Political discourse often centers on the idea that civilizations are unitary, with a single tradition or set of values. Such simplification is frequent in political analyses, but also can be detrimental, said government professor Peter Katzenstein Feb. 22 in Kaufmann Auditorium.

Katzenstein, the Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International Studies, presented the second lecture in a series sponsored by Cornell's Institute for Comparative Modernities. In his talk, "Civilizations in World Politics: Beyond East and West," he presented two opposing theories of civilizations, pluralist and unitary.

In the pluralist view, civilizations are seen in a global context that "influences them without robbing them of their distinctiveness," Katzenstein said. The unitary view, in contrast, proposes a society "organized hierarchically around a system of uncontested core values" as standards for good conduct.

Simplifications like these are useful in some situations and "almost unavoidable in moments of extreme threat or war," he said, because they allow us to focus on "what divides us from our enemies and what unites us with our friends."

He cautioned against the problems that stem from labeling nations as simply belonging to East or West and creating "binary, totalistic entities" that are completely united and integrated. To refute the unitary theory, he used the United States and China.

He reflected on the Jeffersonian and Madisonian traditions of early America as marks of pluralism. He then explained that China and the United States are similar in that neither has a single core of uncontested values, as stipulated by the unitary tradition. Rather, each country "experiences conflict over contested truth, reflecting its internal pluralism and external context."

He reiterated that the pluralist view highlights "shifting balances of practices, rather than shifting balances of power," which are characterized by an "exchange of cultural material" and hybridization. He also noted that "clashes" between civilizations, as political scientist Samuel Huntington describes them are rare.

"Our world of civilizations is, for the most part, characterized by intercivilizational encounters and transcivilizational engagements, and only very rarely by transcivilizational clashes," he said.

He cited China's influence on its neighbors as an example. South Korea, Vietnam and Japan chose to emulate effective practices from China in managing their own affairs and were not coerced by China into doing so, Katzenstein said.

He compared China to "a very large man rolling over in a very small bathtub. In doing so, that man creates some very big waves and cannot help but make a mess on the bathroom floor that may affect his neighbors," he said.

Katzenstein spoke repeatedly of the "combinatorial richness of civilizational politics" that results from pluralist traditions. He warned that we should "resist the temptation of simplification" and instead "embrace the intellectual political opportunities [of] our multicivilizational world."

Katzenstein, a Weiss Presidential fellow, is the author of "Civilizations in World Politics: Plural and Pluralist Perspectives" (Routledge, 2010), and author or editor of more than 30 books. His research interests include international security, international law, political economy, and European and Asian politics.

Olivia Fecteau '11 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.