The River of Inter-civilisational Relations: the ebb and flow of peoples, ideas and innovations

Brett Bowden

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

    Abstract

    As a tool for understanding the world in which we live the study of the history of political thought is stunted because of a preoccupation with the Western canon as the history of political thought to the exclusion of other histories and traditions. This ongoing exclusion is itself facilitated by a deeply entrenched select reading of the Western canon; a reading that overlooks a tendency within the canon to not just ignore but suppress and dismiss the value of other accounts of history and traditions of thought. An opening of the Western mind to these assumed to be alien traditions of social, legal and political thought reveals that, in the global market place of ideas, these purportedly competing and non-compatible traditions of thought might in fact have considerably more in common than what sets them apart: thus opening the way for an authentic inter-civilisational dialogue that focuses more on co-operation and less on clashes.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1359 - 1374
    JournalThird World Quarterly
    Volume28
    Issue number7
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2007

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