Yesterday Today Tomorrow

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WORLD CIVILIZATIONS AND HISTORY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT –Global Civilization—Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - David Wilkinson GLOBAL CIVILIZATION—YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW David Wilkinson Department of Political Science, UCLA, USA. Keywords: Civilization, Central civilization, global civilization, globalization. Contents U SA N M ES PL C E O– CE HO AP L TE SS R S 1. Introduction 2. What is "a Civilization"? 3. Once There Were Many: A Partial Roster of Civilizations 4. Now One Remains: The Emergence of a Single Global Civilization 5. The Unification Process 6. What was the Advantage of Central Civilization? And of its "West"? 7. Was the Actual Course of the Globalization of Civilization Inevitable? 8. The Dialogues of Civilizations 9. Challenges for a Global Civilization 10. Conclusion Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketch Summary In defining "a civilization" we are forced to choose between a definition based upon cultural homogeneity and transactional-network connectivity. In fact, only the network concept is viable. Civilizations are strongly connected politico-military networks of cities; they are also heterogeneous, culturally pluralistic. For most of the past of civilization, there coexisted several such civilizations; today there is only one civilization on the face of the earth. Like its predecessors, it is a multicultural citynetwork; unlike them, it is of global scope. The many became one by way of growth processes, encounters, collisions and fusions, generally involving violence. Certain problems observed in the present monocivilizational globe have precedents in the pasts of its predecessors whose study might prove helpful: climate shifts, plagues and environmental devastations come sharply to mind. 1. Introduction Despite theories of a "clash of civilizations" (S. Huntington) or programs for a

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