The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations [Paperback]

Norbert Elias (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 13, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0631221611 | ISBN-13: 978-0631221616 | Edition: Revised

The Civilizing Process stands out as Norbert Elias' greatest work, tracing the "civilizing" of manners and personality in Western Europe since the late Middle Ages by demonstrating how the formation of states and the monopolization of power within them changed Western society forever.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Without doubt the most important piece of historical sociology since Max Weber." Richard Sennett, London School of Economics. <!--end-->

"A modern classic of the first order." Lewis Coser.

"Elias has all the boldness and sureness of touch of the old masters, of whom he is perhaps the last. Reading his pages one again and again makes the mental note that this or that point is worthy of a Max Weber ... One realises from a book like this that serious sociology must remain dependent on the insightful interpretation of history of just the kind that Elias provides." Bryan Wilson.

"The most remarkable recent attempt to contain the social and the individual within a unified scheme of sociological analysis." Philip Abrams

"The Civilizing Process is remarkable: eclectic, insightful and constantly surprising." Times Higher Education Supplement

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing; Revised edition (July 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631221611
• ISBN-13: 978-0631221616
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 58 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Warriors Into Functionaries: Tamed Nobility & the State October 23, 2001

By ChairmanLuedtke

Format:Paperback

Norbert Elais' The Civilizing Process is an explanation of the rise of the modern nation-state, and the process by which state formation engendered changes in the psyches and day-to-day manners of modern citizens. In short, his argument is that the functional complexity of post-medieval Europe went hand-in-hand with a sublimation of man's baser instincts. Upon first glance, the reader immediately wonders about the relevance of findings such as "in medieval society people generally blew their noses into their hands" (126). The dominant explanations for the rise of the modern nation-state have usually been based in economics (Marx, Polanyi, Moore, North & Thomas) and not in the sort of etiquette, manners and social customs that are the key operating concepts in Elias' work. However, Elias makes a convincing case that such customs deserve predominant explanatory weight, being vehicles of social control that lay the psychological groundwork for the nation-state. Such a finding helps political scientists answer the persistent question of why Western political institutions fail when placed into unfamiliar Third-World social environments. Most analysts have chalked this up to unequal economic development, but Elias would probably favor an argument emphasizing the lack of a "civilizing" process in Third-World societies. Such an explanation--like Putnam's reasoning in revealing Southern Italy's "civic culture" to be bankrupt--is admittedly open to criticism of essentialism, cultural determinism, and other postmodern shortcomings, but at a minimum, it certainly alerts us to pertinent, non-economic variables at work in the development-democracy relationship....

Elias selects three comparative cases, France, England and Germany, and performs a content analysis of medieval texts on manners, etiquette, and the transformation of the nobility from warriors into courtiers. These texts are the empirical evidence offered for his key variable, pan-European courtly manners delineated by social structure (classes and "monopolies" of power). The other key variable (it's rather unclear which one is "dependent" on the other) is the rise of the nation-state, which was brought about by an exogenous variable (population growth) as well as two intervening factors: 1) the decline of the nobility relative to national absolutism (both economically and militarily); and 2) the rise of a money economy. Elias shows how centrifugal forces in these societies (mainly the warrior-noble class) resisted the "integration" of absolutism/nationhood, but that these forces in the end were overcome by economics coupled with the centripetal social groundwork of pan-European "civilite" and social customs, leading to an increasingly complex interweaving of social functions. "Society was `in transition' . . . `Simplicity' . . . had been lost. People saw things with more differentiation" (61). "Social control was becoming more binding . . . with the structural transformation of society . . . a change slowly came about: the compulsion to check one's own behaviour" (70).

The near totality of Elias' evidence is qualitative, often selected from medieval writings and secondhand observations. Although he means to proceed inductively from these facts, Elias often reads like a deductive historian, especially when positing lawlike generalizations such as "the more or less sudden emergence of words within languages nearly always points to changes in the lives of people themselves, particularly when the new concepts are destined to become as central and long-lived as these" (48). In fact, his entire thesis can be summarized with another of his apparently deductive axioms: "The growth of units of integration and rule is always at the same time an expression of structural changes in society, that is to say, in human relationships" (254). Marxists, of course, would say that such social changes are themselves dependent upon changes in the relations of production, but Elias gives equal weight to social causes as to economic ones. The economy is by no means neglected in his analysis, since he gives currency, demand for property, and population growth prime explanatory roles in his causal process (despite the fact that there is no quantitative evidence given for these socioeconomic correlations, unlike the analysis of the same topics by North & Thomas). However, Marxists would surely have a fit over Elias' assertion that the civilizing process leads to a wholesale leveling of distinctions between social classes (430), as well as his claim that the modern state arose out of a virtual stalemate between the bourgeois and the nobility (327).

On the topic of state-society relations, Elias makes the provocative argument that for the past 300 years, "monopoly rulers" (including, but not limited to, absolutist kings) are mere functionaries, with the real power resting in the hands of their "subjects" (271). "Control of the centralized institutions themselves is so dispersed that it is difficult to discern clearly who are the rulers and who are the ruled" (315). Of course, under an instable balance of power (including today's Third World) the playing field is presumably up for grabs between different classes and parts of the state, but in a developed society, Elias would argue that the internalization of "civilized" norms means that the "strong" state, while resting on a cohesive social order, is not as autonomous from social forces as one might think. Read more ›

30 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Elias organizes one's thinking about Western Civilization. July 9, 1998

By Jack Kessler

Format:Paperback

This is one of the most important books I have ever read. Norbert Elias ingeniously and persuasively provides a way to understand the evolution of Western societies and personalities from the Twelfth Century to our own time.

He provides an organizing principle for understanding how and why life and people were different in different periods of Western history. Until I read Elias I could only guess at what life was like in earlier eras by inferring from social, economic, and technical conditions. Elias provides a clear and reasonable way to look much closer.

I strongly recommend this book.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars I wonder if its complete December 26, 2006

By D. Schotman

Format:Paperback

Both the German & the Dutch version of this work are much longer and stretch about 850 pages. This one is only 600 pages long, so I wonder where the other 250 are.

Apart from that its one of the most important books I think there ever have been published by any Sociologist. On of the few that really stands on par with Weber, Durkheim & Habermas (if you concider him as a sociologist).

I really want to read the rest also.

5.0 out of 5 stars Aha! June 16, 2013

By John Kay

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the book that explains why history happens. It requires a fairly large vocabulary or the occasional dip into a dictionary; Elias uses words well and more precisely than most current usage.

5.0 out of 5 stars What I learned from this great book February 14, 2013

By Daniel

Format:Paperback

What I liked about the book is the systemic approach to the social process (a system as a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated and dynamic whole). Elias unravels a complex process where the growing interdependence between the members of a society, and the consequent increasing balance of powers, will lead to the foundations of the modern state and to the democratic societies that many of us enjoy today. This process is present at all levels in a society and can be traced not only by looking at the political, demographic or economic evolution but also at almost any other process within the society: Elias shows an example by studying the evolution of manners in different places and then by focusing on the socioeconomic, demographic, and political changes that will lead to the modern State in France and showing how changes in politics, economics or even manners, are part of a same interconnected and interdependent process.

What does it take for democracy to work? One would think that all you need is to get rid of the tyrants. But history is full of examples that contradict this. Too often another tyrannical system will replace the former one. The Soviet Union, Cuba; many Asiatic, South American or African countries... It's not as simple as to invade Iraq or Afghanistan and to get rid of the local moguls and dictators and then establish a democratic government. It doesn't work like that. There are more levels and variables involved than just a given political, economic or religious group. Democracy is about balance and about interdependence: If I need you and if you have similar power I cannot bully you; I have to negotiate.

It is always simpler to explain history based on the doings of a few kings, generals, politicians, scientists...... rather than to view history as an ongoing process where kings, leaders or eminent people in a given period play a much less influential role than we have learned to believe and are more of a product of their time. Our leaders are the expression of a social status quo. A Hitler will never succeed in a well balanced and interdependent society. It is more about `we the people' and how we relate to each other in a given period, than about whichever bigwig hits the news in a given moment portrayed as the direct cause of this or that historic, social or economic shift. And it is up to us `the people' to realize the role we have in the social process and to take a more active and organized part in it. Read more ›

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Impression of Norbert Elias' Civilizing Process March 27, 2006

By Morris Sokoloff

Format:Paperback

The work is a marvel of creative scholarship. Its organization and style unsurpassed. I would recommend it to anybody interested in the evolution of society and cultural history.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars just one small comment January 18, 2013

By Alejandro Cheirif

Format:Paperback

This book is extraordinary. Although I believe it is in reality two books: one is the history of manners formation or transformation. Two is the history of monopolization and centralization. They are certainly related, but it does seem like two separate reasearches. That did not bother me really. My comment is another topic:
One thing that I believe this book lacks is a history of the impact of transformation of the "military" and the "army" during the state formation process. He talks about money, about taxes, about balancing between bourgois and nobility, but not about how the army was transformed! This is a huge gap!
It still remains an extraordinary work, and of course we can read about those things elsewhere.