The clasp of civilizations

One of the greatest challenges of our times is how to view and to handle diversity – religious, cultural, gender, or whatever. Are our differences a potential source of conflict or of strength? Should we seek to protect, for example, endangered languages and cultures or accept that the future lies in the increasing homogenization of humanity?   These are some of the questions addressed in Richard Hartz’s new book The Clasp of Civilizations: Globalization and Religion in a Multicultural World. The title, of course, refers to Samuel Huntingdon’s  influential book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, in which Huntingdon argues that future conflicts would most likely occur because of the ‘clash’ of the values of different civilizations, noting that the most likely conflicts would be between the West and Islam or China.   Hartz believes that Huntingdon overstates the distinctiveness of different cultures, noting that there is no su...
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