Modern Barbarism and the Prospects of Civilization. Eliasian Themes in an African Context

Abstract The aim of this paper is to make sense of Elias's theory of civilization in an African context. Yet, it is less concerned with the empirical validity of Elias's arguments but rather with the formal qualities and general usefulness of his theory. In the first section it is pointed out that the idea of socio-political evolution should not be discarded and that the combination of macro- and micro-sociological reasoning remains a challenge. The second section tackles more specifically processes of African state formation and dissolution and shows the usefulness of an Eliasian perspective on phenomena otherwise regarded as anarchic. The third and final section, taking up and refining arguments on the relation of (physical) violence and shame that have been developed elsewhere, is an effort to better understand the mass participation of the populace in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Zusammenfassung Ziel des Aufsatzes ist es, Elias' Theorie der Zivilisation in einem afrikanischen Kontext auf die Probe zu...