The Civilizing Process stands out as Norbert Elias' greatest work, tracing the "civilizing" of manners and personality in Western Europe since the late Middle Ages by demonstrating how the formation of states and the monopolization of power within them changed Western society forever.

Since 9/11, the American government has presumed to speak and act in the name of ‘civilization’. But isthat how the rest of the world sees it? And if not, why not? Stephen Mennell leads up to such contemporary questions through a careful study of the whole span of American development, from the first settlers to the American Empire. He takes a novel approach, analysing the USA’s experience in the light of Norbert Elias’s theory of civilizing (and decivilizing) processes. Drawing comparisons between the USA and other countries of the world, the topics discussed include: American manners and lifestyles Violence in American society The impact of markets on American social character American expansion, from the frontier to empire The ‘curse of the American Dream’ and increasing inequality The religiosity of American life Mennell shows how the long-term experience of Americans has been of growing more and more powerful in relation to their neighbours. This has had all-pervasive effects on the way they see themselves, their perception of the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world sees them. Mennell’s compelling and provocative account will appeal to anyone concerned about America's role in the world today, including students and scholars of American politics and society.

Norbert Elias has been described as among the great sociologists of the 20th century. A collection of his most important writings, this book sets out Elias' thinking during the course of his long career, with a discussion of how his work relates to that of other sociologists.

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'.

Originally published in 1991 and now reissued by Continuum International, this book consists of three sections. The first, written in 1939, was either left out of Elias's most famous book, The Civilizing Process, or was written along with it. Part 2 was written between 1940 and 1960. Part 3 is from 1987. The entire book is a study of the unique relationship between the individual and society--Elias's best-known theme and the basis for the discipline of sociology.

Norbert Elias has been recognized as one of the key social scientists of the twentieth century. The contributions collected in Norbert Elias and Social Theory discuss the specificities, the strengths, and the limits of Elias's sociology by considering its similarities and its differences with other important classical (Epicure, Freud, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel) and contemporary (Manheim, Fromm, Arendt, Bauman, and Bourdieu) social theories. Editors François Dépelteau and Tatiana Savoia Landini have compiled an essential and comprehensive volume on a quintessential thinker.

Drawing on the thought of Norbert Elias and using as a thread a purposely apolitical example of cruelty to animals to focus on changes in attitudes, this book explores the ways in which we deal with a past that we now abhor. As we struggle to deal with the fact that our past shapes us—indeed is us, but is not us—and cannot be changed, the modern tendency is to demand merely cosmetic rather than real changes to the world and to judge harshly the individuals with whom the past is populated, pulling down statues or re-naming institutions. An examination of our modern colonialism of time rather than place, which refuses to consider or accept the fact that without our past, we wouldn’t be here at all, let alone in a position to judge, The Civilizing Process and the Past We Now Abhor will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, cultural studies, and literature with interests in contemporary questions of race, morality, and efforts to correct the wrongs of our past.