@article{2025:schmelzer:the_dialec,
title = {The dialectic of civilisation: Norbert Elias, the triad of controls, and social- ecological transformation},
year = {2025},
note = {This paper revisits Norbert Elias’s theory of the civilising process
in light of the ecological, economic, and political transformations of
the 21st century. It argues that Elias’s triad of controls – over
the self (psychogenesis), over others (sociogenesis), and over nature
(ecogenesis) – provides a powerful but incomplete framework for
understanding modern social development. By reinterpreting economic
growth as a historically specific articulation of the civilising
process, the paper highlights how the very dynamics of civilisational
progress now generate destabilising effects – ecological overshoot,
social fragmentation, and affective exhaustion. Drawing on political
ecology and post-growth scholarship, it proposes a dialectical reading
of Elias: one that recognises both the stabilising and the disruptive
potential of ‘civilising’ processes under conditions of capitalist
modernity. Rather than framing post-growth as a decivilising
regression, the paper explores it as a potential reconfiguration of
Elias’s triad centered on collective self-limitation, localised
interdependence, and convivial autonomy.},
journal = {Culture, Practice & Europeanization},
pages = {245--271},
author = {Schmelzer, Matthias},
volume = {10},
number = {2}
}