The Antinomies of Samuel P. Huntington: Some Anthropological Reflections on the American Pundit (Critical Essay‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Sweeping generalizations on sociocultural phenomena of the sort made by influential political scientist Samuel Huntington exhibit a proclivity toward representing the globe in terms of analytical categories devised without adequate attention to inter- as well as intra-cultural specificities. Huntington's simplistic and politically-motivated conceptualizations of such notions as culture, globalization, and undue reifications of ethnonyms (challenging Hispanics, bellicose Muslims etc.) distort the reality on the ground. His-probably unconscious- trespasses into what is arguably the most anthropological of all issues studied by anthropologists -kinship- in the context of his search at the macropolitical level for perennial roots of collective violence are even more questionable. With his hypothesis that the globe is composed of cultures/civilizations each of which a) is complete unto itself with neatly identifiable borders-imaginary or otherwise- and b) legitimizes amicable relations with others only on the basis of civilizational same- or similar-kindness, the political scientist poses himself as a globalization theorist, culture theorist, and kinship theorist simultaneously.