Conclusion: Cognitive, Normative, and Behavioural Coherence in the Global Winston Parva

This chapter concludes the book with a summary of advantages of the process-oriented figurational analysis for the study of social exclusion. The conclusion indicates further issues that would greatly reinforce the figurational research agenda by shedding light on the dynamics of old and new established–outsider figurations, including the pivotal importance of incorporating the tools of memory studies in the figurational paradigm aimed at better understand the work of collective memory in the shaping of social exclusion processes. Using the concepts of cognitive, normative, and behavioural coherence, the chapter argues for a new framework that would describe the transformations of the established–outsiders figurations. A presentation of the nexus of group coherence, security, and resources control summarizes the book’s main thesis: the transforming society moves beyond the cognitive and normative coherence of the original established–outsider model to cope with the far less manageable incoherence that—to many involved minds—calls for a radical means of the restoration of uniformity and homogeneity in all spheres of life. The chapter indicates the hypothetical consequences of severing the cognitive link between the established and the outsiders and to the potential for violence that such a situation would carry. This leads to the final statement that the promise of Eliasian sociology is far from exhausted when providing a historically informed, in-depth comparative understanding of social change today, be it in Poland, Europe, or beyond.