The Idea of Civilization and the Making of the Global Order

The first exploration of the significance for international relations of Norbert Elias’s reflections on civilization from one of his foremost exponents.

The idea of civilization recurs frequently in academic and non-academic reflections on international politics. However, international relations academic writings on civilization have failed to acknowledge the major 20th Century analysis that defined the processes through which Europeans came to regard themselves as uniquely civilized - Norbert Elias’s On the Process of Civilization.

This book provides the first 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 international relations and demonstrates how the interdependencies between state-formation, colonialism and an emergent international society shaped the European civilizing process.