The Civilizing Process

The book The Civilizing Process written by German sociologist Norbert Elias is an influential work in sociology and Elias' most important work. It was first published in 1939 in German as Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation. Because of World War II it was virtually ignored, but gained popularity when it was republished in 1969 and translated into English. Covering European history from roughly 800 AD to1900 AD, It is the first formal analysis and theory of civilization. The Civilizing Process is today regarded as the founding work of Figurational Sociology.

Themes

The first volume, The History of Manners, traces the historical developments of the European habitus, or "second nature," the particular individual psychic structures molded by social attitudes. Elias traced how post-medieval European standards regarding violence, sexual behaviour, bodily functions, table manners and forms of speech were gradually transformed by increasing thresholds of shame and repugnance, working outward from a nucleus in court etiquette. The internalized "self-restraint" imposed by increasingly complex networks of social connections developed the "psychological" self-perceptions that Freud recognized as the "super-ego."

The second volume, State Formation and Civilization, looks into the causes of these processes and finds them in the increasingly centralized Early Modern state and the increasingly differentiated and interconnected web of society.

English editions

• The Civilizing Process, Vol.I. The History of Manners, Oxford: Blackwell, 1969
• The Civilizing Process, Vol.II. State Formation and Civilization, Oxford: Blackwell, 1982.
• 2000, The Civilizing Process. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Revised edition of 1994. Oxford: Blackwell

External links

• HyperElias@WorldCatalogue, a comprehensive online-bibliography.
• The Norbert Elias Foundation