Debating Civilizations : Interrogating Civilizational Analysis in a Global Age

It is said that when an American reporter asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilisation, he responded: 'It would be a nice idea'.In this book Jeremy Smith interrogates debates on Civilizational Analysis both in its classical iteration, with discussions of Toynbee and Spengler, to its post Cold war iterations in the work of Huntington and Eisenstadt, to the third generation of scholars now engaging with these debates, notably Johann Arnason .The book offers a a state of the art reflection on, and extension of, Civilizational Analysis for the Global Age.

It is distinctive in its inclusion of non-Western traditions, and critiques including debates from The Arab world, Japan and Latin America.

It will be essential reading for students and scholars of postcolonial theory, global sociology and anthropology.