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Palgrave Macmillan

Norbert Elias in Troubled Times

Figurational Approaches to the Problems of the Twenty-First Century

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Editors:
  1. Florence Delmotte

    1. Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS), Brussels, Belgium

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  2. Barbara Górnicka

    1. School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

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  • Applies Eliasian approaches in a new way, addressing primarily contemporary problems in society
  • Focuses on social and political issues, including violence, war, terrorism, exclusion, the environment, migration, and beyond, to extend the typical applications of Eliasian theory and methods
  • Compares the pragmatic and sociological relevance of Elias’s approach to that of other established social scientists working in the area of contemporary social and political problems

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies on Norbert Elias (PSNE)

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Table of contents (18 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxvii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Troubled Times: Editors’ Introduction

    • Florence Delmotte, Barbara Górnicka
    Pages 1-15

  4. Violence and Faces of the War

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 137-137
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    2. The Civilising Process, Decline of Homicide, and Mass Murder Societies: Norbert Elias and the History of Violence

      • Xavier Rousseaux, Quentin Verreycken
      Pages 139-158

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

      • Dominique Linhardt, Cédric Moreau de Bellaing
      Pages 159-178

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

      • Maria Beatriz Rocha Ferreira, Marina Vinha, Veronice Lovato Rossato
      Pages 179-197

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

      • Delphine Deschaux-Dutard
      Pages 199-216
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Keywords

About this book

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.

Reviews

 “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

 “Over thirty years ago Norbert Elias emphasised that rising levels of human interconnectedness had increased the subjection of individuals to global processes over which they had little or no control. Citing his comment, the editors of this excellent volume stress the continuing validity of that observation in the present era. They have brought together a stellar cast of international scholars to reconsider and extend Elias's analysis of the social and political integration of human societies.

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

Editors and Affiliations

  • Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS), Brussels, Belgium

    Florence Delmotte

  • School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Barbara Górnicka

About the editors

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).




Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Norbert Elias in Troubled Times

  • Book Subtitle: Figurational Approaches to the Problems of the Twenty-First Century

  • Editors: Florence Delmotte, Barbara Górnicka

  • Series Title: Palgrave Studies on Norbert Elias

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74993-4

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-74992-7Published: 03 August 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-74995-8Published: 04 August 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-74993-4Published: 02 August 2021

  • Series ISSN: 2662-3102

  • Series E-ISSN: 2662-3110

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXVII, 357

  • Number of Illustrations: 6 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Sociological Theory, Political Sociology, Violence and Crime, Sociology of Citizenship

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