Civilisation

A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).

Civilizations are intimately associated with additional characteristics such as centralization, the domestication of plant and animal species (including humans), specialization of labour, culturally-ingrained ideologies of progress, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming, and expansionism.

Historically, a civilization has often been understood as a larger and "more advanced" culture, in implied contrast to smaller, supposedly less advanced cultures. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists, Neolithic societies or hunter-gatherers; however, sometimes it also contrasts with the cultures found within civilizations themselves. Civilizations are organized densely-populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.

Civilization, as its etymology suggests, is a concept originally associated with towns and cities. The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally connected with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution in West Asia, culminating in the relatively rapid process of urban revolution and state-formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite.

History of the concept

The English word ''civilization'' comes from the 16th-century French ''civilisé'' ("civilized"), from Latin ''civilis'' ("civil"), related to ''civis'' ("citizen") and ''civitas'' ("city"). The fundamental treatise is Norbert Elias's '' The Civilizing Process'' (1939), which traces social mores from medieval courtly society to the Early Modern period.It remains the most influential sociological study of the topic, spawning its own body of secondary literature. Notably, Hans Peter Duerr attacked it in a major work (3,500 pages in five volumes, published 1988–2002). Elias, at the time a nonagenarian, was still able to respond to the criticism the year before his death. In 2002, Duerr was himself criticized by Michael Hinz's ''Der Zivilisationsprozeß: Mythos oder Realität'' (2002), saying that his criticism amounted to hateful defamation of Elias, through excessive standards of political correctness. '' Der Spiegel'
40/2002
In ''The Philosophy of Civilization'' (1923), Albert Schweitzer outlines two opinions: one purely material and the other material and ethical. He said that the world crisis was from humanity losing the ethical idea of civilization, "the sum total of all progress made by man in every sphere of action and from every point of view in so far as the progress helps towards the spiritual perfecting of individuals as the progress of all progress".Albert Schweitzer. The Philosophy of Civilization, trans. C.T. Campion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987), p. 91.

Related words like "civility" developed in the mid-16th century. The abstract noun "civilization", meaning "civilized condition", came in the 1760s, again from French. The first known use in French is in 1757, by Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, and the first use in English is attributed to Adam Ferguson, who in his 1767 ''Essay on the History of Civil Society'' wrote, "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation".Cited after Émile Benveniste, ''Civilisation. Contribution à l'histoire du mot'' (''Civilisation. Contribution to the history of the word''), 1954, published in ''Problèmes de linguistique générale'', Éditions Gallimard, 1966, pp. 336–345 (translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek as ''Problems in general linguistics'', 2 vols., 1971). The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active pursuit of progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the French Revolution, "civilization" was used in the singular, never in the plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French. The use of "civilizations" as a countable noun was in occasional use in the 19th century,E.g. in the title ''A narrative of the loss of the Winterton East Indiaman wrecked on the coast of Madagascar in 1792; and of the sufferings connected with that event. To which is subjoined a short account of the natives of Madagascar, with suggestions as to their civilizations'' by J. Hatchard, L.B. Seeley and T. Hamilton, London, 1820. but has become much more common in the later 20th century, sometimes just meaning culture (itself in origin an uncountable noun, made countable in the context of ethnography)."Civilization" (1974), ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' 15th ed. Vol. II, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 956. Retrieved 25 August 2007. Using the terms "civilization" and "culture" as equivalents are controversial and generally rejected so that for example some types of culture are not normally described as civilizations. Only in this generalized sense does it become possible to speak of a "medieval civilization", which in Elias's sense would have been an oxymoron.

Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture and civilization is from the writings of Rousseau, particularly his work about education, '' Emile''. Here, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accord with human nature, and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or approximation to an original discursive or prerational natural unity" (see noble savage). From this, a new approach was developed, especially in Germany, first by Johann Gottfried Herder and later by philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. This sees cultures as natural organisms, not defined by "conscious, rational, deliberative acts", but a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit". Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in material progress, is unnatural and leads to "vices of social life" such as guile, hypocrisy, envy and avarice. In World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behind Nazism and German militarism and nihilism.On German Nihilism
(1999, originally a 1941 lecture), ''Interpretation'' 26, no. 3 edited by David Janssens and Daniel Tanguay.

Characteristics

Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society.Gordon Childe, V., ''What Happened in History'' (Penguin, 1942) and ''Man Makes Himself'' (Harmondsworth, 1951). Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy and other cultural traits. Andrew Nikiforuk argues that "civilizations relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities" and considers slavery to be a common feature of pre-modern civilizations.

All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence, with the possible exception of some early civilizations in Peru which may have depended upon maritime resources.

The traditional "surplus model" postulates that cereal farming results in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificial fertilization, irrigation and crop rotation. It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural production, and so civilizations based on horticultural gardening have been very rare.Hadjikoumis; Angelos, Robinson; and Sarah Viner-Daniels (Eds) (2011), "Dynamics of Neolithisation in Europe: Studies in honour of Andrew Sherratt" (Oxbow Books) Grain surpluses have been especially important because grain can be stored for a long time.

A research from the Journal of Political Economy contradicts the surplus model. It postulates that horticultural gardening was more productive than cereal farming. However, only cereal farming produced civilization because of the appropriability of yearly harvest. Rural populations that could only grow cereals could be taxed allowing for a taxing elite and urban development. This also had a negative effect on rural population, increasing relative agricultural output per farmer. Farming efficiency created food surplus and sustained the food surplus through decreasing rural population growth in favour of urban growth. Suitability of highly productive roots and tubers was in fact a curse of plenty, which prevented the emergence of states and impeded economic development.

A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides producing food for a living: early civilizations included soldiers, artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labour and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations. However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture. It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labour predates plant and animal domestication.

Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word "civilization" is sometimes defined as "living in cities'''".Tom Standage (2005), ''A History of the World in 6 Glasses'', Walker & Company, 25. Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade.

Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified
than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried

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