A Sociological Guide to Better Understand the Problems of our Time

In this review, I review Norbert Elias in Troubled Times, edited by Florence Delmotte and Barbara Górnicka, to be published in 2021. I will present the background and purpose of the book, the authors and the main themes along which the analyses are spread. Before discussing the studies in more detail, however, I will outline the main ideas of the German sociologist, given the lack of domestic awareness of Norbert Elias’s work. I will then present studies analysing the phenomena of violence, war, terrorism, social exclusion, ecological crisis, migration and functional (de)democratisation. At the end of this review, I will try to contribute to the definition of new directions in figurative sociology along three critical lines.