The Heterarchic Umma: Reading Islamic Civilization from Within

Abstract

International Relations (IR) has been struggling with civilizations for well over a decade now. Samuel Huntington’s infamous contribution aside, IR theory has been replete with debates about the role of culture and identity in world politics (Lapid and Kratochwil, 1996; Mazrui, 1990). The advent of critical, poststructural, and constructivist theories of IR sought to emphasize the importance of ideational factors and the processes through which diverse actors build intersubjective meaning (Der Derian, 1989; Onuf, 1989; Wendt, 1992). Others have mined the vein of historical sociology by way of exploring the contemporary relevance of civilizational analysis (Cox, 2002; Puchala, 1997). No account, however, has captured the popular imagination in quite the same way as Huntington’s (1998) pithy story of civilizations in clash. Averitable cottage industry has emerged around efforts to refute Huntington (1996). Some point out that his cultural blocs are artificially bounded, insufficiently dynamic, and bear little resemblance to actually existing formations in the world. Others point out that he has simply reproduced the structural logic of state-based realism at a higher order of affiliation: gargantuan billiards balls pursuing power—defined, perhaps, in terms of something like “civilizational interest”—in an anarchical system.