Norbert Elias
Over centuries, as states grew and people became more dependent on each other, they learned to control their impulses and to feel shame where earlier generations felt none.
Placement
Traced how table manners, shame and self-control changed together with the formation of states: the “civilising process” links the history of society to the history of feelings.
Key ideas
- The civilising process
- From external constraint to self-constraint
- Figurations instead of “individual vs. society”
- Established and outsiders
Teachers: Karl Mannheim
Influence
Influenced by 6
Auguste Comte
influenced by
Elias opened What is Sociology? (1970) with Comte, valuing his move from a philosophical to a sociological theory of knowledge as a long-term process across generations. N. Elias, Was ist Soziologie? (1970), “Soziologie – die Fragestellung Comtes”; S. Mennell, Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-Image (1989)
Evidence: AI draft
Auguste Comte › 1798–1857
Karl Marx
influenced by
Elias valued Marx’s study of long-term social development but rejected the primacy of the economy, setting monopolies of violence and taxation beside it (Was ist Soziologie?, 1970). N. Elias, Was ist Soziologie? (1970); Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939), vol. II; S. Mennell, Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-Image (1989)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Sigmund Freud
influenced by
Elias drew on Freud’s account of drive control and the superego to show how external constraints become self-constraint in the civilising process (Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, 1939). N. Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939); S. Mennell, Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-Image (1989)
Evidence: AI draft
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Max Weber
influenced by ✓
Elias took Weber’s definition of the state by its monopoly of legitimate force and traced how monopolies of violence and taxation formed (Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, 1939). N. Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939), vol. II; M. Weber, “Politik als Beruf” (1919)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Max Weber › 1864–1920
Johan Huizinga
influenced by
Elias drew on Huizinga’s picture of volatile late-medieval emotions (Autumn of the Middle Ages, 1919) as a baseline for growing affect control (Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, 1939). N. Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939), vol. I; J. Huizinga, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (1919)
Evidence: AI draft
Johan Huizinga › 1872–1945
Karl Mannheim studied with
studied with ✓
Elias was Mannheim’s assistant at the University of Frankfurt from 1930 to 1933 and wrote his Habilitation thesis on court society with him; the procedure could not be completed after 1933, and the work appeared only in 1969 as Die höfische Gesellschaft. N. Elias, Über sich selbst (1990; Engl. Reflections on a Life, 1994)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Karl Mannheim › 1893–1947
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Zygmunt Bauman
criticised by
Bauman argued against reading the Holocaust as a lapse of Elias’s civilising process: modern bureaucracy and rationality made it possible (Modernity and the Holocaust, 1989, ch. 1). Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), ch. 1
Evidence: AI draft
Zygmunt Bauman › 1925–2017
Criticizes 2
René Descartes
criticised
Elias traced the image of the individual as a homo clausus, sealed off from others, to Descartes’ cogito, and opposed it with figurations (Civilizing Process, 1969 introduction). N. Elias, Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation, 2nd ed. (1969), Introduction; Die Gesellschaft der Individuen (1987), Part II
Evidence: AI draft
René Descartes › 1596–1650
Immanuel Kant
criticised
Elias rejected Kant’s timeless a priori categories, arguing that concepts such as time and causality are learned and developed socially over generations (Über die Zeit, 1984). N. Elias, Über die Zeit (1984); on his dissertation dispute with R. Hönigswald: Notizen zum Lebenslauf (1984)
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Works
From medieval table manners to the modern state: as monopolies of force and chains of interdependence grow, external constraint turns into self-restraint.
Position
Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939) connects two levels that are usually studied apart. Using books of manners from the Middle Ages to the 19th century, Elias traced how rules about eating, blowing one’s nose, sleeping, sexuality and violence grew stricter: what was once done openly became embarrassing and was moved behind the scenes, while the thresholds of shame and disgust rose. In the second volume he linked this to the formation of states: as rulers monopolised violence and taxation, and as chains of interdependence grew longer, people had to foresee consequences and restrain themselves more. External constraint turned into self-constraint. Elias rejected the image of the individual as a closed “homo clausus” facing society; he spoke instead of “figurations”, webs of mutually dependent people whose balance of power shifts over time. The approach shaped his studies of court society, of “established and outsiders” in a community near Leicester, of sport and of the Germans. Critics, notably Zygmunt Bauman and Hans Peter Duerr, objected that the Holocaust and ethnographic evidence contradict any simple story of progress; Elias replied that civilising processes can be reversed.
Life & context
Norbert Elias was born in 1897 in Breslau (now Wrocław) into a Jewish family. After serving in the First World War he studied medicine and philosophy and took his doctorate in philosophy in 1924. He moved to Heidelberg to work with Alfred Weber and in 1930 followed Karl Mannheim to Frankfurt as his assistant. In 1933 he fled to Paris and in 1935 to London, where he wrote his major work; it appeared in Switzerland in 1939 and went almost unnoticed. In 1940 he was interned as an “enemy alien”; his mother was murdered in the Holocaust. Only in 1954, at 57, did he gain a regular university post, at Leicester; from 1962 to 1964 he taught in Ghana. Recognition came late: in 1977 he was the first recipient of the Adorno Prize. He died in Amsterdam in 1990.
Further main works
- The Established and the Outsiders (with John L. Scotson, 1965)
- The Court Society (1969)
- What Is Sociology? (1970)
- The Society of Individuals (1987)
- Studies on the Germans (1989)
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