The Civilizing Process  

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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 the World War it was virtually ignored, but republished in the 1960s when it was also translated into English. Covering roughly the timespan in European history between 800-1900 AD, Elias' is the first formal analysis and theory of civilization. The Civilizing Process is today regarded as the founding work of Figurational Sociology.

Themes

Originally published in 1939, the two-volume The Civilizing Process was virtually ignored until its republication in 1969, when its first volume was also translated into English.

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