CIVILIZATION, GLOBALIZATION AND THE DIFFERENCES THAT MAKE THE DIFFERENCE. IN HONOR AND MEMORY OF JOHAN "JOOP" GOUDSBLOM

The death of Johan Goudsblom (1932-2020), as happens to great scholars at their passing, in addition to the pain for both human and intellectual loss, brings with it the important and complex challenge of his remarkable scientific legacy and how to enhance it by making it fruitful for the greatest number of scholars, students, policy modelers, entrepreneurs, professionals and citizens with a curious and lively intellect all over the world. Therefore, obviously, some biographical references will be made, we will briefly talk about the sociological (and historical) tradition in which his thought and works are inscribed, but we will avoid any boring didactic-philological approach that usually tends to freeze the inheritance into something arid, while the message of "Joop" is very much alive, dynamic and vital. Thus, this essay, in its own small way, will try to give it further energy by proposing a line of research and training that is to a large extent unorthodox, but at the same time is clearly indebted to "Joop" and "The School of Amsterdam". This paper provides a process liking among Goudsblom’s biography , thought ad works and, as every legacy or heritage, it evolves towards new challenghes and opportunities that maybe Goudsblom himself did not consider; namely, setting a link between the Eliasian sociology of Process and the Luhmanian complex system theory, which is an open horizon for advanced, policy-focused, social science research .