Civilizations as Actors: A Transactional Account

Abstract

Among all of the blunt and controversial quips that dot the landscape of Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, I have always been struck by one statement in particular: the claim that “civilizations are cultural not political entities,” which means that “they do not, as such, maintain order, establish justice, collect taxes, fight wars, negotiate treaties, or do any of the other things which governments do” (Huntington, 1996: 44). In other words, civilizations are not actors; rather, they are cultural contexts within which other actors—“political units”—act.