Political Science 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Liberal Democracy, Primordialism, Family Values
28 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
October 16th, 2017
Lecture #4: Politics and Society
Huntington and Political Culture
- End of Cold War:
o Late 80s early 90s, political scientists developing theories of what the ‘new
world’ order would be and how it would look
o Looked like democracy and liberalism had clearly won
o What is coming next on the world stage
o How different cultures and cultural groupings would be getting along in
this world order
o No outright conflict
o Some not convinced by this optimism (Huntington and Kaplan)
o Very opposites idea: a new phase of global chaos
o Conflicts in the global south
o Peace divided had not arrived
- Quote
o Divides the world into 8 different civilizations
o Civilizations: The highest cultural grouping of people: the broadest level of
cultural identity
o Usually share languages, history, religion, customs, institutions
o Argues the most important conflicts will occur along these cultural
frontlines
▪ Civilizations that conflict with each other
▪ Different than cold war: broadly based on political difference
Sub-arguments
1. Differences among civilizations are basic, intrinsic, real
a. There are fundamental to people
b. Developed over centuries and are very hard to change
c. This view of culture is not the same; culture does change, sometimes
extremely quickly
2. People from different civilizations being increasingly brought into contact with
each other
a. Globalization making the world a smaller place effectively
b. Forces bringing people increasingly into contact: cultural mixing
c. Pro-globlization: good thing, have a lot of similarities
d. He says the opposite: they’ll realise their differences
3. The nation state is weakening as a source of identity, religion is in its place
a. Cold war: element of nationalism and identity tied up with that
b. Often the fundamentalist versions of these religions
i. Any religion
4. Western vs. anti-western ideology growing
a. Western civilization at its peak of power in the 90s
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Most of the clashes will occur where civilizations group meet. First gulf war: engulfs the entire muslim world against the u. s, a more civilization based conflict. Yugoslavia: paradigm examples of a clash of civilizations. The primordialist school of thought re. culture: emphasis on intrinsic nature of culture, culture decides what and who people are, international: how groups conduct their-self and interact with each other. Culture: the content of those institutions, which help define a society: ethnicity, nationality and citizenship defines a group, culture is the activities and ideas that the group considers as status quo. Political culture: a society"s norms for political activity. Study of culture: religion lost a lot of its authority in the developed world: there were remnants of a pre-modern era that would be swept away, religion and political science linked, controversial: not accepted by everyone. Elections a key component of liberal democracy.
