The Paths of Civilization Understanding the Currents of History [Paperback]

This work spans the development of civilizations from their remotest origins to the present day. It examines the term 'civilization' with reference to culture, socio-economic structure, ethnicity and statehood. Socio-economic scenarios help the reader to explore the ways in which individual civilizations - through world views, styles of life and responses to the environment that each bear their own signature - struggle, merge, submerge in the flow of the currents of history.PART I: THE GLOBAL COMPREHENSION OF HISTORY The Choice of the Point of Departure The Concept of Civilization Civilization - Reality and Perception A Spatio-Temporal Outline of Civilizations Social Formations as Structures of Civilizations Structures and Ideas The Geopolitical Formations PART II: SOCIO-HISTORICAL SCENARIOS By Way of an Introduction The Levant South and South-East Asia Eastern Asia Europe PART III: GENERAL OBSERVATIONS The Turning Points on the Map of Civilizations The Varieties of the Human Condition Metahistorical Trends and Outlooks Appendix: A Short Note on Karl Marx, Max Weber and Arnold Toynbee

[T]his book may be characterized as historical sociology informed by theory, sensitive to ideas, and enriched by a lively, provocative intelligence... Recommended. - CHOICE

JAROSLAV KREJC? was born in 1916 in what, two years later, became Czechoslovakia. After studying law and economics at the Charles University in Prague he was employed in the State's economic institutions. As his views clashed with those of the Czechoslovakian communist regime he was made a political prisoner (1954-60). In 1968 (The Prague Spring) he returned to academic work. When the Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia, Krej??, with his wife Anna, went into exile and settled in England, where Lancaster University awarded him, in 1976, a full professorship and, in 2000, an honorary doctorate for literature. Since 1990 he has also been active in the Czech republic; in 1998 President Vaclav Halƒ…