Chs 740 Vol 5 n 2 Violence and the Civilizing Process Does It Work

8/4/2019 Chs 740 Vol 5 n 2 Violence and the Civilizing Process Does It Work

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Crime, Histoire & Socits / Crime, History & SocietiesNumro Vol. 5, n2 (2001)Varia

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Pieter Spierenburg

Violence and the civilizing process :does it work ?................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Rfrence lectroniquePieter Spierenburg, Violence and the civilizing process : does it work ? ,Crime, Histoire & Socits / Crime,History & Societies [En ligne], Vol. 5, n2 | 2001, mis en ligne le 02 avril 2009. URL : http://chs.revues.org/index740.htmlDOI : en cours d'attribution

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Violence and the civilizing process:does it work?

Pieter Spierenburg

Among historians, especially those investigating violence, Norbert Elias'theory of civilization has received divergent appreciations recently. In theAnglo-Saxon world, notably in North America, it has obtained increasingrecognition over the last ten years or so. In particular, many authors agreethat he offers the only theoretical framework which easily accomodates theempirical evidence on the long-term decline of homicide. Conversely, inContinental Europe during the 1990s, a number of historians, notablyGerman historians of crime, have criticized Elias' work. In this discussion,too, the subject of violence looms large.

This discussion article confronts the criticism levelled at the theory ofcivilization, in so far as it pertains to violence. It deals w ith four broad clusters of problems: (1) the reliability and validity of the evidence for the long-term trend of declining violence; (2) the character of violence, in particularits function as an indicator for the level of behavioral control; (3) the interdependence of long-term change in the field of aggression and human emotions on the one hand and the overall development of society on the other; (4)the new wave of interpersonal violence in the Western world in the late twentieth century.

It will be concluded that research on the long-term development of homicide over the last twenty years has yielded impressive new evidence for thetheory of civilization, which some historians nevertheless tend to ignore orattempt to explain away. The only objection to the theory not based on a misinterpretation refers to the historical study of honor and ritual. None of thedata generated by this research, however, are incompatible with theprocesses first observed by Elias. Contrary to what his critics assum e, thetheory of civilization invites creative elaboration, which should be the aim of

future research.Parmi les historiens, en particulier ceux qui s'intressent la violence, la

thorie de la civilisation des murs de Norbert Elias a rcemment fait l'objetd'apprciations divergentes. Dans le monde anglo-saxon, et en particulier en

1 Pieter Spierenburg is affiliated with the history department of Erasmus University, Rotterdamthe Posthumus Institute (a Dutch research school). In 2001 he was a visiting professor at CarM ello n Un iversity, Pittsburgh. His m ain interests are the history of vio lenc e from a comp arativtheoretical perspective and E uropean socio-cultural history. His pu blications include: The Spectacleof Suffering. Executions and the Evolution of Repression : from a Preindustrial Metropolis European Experience,Cambridge (Cambridge UP), 1984;The Prison Experience. DisciplinaryInstitutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe,Ne w Brunswick, NJ (Rutgers UP) , 1991 ;(editor)Men and Violence. Gender, Honor and Rituals in Modern Europe and America,ColumbusOH (Ohio State UP), 1998.

Crime, Histoire & Socits / Crime, History & Societies 2 0 0 1 , vol. 5, n 2 , pp. 87-10 5


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88 PIETER SPIERENBURG

Amriquedu Nord, elle a connu une faveur croissante depuisune dizained'annes.De nombreux auteurs admettent, en particulier, qu'elle constitueleseul cadre thoriquequi soit compatible avecles preuves empiriquesd'undclin de l'homicidesur le long terme. Inversement,en Europe, plusieursauteurs, notammentdes historiens allemandsde la criminalit,ont critiquletravail d'Elias au coursdes annes 1990. Dans cette discussion galement,laquestionde la violence occupe une part importante.

Cet article discuteles critiques adresses la thoriede la civilisationdes mursqui ont trait la questionde la violence.Il traite de quatregroupes de problmes: (l)la fiabilitet la validitdes donnes relatives latendance au dclinde la violence dansla longue dure;(2) le caractrede laviolenceet en particulier sa fonction d'indicateurdu niveaude contrleducomportement;(3) l'interdpendance entre, d'une part,le dveloppementglobalde la socit et, d'autre part,les changements dansle long terme dansle domainede l'agressivitet des motions;(4) la nouvelle vaguede violenceinterpersonnelle dansle monde occidentalde la fin du XX e sicle.

On conclueraque les

recherchesde ces

vingt dernires annessur

l'volution plurisculairede l'homicideont apport d'impressionnantes confirmationsde la thoriede la civilisationdes murs,que certains historienstendent nanmoins ignorer ou contester.La seule objection qui ne soit pasbase sur une msinterprtationde cette thorie rfre l'approche historiquede l'honneuret des rites. Toutefois, aucune donne produitepar cesrecherches n'est incompatible avecle processus observ pourla premirefois par Elias. Contrairement la positionde ses critiques,la thoriede lacivilisationdes murs invite la crativit scientifique, objectif qui devraitguiderles recherches futures.

S cholars who get excited by record-breaking figures must love the abbot DonGregorio Salvini. In a book published in 1758 he refers to a survey, ostensibly conducted by Corsica's Genoan overlords in 1715 : during the preceding thirty-two years no less than 28 715 homicides had been committed on the island 2 . If true,this would yield a murder rate making the top figures cited most often in historicalworks - for fourteenth-century Florence and Oxford and a few mining towns on theAmerican frontier - appear insignificant 3 . Moreover, the Corsican case definitelymeets the methodological requirement of sufficient size (8 722 square km.) and evidence over a sufficiently long time span. The island's population in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries has traditionally been estimated at 120 000, but in the mostrecent synthesis of its early modern history a figure of around 150 000 is assumed tobe more realistic 4. In the latter case, the homicide rate for the period 1683-1714comes at 598 per 100 000 inhabitants per year ; if we cling to the older populationestimate, it would rise to 747, which, if anything else, is an appropriate number fora skyrocketing figure.

Does the question, 747 or 598, really matter? Of course it would be unwise totake the surprisingly precise number of homicides reported by Salvini for granted,

2 Salvini (1758,p. 80). I am indebtedto prof. Antoine-Marie Grazianifor directingme to this work,whichis the (only) original source for all discussionsof the figure in question in historical literature.

3 Becker (1976,p. 287 ) ;the figuresof pp. 152 and 68 for Florence both referto a periodof only4years,so they shouldbe averagedto 110 ; Hammer (1978,p. 11); Courtwright (199 6,p. 82).

4 Arrighi ed. (19 71 , p. 276 ); Graziani (199 7,p. 89).


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even though the abbot claimed he had it from a governmental document. Theavowed purpose of his book was to expose the failures of the Genoese administration in Corsica, in this case the regime's fomentation of civil discord. We candiscard his revolutionary bias, of course, if he had correctly taken the number inquestion from an administrative document (which w e do not kn ow ) 5. Eve n then, it is

unlikely that the reported figure of 28 715 homicides was based on a thorough andreliable investigation. In 1715, the Genoese administration itself had every reason toexag gera te. It had just instituted a tax on the poss es sio n of firearms in Cor sica, in anattempt to pacify the island. For this reason, the leading historian of early modernCorsica, An toine-M arie Graziani, considers the figure in question com pletely m eaning less 6.

Nonetheless, whatever the degree of exaggeration, Corsica around 1 700 w as byno means a peaceful place. Salvini's claim that it was all Genoa's fault, does notdiminish the reality of social conflict. Graziani himself speaks of an ext remedegree of violen ce pervading early m odern Corsican society. Priests, too, w alkedaround armed, even in church, and they avenged their family honor by killingmembers of enemy factions. The number of bandits was kept in check on ly b ecau sem any of them decided to try their luck in Sardinia or the main land 7. Moreover, bloodfeuds and banditry still were endemic in Corsica during most of the nineteenthcentury, as evidenced by S tephen Wilson's w ell-kno wn study. W ilson has ca lculatedhom icide rates ranging betw een 2 6 and 64 per 1 00,0 00 inhabitants (annual averagesin five-year periods) during the years 1816-1850 8. There is no reason to assume apriori that they were lower in the early modern period. Indeed, another contemporary, Ajaccio's bishop Giustiniani, wrote in 1604 that, during his seventeen years ofoffice, he had personally witnessed the killing of at least a hundred m en. This wo uldim ply an annual hom icide rate for the tow n of Ajaccio - one more exaggeration, nodoubt - of over 29 4 per 100 00 09 . During a large part of its history, then, the inhabitants of Corsica were decid edly m ore violent, on average, than their contem porariesin mainstream Europe.

The case of Corsica highlights the excep tions and discontinuities wh ich m arkedthe development of interpersonal violence in Europe. There was no unilinear anduniversal evolution from a violent to a less violent society. Norbert Elias' theory ofcivilization, som e scholars belie ve, im plies just such an evolution. That sort of s implistic interpretation of his theory can easily be corrected 10 . Other criticisms,how ever , may pr ove a little harder to handle. Th e purpose of this essa y is to re -asse ss

s I was unable to trace such a document during a brief visit to th e Archivio di Stato in Genoa . I amgrateful to its director, dr. Carlo Bitossi, for his help.

6 E-mail correspondence between m yself and prof. Graziani , July-November 2000.7 Graziani (1993 & 1997, pp. 146-174) (quote on p. 166) . The involvement of priests casts doubt on

Wilson's thesis that feuds increased in severity in the 19th century, becau se of a growing disrespectfor mitigating rules such as the immunity of certain categories of persons, among whom pries ts(Wi l son , 1988 , pp . 53-54 ,207) .

8

W ilson (1988 , p.16).

9 Giustiniani cited in Graziani (19 97, pp. 1 66-167 ) . Ajaccio had about 2 000 inhabitants at the beginning of the 17th century (p. 105 ).

1 0 This theory was first outlined in (El ias , 193 9) , but I will emphasize the unity of his entire work andthe contribution to his theory by other scholars.


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the explanatory value of the theory of civilization in the light of historical datinterpersonal violen ce. That effort includes a response to som e of E lias' critics

Am ong historians, espec ially those investigating vio lence , the theory of c ivtion has received divergent appreciations recently. In the Anglo-Saxon wonotably in North America, it has obtained increasing recognition over the lastyears or so. In particular, the growing interest in the subject of the long-term deopment of homicide has putElias'work on the scholarly agenda. M ost authors agreethat he offers the only theoretical framework which easily accomodates the emcal evidence on the long-term decline of homicide1 1. It must be added that theauthors in question are mostly content with making this observation and underlittle effort to elaborate on Elias ' analysis. Conversely, in Continental Europe duthe 1990s, a number of historians have criticized Elias' work. Some medievafor example, argue that he presents a distorted picture of life in the middle agethis discussion, too, the subject of violence looms large. Among German crimtorians it now has become almost commonplace to reject the theory of civilizaIt is less clear, though, what they propose in its place.

The criticism from Continental scholars varies in its degree of sophisticatSom e of it is rather superficial. In a col lect ive volume entitledKulturender Gewalt,for example, several contributors, though not all, implicitly or explicitly aragainst Elias. In the introduction, Rolf Peter Sieferle plays the trick of associaElias with Hobbes and calls the former's theory a simple, linear narrative, whicindeed is in Sieferle's summary 1 2. Martin Dinges attempts to confront the theoryof civilization head-on, an effort which utterly fails because he is only fightinwindmills of his own bizarre caricature. For example, Dinges claims that Estresses the otherness and strangeness of violence, relegating it to the realcultura l deserts 1 3. Although totally unfounded, this objection is intriguingbecause it forms the exact opposite o f the reproach made by som e medievalists: thatElias considers violence as a normal and omnipresent feature of medieval lifecontrast, a recent article by Gerd Schwerhoff offers a more sophisticated critiquthe theory of civilization. Schwerhoff is aware that this theory concerns more just vio lence and provides an almost impeccable summary. In the end, howeveressay betrays a structural bias: he cites a number of - mostly historical - studiespublished since 1939 which (appear to) contradict what Elias wrote, but he om itnumerous studies published since then which confirm his theory1 4. Most of theobjections raised by Dinges and Schwerhoff w ill be dealt with below .

An author is always well-advised if he controls his own passions, so I mrefrain from a too-detailed refutation of the arguments of every scholar I disagwith. For the sake of systematization, let me group the objections levelled agthe theory of civilization, in so far as they pertain to violence, into four broad ters: (1) the reliability and validity of the evidence for the long-term trend of dec

1 1 Gurr (1981, pp. 341-342) was probably the first. More recently in the editors' introductionJohnson, Monkkonen (1996).

1 2 Sieferlein Sieferle, Breuninger (19 98 , pp. 9- 29 ; here pp. 14 -15). The counter-example in this volu

is Cristoph Marx's article on South-Africa (pp. 215-240) which makes creative use of Elias' the1 3 Dingesin Sieferle, Breuninger (1 99 8, pp. 17 1-1 94 ; esp. pp. 17 6-1 78) . In a similar vein, Ariette Fclaims that Elias is silent about l'intrieur de la violence, les formes de ce phnomne qui relde la rationalit (Burguireet al.,1995, p. 224).

1 4 Schwerhoff (1998). Summary of Elias on pp. 568-573.


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ing violence; (2) the character of violence, in particular its function as an indicatorfor the level of behavioral control; (3) the interdependence of long-term change inthe field of agg ression and human emotions o n the on e hand and the overall d eve lopment of society on the other ; (4) the new wave of interpersonal violence in theW estern world in the late twen tieth century. At sev eral poin ts in my d iscu ssio n it w ill

be necessary to clear up misunderstandings, for which I apologize in advance. Itactually testifies to the strength of the theory of c iviliza tion that its persistent criticshave only been able to present a seemingly plausible argument by misrepresentingit.

W as the long-term d ecline of v iolen ce, from the fourteenth century to the m iddleof the twentieth, real? Obviously, this is a m ethod ological problem o f concern to allresearchers in the field, whether or not they accept the theory of civilization. Mostof them do agree that the quantitative ev idenc e o n hom icide points at a real de creasein the amount of killing. By contrast, in their enthusiasm for piling up one criticism

of Elias o n the other, both Schwerh off and D ing es question this widely shared view .Th e first even pro poses to reconsider the com m on h abit of treating hom icide figuresbased on prosecuted cases alone as suspect. The widespread practice of considering the highe st ava ilable rates as those nearest to reality he s ay s, ha s a certainarbitrariness to it 1 5 .

Why not take low rates for real for a change, this statement implies. In fact, noresearcher, whether following Elias or not, advo cates a m ethod of alw ays acceptingthe highest figures reported. For example, if a ninth-century chronicler writes mat athousand Vik ings attacked his town , the historian takes this number cum grano salis.I just did the sam e with the amount of murders claim ed by Salvini and w e sho uld dothis in all sim ilar ca se s. Th e real criterion is no t the highes t but the best estim ate. F orthat reason, demographic historians regularly reject reported population figures aseither too high or too low . It just happens that, for hom icide, b ody inspections areour best m easure, espe cially before the age o f statistics and journalism. Con versely,figures for prosecuted homicide do not always yield the lowest rates. In moderntimes they often include attempts, yielding figures much above those derived fromcontemporary medical statistics.

Ongoing work by Manuel Eisner represents the most exhaustive effort of collecting data, from a host of scattered publications, on homicide figures from theEuropean past 1 6. Even his data base, I think, occasionally underestimates thenumber of m urders. Notably, Eisner has included a few older studies of pla ces in latemedieval and early modern England which are based on indictments alone. As Ihave argued earlier, Gurr's original graph for England starts off at a too modestl e v e l1 7 . Moreover, the incredibly low homicide rates (around 0.7) in Swedishnational statistics beginning in the mid-eighteenth century are doubly inflated : notonly are they probably based on court cases (Osterberg does not specify this), theyare relative to the number of inhabitants aged 1 5 -6 9 1 8. Correction for the latter factor

1 5 Schwerhoff (199 9, p. 119).1 6

Reported in Eisner (200 0, conferen ce paper). To appear in British Journal o f Criminology, 2001 /4 .1 7 Spierenburg in Johnson, Monkkonen (1996, pp. 65, 95) . This argument gets support from Roth 's

analysis (this issue ).1 8 sterberg in Johnson, Monkkonen (1996, pp. 43-44). Neither does she discuss the source for the

national statistics in earlier publications wh ere she use s them.


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would at least bring them near to one. Despite these considerations, Eisner's conclusion on the long-term trend in Europe is inescapable: the evid enc e is so c on sistent, the secular dec line so regular and the differences in lev els so large, that it see m sdifficult to refute the con clu sio n o f a real and notable de cline 1 9 .

It is one thing to obser ve a decreasing trend in ho m icide , it is another to c onc lud ethat violence in general has declined. Although several scholars feel unhappy withthis extrapolation, only Dinges, to my knowledge, has maintained that the level ofnonlethal violence actually has increased. The basis for this is very meager : a fewFrench studies sho w a rise in prosecutions for violent offenses toward the end of theeighteenth century and stud ies o f marital conflict revea l a lot of battering and assaultwithin families in the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth 2 0. Thelatter observation says nothing about the prevalence of domestic fights in an earlieror later period. M oreover, one of D ing es ' sources, Da vid Sab ean, actually observesa shift from system atic to reactive v iolence by husbands around 180 0, whichrather suggests a decline in overall marital violence 2 1. The question of husbandsbeating their wives has been heavily debated among family historians. Althoughthey disagree over the timing o f change, m ost agree on a declining trend som ewh erebetween the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. The trajectories of this trend invarious countries should of course be established with greater precision, but for themoment we observe that its direction is congruent with the overall developmentregarding interpersonal violence.

To be sure, high levels of homicide are usually due to a prevalence of male-on-male fighting. We are justified in taking these homicides as indicators for a broaderreservoir of violence, because they commonly are accidents, cases in which afight got out of ha nd 2 2. Ac cep ting this, one m ight still argue that, if men's aggress iveimpulses become stronger, both their willingness to attack others increases and theproportion of fights with an accid ental , lethal outcom e. Th e conse que nce , for thesake of argument, can be stated in quantitative terms : in order to prove a doublingof me n's aggressive imp ulses ov er a certain period, we need a quadrupling of hom icides and to substantiate a 50% decline, a division by a factor of four is needed.Obv iously, with a long-term trend of several dozen s to under one , this is no p roblem.

Quantification alone never tells the whole story. No one would argue that non-lethal violence, including mere threatening, should be left from consideration byhistorians, or that the study of assault and fighting produces only trivial knowledge.It just happens to be the case that, to establish the sheer amount o f v iole nc e in asociety, hom icide rates are our only reliable ind icator 23 . With just the rates of pros ecution available, increases or decreases in nonlethal violen ce m ay reflect anything.In other wor ds, although figh ts, assau lts and threats constitute a subject highly worth

1 9 Eisner (2000, p. 11).2 0 Dinges in Siefer le , Breuninger (1998, pp. 175,186) .2 1 Sabean (1990, pp. 133-134) .2 2 I discussed this more elaborately in my contribution to Johnson, Monkkonen (1996, p. 74). I found

no counter-argument in more recent literature.2 3 The only other possibility is when some town or region obliged its surgeons to report the violently

inflicted wou nds they treated and a com plete series of reports has survived. I have found no study inwhich these two requirements were met, but the preliminary one by Bartolini (1999) points in thatdirection.


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studying, any count of them is unable to prove or disprove the long-term de cline inviole nce . Informed estimates based on prosecuted rates are of course possib le. T woEn glish studies, by Beattie for the eighteenth century and Gatrell for the seco nd halfof the nineteenth, are gener ally acclaim ed for the soph istication of their quantitativeanalysis. The authors carefully weighed all possible factors influencing theirfigures, which enabled them to extrapolate convincingly from prosecuted rates ofnonlethal assault to real rates. Both authors con clud e toward a dec line o f vi ol en ce 2 4.

A final point in this cluster of prob lems co ncer ns the popu lation side o f calcu lating homicide rates. In his dissertation, not that critical of the dominant method yet,Schwerhoff already expressed some doubt: in modern t imes, even a sleepyprovincial tow n easily assembles 50 00 0 people within its con fine s2 5. The implication is that the twentieth century's low homicide rates are biased because of theunfairly high numbers of inhabitants. One could easily turn this argumentaround : peop le living in 150 0 wo uld find it amazing that a town o f that size can besleepy. The question is what do you want your homicide rates to speak for. Oneimportant thing they testify to, I argue, is contemporaries' direct experience withviole nce . If a tow n o f 5 0 00 inhabitants witne sses three murders per year, it mean sthat every neighborhood community has first-hand experience with killing. Today,not to mention in the 1950s, many neighborhood communities have no direct experience with killing at all. Their members live in a world in which aggressive emotions are kept in check to a large extent. Viewed from that angle, it is equallyunnecessary to control homicide rates for such factors as the proportion of youngmen in the population. This factor can simply figure among the explanations forregiona l and short-term va riations in the rates. W hatever the age structure, it le av esthe bare fact of the total popu lation's exper ienc e w ith violen ce unaltered. Whe reas itis true that in every soc iety w e kno w of v iolen ce is practiced disproportionately byyou ng m ales, practice alone doe s not tell us much about an entire comm unity's attitude. During a feud, for exa mp le, older men , or wom en for that matter, m ay encourage youths to avenge the family hon or 2 6.

The subject of honor smoothly leads to my second theme, that of the characterand context of v iolen ce. This is a contested area, in particular for the period wh enhomicide rates were high : the middle ages. Incidentally, in my opinion middleages is a misleading and useless term, which should be banned from historical

writing. In our discu ssion , the term essentia lly refers to (the urban world of) the latethirteenth through early sixteenth centuries. For brevity's sake, despite my reservations, I w ill refer to this period as t he midd le ag es .

Apart from indulging in fights, this wa s also a time in which p eop le ate with theirhands, urinated in public, bathed naked and shared beds with complete strangers.According to the theory of civilization, the degree of control over affects andimp ulses w as lowe r and sudden shifts from on e m ood to another occurred more frequently than in later periods. N ote the comparative wording here. Lesse r control isnot the same as no control. Elias always emphasized that processes of civilization

2 4 Gatrel l (1980) ; Beat t ie (1 986) .2 5 Schwerhoff (1 991 , p . 286) .2 6 Among Turks in the Netherlands today, families often require adolescents, who cannot be tried as

adults, to kill for honor. See van E ck ( 200 1).


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have no beginning : in any society people control their emotions to some degree.Moreover, the relatively lo w level o f emotional control prevailing in the middle ageswas just as much a habitus which had to be learned, into wh ich the you ng had to besocialized, as the court etiquette of Versailles. Given this, it is certainly unjustifiedthat some historians continue to write as if Elias viewed medieval life in terms of astatic we-they contrast. Any criticism based on the mistaken notion that Eliaspostulated a zero point of civilization can simply be dism issed.

Passages coming near to this view can nevertheless be found in the historical literature on violen ce. Th us, the French med ievalist Claude G auvard c hides Elias forhaving observed in the middle ages nothing but an instinctive and brutal barbarity 2 7 . German historians followed suit: in line with Huizinga, he has painted anaive picture of quickly changing m oo ds 2 8; he succumbed to the m yth of the wildand dark mid dle age s 2 9 . Taking issue with his use of the famous Hausbuch as asource of information about knightly life, Schwerhoff once more overstates hispoint. Modern investigators have shown that various artists worked on theHausbuch and that several patrons fostered it, Schw erh off triump hantly remarks, asif this would not rather raise its value as an illustration of contemporary customs 3 0.Finally, in an am using note, Valentin Groebner gave the reproach of a naiv e vie w ofthe middle ages a new twist : Elias actually loved the middle ages. It is no coincidence, Groebner says, that he described the untamed lust for violence in what thishistorian considers sexu ally loa ded terms . Whether Elias w rote about fighting orlove -m ak ing, it all sprang from a nostalgia for a lost intensity and authenticity offeelings 3 1 .

Groebner's statement is amusing, because he apparently thinks he has made a discov ery . It is irrelevant to the theory of civiliza tion, ho we ver , whether som eo nethinks its author w as seiz ed by a nostalgic longing or a stoma ch ach e wh en con templating medieval life. Such comments tell us more about the personality of thescholars who ma ke them than about the theory they ostensib ly criticize. H istorianslike Groebner suppose there simply must be a personal value judgment in Elias'work; they are unable to accept his main motive was to interpret the sources. Bycontrast, in a more realistic approach, the observer may ack now ledg e that on e andthe same historical proce ss can invo lve eleme nts which an individual possibly likesas well as those he possibly dislikes : gains and losses, if you wish. Thus, we mightsay that civilizing pro cesses imply both an increase in politen ess and a decrease in

spontaneity.The criticism discussed so far is largely devoid of content. The only seriousobjection which does refer to a matter of content, concerns the twin themes of ritualand honor. The ritualization of violence and its embeddedness in an honor code, anumber of scholars claim , belie Elias ' picture of med ieva l life as relatively free fromem otional contr ols. Ag ain , Gauvard wa s one of the first to presen t this argument, butshe merely posits it in the introduction and conclusion of her voluminous study.Honor, she explains, was a value shared by all social classes. The fact that violent

2 7

G a u v a r d ( 1 9 9 1 , p . 9 4 4 ) .2 8 Schuster (1995, pp. 96-9 8) .2 9 Schwerhoff (1998, 601) . Similar in Schwerhoff (1999, p . 121) .3 0 Schwerhoff (1998, p . 579) .3 1 Groebner (1995, p. 165).


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behavior wa s usually bound to the rules of the honor code m eans that affects wereconstrained after all, hence a considerable blow to the theory of civilization.Gauvard does not illustrate this with concrete examples though. Another weak pointconcerns her continuous confusion between violence and criminality in general :low crime rates automatically translate into a low level of violence. Finally, she

writes as if society is a person who acts, even producing the curious sentence soc iety has mad e rules to protect itself against itself 3 2 .

Argu ing in a similar vein, Schuster introduces a concrete exa m ple, an incident infifteenth-century Basel : everything is peaceful on the fish market in the earlyev en ing ; a few words from a passer-by alter the situation; suddenly tw o peo ple arefighting w ith kniv es. The n Schuster revea ls that the inciden t had a pre viou s history :the two fighters had quarrelled the other day and the passer-by knew he was likelyto encounter his opponent again on the fish market. This kind of purposeful action,Schuster continues, was typical of medieval conflicts. He considers the fact thatthird parties often tried to stop a fight as another argument against Elias' theory 3 3.On e wond ers wh y Schuster did not beg in his story with the incident of the other dayand whether the angry man perhaps had decided in an impulse to walk to the fishmarket. This example merely illustrates that some conflicts lasted for a longer time,a fact which Elias kne w all too w ell of course. We hav e no proof yet that honor andritual wer e incomp atible with free-floating em otions.

In this matter, D ing es presents the most ingen ious argument. Ac cord ing to him,honor and ritual function ed as pac ifying factors : T he m ost important consequenceof the ritualization of violence is the opportunity [it offers] to get out of a violentconfrontation and peacefully concede to the demands of the other party.Consequently, ritual is a zweckrational phenomenon 3 4. Dinges bases this explicitconclusion on the more implicit ones in his book on conflict in eighteenth-centuryParis. In that perceptive study he sho ws that eve n the seem ingly m ost trivial behavior of common people acquires meaning within the context of honor games. Everyaction has its symbolic significance; nothing is just random. A confrontation mayend in bloodshed or go no further than verbal threats, but rituals accompany it atevery stage. Based on the evidence, Dinges constructs an ideal-type scenario of aslowly escalating quarrel. Verbal threats are followed by gestures : In these carefully ordered gestures, we note again their precisely calculated, ritualized characterof threatening 3 5 .

His choice of words is revealing. Ritual involves calculation, Dinges implies,and therefore a ffect con trol. If one o f his Parisians struck another with his fist, thiswas part of a scenario which the attacker had planned, as it were, five days earlierand had tested and refined in his thoughts. Here we have Dinges' fundamentalmistake. The repetitive nature of his scenario does not point at planning or calculation. Ritual imp lies a fixed p attern! That pattern is already in pe op le's h ea ds ; it doesnot have to be invented. Consequently, the ritual character of many violent confrontations does not preclude that they arose out of impulse. This applies with equal

3 2

Gauvard (1991; paraphrased quote on p. 700). See also Gauvard (1993).3 3 Schuster (1995, pp. 98-104). The book actually is about Konstanz, but apparently he needed an

excursus to Basel to find the right example.3 4 Dinges in Sieferle, Breuninger (1998, pp. 178 (quote), 180).3 5 Dinges (1994, p . 337) .


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force to the medieval period. All human behavior, also in societies with low levelsof affect control, depends to a high degree upon prior learning 36 . To get angry andaggre ssive, you first need a reason, how ever suddenly found. You have to differentiate situations with a friendly atmosphere from situations of hostility. In almostevery society, people who attack and kill for no apparent reason have been considered mad. The caricature which some historians paint of Elias' view of the middleages is that of a soc iety of madm en.

Moreover, Dinges' argument that ritual facilitates the peaceful resolution of aconflict before it escalates, even if it were true, is besides the point. To facilitate isnot to guarantee autom atically. Recurrently, the adh erence to ritual failed to preven tbloodsh ed, in Gauvard's middle ages no less than in D in ge s' eighteenth century. Thehom icide rates sug gest this happened more frequently in the former period. D inge sonly p rove s (althoug h this is important in itself) that a lot of minor v iole nc e in eighteenth-century Paris still was highly ritualized. It should be added that he concentrated on cases involving honor. What about the violence used in robberies, forexa m ple ; did it have a more instrumental character? A lso , in the absence of a reliable indicator for the quantitative incidence of assaults and fights (real crime),we are ignorant how the sheer number of the cases studied relates to that in earlierand later periods : in Paris, in France, in the rest of Eu rope.

Taken together, the criticisms from Dinges and the medievalists want to have itboth w ays. If they can't disprove the theory of civ ilization on quantitative grounds,because of high levels of violence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, theypoint at ritual and argue that attackers actually displayed a great amount of self-control. If they ca nno t find m uch ritual, as in nineteenth-century Euro pe, they c laimquantitatively high levels of assault and marital abuse, as we saw, no longer bothering about the question whether this involved controlled v iolen ce.

If the practice of ritual and an attachment to one's honor are compatible withfree-floating em otio ns, the study of these them es can be integrated into the theory o fcivilization. A host of recent studies have shown the prevalence of honorific violence in the rural and urban communities of preindustrial Europe. For some historians, the popularity of this subject is sufficient reason to consider Elias' approachantequated 37. How ever, the novelty of a theme sa ys nothing about its imp lication forexisting theories. In an attempt to endow these modern studies with a commonprogram, Schw erhoff calls them microhistories, in whic h vio lenc e is analyzed aspart of an old Euro pean culture of conflict and struggle 3 8 . Apart from the fact thatthis formula sm acks a bit too mu ch of old Germ an Volkskunde, he simply providesno alternative theory. The m icrohistories have supplied us w ith a mass o f empiricaldata, showing that, at different times and places, violent confrontations were casesof a defense of a person's honor. The task before us now is to explore new roadsleading toward insights transcending this purely empirical observation. In that task,the theory of civiliza tion still is a formidable b ase from w hich to proceed.

3 6 Compare El ias (1991) .3 7 Compare Roodenburg, who opposes Elias ' approach to an unspecified modern cultural history

(review of Johnson, Monkkon en in CHS, 2 0 0 0 ,4 ,1 , p . 137) . To be sure , El ias dealt with the conceptof honor in his discussion of dueling in Elias (1992).

3 8 S c h w e r h o ff ( 1 9 9 9 , p . 1 2 1 ) .


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The present author has made a modest attempt in this direction. First, I postulated that imp ulsive vs planned viole nce and ritual vs instrumental vio lenc e were theend poles of two largely independent axes3 9 . This notion of axes has proved usefulin a study of m odern Bra zil 4 0. S eco nd , I pointed at chan ges in the concept o f honorover the last few centuries, which loosened its connection to violence4 1. In theabsence of serious rebuttals, I can simply refer to this earlier work.

It may leave one problem unsolved : killing within the context of a feud frequently has an intentional ring to it (although the original murder triggering a feudoften has an im pu lsive character). That is obv ious, for exam ple, in case s in which anenemy is ambushed. Such cases appear to contradict the idea of a long-term trendfrom impulsive to planned violence. Possibly, my axes are valid only for post-feudphases of social development. Alternatively, we may still acknowledge a certainimp ulsive elem ent in feud s, to the extent that the timing of an incident can be une xpected , or in view of the often arbitrary choice of wh ich mem ber of a hostile fam ilyor faction to attack. We may also see it in the passion with which bloodshed mayfollow upon bloodshed in long-lasting vendettas, or even in sudden changes ofm oo d from enm ity to forg iven ess, sealed by a reconciliation ritual, wh ich Elias considers as typical for the society in question. Moreover, the practice of feudingusually involves a love of slaughter and the association of human enemies to ahunting prey, an attitude mag isterially described by E dward M ui r 4 2. There is sufficient reason, then, to rank the physical attacks and killings occasioned by feudscloser to the im pu lsive than to the planned pole .

The third cluster of problems, the interdependence of long-term change in the

field o f aggression and human em otions on the one hand and the overall developmen t of society on the other, touch es on the very core of the theory of civilization. Inthis dom ain, too , misinterpretations have cloud ed the discu ssion at times. Acco rdingto one incorrect view, Elias' theory simply postulates a long-term decline of violence in every social domain. If physical punishment, for example, was on the risein the sixteenth century compared to the preceding period, this would constitute aproblem 43 . However, the death penalties of the sixteenth century primarily were afunction of the growth and stabilization of state monopolies. These judicial executions should rather be put on a par with the feuds by wh ich social control and regulation were achieved previously. With the growth and stabilization of state

m onop olies, the paradoxical situation emerged o f a com bination of collective violence directed outward and a relative pacification of social relations, with lawenforcement as an exception, in sid e4 4.

Linguistic peculiarities have caused some confusion in this respect. The term mon opoly of vio len ce , com m only used in English, is actually m isleading. First ,

3 9 Spierenburg in Johnson, Monkkonen (1996, pp. 70-71).4 0 S o u z a ( 1 9 9 9 ) .41 Cf. my contributions, notably the introduction, to Spierenburg (1 99 8).4 2

Muir (1993).4 3 See, for example, the review of De Verbroken Betovering by Florike Egm ond in NRC-Handelsblad,March 5, 1999.

44 Cf. Goudsblom (1998). Roch is one more author who notes this (speaking of most of the 20thcentury) : On ne peut pas dire que le mon de est plus pacifique et moins v iolen t com me un tout.Simplem ent, les relations interindividuelles taient plus pacifiques.. . (19 98 , p. 2, note 1).


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the monopo ly is always relative, since the very assaults and killings d iscussimply an encroachment on it. Second, following Weber, Elias spoke Gewaltmonopol; the German wordGewalt originally connoted something like ability to ru le 4 5. Although this obviously has to do with power, it is incorrecsay monopoly of power. Elias emphasized that power is an aspect of alrelationships; that it is always two-sided. Although the power balance bethose who rule and those who are ruled is unequal, the latter have a measupow er too. Thus, by definition, power can never be monopolized. M y propotranslateGewaltmonopol as military monopoly. As Elias demonstrated, igradual formation w as intertwined with that of a monopoly on levy ing taxestwo aspects, military ascendency and taxation, together made up the state m ona number of which were established in Europe during the early modern pWithin the theory of civilization this is a crucial, but by no means the onlydevelopmen t w hich facilitated changes in behavioral standards.

To denote th ese changes in behavioral standards in English, the term civprocess is com mon, whereas process o f civiliza tion actually would beThe former term suggests that a person or group out there is actively civiothers, which, in its turn, might suggest that social processes come about bsom eon e directs them. That is never the case. Long-term processes, a lso thatilization, are largely blind. Thus, the refinement of manners in early mFrance received an impetus because middle groups imitated the court elite, wupon the latter were forced to revise their manners in order to maintain sociatinction. On the other hand, throughout history some people have tried indechange the behavior of others, often in the direction o f more civilized sta

If this effort involves a more or less concerted campaign, we may speak of lization offensive. The invention of modern man, as Muchembled calls it,represented a major offensive of this type. During a period stretching from thsixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, we frequently observe conefforts, through courts and other agencies, to impose norms and standards of bior implying a more sober way of life, a decrease of m agic in people's world more controlled sexuality, etc.4 6. The word offensive, of course, does not necessaily imply success. Like similar ones, this concerted campaign itself was pamore encompass ing, b lind process. For example, if the behavior of peasants idiffered from that in 1500, this was not merely due to the offensives of cour

moral entrepreneurs, but it was also facilitated by social and economic transftions.Both the imitation-and-refinement mechanism and that of conscious inction of norms in their turn formed part of overall blind changes.

Thus,the various interdependencies - such as the intertwinement of the grof state monopolies and the spread of civilized codes of behavior - wer

4 5 I already discussed this in the introduction of my dissertation (Spierenburg, 1978). Today, Ghistorians freely useGewalt with reference to interpersonal violence. Dinges, however, appearsdraw on the older connotation ofGewalt, whe n he unjustly accuses m e of overlooking state violen c(in Sieferle, Breuninger, 1998, p. 173). A comparable terminological confusion is evident in a

among French historians on Elias (Burguireet al, 1995). In that debate, Chartier's definition ofinterpersonal violen ce com me mise e n jeu des corps pouvant amener la mise en jeu d e l 'exi(p . 231) is well-taken. For his part, Elias hardly used the word violence; to denote affects of asion, he spoke ofAngriffslust.

4 6 Muchembled (1988). It should be noted that the singular abstract of modern man is quite Elias' approach.


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com plex nature. M oreover, these interdependent develop m ents wer e structured differently in various parts of Europe. Still another mistaken view is that Eliassom eh ow considere d court society - and the French mod el at that - as a necessarystage, withou t which the process of civilization is un think able 47 . Adm ittedly, he concentrated on France in his 1939 book and published a separate study of the Frenchcourt. But once more, it is unfair to evaluate his contribution to les scienceshumaines based only on these two books. Elias later wrote about quite differentsocial formations and other scholars have done so, using his approach. He alwayscalled for new research, wh ich m ight lead to mo dificatons of his theory. The appropriate reaction, therefore, is to take up that challenge, rather than simply reproaching Elias for not hav ing d one all the work himself.

When we acknowledge that the road through court society was not necessarilythe only route for civilization pro cesses, there is no particular reason w hy w e shouldexpect to find that countries or territories with an absolutist regime first witnessedthe decline of hom icide 4 8. To the contrary, they are mo re likely to have b een slowerin this respect. A s E lias h ims elf pointed out, the recently tam ed court aristocratsof Louis XIV still carried swords and their renunciation of violence was based onFremdzwang (external constraints) rather than Selbstzwang (automatic self-constraint). In this environment, the etiquette of table manners and polite conversation,rather than the curbing of anger, formed the main arena for changes in behavioralcodes. This is far from an anomaly, since the theory of civilization is about overallsocietal change, stressing the interdependence of macro-psychological and social,or inter-human, processes. On the most general level, Elias identifies processes ofdifferentiation of functions and extension of the chains of interdependence 4 9. These

include urbanization, for exam ple, or eco nom ic differentiation, w hich m ight equallyhave affected specific spurts in the long-term trend of declinin g viole nc e.We are of course seriously handicapped, if we want to find out how the coming

of court society affected interpersonal vio len ce in France. Th e utter lack of Frenchhom icide rates for the pre-statistical period m akes this enterprise nearly imp ossible.It is the nefarious le ga cy of the violence au vol the sis, whic h has g iven rise to a fatalpreoccupation with percentages. Almost every French historian appears to be convinced that determining the ratio of (prosecuted) violent offenses to propertyoffenses is the real thing. Consequently, France is a blank spot on the European chartof the long-term development of homicide. To remedy that situation is one of the

principal requirements for furthering our understanding of interpersonal violence inthe past.

Finally, the present. How does the new wave of interpersonal violence in theWestern wo rld in the late twentieth century relate to the theory of civiliza tion ? For

4 7 Even while acknowledging that Elias stressed the different routes taken by England and Germany,Schw erhoff (19 98, pp. 584-5 90) , makes this mistake. He considers even the smallest detail on w hicha non-French court deviated from Versailles as a refutation of Elias ' theory. Moreover, i t eludes mewh y com mu nicatio n betw een ruler and leading elite and patronage exc han ge are incom patiblewith the domest icat ion of the ar is tocracy (p. 584) . Final ly, Schwerhoff (p . 588) chides El ias forinsis t ing on the term absolut ism, whereas El ias (1969) consis tendy cal led this a term used byothers.

4 8 Eisner (2000, pp. 16-18) argues that this follows from Elias ' theory.4 9 Schw erhoff (19 98, p . 593) unduly depreciates these as residual, auxiliary arguments .


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those who think this theory is evolutionistic or teleological, the answer is simple.The accusation of evolutionism, however, can be ignored, since it is based on theunscholarly procedure of apportioning guilt by association : Elias' work is first pronounced akin to nineteenth-century theories and next every shortcoming of thesetheories is held against him as we ll 5 0 . Th e theory of civilization is of course based o nobse rved past trends and has no room for evolution. Future generations may witne sssocia l integration at eve n higher lev els than the state or they ma y no t.

To illuminate the present, we have to turn to the distant past for a moment. Thetheory of civilization essen tially m aintains that a few general societal deve lopm entsroughly march together: toward increasing differentiation of functions and anextension of the chains of interdependence or in the opposite direction. There aresufficient ex am ple s of sustained de-integration in the past, of w hich the declin e andfall of the Roman Empire in the West is probably the best known case. The breakdown of the Roman state monopoly and the concomitant de-differentiation of functions w ere acc om panied in their turn by a decrease in average affect con trol. Thereare enough indications to maintain that, during the Principate, the Roman elites hada measure of sensitivity and civilized' emotional control roughly similar to thatprevailing among the aristocracy and higher bourgeoisie of France or Englandaround 1700. If we could get homicide rates for Europe South of the Rhine andDanube in the first five centuries of the Common Era, the theory of civilizationexp ects them to be low est in the first and seco nd centuries and then start on a secularrise, along with the breakdown of central state control and eco no m ic de-differentiation.

The example of Corsica, with which I began, forms another case in point.

Neither the Genoan city-state nor the French national state during the first centuryof i ts hegemony could exercise an effective mili tary monopoly over the island,while the level of economic integration and urbanization remained ephemeralduring this period. The corollary was a persistence of high levels of interpersonalv i o l e n c e5 1. A recent, more short-term exa m ple concern s the devo lution of the Sov ietUnion. In this case, a weakening of the state monopoly is accompanied by risingho m icid e rates. Wh at happened in Corsica and the former Sov iet U nion , is pr eciselywha t the theory of civiliza tion w ould lead us to expect. In a similar vein , the increasein interpersonal violence in the Western world from the 1970s through 1990s waspartly due to the em ergen ce of unp acified islands in the inner citi es 5 2.

Ne ver the less, the very long-term, or world-historical trend rather proc eeds in theopposite direction. Periods of de-differentiation and de-civilization have usuallybeen followed by renewed integration. The world-historical trend lends some plausibility to the expectation of integration at a higher level somewhere in the future.Far from invo lving wishful, evolutionary thinking , this is a realistic prospe ct (and itis per definition not wishful for those who hate the idea). In the long run, societieswith greater integration and affect control tend to prevail over societies with lesserintegration and affect control. This is not due to the presence of some Hegelian

5 0 Recent ly, Schwerhoff (1998 , p . 595) u sed this procedure. Th om e ( this issue) a lso speaks of an evolut ionary component .

5 1 A similar situation prevailed in Sicily. Cf. Blok (1974) , who, however, does not provide homiciderates.

52 Cf. Spierenburg in Johnson, Monkkonen (1996, p. 95). This argument was first put forward (implicitly) in Anderson (1994) .


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wo rld spirit or bec au se so m eon e planned it in adv anc e; it is our empirical ob servation in retrospect.

Ev en if we exp ect renew ed integration and civilization in the future, w e are ign orant about its timing. Are we to assume, with Thome in this issue, that the trendtoward rising interpersonal vio len ce w ill be with us for a w hi le? That is a mere prediction of course. One cannot explain a predicted trend, only make the predictionplausible. A minor argument against its plausibility is the slight decrease in thehom icide rate observed in the U SA at the closing of the 19 90s. A n argument for thestability o f the trend observ ed sin ce the 19 70 s, on the other hand, is that it appears tobe accompanied by the revival of a traditional notion of male honor. For a fullappreciation of modern developments, however, a more distant past needs to betaken into consideration.

One longer-term trend has remained undeflected in Western societies until thepresent day, despite the recent increase in the homicide rate. I am referring to thepacification of the elites. W ell into the seventeenth century it had been com m on foraristocrats and rich burghers to engage personally in physical struggles. This hasbec om e ever m ore uncomm on for them since, with the revival of dueling among thenineteenth-century bourgeoisie as a partial exception 5 3. Throughout the twentiethcentury, the West's upper and middle classes have largely refrained from fighting indaily life, considering this a nega tive habit of me n from the lowe r classe s or ev en anunder-class. In today's w orld, if yo u wa nt to rise socially, yo u ha ve to repress w hatever vio lent inclinations yo u might cherish. Cultures of viole nce are associated w ithoutsider groups, which appears from, among others, studies of New York in the195 0s and contemporary towns in America and the Nether lands 54 . The reality of theprocess of pacification of the elites, for once, is attested by Elias' stern criticstogether. Schuster shows that the patriciate of Konstanz eagerly partook of thetow n's vi ole nc e in the fifteenth century. For eighteenth-century Paris, D ing es p ointsout that, wh ereas m iddle groups still indulged in phy sical con frontations, the uppergroups were uninvolved. Schwerhoff admits to the social marginalization of violence in Germany, explaining that its practice was largely confined to the workingclasses by the second half of the nineteenth c entu ry 5 5.

Th e persistence o f a relative marginalization of physical a ggre ssion, despite therise in hom icide rates in recent dec ade s, attests to the fact that w e ha ve not simplyreturned today to an earlier phase in the long-term dev elopm ent of interpersonal vio

lence. At various levels, modern social circumstances co-determine the ways inwhich threats, fights and assaults manifest themselves in our world. This can beillustrated with a qualitative compa rison. The com parison - preliminary as it mu stbe within the confine s o f this essay - is betw een tw o groups w ho are relatively w ell-researched : Amsterdam's popular duelists around 1700 and the street-orientedinhabitants of Philadelphia's inner city, mostly black, on the eve of the year 2000 5 6 .I will call them A M 17 00 and PH 20 00 , respectively. The former are representativefor a broader culture of violence in the preindustrial period, while several of thelatter's characteristics may also apply to underprivileged groups in contemporary

5 3 Spierenburg in Spierenburg (1998 , p . 24) .5 4 Schne ider (1999) ; Anderson (199 9) ; van San (1998) .5 5 Schus ter (1995 , p . 112 ) ; Dinges (1993 , p . 384 ) ; Schwerhoff (1999 , pp . 12 9-130) .5 6 Amsterdam: Spierenburg (1998, chapter 4 & 2000, pp. 188-189); Phi ladelphia: Anderson (1999) .


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Europe. Although AM1700 and PH2000 share a culture of violence and a code ofhonor and male bravery, at least three crucial differences between them can beobserved.

On e is ob viou s at first sight : the use of knives vs. a preference for guns. This difference of technology affects the psychology of the two groups. In a gun fight, the

participants usually observ e a measure o f physical d istance, in contrast to the mo redirect, skin -close confrontation o f the bladed duel. More so than with shooting , handling a knife involves the unleashing of aggressive impulses. Paradoxically, thoseaggressive impulses do not necessarily imply a drive to kill. Knife fighters wantedto teach their opponen t a less on ; if the fight ended in death, they considered this anaccident. W ith a bullet, it is nearly imp ossible to hurt som eon e just a little bit . Themiddle road between backing off and a deadly fight hardly exists. Consequently, tocultivate and exhibit a reputation for violence functions as a strategy of survival :this reputation alone frightens off challengers. For PH2000, unlike for AM1700,every armed confrontation is potentially lethal.

A second difference has to do with modern developm ents, such as the com m unications revo lution, the rise of consum erism and globalization, all of w hich had notset in yet by 170 0. Desp ite the underprivileged cond itions, mod ern med ia, in particular television , are present in today's inner cities. As a win dow on the world, television makes PH2000 conscious of their posit ion outside mainstream society. Theyhate the system and they ridicule and thwart any individual who seeks a futureoutside the ghetto. Such a form of political consciousness was totally absent inA M 17 00 . Modern m edia also display the newest products. PH 200 0 have a taste forexpensive trademark articles, which induces them to street robbery at times. Thisconsumer-mentality hardly characterized AM1700. Yet, some of them engaged inproperty crim e as we ll, in particular to facilitate their principal type of co nsu m ption :in taverns. Bars and similar establishments appear to be less central again in the lifeof PH 20 00 , wh o literally ha ve a street culture.

Finally, the drug trade permeates modern street life. This is unequivocally arecent phenomenon, in America no less than in Europe. New York gangs of the1950s, for example, still were untouched by it. The very people who are habituallyviolent and cherish an ethos of bravery, are recruited into the illegal economy.Among PH2000, everyone with a street orientation gets involved in the drugtrade ( goin g le ga l ) sooner or later. This mak es it possib le for them to stay outside

th e sy stem indee d. By contrast , A M 17 00 periodically shifted to a legal existen ceby enlistin g on a ship. To the extent that the drug trade help s to sustain the culture o fstreet violence, Western legislators, by prohibiting the consumption of certain substances, indirectly foster that culture.

These observations, the beginning of a comparison which should be elaboratedm uch m ore fully, are indicative. They point at crucial features of the contex t of v iolence which a straightforward count of dead bodies is unable to reveal. The differences between AM1700 and PH2000 illustrate still another aspect of Elias' theory.Elements of earlier phases of a long-term development, he observed, often remainpresent or return during later phases. However, they usually do so in a transformed

manner, commensurate with the different type of society (or figuration) whichhas emerged.Thu s, the explanatory potential, for vio lenc e and other social pheno men a, of the

theory of civilization remains strong. That a few details in Elias' 1939 book havefailed to stand the test of time was only to be expected. In no way do these minor


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modifications addup to a falsificationof his theory and, more important, theyareheavily outweighedby new data compatible with this theory.For example,a reexaminationof the chronicles Elias indirectly relied on to picture med ieval knightlovefor battleand slaughterhas madethe notionof a warrior's lustfor attackinguncertain, but this does hardly diminish the realityof violencein the everyday lifeof the period

5 7

. Similarly, although gender differences werea less prominent themein Elias' 1939 book,he was oneof the first theoriststo include shifting power balances betweenthe sexes among the principal modern trends5 8. Withinthe bodyofkn ow led ge generated by Elias him self and the scholars wh o have elaborated hiories,the triadof gender, power and violence loom s large indeed.

Th e basic argumentof this essay can be sum med up in a few sentences. R esearcon the long-term developmentof homicide overthe last twenty yearshas yieldedimpressivenew evidencefor the theoryof civilization. Some historians tendtoignore this evidenceor attemptto explainit away. The only objectionto the theorynot basedon a misinterpretation refersto the historical studyof honor and ritual.However,in so far as they referto this subject, Elias' critics merely proclaimitsmodernity, overthe alleged old-fashionednessof his approach.In reality,thetheoryof civilization invites creative elaboration,in which subjects like ritualandhonor area boon rather than a prob lem.

Pieter C. SpierenburgFaculteit Historische en Kunstwetenschappen

Erasmus UniversiteitPostbus1738

300 0 DR RotterdamNetherland

[email protected]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson (R ), The codeof thestreets,Atlantic Monthly,May 1994,pp.81-94.Anderson (E.), Codeof the Street. Decency, Violenceand the Moral Life of the Inner City,

New York, London (Norton), 1999.

Arrighi (R), (Ed.),Histoirede laCorse,Toulouse, Privat, 1971.Bartolini (D.), Pratique mdico-lgale en Terre Ferme vnitienne, 16e-17e sicles,quinoxe,22,Automne 1999, pp. 27-39.

Beattie (J.M.), Crimeand the Courts inEngland, 1660-1800,Oxford, 1986.Becker (M.B.), Changing patternsof violence and justicein 14th - and 15th-century

Florence, Comparative Studies in Societyand History,1976,18, 3, pp. 281-296.

5 7 Com pare M aso (1 982). Sch werhoff (1 998, pp. 582-5 83) repeats Maso's critique. It should be that, himself a sociologist, Elias used existing historical studies for his synthesis, having no amto que stion the w ay the authors hand led their original sources . It isa little unfair to blame h im for theshortcomingsof an older generationof historians.

5 8 Elias (1971,p. 76 ; orig.ed., 1970). Thiswas before women's studieshad emergedin academia.Thus,any claim that Elias' theory has no place for women and genderis absurd. On gender and violence, w ith referenceto Elias' work: Spierenburg (1 99 7,1 998 ).


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