A THEORY OF CIVILIZATION

YILMAZ ÖZAKPINAR

ABSTRACT

In the literature of sociology and cultural anthropology there is a multitude of definitions
of culture and civilization. Most definitions are in terms of elements of culture.
These definitions are alike or different from each other according to what elements
are included in the concepts of culture and civilization. In general, the elements like
customs, attitudes, life style and mentality, folklore, works of art, religious beliefs are
included in the definitions of culture. Culture is the way of life of a particular society. The
definition of civilization, on the other hand, includes material and technical products,
organizational rules and formal institutional aspects of societies. Civilization may be
common to many societies with their distinctive cultures. British and American social
anthropologists held that all peoples have a culture. Even a most primitive people must
have developed a culture by sheer biological necessity. In this context, these scholars use
the term civilization only for peoples who have developed a high level of culture, who
have literacy, who are advanced in scientific achievements, and who have developed high
technology and an elaborate social organization. Henri Frankfort says that the terms
culture and civilization are generally used interchangeably and adds that any distinction
between them is bound to be somehow arbitrary. Ruth Benedict sees the way of life of a
society, which we call culture, as a selection from available possibilities. These thoughts
remind the dictum of the Gestalt psychologists, “the whole is more than the addition of
pieces” that is called the “Gestaltqualitaet”. This is a very convincing intuition, but what
we really need is a theory explicitly stating what this Gestalt quality is and giving us
predictions of empirical observations in the field.