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Over the past three hundred years, with the emancipation of people as individuals and groups, social definitions of differences in inequality and equality -particularly those in social and political power, wealth and rank - have increasingly shifted from being designated as 'bad luck' in the direction of 'social injustice'. These are now debated as signs of changing social power relations, both in economic and political terms. On a global level, increasing inequality is reported to coincide with the reduction in these relations, while integration coincides with integration conflicts and with part-processes of disintegration, defunctionalisation and decivilisation. These contradictory directions can be understood by analysing them as tension balances. Two key questions are addressed here: Which side is (or becomes) dominant? At what level of integration does this occur? I show how the contradicting trends of integration and disintegration have been co-dominant: growing social interdependencies such as those based upon the controls of fire, agriculture and industry, have coincided with growing 'equality' and 'inequality' in power, wealth and rank. They coincided further with rising pressures on everyone involved to take more of each other into account more often, to develop longer-term perspectives, and to identify with other people regardless of their social origins. These pressures in civilising directions include the informalisation of regimes of manners and emotions and their internalisation, processes in which people exercise increasing control over their emotions, feelings and displays of superiority and inferiority in particular, resulting in rising levels of ambivalence and higher levels of trust and distrust.

With his concept "functional democratisation," Norbert Elias articulates how a specific type of "social equalisation" is connected to expanding interdependency networks and long-term civilising processes. This article initially focuses on connections between functional democratisation and informalisation, throwing new light on the wider framework of the theory of civilisation and informalisation, as well as on these processes themselves. These insights are followed by a discussion into how functional democratisation and informalisation are interconnected with social differentiation and integration as the two major process drivers of globalisation, thus illuminating directions of processes of civilisation, informalisation, and functional democratisation within the overall process of globalisation. Special attention goes to trends of differentiation and integration on the one hand, and integration conflicts or disintegration and defunctionalisation on the other. Considering from a global perspective which side of these opposing trends is dominant helps to clarify directions in processes of (in-)formalisation and of (de-)civilisation. In addition, it helps to explain the declining power and status of the West as a global establishment, and changes in the balance of power between national and international political and economic centres. Expanding global interdependencies have given rise to a variety of practical problems and theoretical questions – a major policy question among them: "How to steer clear of financial and/or political turbulence?" Issues such as economic crises, global migration, and populism, brought up major theoretical questions: "Have the driving processes of differentiation, integration, and increasing complexity of social functions stalled, changed direction, or ceased altogether?" In other words, "Have civilising processes changed direction?," an issue that was first raised in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Today, as strong spurts of globalisation give rise to feelings of loss and decline, it is reappraised once again in this paper.

With his concept "functional democratisation," Norbert Elias articulates how a specific type of "social equalisation" is connected to expanding interdependency networks and long-term civilising processes. This article initially focuses on connections between functional democratisation and informalisation, throwing new light on the wider framework of the theory of civilisation and informalisation, as well as on these processes themselves. These insights are followed by a discussion into how functional democratisation and informalisation are interconnected with social differentiation and integration as the two major process drivers of globalisation, thus illuminating directions of processes of civilisation, informalisation, and functional democratisation within the overall process of globalisation. Special attention goes to trends of differentiation and integration on the one hand, and integration conflicts or disintegration and defunctionalisation on the other. Considering from a global perspective which side of these opposing trends is dominant helps to clarify directions in processes of (in-)formalisation and of (de-)civilisation. In addition, it helps to explain the declining power and status of the West as a global establishment, and changes in the balance of power between national and international political and economic centres. Expanding global interdependencies have given rise to a variety of practical problems and theoretical questions - a major policy question among them: "How to steer clear of financial and/or political turbulence?" Issues such as economic crises, global migration, and populism, brought up major theoretical questions: "Have the driving processes of differentiation, integration, and increasing complexity of social functions stalled, changed direction, or ceased altogether?" In other words, "Have civilising processes changed direction?," an issue that was first raised in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Today, as strong spurts of globalisation give rise to feelings of loss and decline, it is reappraised once again in this paper.

Baseado em uma análise de livros de boas maneiras, datados desde 1890, em quatro países ocidentais, este artigo descreve como "processos civilizadores" continuaram nos séculos XIX e XX. O artigo concentra-se, primeiro, em três funções centrais de uma "boa sociedade" e de seu código de costumes e maneiras e, em seguida, descreve como, em um processo de longa duração de formalização dos costumes e maneiras e de disciplinamento de pessoas, emoções "perigosas", como aquelas relativas à violência física (incluindo a sexual), passaram a ser controladas de modos cada vez mais automáticos. Sendo assim, um tipo de personalidade de segunda natureza ou de consciência dominada tornou-se predominante. O século XX, por sua vez, assistiu ao aumento dos constrangimentos sociais em favor de condutas descontraídas, além de reflexivas, flexíveis e alertas. Tais pressões coincidiram com uma informalização dos comportamentos e uma emancipação de emoções: emoções que haviam sido negadas e reprimidas recuperaram acesso à consciência e maior aceitação nos códigos sociais. No entanto, foi somente a partir da "Revolução Expressiva" da década de 1960 que, cada vez mais, os padrões de autocontrole têm habilitado as pessoas a admitirem, para si mesmas e os outros, a possibilidade de se sentir emoções "perigosas" sem incitar vergonha, mais especificamente, o receio de perder o controle e a dignidade. À medida que se tornou "natural" perceber os impulsos e as demandas de ambas, da "primeira natureza" e da "segunda natureza", bem como os perigos e as oportunidades, de curta e longa duração, em qualquer situação ou relação, tem se desenvolvido um tipo de personalidade de "terceira natureza". Exemplos ilustrativos dessas tendências também nos ajudam a entendê-las como um processo de integração psíquica desencadeado por um processo de integração social continuada.

The Germans and the English differ in their experience of friendship. This paper departs from the observation that German manners books in the nineteenth and twentieth century are preoccupied with 'friendship' and the use of the personal pronoun, the informal you: Du. The topic 'friendship' is virtually absent in English manners books. In English books, until the 1970s, rules for introductions were a major if not the most prominent topic, whereas these rules attracted hardly any attention in the German ones. From an analysis of manners books from the last decade of, this paper compares friendship in Germany with introducing in England. Establishing a 'friendship' as well as 'being properly introduced' are both ritual transitions from a rather distant and hierarchical relationship in the direction of greater 'equality' and intimacy. These different forms are explained by placing them in the context of their national class structures and by connecting them to differences in the functioning of their good society, particularly the regulation of social mobility, as well as to differences in the processes of social emancipation and national integration.

Rituals in dying and mourning have a social and a psychic aspect: they have the twin function of diminishing the danger of succumbing to intense emotions (fear, despair, powerlessness and grief) by evoking a feeling of solidarity, and of enhancing the sense of being connected to a larger community, on which basis these emotions are acknowledged as well as dimmed and kept under control. As the changes in mourning ritual of the last half of the 20th century demonstrate, the relation or balance between these social and psychic functions of mourning rituals has been changing. From the 1960s onward, many traditional rituals came under suspicion and were pushed aside. Since the 1980s, a quest for new rituals has emerged. The article will address the question of what has changed in the social and individual regulation of these feelings by comparing old, mostly religious rituals, to more recent ones. The latter will be interpreted as part of a highly individualized quest for societal recognition and solidarity, demonstrating how processes of individualization, `solidarization' and globalization are interconnected.