Civilizing Emotions

Abstract

Abstract At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the vocabulary of civility and civilization is very much at the forefront of political debate. Most of these debates proceed as if the meaning of these words were self-evident. This is where this book intervenes, tracing the history of the concepts and thus adding a level of self-reflexivity to the present debates. Unlike former histories of these concepts, the book chooses a global perspective, and highlights the role of civility and civilization in the creation of a new and hierarchized global order in the era of high imperialism and its entanglements, focusing on the developments in a number of well-chosen European and Asian countries. Emotions were at the core of the practices linked to the political project of the civilizing process. the book brings out the role of emotions as an object of the civilizing process. Emotions needed to be actively civilized, but they were also seen as an asset, in order to civilize peoples and societies.

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