The Civilizing Process and the Domestication of Fire* johan goudsblom
University of Amsterdam
In the two volumes of The Civilizing Process (first published in
German in 1939, and in English in 1982) Norbert Elias studied changes in manners, society, and personality in western Europe over the period roughly from 850 to 1850. The documentary evidence upon which he based his argument was mainly derived from the second half of this period, from 1350 to 1850. The purpose of the study was to arrive at a better understanding of the contemporary world, and of its social and psychological problems.1
Now, by any conventional standards the period from 1350 to
1850, not to speak of the millennium from 850 to 1850, is a very long time. Yet, when we take into account the full history of human civilization, it is short: an episode, no more.
Consequently, since Elias’s focus was upon the changes that have taken place in western Europe since 1350, certain underlying patterns in human history had to remain in the background.
Elias himself was aware of this, and in later writings he
1
Journal of World History, Vol. 3, No. 1
© 1992 by University of Hawai‘i Press
*This is the slightly abridged text of the first Norbert Elias lecture, delivered at the University of Leicester on 6 March 1991.
1 For further information on the book and its background, see Stephen Mennel,
Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-Image (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1989). See also Hermann Korte, Über Norbert Elias: Das Werden eines Menschenwissenschaftlers
(Franklurt: Suhrkamp, 1988); Johan Goudsblom, Sociology in the Balance (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), pp. 143–50; Goudsblom, “Responses to Norbert Elias’s Work,” in Peter R. Gleichmann et al., eds., Human Figurations:
Essays for / Aufsätze für Norbert Elias (Amsterdam: Amsterdams Sociologisch
Tijdschrift, 1977), pp. 37–98;