This book will be essential reading for those studying sociology, communication studies and linguistics.

Are massive violence and destruction a manifestation of ‘modernity’, even its very essence, or rather its total opposite: ‘a breakdown of civilization’? Although ostensibly Norbert Elias mainly occupied himself with the civilizing process, he was always, though mostly implicitly so, preoccupied with its complement and counterpart: violence, regression and anomie. In recent years, a number of his students have returned to these themes. Whether they wanted to or not, they were drawn into a debate that never subsided for long in (...) the last century. I shall argue a position that transcends this opposition between ‘modernization’ and ‘regression’: at the core of the civilizing process, another contrary current may manifest itself, allowing extreme violence on a mass scale to be perpetrated towards specific categories of people, while civilized relations and modes of expression are maintained in other sections of society. The concepts of identification, disidentification and compartmentalization should help to describe and explain these ‘dyscivilizing’ processes in their complex relations to processes of civilization. (shrink)

Afin de proposer un cadre général pour l'étude de la société transnationale actuellement en émergence, l'article examine de manière critique les principales démarches disciplinaires en cours aujourd'hui. Il souligne l'intérêt d'une approche fondée sur un modèle de type centre/périphérie accompagné de l'hypothèse d'une compétition oligopolistique. Avec ce cadre d'analyse général, la sociologie peut identifier son objet dans le système des liens établis entre les êtres humains par-delà les frontières nationales, que ces liens soient directs ou médiatisés par des institutions transnationales. (...) Une version plus élaborée, et révisée, d'un tel modèle est notamment illustrée par la dynamique de la globalisation culturelle, et par le « système mondial des langues ». (shrink)