Civilisation: A Critical and Constructive Review

Abstract

Civilisation has for many decades been a rejected concept in anthropology and sociology because of its past evolutionary and Eurocentric misuses. Our reason for reintroducing it is that it will enable us to go beyond the narrow confines of time and space to which culture and society have been restricted and to raise our eyes to see the relations of societies and cultures to each other on a larger scale. In this chapter we will show how we can do this without the assumption of unilinear evolution and without Euro- or any other ethnocentrism.