Norbert Elias in Troubled Times: Figurational Approaches to the Problems of the Twenty-First Century

ISBN-13: 9783030749958 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022

Delmotte, Florence

Opis

This edited collection brings together texts that discuss current major issues in our troubled times through the lens of Norbert Elias’s sociology. It sheds light on both the contemporary world and some of Elias’s most controversial concepts. Through examination of the ‘current affairs’, political and social contemporary changes, the authors in this collection present new and challenging ways of understanding these social processes and figurations. Ultimately, the objective of the book is to embrace and utilise some of the more polemical aspects of Elias’s legacy, such as the exploration of decivilizing processes, decivilizing spurts, and dys-civilization. It investigates to what extent Elias’s sociological analyses are still applicable in our studies of the developments that mark our troubled times. It does so through both global and local lenses, theoretically and empirically, and above all, by connecting past, present, and possible futures of all human societies.

Spis treści

1. Troubled Times: Editors’ Introduction

Part I: Renewing Classical Themes

2. The Question of Inequality: Trends of Functional Democratisation and De-democratisation 

3. Vox Populi Then and Now

4. Figurational Sociology of the Rule of Law: A Case of Central and Eastern Europe

5. Transformations of Human Rights within Ruptures and Continuity: A Historico-Sociological Approach

6. Civilising Digitalisation: In Search of a New balance with Today’s Technological Innovations

7. Confronting Uncertainties: Process Sociology Converges with the Ecological Risk Society of the Becks

Part II: Violence and Faces of the War

8. The Civilising Process, Decline of Homicide and Mass Murder Societies: Norbert Elias and the History of Violence

9. A Throwback to Violence? Outline for a Process-Sociological Approach to ‘Terror’ and ‘Terrorism’

10.  Violence and Power: The Kaiowá and Guarani Indigenous Peoples

11. Analysing European Defence with Elias’s Historical Sociology (1990–2020)

Part III: Established–Outsiders Relations and Habitus Issues

12. Weaving Elias’s Thought with Indigenous Perspectives and Lives: Proposal for a Research Agenda

13. A Question of Function: Unequal Power Ratios and Asylum Seekers in Ireland

14. Thoughts on Describing Established and Outsider Figurations in Inner Mongolia

15. Generational Figuration and We-Group Formation in the Palestinian West Bank since the 1970s

16. The Israeli National Habitus and Historiography: The Importance of Generations and State Building

17. The Established and The Outsiders: An Incomplete Study?

Part IV: Conclusive Reflections

18. Some Political Implications of Sociology from an Eliasian Point of View

O autorze

Florence Delmotte is Research Associate at the Belgian Foundation for Scientific Research (FNRS) and Professor of Political Science at Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium. Her research focuses on the relevance of Norbert Elias and processual sociology for thinking through such political issues as citizenship, legitimacy, belonging and national habitus in today’s Europe. She is the author of a number of articles in English and French on these topics.  

Barbara Górnicka is Research Fellow in Sociology at University College Dublin, Ireland, where she completed her doctoral degree in 2016. She is a Fellow of the Norbert Elias Foundation and a Co-Editor of the Human Figurations Journal. She is the author of Nakedness, Shame and Embarrassment: A Long-term Sociological Perspective (Springer, 2016).

Blurb

“Beautifully written, this book engages thoughtfully with current issues within a solid understanding of their historical background. It covers a hugely impressive range of topics, developing an innovative mobilisation of Elias’s sociological perspective that will underpin a wide variety of new research efforts. In a world becoming increasingly interdependent and complex, this book provides an essential guide to developing the kind of understanding of the world in which we live required for a genuinely democratic politics.”

--Robert van Krieken, Emeritus Professor, The University of Sydney, Australia

“Readers will encounter in this volume an unusually wide-ranging collection of innovative papers that revisit core Eliasian ideas, provide new insights into violence and war, and explore through diverse empirical cases the classical analysis of relations between established groups and outsiders. The result is an inventive study which is essential reading for students of the endlessly surprising consequences and challenges of the global integration of modern societies.”

 --Andrew Linklater, Emeritus Professor of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, UK

This edited collection brings together texts that discuss current major issues in our troubled times through the lens of Norbert Elias’s sociology. It sheds light on both the contemporary world and some of Elias’s most controversial concepts. Through examination of the ‘current affairs’, political and social contemporary changes, the authors in this collection present new and challenging ways of understanding these social processes and figurations. Ultimately, the objective of the book is to embrace and utilise some of the more polemical aspects of Elias’s legacy, such as the exploration of decivilizing processes, decivilizing spurts, and dys-civilization. It investigates to what extent Elias’s sociological analyses are still applicable in our studies of the developments that mark our troubled times. It does so through both global and local lenses, theoretically and empirically, and above all, by connecting past, present, and possible futures of all human societies.

Florence Delmotte is Research Associate at the Belgian Foundation for Scientific Research (FNRS) and Professor of Political Science at Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium. 

Barbara Górnicka is Research Fellow in Sociology at University College Dublin, Ireland, where she completed her doctoral degree in 2016.