I am currently researching on transformational studies in political science regarding post-socialist change in Eastern Europe. Many texts, and especially textbooks for students, refer on how likely change towards democracy is in different societies. For that, Huntington`s religious cultural types often are employed. I wonder, whether that kind of old differentiation still is up to date in social science, especially because it seems to generalize the non-western (and especially the african) cultures in a quite discriminative manner (and because it is discriminative towards non-western cultures in general...). I would like to mention that doubts within my work, does anybody know some current works on that I could refer on?
The distiction on Western, orthodox, islamic, Confucian, Indian civilizations is more or less sound. Latin-American also seems to be broadly OK (at least as much as Confucian in general). However, I agree with you, Afraca cannot be reagarded a single civilization. But this is only a private opinion.
I think we might need to rethink what exactly "Western culture" is, and why, therefore, Huntington (and admittedly many others) seem to think that Latin-American or Orthodox cultures can be distinguished from Western. In my opinion, Latin America has as great or even greater right to be considered a part of Western culture than does North America, since it is closer to the historic roots of Western culture, namely, the Catholic faith and Roman forms of thought.
Beyond that quite general distinction - f.e. big parts of "Western" Europe is actually catholic - there are two different problems I see in that model: Firstly, it doesn`t seem to be very consistent in differentiating once by religion, once by region, once by ethnics (in case of the slavic-orthodox type). F.e. where should Poland, geografically part of Central Europe, with a catholic majority and mostly slavic inhabitants be set within that model? The second question is, whether you can really conclude how likely democracy is from the religious culture of a land. Is that something current studies are confirming not only as a correlation, but as causality?
Dear Nina and Thomas, I believe that the division between the Catholic/protestant ("Western") block form the Orthodox one is based on a real difference as far as ways of thinking are concerned. I do not remember exactly who said it but a country which did not experience renaissance, reformation or baroque cannot be called "Western". And it is not a value difference, just an observation. The Catholic/protestant division is rather within the same "family". I think this is supported by the Inglehard maps, although the borderline maybe somewhat diffuse. (In certain aspects e.g. Hungary is closer to the Orthodox in others to the Western ways of thinking).
Ok, fair. But that would implicate a historical division rather than a religious one....
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Social Science
- Sociology