8.3 The Social Constraint Towards Self-Constraint

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From the course by University of Amsterdam

Classical Sociological Theory

1089 ratings

University of Amsterdam

Classical Sociological Theory

1089 ratings

This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) will offer the participants an introduction into the most important classical sociological readings between the 18th and 20th century. Highly influential social science scholars, such as Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, will be discussed during 8 sessions. Combined with small tests, based on the video’s and recommended readings, the participants will be encouraged to dive deeply into the complex texts and get familiar with classical sociological concepts that are still very relevant today.

From the lesson

Session 8: Norbert Elias (1897-1990)

Elias is the last of the Classical Sociologists. Elias' theory focusses on long term trends, with his so called process or figurational sociology. He shows us how the civilisation proces can be explained in terms like Self-Constraint and Figurations.

8.1 The Last of the Great Classic Sociologists5:43

8.2 Introduction to the Civilizing Process6:55

8.3 The Social Constraint Towards Self-Constraint8:26

8.4 The Conditions of Civilisation6:48

8.5 The Importance of Norbert Elias6:13

8.6 A Base for Contemporary Studies7:09

8.7 Figurational Processes6:14

8.8 Classical Sociological Theories: a Focus on Long Term Trends6:11

Meet the Instructors

Bart van Heerikhuizen
Dr.
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

The titles of the chapters in the first volume of this two volume

book on the civilizing process, on the process of civilization,

are surprising if you expected a work of sociological theory.

Let me quote the titles of chapters four to ten

on behavior at table, that's the chapter that includes

paragraphs dedicated to use of the fork and the knife.

Changes and attitudes towards the natural functions.

That is a chapter on the behavioral codes surrounding urinating and defecating.

On blowing one's nose, on spitting, on behavior in the bedroom,

changes in attitudes towards the relations between men and

women, on changes in aggressiveness.

Now in those chapters you will read about how people thought that

you should blow your nose in the 16th century or in the 17th century in such

a way that you wouldn't annoy other people, or how to manipulate your knife

at the dinner table in a such way that it doesn't seem to be an act of aggression.

Reading those chapters overloaded with anecdotical evidence that sometimes

will make you blush, or giggle, or even laugh out loud is a pleasure in itself.

And for some time this has in fact been the aspect of the book that

received the most attention, especially when it describes changes in sexuality.

For example, changes in the attitude towards the display of nudity.

Some historians who studied sexual habits in the 17th and

the 18th century, were very happy with this book.

A book, by the way, that became popular right at the moment when the sexual

revolution was getting underway.

Elias used all kinds of sources apart from those etiquette books.

He looks, for example, very carefully at paintings and book illustrations,

noticing small details that escape an eye that is not sociologically trained.

In fact, Elias is in this book a very interesting methodologist

who used sources that had often been overlooked.

His use, for example, of those etiquette books is an interesting innovation, but

all of that is not the most important thing that the author wanted to do.

First of all, he wanted to show that behind all those prescriptions,

we can discern a general process, a movement into a certain direction.

Now that civilizing process is, so to speak, a blind process.

It's not planned by anybody, it is unforeseen, unintended, and

for a long period of time, it also remained the unrecognized outcome of

the actions of millions of people over a period of several centuries.

And still, it has its own structure, its own dynamics.

Now, Elias is an atheistic author.

He cannot invoke any kind of heavenly intervention here.

So we are left with, in fact, two big questions.

The first one is, of course, what is the direction of this process, and

the second one is, assuming that nobody plans that process, how can

we then explain that it went in that direction over such a long period of time,

over several centuries and composing many generations?

Okay first of all, what is civilization?

The process of civilization is not a process of increasing control over

the urges and impulses as is often thought.

It's not the process of suppressing spontaneous emotions

under all circumstances.

Elias says that in this process behavioral controls become more generalized,

more stable, more differentiated.

People learn how to manage, how to organize their emotional

impulses in a wide variety of situations.

For example, when you sit at the dinner table surrounded by people from

the highest social strata, you discipline yourself in a certain way that is

very different from how you behave when you are in a bar with your friends,

or when you are in a classroom at the university,

or when you are lying on the couch with the one you love.

The civilizing process forces people to differentiate their behavioral

possibilities more and more, to take the social circumstances into account,

to make an estimation of the type of people that surround you.

To judge what kind of behavior is expected in a particular situation from you,

to reflexively monitor the social context you're in,

and then to steer your emotions accordingly, and

when you are very good at it, you will receive valuable social rewards.

When you make many errors in this regard, those social prices will escape you.

So it's not so much a matter of suppressing your impulses,

it's a matter of organizing, streamlining, using and sometimes also hiding them,

in a way that corresponds with social context.

You can constantly an external pressure,

an external social constraint, a [FOREIGN] in German, that forces to

constrict kind of sociological definition of the situation,

and to organize the manifestation of your impulses accordingly.

During the civilizing process, people are more and more trained to do this,

and after some generations it becomes a part of their habitus,

a kind of self steering mechanism that becomes automatical,

that you don't even realize when you are doing, what you are doing.

That is when self constraint, [FOREIGN],

begins to supplement the external constraints.

The internal controls do not replace social constraints from the outside, but

the external controls force you to increase control over yourself.

And if you make a big mistake, you will feel ashamed.

And if somebody else makes a blatant error,

you will feel a kind of embarrassment, as if you were in his place.

And that is why, from now on, the restroom is locked.

The bathroom is locked.

There is a lock on the bedroom door of the parents,

because even in their domestic living arrangements, people now want to

avoid anything that could lead to embarrassment, to shame and repugnance.

We can observe here a tendency to push potentially unsettling behavior

offstage, so to say, or behind the scenes, into the wings.

Those are metaphors metaphors taken from the world of the theater.

Metaphors, by the way, that became very important in the 50s in the works of

the American sociologist Irving Goffman.

Irving Goffman also loved to write about front stage behavior and

back stage behavior.

And he did that long before he had ever heard of the word of Norbit Elias.

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