Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations hypothesis: challenges from Amartya Sen and the Western South Asian post-immigrant experience

Samuel Huntington ... contends that civilization identities in our modern world are fundamentally based on major divisions of cultural identity. According to Huntington, a resurgence in cultural identities is reinforcing cultural differences leading to a world characterized by culturally-based civilizational divisions, and a clash of civilization . As a counterpoint, Amartya Sen ..., a Nobel Laureate in Economics, also recognizes the pervasive nature of cultural divisions that are instigating violence and clashes but analyzes and advocates remedies to future, culturally-based clashes. In this project, I explore Huntington and Sen's ideas related to cultural transformation as they pertain to the clash of civilizations hypothesis. Their ideas are compared to three case studies derived from the existing social science literature related to Western South Asian post-immigrant experiences. I offer answers to the following questions: What are Samuel Huntington's and Amartya Sen's conceptualizations of cultural transformation? How well do these conceptualizations apply to the experience of post-immigrants? And does their ability to explain (or not explain) the post-immigrant experience reinforce or weaken the case for a clash of civilizations? In the end, I found that Sen's work best characterizes and explains the post-immigrant experience, and that this calls into doubt the validity of the clash of civilizations hypothesis.