Culture: The Focus Of Identity And Clash In Post-cold War Age

The end of cold war has disturbed major theories of international politics. Neo-realism and neo-liberalism which consist of the mainstream discourse of international politics neither forecasted the result of the end of cold war nor explained how it happened according to their own theoretical construction. In order to adapt the change of world and to understand the characteristics of the post-cold war age, many scholars developed a series of new theories and perspectives. Under this trend of intellectual innovation, Samuel P. Huntington. the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University, who is one of the most famous American political scientists, proposed the theory of "clash of civilizations." He inherited the intellectual tradition of "civilization history" from Oswald Spengler to Arnold Joseph Toynbee and brought their insights into the reality of international politics. By doing so, he found that culture will replace ideology to become the focus of the formation of political identities and of clash in the post-cold war age. This article tries to make a full scan and critical review of Huntington's theory of "clash of civilizations" under the background of intellectual history study. The paper is structured into the following parts:The Part 1 is an introduction that provides a brief portrait of Samuel P. Huntington and his academic achievement.The Part 2 mainly examines the origin of the theory of "clash of civilizations" and also gives a retrospective account of intellectual history of this theoretical tradition, which is intent to illustrate the development and the corresponding research background of Huntington's contribution.The Part 3 offers a key analysis of the theory of "clash of civilizations" in three aspects. First, it describes the main content of this theory, secondly, explains the innovativeness of the theory as a new paradigm by making a comparison with other paradigms and examining the inter-paradigm debates in the field of international politics, and thirdly explicates the fundamental significance of this new paradigm in the international politics theory system.The Part 4 summarizes the scholarly debates on the theory of "clash of civilizations". The article takes the event of 9-11 as the boundary that divides the whole debate process into two stages and correspondingly introduces Chinese scholars" critical reviews of this theory. There are two main goals that this article tries to achieve. One is to elaborate comprehensively the meanings and scholarly value of the theory of "clash of civilizations" in terms of intellectual history and the other is to comprehend and grasp Huntington's view that "culture is the focus of identity and clash in the post-cold war age" in the way of critical reflection.