European civilization is defined as the accumulated sum of its productive acts.

Evidence

“European history” thus becomes a history of continuously productive actions defining as well as defined by law. Property is central to that story not only in the sense familiar to political economy and jurisprudence, but in the sense of the particular character, nature, or essence of a person or thing. It is a story that can be narrated in terms of improvement and accumulation, in which the industrial revolution is merely one (albeit central) moment. According to this conception, “European civilization” is simply the sum of properties, all those material and moral acts that define European identity. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 814

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: why ‘civilization’ is always narrated as accumulation — the West’s self-concept as property rather than place or people.