4.1 Introduction

Unlike the three spaces discussed earlier in part two, civilizational spaces do not necessarily have an institutional structure or exclusive geographical marking. They derive their power due to their legitimation in the eyes of their communities and individuals belonging to them. With the rise of modern national states, civilizations were relegated to a back seat. With the exception of the Chines Civilization of all other major civilizations of the world have emerged from strong religious traditions. Consequently, modern national states which rest on the principle of secularism look upon any political role of civilizations with a degree of suspicion. Views are however split on whether civilizations person ‘political agency’ any longer.

Religious tradition lies at the heart of civilizations whose political agency was eclipsed by the rise of secularism and the growth of atheism in modern times.

They inspire a source of community, deeper and possibly longer lasting than the source of community inspired by the motivation state. This is one reason why the discussion on ‘Civilizations’ was revived with the onset of the contemporary upsurge of what has been called a ‘globalized’ world. This upsurge unites the underlying detection of multiple identities and communities. The lid imposed on it during the period of ‘one identity has been lifted. Ad dialectic is socially permissible.

It is however interceding that during the period of ‘One identity’ ideology, atheism or belief in ‘no religion’ has emerged as a universal civilization in its own right, it is somewhat comparable to Christianity and Islam and certain other features to which we shall turn later in the chapter, the tradition of ‘no religion’ was forcefully promoted by the Soviet Union and its allies from their inception and during the cold war period. The largest among the forced converts to a no-religion ideology was China. Interestingly the ‘no religion’ tradition in China has outlasted its disassociation with the Soviet System and its version of communism, partly because of the historic uniqueness to what is religiosity in the entire ‘Sonic’ population of Asia. We shall turn to that later in the chapter.

In many ways the space of civilization as an arena of power play, possessing political agency, remains the most enigmatic among all our four spaces of power, the other three being geo-administrative national spaces of politico-military engagements. Lacking any conceptual agreement on what civilizations are, we find it best to proceed with the subject of civilizations in an empirical fashion and infer a definition. After all, the reality behind the entire subject is an untenable blend of the ‘concept’ and its ‘empirics’.

EMPIRICAL DELINEATION OF CIVILIZATIONS OF RELIGIONS AND ATHEISM:

Worldwide census data or other forums of enumeration tell us that 85% of the world population self identifies itself as belonging to a religion. Another 15% actively deny their association with any religion and identify themselves as people of ‘no religion’. There could of course be some exceptions and ambiguities. Nevertheless, that is how the vast majority of the world’s population self-identify themselves. Among those who self-identify with a religion, 70% identify with three religions in vest numbers, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. These three are followed by Buddhism and what gets broadly characterized as ‘Local Religions’. A simple but meaningful enumeration of the world sums up the picture as below.

Table # 1 Self-identification with religiously rooted CIVILIZATIONS

NO COMMON DEFINITION FOR ‘WHAT IS A SPACE FOR POWER-PLAY

Part two of our short book deals with four spaces of power: National State zones, Economic Zones, Politico-military Zones, and Civilizational Zones. It assumes, as part of the intellectual tradition in which the book is written, that we will not impose a common or standardized definition of what is ‘space’ on all the four. While three are some commonalities compelling us to group them together and imposed uniformity will defeat the purpose. Our objective is to facilitate an ‘open-ended’ discourse, quite different from the struggle to assemble a machine, a precision tool, composed of and generating standardized parts, commands and products. Despite the common nomenclature, we treat the subject of each chapter. This prefatory remark is necessary for what is to come in the next section.

CIVILIZATION ARE NOT DEFINITIONALLY ‘REDUCIBLE’ TO STATES; AND VICE VERSA

We have briefly touched upon the subject of states and civilizations earlier in this chapter. The two terms were mentioned together to make the point that as the ‘one identity’ role of the national state second to enter its possible ‘sunset’, a discourse on alternative and multiple identities opened. The discourse was triggered by Samuel Huntington, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, His Foreign Affairs journal article (1993) and a subsequent book (1996) were considered as having path-breaking prospects by some and flawed with no prospect of a head for his intellectual argument on the subject by others. In retrospect, it reflected parts of both prospects. It was path-breaking because it jolted the ‘one identity’ framework of the nation-state; it was somewhat infertile because it stopped short of defining and studying civilizations as independent from the conceptual category of the nation-state. As a category of the broader field of political authority or power-play, Huntington’s reductionist definition of civilization comes close to treating civilizations as ‘mega=states’ at the other end of the spectrum of national states such as the micro-states Leichestein, Bermuda and others.

The broad lesson brunt by us is that the unit ‘Civilization’ is not reducible to be treated as another kind or class in the genre of national states. It is a different genre in the genres of identities, and its inclusion in our toolkit of understanding the process of power-play or agency, pre-supposes the legitimacy of multiple identities, which co-exist alongside each other rather than being stacked hierarchically. This goes against the grain of the modern administrative national state.

National states, economic zones and politico-military zones can be described through formal organograms. This is less true for civilizations. Once again, this prefatory note is important to be recognized before including ‘Civilizations’ as a space for power-play alongside the other three spaces described in this part of the book.

LIMITATION OF INCLUDING CIVILIZATION AS A UNIT IN A BAROMETER OF FACTS:

Any empirical discussion on civilizations through numerically measurable units has several limitations and qualifications. The following section on examples based on the G & G Global Barometer of Facts and Opinions should therefore be read within the context of those limitations.

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