Overview
Norbert Elias' essays about the Ghanian societies
Unpublished essays for a new discussion of Elias' approach
First edition of Elias' essays on the topic
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Problems of Researching Traditional Societies
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Front Matter
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The Krobo People. Socio- and Psychogeneses of a Stateless Society
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Front Matter
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African and Western Civilising Processes
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
- Norbert Elias
- Ghanian Essays of Norbert Elias
- Figuration Theory
- Sociology of Culture
- Sociology of traditional societies
- Ethnology
- Stateless Societies
- African Civilising Process
- Western Civilising Process
- Anthropology
- Traditional Societies
- Early State Formation Process
- Formation of States
- Sociology and Anthropology
- Norbert Elias and Malcom X
About this book
In 1962 Norbert Elias was invited as a temporary professor at the University of Ghana in Legon, Accra. He taught, employed fieldwork, travelled, and met many people in postcolonial Africa. When Elias left Ghana in 1964, he had laid the basic groundwork for a fundamental sociological argument on human societies.
The volume on hand is a selection of his unpublished writings based on these experiences. Together they touch upon not only the well-known criticism of Eurocentrism and a developmental perspective but also what could be considered the core of Elias’s work: the concept of civilisation. In a foreword, Dieter Reicher and Adrian Jitschin have endeavoured to explain and break down the relations of Elias’s African experience to the rest of his work and biography. They also clarified some misleading interpretations of Elias’s time in Africa. Finally, Arjan Post has uncovered the previously unknown fascinating story of Elias’ encounter with Malcolm X in an epilogue.Reviews
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Norbert Elias was an essential sociological theorist who coined the need for a ‘reality congruent’ orientation of big history.
The Editors
Prof. Dr Dieter Reicher teaches sociology at the University of Graz. Together with others, he has already edited works by Norbert Elias.
Dr Adrian Jitschin works at the FernUniversität in Hagen. He is Elias’s biographer. In addition to multiple biographical publications on Elias, his volume on the young Elias is the standard work on the subject.
Arjan Post is an independent sociologist and teaches ‘Big History’ at the University of Amsterdam. He is the secretary of the Norbert Elias Foundation.
Dr Behrouz Alikhani is teaching Sociology at the University of Münster and Pedagogy at the University of Hildesheim.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Norbert Elias’s African Processes of Civilisation
Book Subtitle: On the Formation of Survival Units in Ghana
Editors: Dieter Reicher, Adrian Jitschin, Arjan Post, Behrouz Alikhani
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37849-3
Publisher: Springer VS Wiesbaden
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: Norbert Elias Foundation 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-658-37848-6Published: 12 January 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-658-37849-3Published: 11 January 2023
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 247
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour
Topics: Sociology of Culture, Sociological Theory, Ethnology, Social Anthropology, Social Sciences, general