In contemporary Western society, the term 'civilization' brings to mind what are popularly considered the "important" societies in world history. Popular discourse depicts these militarized states, distinguished by their hierarchical structure and supposedly remarkable physical achievements, as representative of the highest form of morality and, consequently, those whom contemporary politicians and social actors should seek to emulate. The dialectic concerning "civilized" and "uncivilized" societies and peoples continues to govern a similar dialectic of "good" and "evil", used by state elites to terrorize the populace over potentially dangerous, "uncivilized" terrorists. The construction of these peoples as barbaric and dangerous in turn facilitates the control of their land, labour and wealth.
Depending on context, the term "civilization" refers to different concepts, though the connotations behind the word remain. For example, the discipline of anthropology has institutionalized the word as a "scientific" term for "a form of complex society in which many people live in cities," popularly, though inaccurately, associated most closely with European empires.
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The logic of the term assumes that there must be societies that do not fall under the anthropological rubric of civilization, thus meaning that they are "uncivilized". Yet, a glance at synonyms for "uncivilized" in a standard thesaurus reveals "barbaric", "primitive", "savage", "animal-like", and "undeveloped".
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It is clear that a harsh moral judgement is levied on those societies deemed "uncivilized", while "civilized" may be used interchangeably with "educated, "cultured", "refined",
"enlightened", "elegant", and "sophisticated".
1 James People and Garrik Bailey. Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology . USA:
Wadsworth, 2000.
2 Marc McCutcheon. Roget's Super Thesaurus . Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1995.
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It is important to note, however, that the notion of being "uncivilized" has historically been associated with savagery, regardless of its anthropological definition.
As David Goldberg writes concerning the late medieval period, "The generic [European] image of the savage represented violence, sexual license, a lack of civility and civilization, an absence of morality or any sense of it." 3 In the historical development of modern racism and ethnocentrism, difference is first constructed, followed by an ongoing discourse in which that difference is constantly redefined, though always affirmed. Thus, for Goldberg, "The history of racism is given definition by changes in the conception of
'race.'"
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As the cases of those "civilizations" so emulated by many contemporary state elites indicate, this racism, no matter what its criteria of race or difference, is constructed in order to facilitate the exploitation of internal scapegoats and external enemies, the exploitation of whose wealth and labour creates the state's 'greatness'.
Among the various rationales for racism since the fifteenth century have been differences in religion, pseudo-scientific racial characteristics, ethnicity and culture.
However, when racism is conceptualized as an ideological form of domination, the core reasons for and results of it appear quite similar. Relative to the concepts of civilization and savagery, Frederick Case writes,
A significant factor in attempting to arrive at definitions of race and racism is that, historically, in order to exclude others from humanity it has been necessary to deny the value of their culture… When negation of a race is accompanied by conquest, colonization and prolonged enslavement of that race, the conquerors, colonizers and enslavers elaborate theories of racial and cultural superiority in order to justify the degeneration of their own moral values.
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3 David Theo Goldberg. Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning . Cambridge: Blackwell,
1993. (23)
4 David Theo Goldberg. “The Social Formation of Racist Discourse.” in David Goldberg (ed.). Anatomy of Racism . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. (295)
5 Frederick Case. Racism and National Consciousness . Toronto: Other Eye, 2002. (9-10)
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Thus, the negation of a people's culture and the articulation of notions of racial superiority are equally tied to the same endeavor of subjugating those whose "otherness" has been selected as justification for their domination. The construction of civilization as a criterion for superiority is one aspect in a spectrum of ideologies designed to legitimate the exploitation of those labelled outsiders.
The elites of Europe, its colonial extensions in America, and the Western tradition in general identify "the ancient civilizations" of Egypt, Greece and Rome as their political and cultural ancestry. The structure of these societies reveals the dialectical nature of civilization and oppression. All three were slave societies, whose economies and social structures relied on the enslavement of a large proportion of the population. Each was a predatory empire whose success and survival was based on conquest and hostility with those outside its borders.
6 Thus, it is not surprising that the earliest known articulations of racism, as it is identified today, in the differentiation between "cultivated" and
"barbaric" peoples originate in these early predatory societies. Goldberg writes, "As a general category of discriminatory sociological exclusion, barbarianism was the invention of fifth-century Hellenism. A Barbarian was one of emphatically different, even strange, language, conduct, and culture and lacking the cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice." 7 Thus, the dialectical nature of discourse regarding 'civilized' and 'uncivilized' reinforced the need for domination of those deemed barbaric because their supposed predisposition to simplicity and violence was seen to necessitate containment.
6 Orlando Patterson. Slavery and Social Death . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. ( vii )
7 Goldberg, Racist Culture , 21.
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The contemporary depiction of these empires as "great civilizations" is an example of the historical arrangement of perception of what is considered important or relevant. The violent foundations upon which they were framed do not make them obvious, or reasonable, candidates for emulation. As Orlando Patterson notes, "[Slavery] was firmly established in all the great early centers of human civilization and, far from declining, actually increased in significance with the growth of all the epochs and cultures that modern Western peoples consider watersheds in their historical development."
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In the context of contemporary capitalist society, those in power deploy an ideological construction of seeing that is compatible with their interests. Arnold
Itwaru refers to this as the "imperialization of vision" in which the imperialist is
"convinced [that] it is their Civilized and manifest destiny to exploit the rest of humanity."
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This is not a new phenomenon. As highly militarized states in Western Europe consolidated their power following centuries of instability, the elite of the military and political orders deliberately sought to emulate the empires of old. Yet, the most influential order of all, that of the Catholic Church, provided the ideological force for constructing evil and greedy internal scapegoats (European Jews and Muslims) and barbaric dangerous external threats.
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These external threats were the Islamic world during the time of the Crusades, but they have come to include virtually every people who have not been constructed at various times as 'European', 'White', 'Christian', or
'Civilized'.
8 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death , vii.
9 Arnold Itwaru. Closed Entrances . Toronto: TSAR, 1994. (5-10, 7)
10 Michael Parenti. History As Mystery . San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1999. (103-118)
Bernard Lewis. Cultures In Conflict . New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. (29-53)
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The ideology that informs the working of the contemporary American state is consciously lent from those of the aforementioned "great civilizations". The concept of
"civilization" as a measure of superiority informs the dominant discourses of respectability in those societies self-labelled "the West". Even at the minor level of recycling, a public service announcement from the city of Toronto encourages people to recycle because, "Recycling allows us to demonstrate that, as civilized people , we can clean up after ourselves and make the most of our resources."
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Thus, even from this seemingly insignificant example, civilization is equated with both a superior moral standard and the ability to exploit resources to the fullest.
In the broader political context, the American state's "war on terror" illustrates the deployment of this dialectic of domination within discourses regarding those identified as
'other'. The construction of one's own "civilized" world and a foreign "uncivilized" alterity is used to facilitate two levels of domination by those in power who exploit this ideology for their benefit. First, any foreign land and people who possess desired wealth or who represent opposition to the global system that facilitates their exploitation by the predatory state can easily be labelled an opponent to "civilization" or "the civilized world". As a result of being labelled "uncivilized", these peoples all become potentially dangerous, barbaric and unpredictable to the "civilized" power, thus legitimating their subjugation by force. The second layer of domination results when these supposedly
'dangerous' 'uncivilized' 'barbarians' are (often falsely) presented as posing a direct threat to the well-being of those who live within the predatory state's borders. In the interest of protecting themselves, these people, if convinced of a threat, will support the state that
11 Works and Emergency Services, City of Toronto. "Toronto Waste Watch", Fall 2003, http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/garbage/wastewatch/aptwastewatch_fall03.pdf (emphasis added)
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they are terrorized into believing is needed for their protection. These attempts to manipulate the populace are, as Itwaru writes, "constructs of particular perceptions, the designs of a project of power which should never be taken for granted."
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The American state's current "war on terror" is a clear example of the deployment of this ideological construction. As George Bush stated following the attacks of 11
September 2001, "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."
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The constant battle between a "free and just" world and a supposedly cruel and fearful alterity is now constructed as a battle between "civilization" and "terrorism". "The only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it and destroy it where it grows.… This is not, however, just America's fight. And what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight."
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Thus, the American state is constructed as the embodiment of "civilization", a concept whose meaning has, as previously stated, been imbued with notions of greatness and morality. The construction of others as
"terrorists" and threats to "civilization" thus justifies the need for their elimination.
"Terrorists", like "barbarians" in ancient Greece or "savages" in imperialist
Europe, are racially and culturally constructed, in this case associated with Islam. In
1993, the American conservative political strategist Samuel Huntington proposed that international relations were characterized by a "clash of civilizations", mainly Islam and the West, who could be considered unified ideological entities destined for conflict. In
12 Itwaru, Closed Entrances , 45.
13 White House. News Archive- September 2001 . "http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/"
History Place. George W. Bush Speech to Congress Sept. 20, 2001
"http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/gw-bush-9-11.htm"
14 White House, News Archive .
History Place, George W. Bush .
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response, he advocated that America and the West do everything in their power to meet this challenge at military, societal and cultural levels.
15 This view, which has come to frame contemporary discourse regarding relations between "the West" and "the Arab world", is a clear example of the construct of "civilization" within the dialectic of domination. The "terrorists" constructed in the American state imagination are Islamic fundamentalist extremists whose irrational Islamic ideas pose a serious threat to
"civilized" Western society. Thus, once the existence of such a threat is accepted, Islam is seen as an uncivilized alterity to Western civilization that must be contained and controlled.
The construction of racism as a form of domination has varied across time and space, but its essential purposes and results have been quite consistent. The ideological construct of "civilized" and "uncivilized" is one way in which the dialectic of domination has been perpetuated through history. As with any other form of racism, the humanity of those who are imagined as "uncivilized" is negated. In contemporary Western society,
"terrorists", who are identified with Arab peoples and Islam, become an objective embodiment of evil against which the "Western" imperialist self is set.
15 Samuel Huntington. "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs ; Summer 1993; 72, 3. (22-49)
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