Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions

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 Kreji: 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

Johann P. Arnason, Dr.Habil. (1975) in Sociology, University of Bielefeld, is Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has published extensively on social theory and historical sociology, including Social Theory and Japanese Experience: The Dual Civilization (Kegan Paul International, 1997).

"'This is a rare and unusual manuscript of breathtaking scholarship, written by a senior scholar in full command of his field. Arnason seeks nothing less than to legitimate the study of civilizations as an independent realm of scholarly inquiry---and succeeds masterfully.'