Civilité, Citizenship and Civilisation: Cosmopolitanism in Norbert Elias's Sociology of the Political
(2014) Proceedings of Norbert Elias XV Congreso Internacional Procesos Civilizatorios — published
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- Historically, citizenship – the fact of enjoying full civil and civic rights – has always been conditioned by the belonging to a bordered, national-state community. In my view, a corpus of Elias’s “political” texts, constituted by On the Process of Civilisation, by later essays such as “Changes in the We-I balance” in The Society of individuals, and by the Studies on the Germans, contributes to question the genesis and possible meanings of a cosmopolitan citizenship, that is to say a citizenship that does not refer (or does not refer anymore) to the belonging to a bordered political community , be it actual nation-state, federation of states, or even hypothetical global, world state. In this paper, I would more particularly like to discuss the different conceptions of civilité that emerge from those texts, in relation with the way the issues of state, violence and civilisation are dealt with. At this stage of the research, my opinion is that this corpus of “political texts” paves the way for two concepts of civilité. Elias’s political thought reveals that what we call civilité has to be considered as at least twofold; its different dimensions are at the same time socio-historically articulated and potentially conflictive. They contribute to shape two conceptions of citizenship, both concerning manners and rights. One is defined by the belonging to a bordered political community. The other has more to do with a decentred, self-detached political and social conscience, intimately related to the learned recognition of interdependences.
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Delmotte, F. (2014). Civilité, Citizenship and Civilisation: Cosmopolitanism in Norbert Elias’s Sociology of the Political. In Ricaro Pozas et Fernando Benitez (ed.), Proceedings of Norbert Elias XV Congreso Internacional Procesos Civilizatorios. UNAM. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/194498