Voor de beste ervaring schakelt u JavaScript in en gebruikt u een moderne browser!
Je gebruikt een niet-ondersteunde browser. Deze site kan er anders uitzien dan je verwacht.

Robert van Krieken

'The Age of Anger and Social Media: Norbert Elias on technology, civilization and 'ressentiment''

A striking feature of communication on social media today is the lack of emotional restraint and the tendency towards highly emotive, aggressive and abusive language. Politics and society seem to be characterized by anger and rancour, significantly facilitated by the speed and ease of their expression on social media, including the possibilities for anonymous communication. This raises the question of how changes in communication technology interact with broader shifts in social relationships, and how the relationship between the two should be understood.

In this talk, I will attempt to link two bodies of research and analysis:  first, Norbert Elias’s sociological analysis of the complex dynamics of processes of civilization and decivilization, his thoughts on the interrelationship between technological, social organization and human habitus, and his concept of ‘figuration’, which  can be seen to function in a similar way to the concept of ‘assemblage’, in the sense of thinking in terms of complex social networks of interdependencies which also encompass non-human elements such as architecture and technology, to which he adds a concern with the formation of emotional dispositions and habitus.

Second, the work done on the concept of ressentiment, first made a technicus terminus by Nietzsche and then developed in a more sociological direction by Max Scheler, which I will argue can usefully be understood in terms of the ‘dark side’ of the civilizing process, I order to reflect on the role of contemporary communications technology in the expanding significance of ressentiment in social and political life today. My overall argument will be that it is important to see the shifts taking place today as part of a long-term process of the interweaving of technological and social changes, with the spread of ressentiment in social media being the latest episode in the on-going interweaving of processes of civilization and de-civilization.

About the speaker

Robert van Krieken is also Visiting Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. His fields of interest include the work of the Norbert Elias as well as sociological theory more broadly, the sociology of childhood, cultural genocide, the study of law and society, and celebrity.

During his time at University College Dublin, he also became interested in the dynamics of processes of civilization and de-civilization in Ireland. His books include Norbert Elias (1998) and Celebrity Society (2012), and his journal articles have been published in journals such as Amsterdamse Sociologisch Tijdschift, Sociology, Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, and Theory & Society. He enjoys translating, from German to English but also from Dutch, and recently became sufficiently interested in the work of Menno ter Braak to translate his Het nationaal-socialisme als rancuneleer, which will play some role in this talk.