The Factor of Culture in the Global International Order

Abstract

Anthropology, science of culture, once took a definition of the Eliot kind as a description of what it was about: Culture or civilisation, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. The idea that one might borrow the methods of the writers on political culture to shed light on the place of culture in international affairs is a formal one about procedure. The preservation of the integrity or authenticity of a local culture might be invoked, but merely for propagandistic purposes, so that a better bargain might be struck in any negotiations. An international political culture characterised by attitudes and values that are, in the cant word, moderate, stands in constant danger of being overwhelmed from the edges of politics.