Barbara Górnicka – författare

This edited collection brings together texts that discuss current major issues in our troubled times through the lens of Norbert Elias’s sociology. It sheds light on both the contemporary world and some of Elias’s most controversial concepts. Through examination of the ‘current affairs’, political and social contemporary changes, the authors in this collection present new and challenging ways of understanding these social processes and figurations. Ultimately, the objective of the book is to embrace and utilise some of the more polemical aspects of Elias’s legacy, such as the exploration of decivilizing processes, decivilizing spurts, and dys-civilization. It investigates to what extent Elias’s sociological analyses are still applicable in our studies of the developments that mark our troubled times. It does so through both global and local lenses, theoretically and empirically, and above all, by connecting past, present, and possible futures of all human societies.

This edited collection brings together texts that discuss current major issues in our troubled times through the lens of Norbert Elias’s sociology. It sheds light on both the contemporary world and some of Elias’s most controversial concepts. Through examination of the ‘current affairs’, political and social contemporary changes, the authors in this collection present new and challenging ways of understanding these social processes and figurations. Ultimately, the objective of the book is to embrace and utilise some of the more polemical aspects of Elias’s legacy, such as the exploration of decivilizing processes, decivilizing spurts, and dys-civilization. It investigates to what extent Elias’s sociological analyses are still applicable in our studies of the developments that mark our troubled times. It does so through both global and local lenses, theoretically and empirically, and above all, by connecting past, present, and possible futures of all human societies.

This edited collection brings together texts that discuss current major issues in our troubled times through the lens of Norbert Elias’s sociology. It sheds light on both the contemporary world and some of Elias’s most controversial concepts. Through examination of the ‘current affairs’, political and social contemporary changes, the authors in this collection present new and challenging ways of understanding these social processes and figurations. Ultimately, the objective of the book is to embrace and utilise some of the more polemical aspects of Elias’s legacy, such as the exploration of decivilizing processes, decivilizing spurts, and dys-civilization. It investigates to what extent Elias’s sociological analyses are still applicable in our studies of the developments that mark our troubled times. It does so through both global and local lenses, theoretically and empirically, and above all, by connecting past, present, and possible futures of all human societies.

This edited collection provides an invaluable resource of seventeen chapters from a wide range of academic disciplines. These chapters place sex and sexualities in Ireland in historical context and take the reader through the structural changes that have transformed the expression of sexuality in Ireland from one of self-denial to self-expression. The collection does not however unquestionably assume a linear narrative of progress: new issues and challenges are also addressed throughout. This book will be of interest to students and scholars from a range of disciplines including sociology, social policy, history, media, gender studies and psychology. The collection is divided into six separate but interlinked thematic sections: Sexualities in Historical Irish Contexts, Young Adults, Sexual Health, and Education, Sexual Practices and Health, Minority Sexualities and Genders, Sex Work in Ireland and Activism and Contestation.

This edited collection provides an invaluable resource of seventeen chapters from a wide range of academic disciplines. These chapters place sex and sexualities in Ireland in historical context and take the reader through the structural changes that have transformed the expression of sexuality in Ireland from one of self-denial to self-expression. The collection does not however unquestionably assume a linear narrative of progress: new issues and challenges are also addressed throughout. This book will be of interest to students and scholars from a range of disciplines including sociology, social policy, history, media, gender studies and psychology. The collection is divided into six separate but interlinked thematic sections: Sexualities in Historical Irish Contexts, Young Adults, Sexual Health, and Education, Sexual Practices and Health, Minority Sexualities and Genders, Sex Work in Ireland and Activism and Contestation.

Barbara Górnicka presents a sociological investigation – both historical and contemporary – into the problems surrounding naked bodies. She draws on her own participation in a nudist swimming club and goes on to study the often very complex and paradoxical emotions that have been associated with nakedness in the Western world for centuries. The book provides answers not only to why we find exposing our naked bodies shameful, but also why we find it sexual and erotic in the first place. It looks beneath taboos surrounding nakedness today and offers a theoretical explanation for their development over time. On the basis of her historical analysis, the author demonstrates that it was not until the late nineteenth or twentieth century that we began to see nudity as erotic.