Origins of the concept

Like its sister concept, culture, ‘civilization’ is one of the major constructs to have been born of the Enlightenment project, although arguably it has its roots in the great voyages of discovery made by the Europeans from the late fifteenth century onwards, which is arguably when the notion of what it means to be ‘civilized’ first begins to become apparent.

More easily described than defined, and more amenable to connotation than denotation, the term ‘civilization’ remains semantically problematic some three centuries after its first regular usage in academic circles. It is in the 18th century that the word first appears in a form that would be recognisable to us today. Emerging in France in intellectual circles, ‘civilization’ appeared as a word which carried a mixture of empirical and polemical meanings, and which from the outset was pregnant with strong ideological connotations. It referred to something that was, particularly to those who helped to give birth to the concept and nurture its growth, plainly observable: namely the fact that people like themselves, who comprised the nation’s elite, lived and behaved according to norms and standards which were very different from those of the warrior elites of the earlier ages or the artisans and peasants of their own time.

These standards, which included manners of speech, judgement and conduct in general, represented a particular way of living – something that today we might call a ‘lifestyle’ – that was different from, and by implication superior to, that of the ‘other’. This way of life was deemed ‘civilized’ and indicated ‘civilization’. Moreover, in addition to the obvious empirical connotations, the term also carried clear normative and polemic overtones. For those who used the term, ‘civilization’ represented a thing of value: to be ‘civilized’ was an attainment that was both a badge of honour and a mark of superiority. This evaluative meaning of the term was brought into focus most dramatically by its typical opposites, namely ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’.