Abstract
How can we understand the times we live in now in 2020, which for us appear more than ever in the grip of various ‘troubles’, however unexpected, yet in many ways predictable? The editors’ introduction evokes the very particular context of the preparation of this book, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors then return to the ambition that gives the book its unity, beyond the diversity of disciplines and themes: to revisit the theses of Norbert Elias’s historical sociology in tackling with some of the thorniest problems of ‘our time’, such as the rise of populism, the crisis of the rule of law model, the setbacks of democratisation, the transformation of the faces of violence, and the reproduction of ‘established–outsiders’ figurations. In the end, the contributions thus aim to continue to develop new means of orientation, less ideological and more ‘reality-congruent’, and which our ‘troubled times’ need more than ever.
We may or may not welcome the increasing integration of humankind. What is quite certain is that, to begin with, it increases the impotence of the individual in relation to what is happening at the top level of humanity.
—Elias (2010a [1987], 149)
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Delmotte, F., Górnicka, B. (2021). Troubled Times: Editors’ Introduction. In: Delmotte, F., Górnicka, B. (eds) Norbert Elias in Troubled Times. Palgrave Studies on Norbert Elias. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74993-4_1
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