Violence and Civilization

An Introduction to the Work of Norbert Elias

Jonathan Fletcher

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780745618791
  9780745614342
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780745666280
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides an introduction to the work of Norbert Elias. It is the first systematic appraisal of two central themes of his thought - violence and civilization. Although Elias is best known for his theory of civilizing processes, this study highlights the crucial importance of the concept of decivilizing processes. Fletcher argues that while Elias did not develop a theory of decivilizing processes, such a theory is logically implied in his perspective and is highly pertinent to an understanding of the most violent episodes of twentieth-century history, such as the Nazi genocides.

Elias's original synthesis of sociology and psychology is examined through an analysis of several key texts including The Civilizing Process, The Established and the Outsiders and The Germans. Fletcher shows how Elias constructs his "figurational models" and applies these comparatively to specific historical examples drawn from England and Germany.

Violence and Civilization is an excellent introduction to Elias's work. It will appeal to students of sociology, anthropology, and history interested in understanding the phenomenon of violence in the modern world.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

On 1 September 1939, German troops invaded Poland on the orders of Adolf Hitler. The same year saw the publication in Switzerland of a two-volume work entitled The Civilizing Process. Its author, Norbert Elias, was a German of Jewish descent who had already fled his homeland with the ascent of the Nazis in 1933. By 1941, Elias’s parents had lost their lives under Nazi rule: his father in Breslau and his mother in the Auschwitz concentration camp, although the true character of the regime was only to emerge clearly with its defeat by Allied forces.¹

The processes traced in The Civilizing Process seemed irrelevant to many, given events which were then overtaking continental Europe. There was simply no market for such a book, especially one written by a German Jew, and indeed, only a small number of copies were sold.² It appears that few people were willing to read a work on ‘civilization’ at the very time when the nations of the Western world were witnessing the eclipse of all that the term was thought to represent. In such a context it does seem surprising that Elias had completed a long-term study of state formation and the development of manners among the European secular upper classes in conjunction with the term ‘civilization’. The seeming contradiction between the process identified by the book’s title and the violent events of more recent European history form one of the main themes of this book.

Elias studied medicine, philosophy and later sociology at the universities of Breslau and Heidelberg, subsequently becoming Karl Mannheim’s assistant at the Department of Sociology at the University of Frankfurt. After fleeing Germany and spending some time in Paris, he moved to England in 1935 and remained there until the mid 1970s, working as a guest lecturer at the London School of Economics and later as Reader in Sociology at the University of Leicester. Elias received the title of professor from the University of Ghana in the late 1960s, and for the last fifteen years of his life he lived and worked in Amsterdam, where he died on 1 August 1990, at the age of 93. With such a biography,³ it is not surprising to learn that Elias was interested in developing a sociological understanding of violence and violence controls in twentieth-century European societies more generally, and of the National Socialists and the Holocaust in particular. But it was not until some twenty years after having left Germany that he wrote in any detail about events in the Third Reich.

It is no exaggeration to say that, along with other murderous episodes, two world wars and the Holocaust in Germany have shattered many of the connotations which hitherto seemed to enshroud the concept of civilization with an aura of mystique. These connotations were carried over from certain beliefs generated in the eighteenth century and earlier, accompanying the rise of industrialism, technological innovation, colonization and a belief in the inherent ‘progress’ associated with such developments. The events of the twentieth century have exposed many of these beliefs as delusions. A sense of caution and even despondency has resulted. In turn, this general attitude has brought forth a strong reaction against the very use of the word ‘civilization’. Indeed, ‘barbarization’ would seem to many to be a more appropriate term with which to characterize the twentieth century so far.

As regards the work of Norbert Elias, this general reaction has often taken the form of dismissive and sometimes even tasteless commentaries (see respectively Leach 1986: 13; and Hunt 1988: 30). Others have described his theory of civilizing processes variously in terms of its simplicity (Lasch 1985: 714), evolutionism (Lenhardt 1979: 127; Giddens 1984: 241), its inability to account for the ‘barbarism’ of the present century (Coser 1978: 6; Buck-Morss 1978: 187–9), or even its ethnocentrism and racism (Blok in Wilterdink 1984: 290).⁴ Some of these reactions can only be understood in the context of the pervasive sense of disillusionment which has come to permeate Western culture. But to what extent are they an accurate assessment of Elias’s perspective? Or is the strength of these responses an over-reaction?

In criticizing Elias for his use of the terms ‘civilization’ or ‘civilizing process’, many writers have overlooked the implications of his ideas for developing an understanding of ‘breakdowns in civilization’. The attention to violence and its controls lies at the centre of his theory, and this book seeks to clarify the insights provided by Elias’s approach with respect to the notions of ‘civilizing’ and ‘decivilizing’ processes. It also includes a critical assessment of some of Elias’s main ideas on violence and its controls. A considerable amount of space is given to exposition, particularly with respect to Elias’s work in The Germans. I attempt to provide clear, accurate summaries of Elias’s comments on specific themes to do with violence, civilization and decivilization, themes which are central to an understanding of the broad spectrum of Elias’s writing. This book therefore serves as an introduction to his work as a whole. Needless to say, it is not a substitute for reading Elias’s books and articles themselves.

Even this focus on violence and civilization, however, is a broad enough task in relation to Elias’s work. Whilst seeking answers to several key questions which I pose below, I have therefore restricted the scope of this book to include only some examples Elias draws from England, providing a comparative contrast to his use of examples from Germany up until the end of the Second World War. Apart from lack of space, one important reason for not considering Elias’s work on Germany after 1945 was that I wanted to understand how far his approach is relevant to an understanding of Nazism. Certainly, Elias’s work on the civilizing process is far from being the product of blind naivety to the world at the time of the book’s production in the 1930s. But the extent to which it was in fact inspired by a pressing need to develop a more detached understanding of social processes including the rise of Nazism and the ‘barbarization’ of the twentieth century has remained obscured, particularly in the Anglo-American world, for a variety of reasons. Among others, these reasons include Elias’s idiosyncratic pattern with respect to the publication of his work; the intrinsic complexity of the synthesis to which he sought to contribute, a synthesis that is sociological, psychological, historical and equally theoretical and empirical; and the fact that his approach did not fit in with the ‘philosophical’, ‘present-day’ orientation which overtook British sociology during the 1960s. This perceived inability to account for ‘reversals’ of civilizing processes may also result from the fact that Elias tended to focus on civilizing processes rather than their deterioration, leading in part to the widespread misunderstanding of his theory as teleological, evolutionary and overly optimistic.

The central task of this book, then, is to clarify the relationship between violence, civilization and decivilization in Elias’s work through seeking answers to the following questions: What does Elias mean by civilization, civilizing and decivilizing processes? What does he mean by violence? What are the characteristics of social processes he specifies which may generate violence? What is the relationship between violence, civilization and decivilization in modern twentieth-century societies? And how do these issues connect with historical examples which feature most significantly in Elias’s discussions? Several related questions are also considered. Elias attempts to develop a concept of civilization which he believes to be largely non-normative, but to what extent did he succeed in this? Did he reveal any ambiguity in using this concept when dealing with events in Nazi Germany? And if so, would this be fatal for his overall approach? In addition, although Elias did not develop a theory of decivilizing processes, is it logically implied in his theory of civilizing processes? Lastly, while Elias’s work tends to emphasize societal continuities, does this in fact involve teleology and evolutionism in considering problems of violence and its controls, and if so, to what extent?

I do not intend to detail how his work differs from other writers who have dealt with similar topics, for example, Freud, Max and Alfred Weber, Horkheimer and Adorno, Goffman or Foucault. Instead, I critically analyse the themes mentioned in order to highlight their interconnections in relation to the various subjects on which Elias has written. While my critical exposition of Elias’s work includes some assessment of commentaries on his approach, I have not attempted to cover all these critics’ perspectives; nor do I focus on them in detail unless they are of particular relevance to an issue at hand. From my central questions, it follows that my primary concern is to show how Elias develops his perspective and applies it in the context of historical studies, particularly in his consideration of England and Germany. In order to do this, I focus on Elias’s most significant publications so as to gain an appreciation of his approach as a whole.⁵

This book is distinctive in emphasizing the role of violence in civilizing and decivilizing processes in Elias’s work, an aspect which few commentators have drawn out so explicitly.⁶ Also, in showing how Elias develops and applies his sociological concepts in relation to England and Germany, I emphasize a comparative side to his writings that has received scant attention. In order to address the key questions of this book, I highlight the central role played by the concept of habitus in Elias’s work, as well as his ideas on the formation of group identity. However, both themes, while generally neglected in English-language works on Elias, appear to be of central importance for the understanding of civilizing and decivilizing processes.

The book falls into two main parts. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 present a critical exposition of the main themes in Elias’s work on violence and habitus in civilizing processes, state formation, his development of sociological process models and how they can account for violent social processes. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 consider how these themes and models are woven into Elias’s approach to specific socio-historical situations, concentrating on England and particularly Germany. At the same time, the advantages and shortcomings of his approach are addressed. Chapter 8 summarizes the issues discussed and highlights the key problems surrounding Elias’s ideas on violence, civilization and civilizing processes. In addition, I point to the main elements of Elias’s approach that are relevant to a sociological understanding of violence, focusing on the example of the former Yugoslavia in terms of a decivilizing process.

Through exposing some of the lacunae in Elias’s work on violence and civilization and through suggesting how these may be dealt with, or not, as the case may be, this book forms part of the ongoing assessment of his contribution to social science and, more generally, to the development of an understanding of the way in which people are willing and able to achieve a more adequate perspective on violence and its controls.

CHAPTER TWO

Civilization, Habitus and Civilizing Processes

The concept of civilization developed by Elias shows marked differences in comparison to other writers who have used the term. The main task of this chapter is to show how it is employed by him to refer to a transformation of behaviour in the secular upper classes of the West. The term is also essential to an understanding of aggression and violence in Elias’s work. This chapter begins with his account of the emergence of the word civilization before specifying the way in which he connects this to behavioural dispositions, aggression, violence and shame. The concept of habitus is also shown to be highly significant for Elias’s project.

The development of civilization as a concept

A useful summary of many important formulations of civilization as a concept and empirical referent among several prominent historians is given by Fernand Braudel (1980: 177–218). However, while he discusses the work of various writers, including Guizot, Burckhardt, Spengler, Toynbee, Bagby and Alfred Weber, there is no mention of the significant contribution of Norbert Elias. The concept of civilization has been used variously either as an ideological, evaluative weapon employed by generations of historians in the service of Western colonialist aspirations, or as a generic term used to refer to the level of economic, political and social development achieved by a particular society in the past or present.¹

In contrast, Norbert Elias elaborates a different concept of civilization. His formulation was partly inspired by the public debate between Thomas and Heinrich Mann, in which Thomas indirectly denounced his brother as a Zivilisationsliterat. By this he meant that Heinrich was a French-influenced, superficial, democracy-smitten, Enlightenment-orientated revolutionary novelist who had no appreciation of ‘truly German’ poetry and art. Elias’s sensitive discussion of the concepts of Zivilisation and Kultur in the first volume of The Civilizing Process in Germany evokes all the nationalist connotations and intentions which these terms generated at the time. He begins his study with a concerted attempt to understand the development of these terms in connection with the development of the societies of which they are a part. The Civilizing Process forms the keystone of his theory of civilizing processes.²

Inter-group tensions and conceptual developments

Elias argues that the concept of civilization develops through inter-group tensions and rivalries. In Germany, for example, he places the development of Zivilisation and Kultur in the larger context of the formation of group identities, world-views and personality structures among particular social classes within that country and between Germany and other nations. By tracing the development of the antithetical concepts Kultur and Zivilisation in Germany and ‘civilization’ in France and England, he focuses on aspects of a social and psychical transformation. From around 1500 to 1525, the concept of civilité developed as a badge of the French courtly circles: civility in England, civiltà in Italy and Zivilität in Germany all fulfilled similar functions. They were all precursors of the later concept of civilization and they emerged in order to demarcate the behaviour of courtly circles from the rest of society.

By the eighteenth century, the ruling classes in Germany spoke French and they tended to imitate the French courts, while German was considered by them to be a coarse and unrefined language. In contrast, the relatively small German bourgeoisie generally spoke German. They were excluded from court society: not only were they denied social access but, more importantly, they had no voice in political decision-making processes. The bourgeoisie were effectively politically impotent – their struggle with the nobility took place largely outside the political realm. As a consequence, the German bourgeoisie developed their own world-view and self-identity. In contrast to what they perceived as the superficiality or Zivilisation of court life, they employed another symbol of their own self-image: Kultur. This was highly particularistic; great importance was placed on books, scholarship, religion, art, philosophy and inner enrichment leading to the intellectual formation (Bildung) of the individual.

The antithesis between the court-aristocracy and these middle classes expressed in the concepts Kultur and Zivilisation was transformed from a ‘social’ to a national one. This occurred in conjunction with the slow rise of the German bourgeoisie to a class which bore the ‘national consciousness’ (Elias 1994a: 25): it was defined first in terms of its relation to the nobility and then in terms of its relation to other nations. Along with this development there occurred a change in the perception of German ‘national character’. Honesty and sincerity were held up as typical of the German people, in contrast to superficial courtesy, an attitude which stemmed from the relatively isolated and clearly defined German middle class, which found expression in the German intelligentsia through their artistic and literary products. Thus, with the slow rise of the middle classes, the social characteristics of this class gradually broadened to the national level.

The concept of civilisation originated in France, replacing the terms courtoisie and civilité. There, in contrast to Germany, sections of the bourgeoisie were drawn into courtly life relatively early on, which allowed them to develop a capability of thinking and acting in political categories. Having considerable influence at court gave them access to even the highest government positions; their power in relation to the aristocracy made them indispensable to the king. Consequently, continuous and close social contact emerged between people of different social backgrounds. Sections of the bourgeoisie then formed part of the courtly ruling class and increasingly copied the manners of the nobility. This occurred long before the Revolution, which, although it destroyed the old political structures, did not erase the old courtly forms of manners. Thus, while the bourgeoisie in Germany was confined to the realm of ‘ideas’ and the ‘mind’, with the university as their social base, their French counterparts existed more in the ‘real world’, as they were more politically informed because of their access to courtly circles and their prominence in higher administrative positions.

Elias aligns the development of the concept of civilisation in France with the emergence of the reform movement in the late eighteenth century. It was the Physiocrats who articulated for a wider audience sentiments that were more general among those connected with and influenced by the court. These reformers shared several ideas centring on the notion that kings and ministers were not all-powerful in the regulation of affairs and that there were broader social forces with their own laws operating above and beyond the wishes of rulers. They argued that a rational and planned administration was necessary in order to cope more adequately with these social processes. Civilisation emerged as a banner proclaiming these reformist goals and also as an indication of the existence of systematic social regularities. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, civilisation became infused with two central ideas: first, it stood as a courtly concept in opposition to ‘barbarism’; and second, it constituted the notion of a process with a goal. It is the latter which represents an extension of the original courtly concept in the hands of the reformists. Anything from trade to education, within which ‘barbaric’ practices could be discerned, came under the province of reform in the name of civilisation, involving the refinement of manners and the internal pacification of the country by the kings (1994a: 39). This formed part and parcel of what has been described as a ‘civilizing offensive’ (cf. Kruithof 1980; Mitzman 1987: 663–87; Van Krieken 1989:193–218).

To an English person, the concept of civilization usually appears relatively clear, referring to political, economic, religious, technical, moral or other social facts (1994a: 4). The concept developed roughly the same meaning in France, where it expressed the social situation, behaviour- and feeling-codes of an upper class which comprised aristocratic and bourgeois elements and which was more unified than in Germany. By the early part of the twentieth century the concept of civilization was used by people in Western societies to refer to a completed process. They increasingl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Civilization, Habitus and Civilizing Processes
• 3 Violence, Habitus and State Formation
• 4 Identity, Violence and Process Models
• 5 Social Habitus and Civilizing Processes in England
• 6 Nationalism and Decivilizing Processes in Germany
• 7 Genocide and Decivilizing Processes in Germany
• 8 Elias on Violence, Civilization and Decivilization
• Notes
• References
• Index