Modernity and Social Theory SO3523 Norbert Elias 1897-1990.

Modernity and Social Theory SO3523

Norbert Elias

1897-1990


• Elias’s Biography:

• Jewish middle class background – conscripted during WWI

• Heidelberg 1925-29: Key centre for European sociology at the time. Elias worked in an unofficial capacity under Mannheim.

• Frankfurt 1930-33: Worked as Mannheim’s Assistant


Paris 1933-34: Worked selling wooden toys

London 1935-53: Wrote The Civilising Process Vols. 1 & 2 – Death of Elias’s parents and sister in Nazi Germany.

Leicester 1954 - 62 Lectureship

Ghana 1962 – 75 Professorship

1975 – 90 Amsterdam & Bielfield


• The Influence of Freud

‘…probably Freud’s ideas had a greater influence on my thinking than those pf any theoretical sociologist’

• ‘Civilization & It’s Discontents’


1) Opposition between human ‘instinct’ and social requirements.

2) Psychic life changes historically. In western society this is characterised by increasing restraint over time. Childhood socialization reproduces this process in ‘reduced’ form.

3) Human desire to fulfil its strongest wishes leads to the embracing of religion, myths and ideologies


Other Key Influences:

Horkheimer: social science should be interdisciplinary - societies are ‘psychologically co-determined’.

SI (Mead, Cooley, Blumer etc.): Social life as a process.

MacIver: Social life must be understood ‘genetically’ by studying its historical development rather then merely its current state.

Huizinga: Work on the middle ages and its people heavily influenced Elias’s key works on ‘Civilization’.


• Theory Building:

• Elias paid little attention to the work of other sociologists in formulating his own ideas.

• He believed that sociology needed a new conceptual framework that transcended the structure/ agency problem


• Individual & Society: A False Opposition?

• ‘Homo Clausus’ and Interdependency

• Social Habitus – personality formed in interaction with others. (see Bourdieu)

• Psychogenesis & Sociogenesis

• Society: Neither merely a collectivity of individuals nor a system existing beyond individuals, but a ‘network of interdependencies formed by individuals’ (Elias, 1994 [1939]).


• Elias on Social Order:

• ‘The social life of people in societies always has, even in chaos or degeneration, in the greatest social disorder, a very particular form’ (Elias, in Schäfers (ed), 1986)

• Emergence: Social interaction produces an order ‘sui generis’, independent of the will of the individuals who comprise a particular society.


• Key elements of Elias’s Approach

• 1) Social life is the unintended outcome of intentional human action and interaction.

• 2) Humans form interdependent figurations linking the psychological to the social.

• 3) Sociology should focus on relations.• 4) Sociology should focus on change and

development rather than static structures.• 5) Sociology’s role is to understand the ‘real’ world

and how it might be improved(van Krieken, 1998)

Process SociologyProcess Sociology::

Interaction, Interdependency, power and domination – central to all human relationships

Evolution and Social Process

Structure, System and Reification


• The Civilizing Process Vol. 1: ‘The History of Manners’

• A Historical Account of Western Psychological Development: The Moulding

of ‘Instinct’



The Medieval WorldThe Medieval World


• Courtly Manners, Distinction & Social Advantage: ‘A man who knows the court is a master of his gestures, of his eyes and of his face; he is profound, impenetrable; he dissimulates bad offices, smiles at his enemies, controls his irritation, disguises his passions, belies his heart, speaks and acts against his feelings’ (La Bruyère).


• Emotion & Rationality

• The favouring of long term goals over immediate emotional satisfaction

• Courtly Rationality (Symbolic) & Bourgeois Rationality (Economic) (see Weber, Bourdieu)


Lecture 2

• The Civilizing Process Vol 1:

• Habit & Disgust: External Constraint Becomes Internalized to produce Automatic Self Restraint

• Bodily Matters

• Rationalizing of Interpersonal Violence


• The Contemporary Court?

• Business Etiquette & Organizational Cultures

• Office Politics & Courtly Machinations


• Civilising Process Vol 2: State Formation

• Civilization at the Macro Level


• The ‘Monopoly Mechanism’:

Some small interdependent social units within a larger collective, through ongoing competition, will gain greater opportunities that allow them to eliminate others on an escalating basis.


• The ‘Royal Mechanism’:

Central authorities who can locate themselves between mutually fearful competing interests, where the latter can neither cooperate or win out against each other, tend to retain the balance of power.


• The Rise of States and The Monopoly of Violence

• European Nationhood


• Civilizing Process & State Formation:

• Economy

• Extended Markets

• Division of Labour

• Monetization


• Civilizing Process & State Formation:

• Functional Democratization

• The Spread of the Franchise


• Civilization v ‘Barbarism’:

• Ethnocentric?

• The Consciousness Of Western Superiority

• Colonialism: European Empire to the PNAC (Project for the New American Century)


• Civilization & De-civilization?

• The Mechanization of War

• ‘The Germans’ & National Socialism

• Stanley Milgram

• ‘The Bomb’


• The ’60’s Onwards & The Sexual Revolution: Controlled De-control?


• The Present: ‘Late Barbarians’?

• The Mass Media & ‘Decivilization’?

• The Blurring of the Public & Private

• Vicarious Experience

• De-civilization or ‘Mimesis’?


• Mimesis, De-civilization, Sport & Hooliganism (Dunning et al)

• Violent Crime


• Civilized Elites?

• Global Conflict, Warfare & Terrorism:

• The War on Terror & ‘The Clash of Civilizations’

• Conflict, International Law & ‘Civilized’ Codes of Conduct


• A Global Civil Society? (Keane)

Modernity and Social Theory SO3523 Norbert Elias 1897-1990.

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Transcript of Modernity and Social Theory SO3523 Norbert Elias 1897-1990.