The word, "civilization" is barely heard. Civilization might be part of a renaissance formalism, including dance, manners, architecture, poetry and "rational" thought. One view is that WW1 broke apart civilization, and now we have a collage of a huge number of fragments to which we adapt, domesticated rather than civilized.

A well connected world of ethnic enclaves?

Spengler speculated that all large empires must turn militaristic, because any sign of weakness and they will be torn apart from within and without. He is officially ignored. Toynbee used Civilization as the core species for historical analysis. But if the collage image is right, there are ways of surviving that are not civilizations.

Armesto has written a series of books recently on civilization that raise very profound questions. Mumford's view that civilization leads to the mega-machine is part of the questioning: wither are we going?

An interesting American essay is the chapter is Adams The  "The Virgin and the Dynamo" in his Education, , showing the shift from a religious to an industrial society.

Less well know is Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden, a look at this theme in American literature.