[BRIEF NOTE] On Clashes of Civilizations
Feb. 20th, 2006 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLast week ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
imomus wrote that the controversy over the Danish cartoons made him believe that Samuel Huntington was right about the impending clashes of civilizations. Who am I to disagree? All that I can say is that there are plenty of situations in which metrics apart from his primordial religious definitions define allegiances--Romanians' affinity for the Latin world, say, or Argentines' origins in western and southern Europe, or the strength of Ukrainian nationalism outside Catholic circles, or the interest of Francophone Maghrebins in la francophonie--and say that these differences only matter when people want them to matter in certain specific ways and in certain circumstances. Otherwise, they need not matter at all.
imomus wrote that the controversy over the Danish cartoons made him believe that Samuel Huntington was right about the impending clashes of civilizations. Who am I to disagree? All that I can say is that there are plenty of situations in which metrics apart from his primordial religious definitions define allegiances--Romanians' affinity for the Latin world, say, or Argentines' origins in western and southern Europe, or the strength of Ukrainian nationalism outside Catholic circles, or the interest of Francophone Maghrebins in la francophonie--and say that these differences only matter when people want them to matter in certain specific ways and in certain circumstances. Otherwise, they need not matter at all.
