SOC3070 - Lecture 8

Norbert Elias

Thus far:

Society as a process constituted historically by individuals who are constructed historically by society.

We need to understand better role of the individual

The unity of self and society

Dualism individual/society (even in Durkheim)

Individual as standing out of society and nature, an autonomous thinking agent acting on them basic tool for the construction of modern society and modern science (e.g. rights of the individual versus the social)

Alternative, unified view:

Individuality, like society, is constructed historically.

Identity emerge from social structure in time.

Elias, The Civilising Process (1939)

1. Critique of dualism in social analysis

2. Case-study on the history of manners in Europe, from the Middle Ages to the 18c

Medieval manners

Expression of emotions

Violence, cruelty

Etiquette

Re-elaborations of ‘normal’ behaviour in the court society: new psychological and institutional barriers to the indiscriminate enactment of feelings

At the same time, the civilising process is also creates social distance between civilised and uncivilised members of society

Civilising process: a way of life and a social system (impossible to split meaning and structure)

Simulatenous appearance of new types of individual and a new types of society

Civilised individual: increased control over emotional life, through new feelings of revulsion and shame. Public and private life are separate spheres of existence.

The notion of ‘habitus’ (psychic structure)

Civilised society: increasingly differentiated. More controlled social order. More stratified. More social distance. State-formation and centralisation.

These are not distinct processes but aspects of one and the same process.

The creation of the civilised individuals was the creation of the stratified society.

Elias notion of figuration, and figurational change.

Figuration: pattern and the process of patterning

The metaphor of dance

Figuration: ‘a structure of mutually oriented and dependent people’

‘It is not particularly fruitful to conceive of men in the image of individual man. It is more appropriate to envisage an image of numerous interdependent people forming figurations.’

Effects of the civilising process:

Sociallly: stratification and social distantiation. Social control.

Psychologically: isolation of the self from the outside world. Self-control.