1 - Introduction

Summary

The cultural influence of one people upon another requires no military occupation, nor the labours of missionaries, not even the peregrinations of hawkers and other traders.

Jan Knappert, Myths and Folklore in Southeast Asia (1999: 4)

In considering the imprint of cultural contacts, and the undoubted fact that ideas are imported along with goods, there is a need to develop a more supple language of causal connection than source and imitation, original and copy. The transfer of cultural forms produces a redistribution of imaginative energies, alters in some way a pre-existent field of force. The result is usually not so much an utterly new product as the development or evolution of a familiar matrix.

Stanley J. O'Connor, The Archaeology of Peninsular Siam (1986: 7)

Understanding the impact of world views on general politics or foreign policy would require a broader comparative study of cultures.

Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Chan (1993: 9)

The interaction among civilizations, including the flow of ideas, culture, and institutions, among them, is increasingly recognized as a powerful force which has shaped world history and still shapes the contemporary international order. (Katzenstein 2010). Since the time Samuel Huntington's “clash of civilizations” thesis appeared (Goldstein and Keohane 1993; Huntington 1993; Huntington 1996), scholars in the social sciences and humanities have debated a number of questions concerning the diffusion of ideas. What is the relationship between ideas and power? Can there be any power in ideas without them being the ideas of the powerful? Do ideas spread peacefully? Where do local actors borrow foreign ideas from and what role do they play in the spread of ideas? And why do some ideas get accepted in a foreign locale while others do not? Do ideas always clash as Huntington suggests? Or do they also converge? What permissive conditions facilitate the convergence of civilizations?