Introduction

This book is an international investigation of the different processes of learning and education in contemporary societies, drawing on theoretical and applied studies that examine the national habitus of Brazil, France, Germany, Denmark and England. It has two main goals: firstly, to discuss Norbert Elias´s processual contribution to contemporary childhood and educational practices that affect the lives of young and older children and secondly, to raise questions on how debates about learning processes can enrich our understanding of Elias´s contribution to process sociology. In the book, each of the authors applies Elias’s relational perspective to understand and explain learning processes in childhood and education, focusing on some of the long-term individual civilising processes that younger and older children undergo as they prepare for adulthood in complex societies. We explore in different chapters how these processes of learning relate to emerging and dynamic forms of figurations that children form with parents, teachers and friends. Each of these figurations is multi-layered and embedded within a range of institutions, referring to a large number of related aspects such as early childhood education and upbringing, the ‘socialisation’ of ‘norms’ and values’, formal schooling, play, youth and the transmission of knowledge from one generation to another.