Societies without culture?

It's hard to be sure that this is indeed what he is saying because he says it so obliquely. But Terry Eagleton appears to take the view that the 'contrast (as he puts this) between west and east' is one between civilization and culture, a contrast that he maps on to the 'conflict between civilization and barbarism' - though I can't help thinking that he must be using this latter phrase in an inverted-commas way, as not belonging in his own mouth, but the preoccupation of others. In any case, here's the contrast:

Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and arational. It is no surprise, then, to find that we have civilisation whereas they have culture.

And the problem then, as he sees it, is that civilization needs culture in order to subsist. If it isn't rooted in a common way of life which ordinary people embrace as their own, it will have no authority and power to survive. Quite apart from anything else that might be said about these claims, the idea that we - that is, the democratic societies of the West - have no culture, or cultures, is bizarre. (Is it a subtext here that these cultures have all been thoroughly eroded?) It reminds me of the idea that there once was history, but not any more.