The Nature of Civilizations

Civilizations and world-systems: studyng world-historical change, ed. Stephen K. Sanderson, Alta Mira Press, 1995, p. 25-45
Valiant attempts to define and describe giant cultures have become familiar in the 20th century. Spongier, Toynbee, Sorokin, and Kroeber have each offered impressive systems involving the conception of a number of exclusive, durable, mortal macrocultures that have come to be called "civilizations. " That these attempts have aroused considerable interest derives, no doubt, from a feeling that our own civilization might be facing the possibility of coming to an end, of "dying" if you will, as others apparently have in the past.