Brexit barbarization? The UK leaving the EU as de-civilizing trend

David Inglis

doi:10.1177/1440783320960525

Abstract

Social scientists have begun to offer varied diagnoses of why Brexit has happened, and what its consequences have been and will likely be. This article does so by drawing upon Elias-inspired notions of longer-term de-civilizing processes, shorter-term de-civilizing spurts, and short-term de-civilizing offensives. Brexit is conceived of as involving a set of interlocking phenomena and tendencies which are de-civilizing in nature, and therefore de-cosmopolit(an)izing too. Diverse empirical phenomena in the UK are made sense of through the unifying conceptual apparatus of ‘de-civilization’, allowing analysis to start to relate them to each other systematically. The article also uses this sociological approach to look ahead tentatively to what the post-Brexit socio-political landscape may look like in the future.

Highlights

Social scientists have begun to offer varied diagnoses of why Brexit has happened, and what its consequences have been and will likely be
This article has examined a series of Brexit-related phenomena through the prism of the Elias-inspired notion of de-civilizing dynamics, both short-term and deliberate offensives, somewhat longer-term spurts, and unplanned longer-term processes
There are several potential benefits to looking at such matters in this way: (a) diverse empirical phenomena are made sense of through a unifying conceptual apparatus, allowing them to be systematically related to each other; (b) a focus on de-civilizing phenomena complements analysis of Brexit as involving de-cosmopolit(an)izing trends, of the sort gestured to by Beck (2002); (c) an Elias-inspired approach emphasizes the processual nature of Brexit phenomena, allowing us to locate them historically, in terms of factors that variously preceded, happened during, and occurred in the immediate aftermath of, the Brexit referendum

Summary

Introduction

Social scientists have begun to offer varied diagnoses of why Brexit has happened, and what its consequences have been and will likely be. Official penalization of ‘immigrants’ was a de-civilizing policy offensive that helped cultivate a broader de-civilizing spurt, in terms of greater public hostility to those defined as ‘not British’, rising levels of reported racist crimes, and increased right-wing media denigration of migrants, who were framed as ‘benefit scroungers’ and a burden on health, social and educational services, and the (radically shrunk) public purse as a whole.

Results

Conclusion