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Anouar Abdel-Malek

Abdel-Malek, Anouar: The Civilizational Orientation in the Making of the New World. In: Journal of World-Systems Research. Vol. VI. No. 3 (Fall/Winter) 2000. Festschrift for Immanuel Wallerstein. Part II, S. 564-579.

"To the living memory of Joseph Needham, maître en l'art de civilisation

Great intelligence embraces,

Small intelligence discriminates.

Great talk is sparkling,

Small talk is verbose.

-Tchuang-Tseu

(1) The historical moment of the position of the problem, from the onset, leads to the heart of the sudden perplexity about the nature, rôle and prospect of "the civilizational question" in our times. While the very category of "civilization" was avoided until recently, a fl urry of amazement-cum-disquiet has been pervading the public mind, more specifi cally the intellectual circles used to the long-prevailing dichotomies of social thought ("left" and "right"; "developed" and "under-developed"; "center" and "periphery"; "conservative" and "radical" "reactionary" and "progressive"; "religious" and "secular"). All of a sudden, as it were, on the morrow of the implosion of the former U.S.S.R., the end of the bi-polar system, the advent of unipolar world hegemonism in 1989-1991, a resounding essay in 1993 came as a shock. "Civilizations," fi nally in the limelight, were deemed to "clash."

(2) History indicates that "civilizations" were recognized as distinct constellations of socio-cultural formations since early times-much before "the making of international society" as we came to know of it, from the end of the 15th century to our time (...)"

(ibid., S. 564)

Journal of World-Systems Research. Vol. XI. No. 2 (Summer/Fall) 2000. Festschrift For Immanuel Wallerstein. Part I.

Journal of World-Systems Research. Vol. VI. No. 3 (Fall/Winter) 2000. Festschrift For Immanuel Wallerstein. Part II.