Covid-19 and the civilizing process

Abstract

This article outlines the key elements of Norbert Elias’s theory of the civilizing process that can usefully be drawn upon to develop a detached, less present-focused sociological understanding of the Covid-19 pandemic. Three ideas are highlighted: first, this is in fact an old story, in the sense that we’re in the middle of a constellation of long-term processes, and this matters in a number of ways. Second, human civilization, understood as based on expanding and intensifying forms of global interdependence, is both a cause and part of the solution to the problems we are facing. Third, the causes, effects and possible responses to the Covid-19 pandemic are tightly bound up with what kinds of persons we are. It concludes that a sustainable response to crises like pandemics will only be organized around rational reflection to a limited extent: in significant ways it will be constituted by shifts at the emotional and psychological level, in the realm of culture and habitus, by the formation of particular ways of being a person.