Law and (De)Civilization: An Introduction

Abstract

This paper outlines the intellectual origins of this special issue in a number of conferences and workshops held between 2018 and 2021, addressing the questions of, on the one hand, how the understanding of law and legal institutions can be enhanced with reference to Norbert Elias's conception of both civilizing and decivilizing process and, on the other hand, how Elias’s analysis of civilization and decivilization could be developed with a deeper engagement with the specific role of law. After a discussion of the centrality of law to civilizing and decivilizing processes, we identify the central theoretic premises that informed the call for papers and that link all the papers together. This is followed by a very brief outline of each of the nine papers, and finally some concluding reflections on the future directions that research in this field might take.