Credits, references, and bibliography

Norbert Elias

The Civilizing Process: behaviors once allowed become, over time, unacceptable.

• What was once acceptable (or not taken into account) becomes noticed and problematic (embarrassing).
• Until people began commenting on such behaviors--there wasn't anything"rude" or embarrassing.
• Belching, Nose Picking, and Passing Gas
• The "frontier of shame" defines civility

Explaining the Changes: Lengthening Dependency Chains

1. Kings and their courts:
2. Dependency
• Short dependency chains--free to do as you want (warriors).
• Long chains: become sensitive to needs and expectations of others (nobles).
3. Life grows less dangerous and more predictable, but also less exciting--boredom, repression, and restlessness
4. Case Study: Fox Hunting--becomes increasingly rationalized ("sportization") and less exciting.
• Banned in Great Britain, 2005
• As violence is taken out of sport, it manifests itself in other areas.
5. Figurations
   • Interweavings of people--interrelationships (not external structures)
   • Process Sociology. Centrality of power--figurations constantly developing, largely unseen and unplanned
   • Dependency chains are one example
   • Individuals are open to and interrelated with others.

See: Christopher Lasch. Review: Historical Sociology and the Myth of Maturity: Norbert Elias's "Very Simple Formula". Theory and Society, Vol. 14, No. 5 (Sep., 1985), pp. 705-720.

Norbert Elias (1897-1990) "studied the long-term historical development of the civilizing process.  In the civilizing process, a number of behaviors that were formerly allowed became prohibited in European society from the 13^th to the 19^th centuries.  People became much more self-conscious about appropriate behavior over this period.  Elias argued that people became more and more connected to and dependent upon one another as modern social structure developed.  He referred to this as the lengthening of dependency chains.  As a result, people became more sensitive to others.  Elias tried to map the social relationships that created sensitivity into figurations or interweaving networks of people.  The concept of figuration can be seen as an effort to overcome the macro-micro distinction in sociology in which cultural phenomena are reified into norms.  Elias argued that sociologists needed to deal with human relationships rather than abstractions." (1)

Exercise

Norbert Elias observed a long-term trend of increasingly civilized everyday behaviors.  His research method was to look at writing on manners, which he found in etiquette books, to find out what common behaviors were and when they began to be considered offensive.  Today, the Internet is a new social realm where manners are still developing. 

Go to the Netiquette website: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/

First, take the netiquette quiz to gauge your own understanding of netiquette.  Then, look at the core rules of netiquette and answer the following questions.

a.       What are some common everyday behavioral problems for Internet users?

b.      Are some of these behavioral problems peculiar to the Internet?  Why?

c.       To what does the guide to etiquette appeal when recommending changes in behavior?

d.   Based on what you know about the role of self-constraint in the civilizing process, do you think that netiquette will improve over time?

Norbert Elias and Process Sociology: http://www.norberteliasfoundation.nl/figurations.php. The Norbert Elias Foundation website on "Figurations". 

1. Much of this page comes from the "Instructor's Manual" to accompany Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics, Second Edition, George Ritzer, Mcgraw-Hill, 2007. The Instructor's Manual was prepared by James Murphy, University of Maryland, College Park and Todd Stillman, Fayetteville State University. These excerpts are from chapter 5.
2. Ritzer, George. 2007/2010/2013. Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics. 2nd/3rd/4th editions. St. Louis: McGraw-Hill

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