist Samuel Huntington HYPERLINK l “cite_note-13″ [14] has argued that the defining characteristic of the 21 Century will be a clash of civilizations. According to Huntington, conflicts between cultures is a substitute for the conflicts between nation states and ideologies that marked the 19th and 20 Century. These views are strongly contested by others, such as Edward Said and Mohammed Asudi. Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued that the liberal “real clash of civilizations” between Muslim and Western worlds, by the refusal of the Muslims of Western sexual values, more than one difference is caused by political ideology.
Currently, world civilization in a period that are created, which is characterized as an industrial society, superseding the agrarian society, which has before him. Some futurists believe that civilization is another break, and that world society will become a so-called information society.
Some environmental scientists see the world in a planetary phase of civilization, marked by a shift from independent, self-contained world nation in a world of increasing global networking with institutions, environmental challenges, economic systems, and consciousness [17]. L HYPERLINK “cite_note-17″ shall be understood as an attempt to better what is a planetary phase of civilization, how could the current context of natural resources and reduced growth in consumer spending, used to reach the Global Scenario Group scenario analysis to three archetypal futures : barbarism, which is the growing conflicts in the world, due to the strength or whole social fabric; Conventional Worlds, in which by and by market forces or political reforms, sustainable practices, and rain add a transition in which either the sum of fragmented Eco Communalism movements to lead to a sustainable world, or coordinated efforts and global initiatives in a new paradigm of sustainability.
The decline of civilizations
There are many explanations that were offered by the collapse of civilization. “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay, because of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest, and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, we found the mighty fabric, to the pressures of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and clear, and instead of asking why the Roman Empire was destroyed, and not surprisingly, it has already survived so long. “Jeffrey A. McNeely recently proposed that “A review of historical evidence that past civilizations over-exploitation of their forests, and that such abuse of important resources have tended to become an important factor in reducing the overexploitation of society. Peter Heather argues in his book” The Fall Of The Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and BarbariansHYPERLINK l “cite_note-20″ [21] that this culture does not end for moral or economic, but through centuries of contact with the barbarians generated by the border to its own nemesis, making them much more powerful and dangerous opponent. The fact that Rome is needed to increase revenue for the equipment and upgrading of their armies, the first back on the field were beaten, led to the dismemberment of the empire to generate. Although this argument is specific to Rome, but also on the Asian kingdom of Egypt, the Han and Tang dynasties of China shall be applied, the Abbasid Caliphate, Muslims and others. Bryan Ward-Perkins, in his book “The Fall of Rome and the end of l CivilizationHYPERLINK” cite_note-21 “shows the true horror of the collapse of civilization to those who suffer its effects, unlike many revisionist historians, the related Demolition importance. The collapse of complex society means that even basic plumbing disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar Dark Age with the collapse of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, Easter Island and seen elsewhere. Arthur Demarest argues Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest l CivilizationHYPERLINK “cite_note-22″ with a holistic perspective, the most recent findings in archeology, paleoecology, and epigraphy, which no adequate explanation, but a series of irregular, complex events, including loss of fertility soils, drought and rising internal and external violence, the disintegration of the courts of the Maya kingdoms, which started a spiral of decline and decay resulted. He argues that the collapse of the Mayan civilization has lessons for today. Thomas Homer – Dixon in The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization, believes that the decline in energy return on investment, the energy expended to energy efficiency is money, it is important to limit the survival of civilization . The degree of social complexity, are strongly connected, he proposes to make with the amount of available energy systems, environmental, economic and technology. If this amount is reduced civilizations, whether they have access to new sources of energy have, or it collapses. Peter Turchin in his historical dynamics and Andrei Korotayev et al. In his introduction to the social macro-temporal dynamics Millennium cycles and trends point to a series of mathematical models describing collapse of agricultural crops. For example, the basic logic of the tax “of Turchin-demographic” model can be summarized as follows: During the first phase of a demographic cycle observed a relatively high per capita production and consumption, not only to population growth is relatively high, but even relatively large surpluses. As a result, can contribute in this phase of the population pay the taxes without major problems, taxes are relatively easy to collect, and population growth is accompanied by the growth of government revenues. During the transition phase, increasing overpopulation leads to declining per capita production and consumption, it is increasingly difficult to stop growing increase taxes and government revenues, while public spending will increase by population growth is controlled by the state. As a result of this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final phase of collapse from overpopulation leads to further decline in per capita surpluses, government revenues are reduced, but the state needs more resources to control growth (although prices lower and lower) of the population. This ultimately leads to famines, epidemics, deterioration of the status and the demographic collapse and Culture (Peter Turchin.
Criticism
Civilization has been criticized from different angles and for a variety of reasons. Some critics have to argue all aspects of civilization, while others argued that civilization brings a mix of good and bad effects.
Some environmentalists like Derrick L Jens HYPERLINK “criticize cite_note-24″ to civilizations for their exploitation of the environment. Richard Hienberg argued that the intensive agriculture and urban growth, civilizations tend to destroy natural settings and habitats, and the resources on which it depends lead. This is sometimes referred to as “dominator culture”. Proponents of this view believe that traditional societies live in greater harmony with the nature of cultures, people with nature, instead of trying to dominate them. Sustainable living movement is a push by some members of civilization to gain harmony with nature again.
Primitivism is a modern philosophy, quite the opposite sign of civilization. Primitivists accuse civilizations of restricting human potential, suppression of the weak, and harms the environment. The desire to create a primitive form of life that they believe in the best interest of nature and people back. The main representative of John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen, while a critic Roger Sandall.
However, do not believe all the critics of civilization past and present, that a primitive form of life is better. Some have argued that many of the negative aspects of the current “civilized” nations can be overcome. Karl Marx, for example, argued that the principle of civilization at the beginning of oppression and exploitation, but also felt that these things at last break free and create communism around the world. Communism is not presented as a return to any kind of idyllic past, but as a new stage of civilization. Conflict theory in the social sciences is also of the view that the current form of civilization based on domination of some people who judge of others, but not the moral question.
Given the current problems with the sustainability of industrial civilization, some say, as Derrick Jensen, portable from civilization not by nature, we have developed a social form of “post-civilization” as different from the civilization in which it was with pre-civilized peoples.
