Elias and Politics: An Overview
(2018) Global Interdependencies. Norbert Elias Conference Brussels 2018 — Location: Bruxelles (5.December.2018)
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- Abstract
- ‘Some of my readers may perhaps wish me to tell only about aspects of humankind’s development that are pleasant and hopeful. But such a selection is the true meaning of the trahison des clercs. We may or may not welcome the increasing integration of humankind. What is quite certain is that, to begin with, it increases the impotence of the individual in relation to what is happening at the top level of humanity’ (Norbert Elias, Changes in the We-I Balance [1987], The Society of Individuals, Collected Works 10, UCD Press, 2010: 149). Thirty years later it seems that nothing has happened to contradict the assessment of the increasing integration of humankind as being a major trend, or more exactly that ‘integration–disintegration tensions’ are part and parcel of the contemporary world. However, we have more difficulties in imagining how it would be possible to see only the ‘pleasant and hopeful aspects’ of human development or even what they finally are. Global warming, refugee crises, the rise of populisms and finally the explosion of old and new forms of war and terrorism: Elias was right to wonder whether humankind would survive the violence of his time and ours.
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Delmotte, F., & et al. (2018). Elias and Politics: An Overview. Global Interdependencies. Norbert Elias Conference Brussels 2018, Bruxelles. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/172321