Troubled Times: Editors' Introduction

The Civilizing Process is Elias´s magnus opus, and it is not rare that someone restricts his reading of Elias to this sole book, which brings with it an optimistic view of human history and of the civilizing processes. However, even in this text, and in other of his many books and articles, one can find other clues to analyze violence, conflicts and social disturbances. Decivilizing processes, decivilizing spurts, dys-civilization are important concepts in this regard. An objective of the current project of book is thus not to deny the controversial aspect of Elias’s legacy but rather to investigate to what extent his sociological analysis would be now more appropriate than ever to study in a critical way phenomenon that mark our current troubled times, at a global level as much as at a micro-sociological one, theoretically and empirically, and always by connecting past, present, and possible futures. How to understand social figurations, processes and changes that, at first glance, seem to be incompatible with modernity and its supposedly main characteristics (rise of a universal reason, decrease of violence and violent conflicts, political democratisation, human rights)? Can we see in any of the current changes a reverse of the civilizing process? Or are these changes rather a result of the directions taken by the civilizing processes? More generally, can we use Norbert Elias’s approach to improve our understanding of major and contemporary social problems?