The idea of civilization recurs frequently in reflections on international politics. However, International Relations academic writings on civilization have failed to acknowledge the major 20th-century analysis that examined the processes through which Europeans came to regard themselves as uniquely civilized – Norbert Elias’s On the Process of Civilization.
This book provides a comprehensive exploration of the significance of Elias’s reflections on civilization for International Relations. It explains the working principles of an Eliasian, or process-sociological, approach to civilization and the global order and demonstrates how the interdependencies between state-formation, colonialism and an emergent international society shaped the European ‘civilizing process’.
Table of Content
Introduction: A Process-Sociological Approach to Understanding Civilization
The Return of Discourses of Civilization and Barbarism
Elias’s Explanation of the European Civilizing Process
The Nation-State, War and Human Equality
The Classical European ‘Standard of Civilization’
Civilization, Diplomacy and the Enlargement of International Society
Standards of Civilization in the Post-European Global Order
Civilizing Processes at the Level of Humanity as a Whole
Summary and Conclusions
About the author
Andrew Linklater is Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.
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