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The first goal of the last in the series of articles called "Civilization as process" is to show how the notion of civilization was saved in academic discourse from being fully associated with imperialism and racism. While the text reconstructs how it happened, it nonetheless stresses that the doubts about the use of the term "civilization" in research have remained, even once its value-free, descriptive meaning was shaped. Essentialism based on racist and classificatory grounds still haunts civilizational studies, as can be seen in the scope and intensity of debate accompanying Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1997), which has been accused of essentialism. In reaction to the spectacular but also dangerous theses by Huntington, theoretical inquiry into the notion of civilization has deepened, preparing the ground for contemporary resurgence in the academic discourse of civilization in singular – as a multivalent social process.

One of the possible understandings of the notion, arguably especially useful today – civilization as "pacification of the social" – is discussed in the final part of this essay. To make this discussion possible, the classic substantialist and pluralistic theory, especially as formulated by Koneczny, is analysed, and then the dynamization of the concept in Sorokin, Nelson, Braudel and Eisenstadt is discussed, leading to an introduction to the currently dominant paradigm in civilizational analysis that is the theory of civilizational identities. The article shows that the latter is not the final step in the development of civilizational theory but rather the reverse.

Civilization as a Process: The Crisis of the Idea

The article presents the history of the notion of civilization at the stage of emerging civilizational pluralism. This presentation offers a critical reconstruction of civilizational essentialism, at least partially racist in character, which at the turn of the 20th century became the basic method for civilizational studies. In order to fully reveal the grounds upon which civilizational studies adopted "scientific" racism in the middle of the 19th century the text discusses the history of this research paradigm beginning from when the term "civilization" became prominent not only in moral but also historical and sociological analysis. On the one hand, this throws a clear light on the uncomfortable heritage of the discipline in terms of its mission to "civilize," one that civilizational studies have faced until the present day. On the other, the article shows that the direction they chose in the times of social darwinism's cultural triumph was not inevitable. In its shadow there have existed alternative civilizational studies with Norbert Elias as their early proponent. In order to develop them further one must not forget the history of the paradigm and hence this article is devoted to discovering the causes of the crisis in the colonial era of the Enlightenment idea of civilization, so important for Elias.

Civilization as a process. Part 1: The roots of the idea. The article is the first installment in the series reconstructing the history of the idea of civilization seen as process and discussing its usefulness for contemporary civilizational studies. The first part of the text analyzes two roots of the term using the latin words civilitas and civitias. After pointing out ancient antecedents of the notion of civilization, the article analyzes in detail the civilizational discourse of the Enlightenment, emphasizing Victor de Mirabeau's and Immanuel Kant's con-tributions. This leads to the conclusion that civilization can on the most general level be defined as refinement of society by ordering it by law. In the process of attaining civilization, civil society, understood as a collective bonded by mutual respect and prefering peaceful regulation over violence, becomes the lawgiving subject. Even though civilization, as the cult of good manners, can become an emp-ty formalism, mutual courtesy and respect are still necessary conditions for civil society's existence. If we understand the process of civilization along such lines, it remains worthy of consant research, especially comparative studies, today.

Intro -- SPIS TREŚCI / TABLE OF CONTENTS -- Prze-pisać taneczny modernizm: sieci -- Palimpsesty: taneczny modernizm -- Historie elastyczne i nieelastyczne. Analiza wczesnodwudziestowiecznych kategorii niemieckiego tańca modern -- Ausdruckstanz w obliczu historii i pamięci. Odtworzenia przeszłości -- Seksualność i queerowa uczuciowość w Karnawale Michaiła Fokina -- Miejsca i transnarodowe linie tańca wyzwolonego i ekspresjonistycznegow Europie -- Mary Wigman i Azja: między orientalizmem i transnacjonalizmem -- W drodze do "Azji": egzotyczność, wędrówka i autokreacja a początki środkowoeuropejskiego tańca modern -- Sada Yakko - rekonstrukcja w działaniu -- Żydowskie tango i pytanie o tożsamość -- Taniec polski w sieci transkulturowych powiązań (1918-1939) -- Prze-pisać taneczny modernizm - perspektywa chorwacka -- Wybrane aspekty czeskiego modernizmu tanecznego w kontekście tanecznej (r)ewolucji z początku XX wieku -- Polskie - nasze / zagraniczne -cudzoziemskie - obce -- ILUSTRACJE / ILLUSTRATIONS -- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks -- Palimpsests: -- Flexible and Inflexible Histories: An Examination of Early 20th Century Categories of Modern German Dance -- Ausdruckstanz Facing History and Memory: Reenacting the Past -- Sexuality and Queer Sentiment in Mikhail Fokine's Le Carnaval -- Places and Transnational Lines of Free Dance and Expressionist Dance in Europe -- Mary Wigman and Asia: Between Orientalism and Transnationalism -- On the Way to 'Asia': Exoticism, Itinerancy and Self-Fashioning in the Making of Central European Modern Dance -- Sada Yakko: Reconstruction in Action -- Jewish Tango and the Question of Identity -- Transcultural Cross-over: Polish Dance (1918-1939) -- Re-writing Dance Modernism: A Croatian Perspective.