Author: Rakhmonberdiev, Islombek; Aliyev, B.A.

Annotation: The subject of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” has sparked much discussion. Huntington argues that post-Cold War conflicts are primarily about civilization. This article uses a data set from an at-risk minority group to bring a quantitative element to the civilization debate, which until now has largely relied on anecdotal claims. This article focuses on the question of whether both the number and intensity of ethnic conflicts between groups belonging to different civilizations have increased since the end of the Cold War. Overall, the analysis identifies several problems with Huntington’s argument. First, Huntington's classification of civilizations is difficult to implement. Second, civilizational conflict is a minority of ethnic conflict. Third, the conflict between the West and China/Confucianism and Islamic civilization, which Huntington predicted would be the most important conflict of the post-Cold War era, constitutes a minority of civilizational conflicts. Finally, there is no statistically significant evidence that the intensity of inter-civilizational ethnic conflicts has increased relative to other types of ethnic conflicts since the end of the Cold War.

Keywords: Civilization, civilizational consciousness, social consciousness, culture, religion, lingua franca, paradigm

Pages in journal: 722 - 727