Kilminster - Evaluating Elias 1991

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Review Article

Evaluating Elias

Richard Kilminster

Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-image

by Stephen Mennell

Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp. 319, 30

There are two kinds of critique. One version, typical of those

influenced by analytic philosophy, goes first for the weaknesses of

the theory or text and proceeds swiftly to its demolition. This

type of critique is a strong temptation because pointing out what

is wrong with something comes very easily to highly self-controlled

people brought up in internally pacified societies. Here fear and

aggression have long been turned mainly inwards in the personality

and conflicts have been largely transformed into non-violent

rivalries with their weapons rhetoric and skilful calculation.

Attacking a text by vigorous fault-finding protects the critic against

the threat posed by the author whose superiority the critic unconsciously fears. In this kind of analysis what is valuable and positive

in the subject matter gratuitously appears only at the end of the

story, as an afterthought, overshadowed by the catalogue of faults.

Another style, however, arguably associated with a different

tradition, including Hegel, Mannheim, Elias and others, is more

detached and less defensive, affirming first what is considered

valuable and positive, given the author's presuppositions and

perspective. Only then does the critic show how certain negativefeatures entail us moving 'beyond the standpoint' concerned, as

Hegel would have put it, carrying forward what is positive. So let

us take this path here and begin with what is good in this new book

on Elias.

This book is most welcome as the first major study to appear in

Theory, Culture&Society (SAGE, London, Newbury Park and New Delhi), Vol. 8

(1991), 165-176

from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

at The University of Iowa Libraries on March 18, 2015tcs.sagepub.comDownloaded from
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166 Theory, Culture & Society

English on the life and work of Norbert Elias and the research

tradition he has inspired in Holland, Germany and Britain, which

has become known (against the wishes of its founder) as 'figura-

tional sociology'. As such this book will for a while corner themarket and become the standard reference work on Elias. Mennell

was translator of Elias'sWhat Is Sociology? into English (1978), has

applied Elias's theories to his own researches into eating and taste

in France and England, and has been a devotee and champion of

Elias's work for some years, informed by long acquaintance with

the man himself and his closest collaborators. As one works through

the book, it becomes apparent, not surprisingly, that Mennell

knows the writings of Elias very well, which he expounds for the

most part faithfully. The author is particularly au fait with the

research by and debates between followers and critics in Holland,

where Elias has had the most influence. The book is a clearly written

exposition of Elias's way of doing sociology and constitutes its sus

tained defence, in virtually every respect.

As I know well from my own experience expounding Elias's

theory of civilizing processes, one is frequently confronted by the

same knee-jerk reactions from the audience: Aha, Eurocentrism!

Sounds like evolutionism to me! But what about the increasingviolence in our society? What about football hooligans? Surely the

Holocaust gives the lie to the whole project? Doesn't the sexual

revolution of the 1960s suggest the opposite trend to that delineated

by Elias? In the well-organized chapter 10 'Civilization and

Decivilization' on disputes, Mennell evaluates the main criticisms of

Elias which have emerged in recent years under four headings:

(a) arguments from cultural relativism (Blok, Duerr); (b) objections

involving 'stateless' civilizations (van Velzen, Rasing, Jagers);

(c) those invoking the problem of the 'permissive society'(Brinkgreve and Korzec); and (d) the problem of 'barbarism' in the

twentieth century (Leach). Mennell discusses these controversies

thoroughly and fairly. This chapter is a Godsend.

There are still outstanding problems with Elias's theory and much

more theoretical and empirical work to be done, but I think the

more common and crass objections are more-or-less successfully

rebutted here. I would like to think that this chapter will finally lay

to rest the recurrent misreadings of Elias, though I doubt it. No matter how many times, for example, that Elias distinguishes between

largely irreversible biological evolution and potentially reversible

social development (the latter exemplified by his theory), it goes

unnoticed. The cultural relativists and anthropologists who can only



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Kilminster, Evaluating Elias 167

see evolutionism (and hence for them ethnocentrism and evenracism) in Elias should check outTheCourtSociety(Elias1983:221ff) as one place among others where all this is dealt with. But they

won't. He in fact posits criteria for accurately calibrating progression and regression in social processes based on comparativeempirical research into real interdependencies in different societies(set out by Mennell from Elias on p.236).It is precisely ethnocentrism and the ideology of 'progress' that this procedure is designedto circumvent.

Nor does the Holocaust of itself (repugnant though it is to thevast majority of 'civilized' people in modern societies) provide a sim

ple knock-down refutation of the theory of civilizing processes. AsMennell shows, Elias offers many insights into the origins ofNazism and the social preconditions conducive to the operation ofthe rationally organized slaughter of outsider groups (see Mennell,pp.248-9; Elias,1983:Appendix 1; Elias, 1989). This example andothers provide the impetus to redouble research into the dynamicsof'decivilizing' processes of many kinds and should not driveusintounnecessarily positing a basic and barbaric instinct in human beingsto explain such episodes, appalling though they are (Mennell,p.248).

Another apparent knock-down argument has been that the relaxation of sexual and other behavioural standards during the 1960sand 1970s signals a descent into lack of control, i.e. a reversal ofthe civilizing process. In fact it implies new patterns of self-restraintsemerging to enable such 'controlled decontrolling of controls'(Elias) to occur. And there have been such phases of 'informaliza-tion' (Wouters) before, followed by reformalization and then fur

ther informalization on a new level. These all reflect empiricallyverifiable shifts in power balances between groups. Failure to suspend value judgements in favour of this kind of research inevitablyleads to assertions of a descent into decadence or the affirmationthat such periods as the 1920s or the 1960s just show that peoplehave always been the same, human nature being what it is.

This exercise is useful not only because it puts the record straightin relation to misunderstandings about Elias, but also because at the

same time it tells us a great deal about the condition of the socialsciences within contemporary societies which spawn the criticisms.It also alerts us to our tendency to find our own preoccupations mirrored in the projected omissions of others. Elias would have hadto have been monumentally naive or obtuse to have made such



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obvious blunders. There is a striking parallel with the litany of

erroneous criticisms made again and again against Karl Mannheim's

sociology of knowledge, even though he had explicitly anticipated

them (see Simonds, 1978). The repeated knee-jerk reactions, whichseem so indubitable to the opponents, involve many rigid presup

positions and prejudices, interests and unthought-out antinomies

which must fulfil deep-seated needs for them. Out from under their

stones have come the Marxists, the Romantics, the philosophers,

the structuralists, the anthropologists, the relativists, the historians

and the rest from left, right and centre on the political spectrum,

eager to do battle with Elias. To be embattled in this way is probably

endemic to the vocation of the sociologist, but some of the attackshave been particularly shrill in relation to Elias because he has the

gall to pronounce on 'evaluative' matters from a sociological point

of view. (More on this later.)

What also comes over clearly in this book is how wide-ranging

is Elias's knowledge and broad his historical canvas. He moves bet

ween the arts and the sciences and roams across many different

periods and societies at will. And we also get a glimpse of the

magnitude of the staggering intellectual synthesis that is the Civiliz

ing Process,Mennell rightly draws our attention to the unity of the

two volumes and to the remarkable synopsis in the last chapter.

Elias had an extraordinary talent for solving in a theoretical syn

thesis, hand-in-hand with empirical evidence, problems shrewdly

posed but left in the air by other writers. As is very well known,

Sombart, Veblen, Simmei, Weber, Mannheim and Freud Gust to

name a few important figures) had already in their different ways

tried to understand conspicuous consumption by elites, two-front

strata, the monopoly of the means of force, the dynamics of competition, patrimonialism, rationalization, democratization, civi

lized self-restraints and so on. As he expounds Elias, Mennell

mentions briefly in passing how they and some other German

writers handled similar issues to those of Elias, though this dimen

sion is not central to his treatment. He picks out mostly those refer

red to in the footnotes in Elias's works written in the 1930s. Were

he more interested in the origins of Elias's synthesis, Mennell might

have made the point that perhaps the power of Elias's achievementowes something to the stature of the social scientists of his genera

tion and the one before who set the remarkably fertile problem

agenda of his time. Elias has been criticized for not acknowledging

them enough.



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I found much to disagree with about the first biographical

chapter. It tells the fascinating and sometimes harrowing story of

Elias's eventful life from Breslau to Amsterdam via Paris, London

and Leicester as a Jewish refugee from Nazism and his attempts torebuild a shattered academic career in Britain. Much of this

chapter's content was familiar to me from many hours of talking

myself with Elias over the last twenty years, and as such it has the

ring of authenticity. But this otherwise absorbing chapter suffers

because Mennell has reported the story only according to Elias's

accounts of it, either in his own published interviews and biogra

phical reflections or from personal conversations. There is, for

example, a growing literature on the German refugees in wartimeBritain which could illuminate this phase (see Hirschfeld, 1984: esp.

chapters by F.L. Carsten and M. Seyfert). Obviously, taking Elias's

account as definitive produces a highly selective biographical

sketch.

This chapter covers also Elias's relationships with other promi

nent figures such as Alfred Weber, Mannheim, Ginsberg, Adorno

and S.H. Foulkes. But these too are presented entirely as Elias

recounts them, with no attempt made to seek corroboration or dif-

ferent angles from other sources than the man himself. The result

is a one-sided picture. The portrait of Elias's intellectual differences

with Mannheim, for example, is particularly overdrawn, as well as

reproducing the older received view (now much discredited) of

Mannheim as a brilliant relativist, but a relativist nonetheless. In

general, Mannheim was more rationalistic than Elias, but my own

view is that there is nonetheless an affinity between their approaches

to sociology and much more common ground between them than

has hitherto been recognised, particularly on the relationship between sociology and philosophy, the role of sociological knowledge

in society and on epistemological matters. But much more research

has to be done on this subject to arrive at a realistic evaluation

(Kilminster, forthcoming).

Part of the problem is that Mennell's book gamely tries to do too

many things at once. He expounds Elias's theories; shows parallel

discussions by other German writers in the Weimar period in par

ticular; weaves in current research by Elias's associates whichextends his ideas in various fields; makes connections to the con

verging work of prominent sociologists, natural scientists and

philosophers in our time (Goffman, Rorty, Bhaskar, Richard

Dawkins and many more); deals with the main disputes; and tries



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to make the book partly a biography at the same time. This multi

purpose character has been a further inevitable source of gaps,

omissions and unevennesses.

There is no mention or discussion of Elias's involvement with the

Utopieforschung project at the University of Bielefeld in 1980-1

and his subsequent writings on this theme (see Kilminster 1982;

Elias, 1982b). Neither is the discussion of Elias's critics by any

means complete. Omitted are at least the critiques by Susan Buck-

Morss, Robert M. Adams, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, Christopher

Lasch, Mike Gane, S.G. Sathaye and Martin Albrow. And in his

zeal to leave no Dutch stone unturned, Mennell has also overlooked

some of the British research. Left out is a body of research carriedout in the Sociology Department of "the University of Leeds during

the 1980s which follows up lines of inquiry initiated by Elias in the

sociology of knowledge and science. In particular, Elias's concep

tions of reality-congruence, levels of integration, psychogenesis,

sociogenesis and object-adequacy have been clarified and sharpened

through comparison with the converging work of other writers, past

and present. This work has tested the strength of Elias's theories by

pushing them outwards to encounter other research traditions. And

by and large the explanatory power of Elias's theories has come out

of these encounters very well, subject to various modifications (see

Wassail, 1990; Burkitt, 1989; Longmate, 1989).

Altogether Mennell's book is a curious mixture of care and

carelessness. The daunting task of conveying the seamless web of

Elias's writings is tackled by Mennell by expounding the main

arguments ofThe Civilizing ProcessandThe Court Society first and

then dealing with Elias's other works and co-written pieces (e.g. on

established/outsider relations, sport, sciences, social sciences andtime) under separate themes. Inevitably this procedure has the effect

of breaking up Elias's work into neat boxes, when for him it was

probably all of a piece. But I concede that it is difficult to see how

else to present his ideas in an assimilable manner and in any case

he himself did also write on themes and topics. Mennell takes no

chances and expounds Elias by following the contours of the

original texts very closely indeed, often producing expository para

graphs which reproduce pages from Elias in precis form. To hiscredit he explains and sorts out very succinctly some difficult and

closely interwoven ideas and gets them right most of the time; but

there are lapses which have substantive interpretative consequences.

1. In chapter 4, 'Sociogenesis and Psychogenesis', Mennell



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explains the profound synthetic force of Elias's insight that the

advances in the thresholds of shame and embarrassment and the

increasing rationalization of conduct are linked. This chapter is

based on intertwined themes taken from the first 80 pages of thebrilliant synopsis to volume II of The Civilizing Process, dealt with

under sub-headings which are adapted from some of Elias's own.

In Elias the two processes are different aspects of the growing split

in the personality between drives and drive-controls, producing

both increasing rational foresight and conscience (super-ego) for

mation. In a nutshell, in the course of a civilizing process physical

fears of attack are increasingly replaced by social fears of shame and

embarrassment in an increasingly complex and internally pacifiedsociety.

But what Elias calls two 'forms' of foresight psychologization

and rationalization are lumped together by Mennell with the

advance of thresholds of shame and embarrassment and allcalled

'variations' or 'facets' of foresight. The advances in the thres

holds in Elias are, however, not examples of or direct aspects of

foresight only psychologization and rationalization are. This is

no mere terminological quibble. The advances in the thresholds

show how fears have been turned inwards into the psyche: both this

process (involving superego formation) and the increasing detach

ment associated with rationalization and psychologization are asso

ciated with the development of the particular kind of drives/control

balance mentioned. In Elias the developing 'civilized' personality in

the West was always caught up in the pincer movement of two

related processes internal pacification of the state and the exten

ding web of inter-group interdependencies. Mennell more-or-less

says that, but confuses the issue through carelessly attempting asystematic formulation which contains an erroneous conflation.

2. Mennell's account (pp. 182-4) of Elias's researches into the

origins of political economy and sociology in the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries as part of a general transformation in ways of

thinking about 'society', fails to do justice to the richness of Elias's

account. Elias's original paper on this subject from 1962 was called

'"The Break With Traditionalism" and the Origins of Sociology' and

not 'On the Sociogenesis of Sociology' as Mennell says. The newtitle,which lacks the specificity of the original one, was given to the

unchanged manuscript by the editors of theSociologisch Tijdschrift

when it was published in Holland in 1984.

Mennell mentions the significance of political economy as the



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social science to advise kings and ministers of what came to be called

economic processes, such as the circulation of income between

classes and the operation of national markets. Here, prior to what

we think of as the 'modern' world, were the first social scientistssystematically to deploy empirical evidence: the Physiocrats.

Although Mennell does not say so, Elias's analysis chimes in with

his views on the non-bourgeois, aristocratic, courtly origins of

'rationality': Frangois Quesnay was a court physician. There is no

mention either of Elias's interesting remarks on the transfer of

meaning of the word 'economy' from the household to the national

level, as a movement towards a more impersonal usage. Mennell

inexplicably also leaves out Elias's crucial account of the emergentsubject matter of sociology as such, compared with its forerunner

political economy. He avoids the issue with a vacuous comment:

'The origins of modern sociology are inextricably entangled with

those of modern economics' (p. 183).

But the pioneer sociologists, as Elias in fact points out, although

steeped in the social ideologies of their time, were nonetheless

interested in a wider range of problems about social development

and the longer-run direction of change, very different from the

static economic regularities studied by the political economists.

Mennell gets bogged down in the niceties of homo economicus and

misses the central ontological point of the article: that is that 'the

social' as a range of regularitiessui-generiswas first noticed in what

came to be called the economic activities of society. Later, says

Elias,when the power potential of the middle-class business groups

increased in their interdependence with the workers, and became

more consolidated and pervasive as part of the overall social web,

then it even became possible to conceptualize self-regulatingeconomic mechanisms such as business cycles, national markets and

so on as 'the economy'. Mennell does not distinguish sufficiently

clearly between political economy and economics.

3. Mennell's rendering of Elias's theory of established-outsider

relations in chapter 5 is full and up-to-date with recent Dutch and

British research into relations between ethnic groups, men and

women and homosexuals and heterosexuals. But I think Mennell

overstates the point that this is a 'later theory' of Elias's (p. 116) arising from the community study undertaken by Elias with John L.

Scotson in 1965 with this title. He gives the impression that the

theory has its origins entirely there. It is certainly more elaborated

in that study, but both the basic insight and the concept are to be



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found inThe Civilizing Process(Elias,1982a: 250, 314). And Eiias'sconcepts of group charisma and group disgrace so important tothe later applications of the theory for explaining the dynamics ofgroup domination and group subjection are adumbrated theretoo in essence, even if not named as such. The mechanism isexplained on both the individual and group levels (Elias, 1982a: 292,314).

Thereisa real problem of getting Elias's undoubtedly outstandingwork into perspective. There must be a third way between the twoalternatives of out-and-out dismissal or uncritical acceptance of thewhole figurational package, lock, stock and concept. Mennell is

closer to the latter pole, which means that with the best of intentionshe tends to accept Elias's accounts of his intellectual debts at facevalue and acquiesces in the historical amnesia which has descendedover the genesis of Elias's sociological programme, which Eliashimselfhasdone very little substantively to correct. As I said before,Elias's theory of civilizing processes is a synthesis which, in a scientific spirit, attempts to solve problems which were shrewdly posedby a number of very gifted people of his generation and the one

before. But it was more than that.There is a forgotten 'evaluative' dimension, born in the Germantradition of the sociology of knowledge. It has its origins as amoral-political strategy, a wager for a strong scientific sociology asa counterweight to the spiralling social and ideological conflicts ofthe 1930s. Sociology can evaluate the feasibility, credibility anddesirability of reform programmes put forward by political groupsand in political ideologies and illuminate the roots of conflict. Atthe same time, coming from this tradition it means almost certainly

that Elias takes it for granted, hence does not always bother to keeprepeating, that sociology can by comparative, empirical inquiriesinto real societies, also significantly reframe so-called 'ethical' questions posed by philosophers.1 It is thus obvious that Elias is nopractitioner of any simple-minded 'value-free' sociology.

But Mennell only presents this thrust in a diluted form in hisdiscussion oftheopening chapter of volume I ofThe CivilizingProcesson the sociogenesis of the concepts ofKulturandCivilization.

Elias starts the whole investigation with a sociogenetic inquiry,typical of the sociology of knowledge, into the origins of these concepts, which were in the 1930s redolent of both Alfred Weber'ssociology and the highly charged discussions of whether civilized

behaviour was the acme or the nadir of the human social



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174 Theory, Culture& Society

achievement. The task is to reframe their range of applicability andrealistic usefulness via the sociological inquiry into their genesis andinto the European civilizing process in general. Significantly, Elias

returns to the concepts at the end of volume II (Elias, 1982a: 310ffand 328-33) at a new level and re-poses the questions about humansatisfaction, fulfilment and constraint embodied more ideologicallyin the antithesis which partly provided the starting point.

Unfortunately, Mennell mentions none of this, but formulatesElias's strategy in tracing the origins of the concepts in the weakerform of a 'concern. . .with the facts to which the words relate, factsless obvious and more interesting to a social scientist' (p. 30).

This misses the intensity of human commitment embodied in Elias'sscientific quest its whole raison d'etre. Mennell fatally recommends that 'the opening part of theCivilizingProcessisfrankly nowan obstacle for many readers . . . [so] . . . it is a good idea to omitthis section at first reading' (p. 36). Obviously one needs someknowledge of the controversy to understand the ideological importance of the concepts in the context, but to advocate, even initially,skipping the opening section runs counter to the whole methodembodied in the study.

Elias actually refuses to state his central ideas at the beginningof volume I because he says they only took form gradually in a continuous, sequential process of discussion of the empirical materialssuccessively presented later, of which the reader will as yet have noknowledge. He suggests therefore that 'the individual parts of thisstudy, its structure and method, will probably be completelyintelligible only when they are perceived in their entirety' (Elias,1978: iii). He would not have bothered to say this unless he had

something in mind. After all, could he not have stated his conclusions right away and let us take on trust that he had the empiricalbacking? No, my reading is that hewantsus to work through thematerial with him.

It would not be too fanciful to say that for the individual to readthrough the two volumes from beginning to end itself exemplifieswhat Elias calls a basic 'sociogenetic law', i.e. that in the individual'sshort lifetime he or she can pass through some of the processes that

their society has passed through. He says that his (now celebrated)picturesque empirical examples (about spitting, farting, bedroombehaviour, etc.) are laid out in such way as to 'serve to showdevelopment in an accelerated fashion. In a few pages we see howin the course of centuries the standard of human behaviour on the



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Kilminster,Evaluating Elias 175

same occasion very gradually shifts in a specific direction' (Elias1978: xii).As we read through them we also gain insight throughthis experienceinto our own feelings of shame and delicacy derived

from the standards of our own society. And as we complete thesecond volume we have also gained comparative insight into thenature and limits of ideological discussions of 'civilized* and'uncivilized' behaviour, so the value-issues look different. He writes:'only historical experience makes clearer what this word [civilization] actually means' (Elias, 1978:xiii). If one is searching for anexample of the elusive 'unity of theory and practice', then TheCivilizing Process is surely a strong candidate.

Note1. See the discussions in The Court Society, (Elias 1983:28ff, 208-13 and chapter

VIII). For example, on the controversy between free will and determinism Elias

(1983: 30) writes: 'If one is prepared to approach such problems through two-

pronged investigations on the theoretical and empirical planes in closest touch with

one another, rather than on the basis of preconceived dogmatic positions, the ques

tion one is aiming at with words such as 'freedom' and 'determinacy', poses itself

in a different way1 (my emphasis). Elias shares this radical view of the task of

sociology with both Mannheim and Durkheim: see my 'Sociology and the Professional Culture of Philosophers' (Kilminster, 1989).

ReferencesBurkitt, Ian (1989) The Sociologicial Problem of Personality Formation.

Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds (forthcoming book, Sage Publica

tions, 1991).

Elias, N. (1978) The Civilizing Process Volume I. Oxford: Blackwell.

Elias, N. (1982a) The Civilizing Process Volume II. Oxford: Blackwell.

Elias, N. (1982b) 'Thomas Moms' Staatskritik', in W. Vosskamp (ed.),

Utopieforschung, Band 2. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag.

Elias, N. (1983) The Court Society. Oxford: Blackwell.

Elias, N. (1989) Studien uber die Deutschen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Hirschfeld, Gerhard (ed.) (1984)Exile in Great Britain: Refugees From Hitler's Ger

many. London: Berg Publishes for the German Historical Institute.

Kilminster, R. (1982) 'Zur Utopidiskussion aus soziologischer Sicht', in W.

Vosskamp (ed.) Utopieforschung Band 2. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag.

Kilminster, R. (1989) 'Sociology and the Professional Culture of Philosophers', in

H. Haferkamp (ed.) Social Structure and Culture. Berlin and New York: de

Gruyter.

Kilminster, R. (forthcoming) Involved Detachment: Norbert Elias and the Sociology

of Figurations. London: Routledge.

Longmate, D. (1989)Objectivity as Process. Unpublished MA thesis, University of

Leeds.



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Simonds, A.P.(1978)KarlMannheim's SociologyofKnowledge.Oxford: ClarendonPress.

Wassail, T.J. (1990)The DevelopmentofScientific Knowledge inRelationto theDevelopmentof Societies.

Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds.

Richard Kilminsterislecturer in sociology at the University of Leedsand author ofPraxisandMethod,London, Routledge, 1979 andnumerous articles on the sociology of knowledge, sociologicaltheory and on Norbert Elias.


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