Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface -- Acknowledgements -- 1. The Rediscovery of Civilizations -- 1.1 Civilizational claims and counter-claims -- 1.2 Legacies and trajectories -- 1.3 Civilization and modernity -- 1.4 Rethinking basic concepts -- 2. Classical Sources -- 2.1 Durkheim and Mauss: The sociological concept of civilization -- 2.2 Max Weber: The comparative history of civilizations -- 2.3 From Spengler to Borkenau: Civilizational cycles and transitions -- 3. Patterns and Processes -- 3.1 Exits and openings -- 3.2 Benjamin Nelson: Civilizational contents and intercivilizational encounters -- 3.3 S.N. Eisenstadt: Civilizational breakthroughs and dynamics -- 3.4 Jaroslav Krejí: Civilizations as paradigms of the human condition -- 4. Meaning, Power and Wealth: Changing Constellations -- 4.1 Domains and dimensions of socio-cultural analysis -- 4.2 Theorizing civilizations -- 4.3 Configurations of meaning, I: Cultural articulations of the world -- 4.4 Configurations of meaning, II: Religious traditions and civilizational trajectories -- 4.5 Institutional patterns, I: Politics and ideology -- 4.6 Institutional patterns, II: The historical forms of economic life -- 4.7 Culture, institution and organization: The case of science -- 4.8 Intercivilizational encounters -- 4.9 Civilizational groupings -- 4.10 Traditions in transformation -- 4.11 Civilizations and regions.

The growing interest in civilizations, both on the level of political controversy ("the clash of civilizations") and in the context of scholarly debates, calls for more theoretical reflection on the problems and perspectives central to this field of social inquiry. This book contains the first systematical and critical survey of classical and contemporary approaches to comparative civilizational analysis; it goes on to outline a theoretical model that draws on the work of historical sociologists as well as on comparative cultural and intellectual history. Civilizations are analyzed as multi-dimensional formations, with particular emphasis on cultural orientations, but also on the autonomous dynamics of political and economic institutions. The last chapter applies this line of argument to questions raised by critics of Eurocentrism and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of postcolonial theory.

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