Civilising statecraft: Andrew Linklater and comparative sociologies of states-systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 686-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Dunne ◽  
Richard Devetak
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Sociology ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
Theoretical Synthesis ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Institutional Capability ◽  
Extension Of State ◽  
High Level ◽  
Intellectual Journey ◽  
Second World

AbstractIn this contribution to the forum marking the publication of Andrew Linklater’s remarkable book on Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems we first locate the book in the context of Linklater’s overarching intellectual journey. While best known for his contribution to a critical international theory, it is through his engagement with Martin Wight’s comparative sociology of states-systems that Linklater found resonances with the work of process sociologist, Norbert Elias. Integrating Wight’s insights into the states-system with Elias’s insights into civilising processes, Violence and Civilization presents a high-level theoretical synthesis with the aim of historically tracing restraints on violence. The article identifies a tension between the cosmopolitan philosophical history which underpins the argument of the book, and which has underpinned all Linklater’s previous works, and the ‘Utrecht Enlightenment’ that offers a conception of ‘civilized statecraft’ at odds with a universal conception of morality and justice. The article then examines Linklater’s argument about the ‘global civilizing process’ as it applies to post-Second World War efforts to build greater institutional capability to protect peoples from harm. It is argued that Linklater over-estimates the extent to which solidarism has civilised international society, and that the extension of state responsibilities and development of civilised statecraft owe more to pluralism than solidarism.

Danish humor in cross-cultural professional settings: linguistic and social aspects

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lita Lundquist
Keyword(s):  
Power Distance ◽  
Work Relationships ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
Low Degree

AbstractThe specificities of national humor are often mentioned in humor research, but seldom explained in depth. This article concerns two studies, which reveal that Danish humor (as used in professional settings) is judged by Danes and non-Danes alike as ironic, self-ironic, sarcastic, and direct, with no limits or taboos. These characteristics of Danish humor are analyzed here using two different theoretical frameworks: linguistics – where an explanation is found in certain type-specific features of the Danish language, namely the dialogical particles typical of the Nordic languages in general – and the historico-sociological approach proposed by Norbert Elias. According to Elias, the mentality of a people has been molded through an ongoing historical process of civilization. The civilizing process specific to Danish society has engendered a “campfire mentality”, leading up to the egalitarian, consensual welfare state. Work relationships in Denmark are based on a horizontal, flat structure with low power distance, a structure for which management researchers actually recommend the use of humor, irony and self-irony. Finally, the specificities of Danish humor are linked to a low degree of gelotophobia, the fear of being laughed at, among Danes.

Making Europe—Processes of Europe-Formation since 1945

2000 ◽  
Vol 48 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 235-256
Author(s):  
Dennis Smith
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
National Society ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National State ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Norbert Elias

Dennis Smith argues that the development of the European polity that has become the European Union has been shaped by social processes similar in many respects to those analysed by Norbert Elias in The Court Society and The Civilizing Process. However, these processes have occurred at the supra-state level whereas Elias described them as they occurred at the level of the developing national state, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the 1940s and 1950s the United States played a key role in pacifying the European nations and imposing a framework of rules for the conduct of their economic and diplomatic affairs. States in western Europe were increasingly locked into tight bonds of interdependence. This movement towards integration was complemented by the disembedding of regions and large businesses from their close ties to the national state; they became ‘Europeanised’. Brussels became Europe's Versailles, a place where the courtier's skills were employed by the lobbyist. It is suggested that just as France represented, in Elias's eyes, a vanguard society within Europe in respect of the civilising process at the level of the national society, the European Union may play such a role globally in respect of developments at the supra-state level.

On the group matrix and the morality of the nuclear deterrent: The worldview of Gregory van der Kleij

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-376
Author(s):  
Harold Behr
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Group Matrix ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article presents the writings of Gregory van der Kleij, group analyst and Catholic priest, whose experiences of the holocaust during the Second World War shaped his thinking, not only as a therapist but also as a campaigner against the nuclear arms race. The author re-visits two significant articles on the group matrix published in this journal in the 1980s and introduces the reader to a little-known monograph addressed to the Catholic community which examines the moral dilemma faced by Christians during the Cold War. The monograph contains an exhortation to rise up in protest against what Gregory considers to be ‘the madness’ of high-level thinking on the morality of the nuclear deterrent.

The Force of Embodiment: Violence and Altruism in Cultures of Practice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur W. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Kidney Transplant ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Habitus ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Norbert Elias

This article examines two stories that foreground significant practices of embodiment: violence and altruism. The stories tackle the notions of violent and altruistic bodies, and both seem to have clear ethical implications. They are interpreted through two theoretical interests that are central to studies of the body: habitus and networks. The first story is from Norbert Elias, who has published two major works: The Civilizing Process (1984) and The Germans (1996). The article considers how Pierre Bourdieu expands and specifies Elias’s conceptualization of habitus and embodiment, and more specifically his views regarding the hierarchy of positions underlying habitus. It also discusses Michel Foucault’s explanation as to why people play truth games. Finally, it looks at the second story, which involves kidney transplant.

On Class, the Logic of Solidarity, and the Civilizing Process: Workers, Priests, and Alcohol in Dutch Shoemaking Communities, 1900–1920

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-152
Author(s):  
Don Kalb
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
To Come

There is an economic logic and a moral logic and it is futile to argue as to which we give priority since they are different expressions of the same “kernel” of human relationship.—E. P. Thompson, 1961Class is certainly a key concept of social history just as civilization is for the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias and his followers. Each of these traditions needs to come to terms with the other. Notwithstanding fundamentally divergent assumptions, interests, and styles, both traditions would gain from a closer examination of each other's concepts, subjects, and methods.

Eccentric modernity? An Islamic perspective on the civilizing process and the public sphere

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armando Salvatore
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Islamic Perspective ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article engages with Johann Arnason’s approach to the entanglements of culture and power in comparative civilizational analysis by simultaneously reframing the themes of the civilizing process and the public sphere. It comments and expands upon some key insights of Arnason concerning the work of Norbert Elias and Jürgen Habermas by adopting an ‘Islamic perspective’ on the processes of singularization of power from its cultural bases and of reconstruction of a modern collective identity merging the steering capacities and the participative ambitions of an emerging urban intelligentsia. The Islamic perspective provides insights into the interplay between civilizing processes and the modes through which cultural traditions innervate a modern public sphere. By revisiting key remarks of Arnason on Elias and Habermas, the Islamic perspective gains original contours, reflecting the search for a type of modernity that is eccentric to the mono-civilizational axis of the Western-led, global civilizing process. While this eccentric positioning entails a severe imbalance of power, it also relativizes the centrality of the modern state in the civilizing process and evidences some original traits of the public sphere in a non-Western context.

scholarly journals Norbert Elias i socjologia figuracyjna

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Suwada
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
Starting Point

In the article the biography and theories of Norbert Elias, a sociologist who lived and wrote in 20th century, are presented. He tried to overcome the division between society and an individual, he opposed the reduction of processes to states and introduced the term “figuration”. Figurations underline the relational and processual character of social reality. An important part of his sociology is the theory of the civilizing process which using a historical perspectives tries to explain social changes. The aim of this article is to recall Elias’ sociology and to show its importance to contemporary trends in sociology. A starting point is the release of a Polish translation of one of his first book titled What is Sociology?

scholarly journals Berlin Furniture Drawings by Carl Wilhelm Marckwort (1798-1875)

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-145
Author(s):  
Achim Stiegel
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
High Level ◽  
Second World ◽  
Made In

The Rijksmuseum recently acquired eight furniture designs, drawn by the cabinet-maker from Braunschweig, Carl Wilhelm Marckwort (1798-1875), while working as a journeyman in Berlin, in the years 1820-23. Apart from another group by Marckwort, no similar drawings made in Berlin during the first half of the nineteenth century survive, although they must once have been common. They were not regarded as works of art, and those that may have been retained in Berlin were lost during the Second World War. Marckwort took his drawings with him when he returned to Braunschweig in 1824, where they have until recently been kept by a succession of local cabinet-makers. Marckwort’s drawings present much information on current Berlin furniture types, and they document the high level of draughtsmanship attained by a talented craftsman working there. In Berlin, as in Vienna and indeed also in Braunschweig, much attention was given from the late eighteenth century onwards to providing drawing lessons for apprentices and journeymen. This was seen as an important step in an effort to improve the quality of manufactured goods. Marckwort’s manner of drawing, linear rather than free, exemplifies the workings of the new educational system. Sadly, no documentation concerning his training has been found.

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