Language:
English
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
British Journal of Sociology
Angaben zur Quelle:
47,1 (1996) 135-150
Keywords:
Elias, Norbert,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
Abstract:
Deals with the "civilizing" process delineated by Norbert Elias, noting ambivalences in the features identified by Elias as central to this process. As Elias showed, terms such as "civilization" and "barbarism" have a social and normative origin, their function being to define the behavior of one set of people as morally good and superior, and another as debased and inferior. However, social behavior is more ambiguous. It has been suggested that Elias claims that a process of internal pacification - supported by a state monopoly of the means of violence, chains of interdependence, and mutual identification - makes for a more civilized society; that for violence and terrorization to exist, a combination of these elements would have to collapse, so that a "decivilizing" process would occur. Argues, using the work of Zygmunt Bauman as a point of comparison, that this need not be the case; because of the ambivalent nature of the "civilizing" process, its central features can become mechanisms which suppress mutual identification and lead to a form of "civilized" violence and terror. Relates to Nazi Germany's perpetration of the Holocaust as an example.
Note:
Attempts to assess Norbert Elias's central theme of the "civilizing process" with reference to the Holocaust.
URL:
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