The first goal of the last in the series of articles called “Civilization as process” is to show how the notion of civilization was saved in academic discourse from being fully associated with imperialism and racism. While the text reconstructs how it happened, it nonetheless stresses that the doubts about the use of the term “civilization” in research have remained, even once its value-free, descriptive meaning was shaped. Essentialism based on racist and classificatory grounds still haunts civilizational studies, as can be seen in the scope and intensity of debate accompanying Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1997), which has been accused of essentialism. In reaction to the spectacular but also dangerous theses by Huntington, theoretical inquiry into the notion of civilization has deepened, preparing the ground for contemporary resurgence in the academic discourse of civilization in singular – as a multivalent social process.

One of the possible understandings of the notion, arguably especially useful today – civilization as “pacification of the social” – is discussed in the final part of this essay. To make this discussion possible, the classic substantialist and pluralistic theory, especially as formulated by Koneczny, is analysed, and then the dynamization of the concept in Sorokin, Nelson, Braudel and Eisenstadt is discussed, leading to an introduction to the currently dominant paradigm in civilizational analysis that is the theory of civilizational identities. The article shows that the latter is not the final step in the development of civilizational theory but rather the reverse.

The first goal of the last in the series of articles called “Civilization as process” is to show how the notion of civilization was saved in academic discourse from being fully associated with imperialism and racism. While the text reconstructs how it happened, it nonetheless stresses that the doubts about the use of the term “civilization” in research have remained, even once its value-free, descriptive meaning was shaped. Essentialism based on racist and classificatory grounds still haunts civilizational studies, as can be seen in the scope and intensity of debate accompanying Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1997), which has been accused of essentialism. In reaction to the spectacular but also dangerous theses by Huntington, theoretical inquiry into the notion of civilization has deepened, preparing the ground for contemporary resurgence in the academic discourse of civilization in singular – as a multivalent social process.

One of the possible understandings of the notion, arguably especially useful today – civilization as “pacification of the social” – is discussed in the final part of this essay. To make this discussion possible, the classic substantialist and pluralistic theory, especially as formulated by Koneczny, is analysed, and then the dynamization of the concept in Sorokin, Nelson, Braudel and Eisenstadt is discussed, leading to an introduction to the currently dominant paradigm in civilizational analysis that is the theory of civilizational identities. The article shows that the latter is not the final step in the development of civilizational theory but rather the reverse.