Western, Russian, and Islamic Culture in World Civilizational Perspective

Abstract

Gabitov first provides an essential summary of the pre-civilizational period, the rise of civilizations, classical culture, post-classical (i.e., medieval) developments and the culture of the Renaissance. This serves as a backdrop for treating the modern industrial era and the place of the West, Russia and Islam therein. Although his narrative reflects a more traditional twentieth-century ‘world civilizations’ approach, it is framed from a unique Islamic-Eurasian vantage emphasizing complex historical-cultural processes and crosscultural contact and exchange. He sees the modern world developing in broad outline according to a Western civilizational model over the past five centuries, encompassing both great human scientific and cultural achievements alongside bloody, destructive wars. He suggests that individual countries and human society as a whole will determine the future course of humanity through their respective Toynbeean-style responses to the multiple, complex challenges of the global age.

Translated from Kazakh by Zhuldyz Zhumashova; edited by R. Charles Weller.