GOODY Elias and the Anthropological Tradition

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Anthropological Theory

DOI: 10.1177/146349902606205122002; 2; 401Anthropological Theory

J. R. GoodyElias and the anthropological tradition

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Anthropological Theory

Copyright 2002SAGE Publications(London, Thousand Oaks, CA

and New Delhi)Vol 2(4): 401412

[1463-4996(200212)2:4;401412;029504]

401

Elias and theanthropologicaltraditionJack GoodyUniversity of Cambridge, UK

Abstract

The impressive work of Norbert Elias displays little knowledge of other cultures nor

of anthropology in general. But it does promote a comparative method along the lines

of Marx and Weber, and this served to encourage such studies in the social sciences,

methods which had been rejected by many anthropologists in the 20th century. Elias

was interested not only in comparison but in long-term historical change and in what

he called sociogenesis. The civilizing process is described as having its genesis in the

European Renaissance with the increased part played by the state and thedisappearance of feudal structures. It is argued that he arbitrarily selects certain aspects

of manners, neglects the growth (or continuation) of violence and fails to take account

of the conscience collective operating in simpler societies, let alone developments in

other post-Bronze Age societies. Manners he treats largely in psychological terms of

the advance of the highly generalized notion of self-restraint, in which he tries to use

Freud for historical purposes. But without precise measurements these questions of

mentality are too problematic to be examined by texts alone, without direct

observation.

Key Words

comparative study Elias eurocentric Ghana manners mentality naturvolk

psychological history self-restraint

I intended to write an article on Elias thinking that I could stress the contribution madeto cultural history and comparative studies, two ventures in which I had been engagedand which recent anthropology had neglected. But turningback to Elias major text,

I felt I needed to comment on its message and method from the standpoint ofanthropology, a subject that was not always appreciated by Elias. While that is of littleimportance from the standpoint of his significant work on European historical sociology,it does help to throw some light on the question of the universality of his theories andcertain evolutionist or developmental assumptions behind his approach.

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A recent invitation to a conference on Elias mentions his encounter with the otherand the blurb for the 1994 edition of his bookTheCivilizing Processrefers to his researchin Ghana. His consideration of the other is relevant to his attitude towards ourselvesand to our culture as well as to the major change he saw as taking place in the civilizing

process. I have written of my meeting with Elias in Africa when he was Professor ofSociology of the University of Ghana (Legon). I got the impression that he knew verylittle about the continent and its people, and had read almost nothing on the subject.Like most European sociologists, he had a Weberian view of traditional societies whichhad to be radically distinguished from modern ones, in social organization and inpsychological outlook. In Ghana he was more concerned with the latter, but in a ratherold-fashioned way. He seemed to think it possible to gain an understanding of suchmatters by chatting to students and employees, and through his collection of Africansculptures, purchased from itinerant Hausa traders who frequented the residential areaof the University around sunset. Otherwise he made a rare visit to a village by car. He

was somewhat isolated from what went on around him. From my point of view, and Iemphasize this was a personal impression, he was the very opposite of an ethnographer,at least of Africa and of other cultures. I believe my impressions are fully supported bylooking at his autobiographical account of his experiences in that country and of hisencounter with what he referred to as naturvolk (Elias, 1994b; Goody, forthcoming).The term is significant since it refers to those who have yet to undergo the civilizingprocess. They are nearer to nature and to the expression of mans biological nature. Suchignorance of and distance from the local scene as this conception implied was not charac-teristic of Elias alone but was noticeable in other expatriate teachers in the social sciences

in Africa who came from the dominant European sociological tradition.When Elias came to the sociology department, in which the degree was based on that

for the London School of Economics, he tried to get rid of anthropology. His groundswere that Africa should not be left to the anthropologists who had failed to understandits particular strangeness. He desired to replace anthropology by sociology. He felt thelatter could do much better, perhaps through a community study such as he had carriedout in England, rather than through intensive fieldwork. But he did not publish theresults of any such survey and the work of others, including Busias survey of Takoradi,suggests that such an approach has its limitations (Busia, 1950). In any case, as far as

the curriculum was concerned, the students strongly resisted this change, wanting tolearn more about their own society and not only about western ones (which is of coursewhere his own expertise lay).1

We can see the same trend in his work at Leicester. A new and large Department ofSociology, it had effectively no element of anthropology in its curriculum. His book onWhat is Society? has virtually no reference to anthropologists, except to Levi-Strauss inrelation to the Whorf hypothesis and to Evans-PritchardsNuer. If anthropologists inBritain neglected Elias, it was perhaps partly because he neglected them and showed littleinterest in the range of society with which they were mainly dealing and which his

universalizing hypotheses might have expected him to include.The important achievement of Elias as far as anthropology is concerned lay elsewhere.He represented a continuation of the tradition of historical and comparative sociology,now rejected by many postmodernists, the tradition that was exemplified in the worksof Marx and above all of Max Weber; for he worked with Alfred Weber and had joined

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the circle of Marianne Weber at Heidelberg, becoming an assistant to the sociologistKarl Mannheim, with whom he later met up again in London. And he applied thatapproach to the fascinating topic of manners.

In the introduction that he added to the 1978 edition ofTheCivilizing Process, Elias

brings out his theoretical and methodological interests. He is particularly concerned withthe way in which the predominant type of sociology current in his day he refers mainlyto Talcott Parsons had become a sociology of states and had set aside a considerationof problems of long-term social change, of the sociogenesis and development of socialformations of all kinds (Elias, 1978: 190). That was the case, but Parsons saw an advan-tage in the synchronic analysis of social action. Indeed regarding diachronic analysis, thework of authors like Comte, Spencer, Marx and Hobhouse are dismissed by Elias himselfpartly on evidential grounds and partly because of an ideology that assumed develop-ment was always for the better, a movement in the direction of progress.

Elias, rightly in my opinion, argues that we should set aside the ideology and attempt

to improve the factual basis. But one problem with his study is that the factual base isrestricted; nor is it clear in his first monograph to what extent a notion of progress isintrinsic to his concept of civilization, of centralization and the internalization of con-straints in the development of manners. There has been much discussion of the natureof Elias concepts of progress and of process and their relation to earlier notions ofevolution and development, but in his major book he is certainly dealing with vectorialtransformation over time, both of society and of the personality.

In the 19th century the British tradition of comparative studies in the social scienceshad taken a somewhat different turn, influenced as it was by anthropology more than

by sociology (though Herbert Spencer and the legal historians drew on both fields). Thatis to say, it concentrated not simply on European and to a lesser extent Eurasiaticsocieties, as the sociologists had done since their problematic always centred uponEurope and on questions of modernity and tradition, but it included in this purview thewhole range of human experience and culture, especially in non-European societies.Their original focus was on the early and the other rather than on the modern andourselves.

These efforts produced a number of interesting results in terms of the history ofhuman culture but they were largely set aside and discounted by the British anthro-

pologists who followed in the 1920s and above all the 1930s. Under the influence ofMalinowski and to a lesser extent of Radcliffe-Brown, the thrust of anthropologicalenquiry turned to direct observations and enquiries in the field in the manner classicallydescribed by Evans-Pritchard (1951). So large-scale ethnographic comparison took aback seat. But that did not eliminate the practice of comparison altogether, though thebroad diachronic element disappeared. Fieldworking anthropologists recommended thattheir students do in-depth research in two communities. One-to-one comparison wasan intrinsic feature of this programme. But so was another kind. Malinowski effectivelyworked only in the Trobriand Islands, but he was consistently drawn to compare

Trobriand practices with those of Europe. He had no further controls; it was a one-to-one comparison with his own society in order to query relevant aspects of the West.There was yet another type of comparison that was tacitly accepted, indeed actively

promoted by some. This was regional comparison, an enquiry that was justified on thegroundsthatneighbouringsocietieshadmuchincommon,whichmadethecomparison

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more valid and more acceptable. The most systematic of these studies were Schaperaswork on the political systems of the Southern Bantu (1956) and Richards analysis ofmatrilineal societies in Central Africa (1950); both were based on their own fieldwork.In the same vein Evans-Pritchard promoted Nilotic studies and Fortes Voltaic ones, both

encouraging their own students to work in those particular areas in order to further thepossibility of profitable comparison as well as to satisfy curiosity about their neighbours,and perhaps to lend support to or confirm their own studies. In both the restricted andthe regional comparison there might be some treatment of change, especially if it wasshort-term and observable. But longer-term changes were of little explicit interest.

So larger comparisons were abandoned by these scholars, as were ones involving ahistorical perspective. While they did not openly declare that history is bunk, manywere worried by the use of conjectural history (or pseudo-history) by 19th-centuryanthropologists to account for the variations and distribution of human behaviour whichthey had perceived by their use of the comparative method. It was the case that scholars

had used history to try and explain origins or sociogenesis in highly speculative waysthat distracted from the search for explanations in terms of the interlocking of contem-porary features (functional or structural). That interlocking of persons and institutionsat one point in time was rightly seen as a perfectly valid form of analysis, as in biology;static was not considered to be failure of analysis but as useful (as Comte had main-tained) for certain definite purposes. Indeed the choice between synchronic anddiachronic analysis clearly depends upon the problem at which one is looking andcannot be determined in advance.

Not all anthropologists everywhere were equally opposed to comparison. In France,

Levi-Strauss and Dumont had few such inhibitions about wide-ranging comparison, ina sense carrying on the tradition ofAnnesociologique(which the British adopted in othersociological respects).

There were other scholars influenced by the great sociologists of the past, Marx andWeber, who continued with comparative and historical questions. For them the centralquestion was usually why did modernization (capitalism, industrialization) take placein Europe and not elsewhere? The work of Marx had most influence on anthropologistsin France, following publication of a translation of his study of pre-capitalist social for-mations, the discussion of the Asiatic mode of production and the re-analysis of his

concepts by Althusser, especially in the work of Godelier, Meillassoux, Terray and others.In Britain the comparative and historical tradition was maintained, albeit on a regionalbasis, by Peter Worsley inTheTrumpet Shall Soundwriting on Melanesian cargo cultsand by Kathleen Gough (1981) in her studies on south-west India, both influenced byMarxist ideas.

Weber had less influence, except for his widely-read essay onTheProtestant Ethic andtheSpirit of Capitalismtranslated by the American sociologist Talcott Parsons, throughwhom his works were made known to an English-speaking audience. Elias adopts a verydifferent stancefromParsons, whoseapproach heonly seesasstatic (yet Parsonswas

also very much concerned with the links between the social and psychological systems).Like Weber he is interested in long-term changes and explores the reasons for sociologysabandonment of such investigation, linking this to changes in social processes. But heremains aware of the dangers the problem of evidence and the ideological biasassociated with the idea of progress. Let me discuss the first of these.


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Weber had some effect in encouraging a comparative approach. In the first place hisgeneral sociology was of an abstract, classifying kind which led to some comparison, forexample, in his discussion of forms of authority traditional, charismatic, bureaucratic rather as Durkheim did with his treatment of organic and mechanical social systems.

However, this discussion was of limited value to anthropologists, as the notion of a singlecategory of traditional authority was far too restrictive and did not correspond to whatone found in practice. Traditional was simply a residual category for Weber and so toofor Elias. In the second, while he was extremely knowledgeable about the major Eurasiancivilizations, unlike Durkheim he knew virtually nothing of non-literate societies, andlittle enough of peasant ones. Durkheim on the other hand made an extensive study ofnative Australians forTheElementary Forms of theReligious Life(1912) as well as review-ing many anthropological works for Annesociologique; his collaborators and studentssuch as Mauss, Hertz, Fauconnet, Bougl, Dout and others made thoughtful contri-butions to ethnographic research even if they did not themselves engage in fieldwork to

any notable extent. Such a wide interest was very limited in the German sociological tra-dition from which Elias emerged. More stimulating was Webers major problematic andthe way he tried to test his suggested answer cross-culturally. From the broadest perspec-tive Elias original thesis adopts a similar approach to those discussed by Blaut in hisEight Eurocentric Historians(2000) among whom he includes Weber, White, Jones, Hall,Brenner, Mann, Diamond and Landes.2This work would have qualified Elias for a ninthplace (though there are many other candidates) because of his statements about Europesadvantages in the civilizing process (and particularly in the internalization of restraint)without any review of non-European material.3

Elias belonged to this Weberian tradition and his central question inTheCivilizingProcess(1978 [1939]) was precisely how this process had emerged in modern times andhad been internalized by the actors as a set of constraints. His problematic is not identicalto Webers but it is related. He is asking not why capitalism arose exclusively in the Westbut why the civilizing process did. True, he never puts it quite as directly as Weber (whoat times also pursued a more nuanced argument), but in fact his major work concen-trates entirely upon Europe and the development of the civilizing process in the periodfollowing the Renaissance. This he sees as manifested in increasing self-restraint, in theinternalization of controls over affect, which he contrasts explicitly with what took place

in the Middle Ages (such as uncontrolled bouts of drinking) and in simpler societiesamong the naturvolk, as in Ghana, with their sacrifices, rituals, scanty clothing butgreater directness. With Weber, as with Elias, the focus came firmly back to historicalcomparison, though talk of the naturvolk, and of the assumption of some ideal type oftraditional society brought one perilously close to the speculative history of 19th-centuryanthropologists against whose procedures and results the fieldworking anthropologistsof the interwar period with their static observations had struggled so strongly and tomuch purpose.

In his introduction to the 1968 German edition, Elias draws attention to the paucity

of work on the structure and controls of human affects except for the more developedsocieties of today. His work concentrates on the long-term transformation of person-ality structure which he sees as related to long-term transformations of social structures(to state formation). He is concerned with the background of what in common speechrelates to the change from barbarity to civilization, not in the sense the terms have


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been used by prehistorians but referring to changes in the control of internal (andexternal) behaviour.

Elias appreciates the need for evidence and considers he has tackled this question,both with regard to social differentiation at the socio-political level (state controls) and

to the relationship with long-term changes in affect control, the latter being manifest inexperience (in the form of an advance in the threshold of shame and revulsion). Thenotion of such an advance is critical. Although he wishes to replace metaphysicallydominated sociological theories of development with a more empirically based model,he rejects the notion of evolution in the nineteenth century sense or of unspecific socialchange in the 20th century one (1994: 184). He rather looks at social development inone of its manifestations, namely the process of state formation over several centuriestogether with the complementary process of advancing differentiation. He claims he islaying the foundation of an undogmatic, empirically based sociological theory of socialprocess in general and of social development in particular (1994: 184). Social change

(seen as structural) must be regarded as moving towards greater or less complexity overmany generations (1994: 184). It is not easy to discuss the applicability of this theoryto other contexts because of its generality. At the same time he confines the notion ofstate formation and civilization to the modern period in Europe. From a theoreticalpoint of view such a purely European focus is unsustainable, especially as the process ofstate formation was discussed by other German writers (such as the anthropologistRobert Lowie) in a much wider context.

Elias does not see every development as proceeding in a straight line. After the FirstWorld War, there was a relaxation in morals (1994: 153) but this was a very short

recession which he claims did not affect the general trend. For instance, bathingcostumes (and womens sport) presuppose a very high standard of drive control. Whydoes that observation apply to us and not to the scantier clothing of simpler societies?Indeed when one examines the problem of increasing constraints from a different angle,the notion of a general progression disappears, although there may have been changestowards stricter and laxer controls over time and place in specific spheres. Nevertheless,Elias asserts that the direction of the main movement . . . is the same for all kinds ofbehavior (1994: 154). Instincts are slowly and progressively suppressed. While this pointof view is a commonplace in the West, it is not easy to find any empirical support.

Later on towards the end of his life, Elias turned to consider the most dramatic phase,the rise of Nazism (or more broadly Fascism), which some consider should have had itsplace in any account of the overall changes in human society. He now sees the Naziperiod as a process of decivilization, of regression, but that seems to avoid the mainissue. Such activity and the Fascist ideologies in Germany and Italy, like the World Wars,are surely an intrinsic part of contemporary society, of the development that has led toour present situation, and not some kind of regression, a social equivalent of Freudianpsychological processes.

That conception seems to relate to another, which it is now generally regarded as mis-

leading. There is little doubt that Elias equated the childhood of the race with the child-hood of the human being, the phylogenetic with the ontogenetic (although children didnot go through all the phases of the civilizing process); the naturvolk or primitiveneeded to have his emotions and behaviour controlled, as was also the case with childrenwho required disciplining in the same way (with fear being involved in both cases). But


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as has often been pointed out, naturvolk have already been through a long process ofsocialization, of denaturing, and to see them as lacking in self-control is highlyquestionable. In acephalous societies without elaborate systems of authority there arepossibly more internalized constraints, certainly reciprocal ones, which may of course

take the form of negative reciprocity in the violence of vengeance and the feud. Thathe should later have learnt had he read the work on the Tallensi of Ghana undertakenby Fortes with his psychological and indeed psychoanalytic background.

The change in the structure of affects is related by Elias to the change in the struc-ture of society, in particular the shift from the free competition of feudal society to themonopolization of power by the monarchy, creating the courtly society. In a differenti-ated society that increased central control is seen as offering greater freedoms to itsmembers, entailing a shift from external constraints to internal ones, though the logicalbasis of this transformation seems open to question.

The process of what he calls state formation, the sociogenesis of the state, is analysed

exclusively from the standpoint of western Europe, which is of course where he sees thecivilizing process as taking place. (No African society was seen by him as having a state,though he lived within the shadow of the Kingdom of Asante.) His approach contrastswith that of Weber, who was concerned with the sociogenesis of capitalism (and theinternalized religiously based constraintsof Protestants) and discussed at great lengththereasonswhyAsiansocietiesdidnot,couldnot,giverisetocapitalism.Nevertheless,thequestions are linked together.

What lends the civilizing process in the west its special and unique character, Eliaswrites, is that here the division of functions has attained a level, the monopolies of force

and taxation a solidity, and interdependence and competition an extent, both in termsof physical space and of numbers of people, unequalled in world history (1994:457).Could that really be said of the 16th century? In any case he does not examine the historyof any other part of the world and if he did so, given his initial question, he might onlyhave ended up like Weber in seeing Europe as unique, which of course it is bound tobe, but the implication is that it is unique in respect of the factors leading to the civiliz-ing process (or capitalism). Pomeranz has effectively queried these assumptions in arecent book (2000) and I would certainly do so as well (Goody, 1996).

Western society, he asserts, developed from a network of interdependence, encom-

passing not only the oceans but arable regions of the earth (the expansion of Europe),creating a necessity for an attunement of human conduct over wider areas. Corre-sponding to it, too, is the strength of self-control and the permanence of compulsion,affect-inhibition and drive-control, which life at the centres of this network imposes(457). Having elaborated this relationship between terrestrial expansion and psycho-logical interdependence, producing permanent self-control (more complex super-egos),he sees this in turn as related to punctuality, to the development of chronometric tech-niques and to the consciousness of time as well as to the development of money andother instruments of social integration. Those developments include the necessity to

subordinate momentary effects to more distant goals (458), starting with the upper andmiddle classes. All this concerns western development and western societies, with theirhigher division of labour (459). Higher note, rather than more complex. There iscertainly more planning, and hence delayed gratification, in such societies, associatedwith the reckoning of time. But that often involves external controls as much, or more


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than, internal ones. And we must not lose sight of the fact that apart from attunement,state formation led to violence within and without the boundaries.

No need to consider naturvolk in this process but it is unacceptable that there is noreference to other urban societies, especially as this might have led him to query the

notion of a special social personality structure in the West. The question he raises iswhether the long-term changes in social systems, toward a higher level of social differ-entiation and integration (183), are accompanied by parallel changes in personalitystructures. The problem of long-term changes in affect and control structures of peopleconstitutes an interesting question and is not one that anthropologists have much dis-cussed, certainly in terms of affect and emotion though there has been considerableinterest in social control, including internalized sanctions, the question of shame andguilt, and the relation of segmentary political systems to moral and jural solidaritieswhich was raised by Durkheim (and only much later in the German tradition with itsoverwhelming concern with the state). The comparison and history of affect presents

greater problems of evidence and documentation, at least in the absence of writtensources; indeed, that situation throws some doubts on a dependence on the text alonefor examining mentalities, and most anthropologists, discomforted by Levy-Bruhlsprimitive mentality, would tend to follow G.E.R. Lloyd in his extensive criticisms ofsuch an approach. That is not to deny the possibility of long-term changes, possiblydirectional ones, at the level of affect, even if anthropologists more frequently take arelativistic or universalistic line about such topics (the unity of mankind), demandinga scepticism about such questions as the invention of love in 12th-century France or18th-century England, the evidence for which depends entirely on the written record.

Inhisdiscussionofthehistoryof manners, forwhichheisbestknown,Eliasconcen-tratesuponaset of aspectsof behaviour, theincreasinguseof tableware(especiallythefork),ofhandkerchiefs, andsoforth. Increasingconsumptionover thisperiod,aswell aselaborationinmattersofdressandtablemanners, didseeaseriesofchangesinwesterncultures.Butweneedtoasktwoquestions. Isitsatisfactorysimplytoselecttheseaspectsandto disregardotherswhich seemto go in acontrarysensewhereoneneedsto takeaccountof theincreaseinwarfareandviolence, includingthoseaspectsthat ledtoEliashimselfhavingtofleehisnativeGermany,aswellasmoreunconstrainedbehaviourintheareaofsex,ofviolationsofpropertyrightsandother formsofcriminal action?

Concerning violence he claims that we see clearly how the compulsions arisingdirectly from the threat of weapons and physical force gradually diminish, and how thoseforms of dependency which lead to the regulation of the affects in the form of self-control, gradually increase (153). The proposition is highly questionable, at least at thelevel of society, taking into account the use and threat of weapons in the 20th century.Yet he claims that social facts fit in with the general notion of increasing self-control.That thesis is vaguely based on ideas of naturvolk with their supposedly freer feelings,on the notion of a shift from (external) shame to (internal) guilt, on Freudian and similarvisions of instinctive drives and impulses gradually being brought under control by

society.Here Elias failure to seriously examine other cultures leads him into two kinds ofproblems. Firstly his sequence of development privileges western Europe and its develop-ment from feudal to courtly (of the 16th and 17th centuries) to bourgeois society.Secondly his vision totally underestimates the social constraints in the simpler societies,


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certainly with regard to sex, violence and other forms of interpersonal behaviour. Thefact that primitives may go about scantily clad does not mean they do not have stronglyfelt internalized feelings of shame and embarrassment. That is to overinterpret, as I thinkhe sometimes does, the material culture as an index of a psychological state.

Loveisseen in similarlyquestionabledevelopmental terms. What wecall love . . .thattransformationofpleasure,thatshadeof feeling,thatsublimationandrefinementoftheaffects(328)comesintobeinginthefeudalsocietyofthetroubadoursandisexpressedinlyricpoetry.Heseesatext, indeedthegenre,asexpressinggenuinefeelings (thoughitcouldbeusedotherwise)and, inthewordsofC.S.Lewis,asanindicatorofanewstateof affairs. That wefindhereapoeticgenrenewforChristian Europetherecan belittledoubt;butthereis(asI havetriedtoshowelsewhere)noevidenceofnewfeelings,unlesswemean bythat newformsof expressingthosefeelings, andeven herethenewnessofexpressionappliesonlytoChristianEurope,nottoanoverall changeinmansconscious-ness.Therehasbeenamisapplicationof thenotionofsociogenesis(seeGoody, 1998).

Sexuality, dealt with under a section headed changes in attitude towards relationsbetween the sexes (138 ff.), is given a similar treatment. In accordance with his generalview of the history of manners, Elias begins by claiming that the feeling of shamesurrounding human sexual relations . . . changed considerably in the process of civiliz-ation. The note refers to comments by Ginsberg, Montaigne and Freud about socialinfluences on behaviour but which give no support whatsoever to the idea of a pro-gression in notions of shame. That he sees in the views taken of Erasmus Colloquiesinthe 19th century; he has a different standard of shame from the later period and thatdifference is part of the civilizing process since at that time even among adults, every-

thing pertaining to sexual life is concealed to a high degree and dismissed behind thescenes (146).

Elias perceives a similar progression in respect of monogamous marriage which theChurch had proclaimed early on in its history. But marriage takes on this strict form asa social institution binding on both sexes only at a later stage, when drives and impulsescome under firmer and stricter control. For only then are extramarital relationships formen really ostracised socially, or at least subject to absolute secrecy (150). This seems avery dubious assertion that perhaps held for the Victorian period in England but by nomeans everywhere even in Europe. Yet it is a problem he pursues in trying to establish

his thesis: in the course of the civilising process the sexual drive, like many others, issubjected to ever stricter control and transformation (149). It may have been possibleto make this assertion in the 1930s (though I myself have doubts), but after the 1960sit is hardly correct to claim a progression to ever stricter controls. Women have cer-tainly experienced some liberation in this as in other spheres; men too are not morestraight-laced than in Victorian times. Indeed Victorian England has to be looked uponas a special case of inhibition in this respect.

What is problematic is not the interlocking of human beings in a wider perspective(society, culture, figuration), nor the relationship of the individual to the social (as

distinct from society) discussed by Durkheim and further analysed by Parsons inTheStructureof Social Action(1937) which in my view Elias does not completely understand,or if understands does not take fully into account. The problem that is most worryingtoanthropologistsliesinthenatureofthenexusbetweensocial structureandpersonalitystructure.Itishowmentalstagescorrespondtosocialones,aquestionthatliesattheheart


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ofhisproblematic.Noonewoulddenythattherearesuchrelationships.Butitispossibleto interpret thoseastootightlystructured, toocloselydrawn together. Eliaswritesof aconception of therelation between what isinsideman andtheexternal world that isfoundinthewritingsofall groupswhosepowersof reflectionandwhoseself-awareness

havereachedthestageatwhichpeopleareinapositionnotonlytothinkbuttobecon-sciousof themselves, andtoreflectonthemselvesasthinkingbeings (207).Butwhat isthisstage?Itseemstoassumetheexistenceofamoreprimitivementalityand fails to lookfor particular social factors leading to this breakthrough, such as the power of the writtenword to promote reflexivity of this kind (and the role of individuals and social groupsthat developed it, including philosophers and other intellectuals). Can we properlyspeak of a stage in the development of the figurations formed by people, and of thepeople forming these figurations (207)? That seems to be putting the problem at a toogeneral, non-sociological level. Again, he sees the shift from a geocentric view of theworld as resulting from an increased capacity in men for self-detachment in thought

(208). That particular development (of the civilizing process) led to greater self-controlby men. Many historians of science would put the relationship round the other way andoffer explanations that did not require the notion of an autonomous civilizing processinvolved with great affect control, greater self-detachment. Indeed going to the rootsof Elias hypothesis, it is difficult to accept the construction of aprima mobilewhich isnot simply descriptive but causal a civilisation shift . . . that was taking place withinman himself (209), flattering as that may be to our own egos.

Even granted there were directional changes in behaviour linked to centralization,why disregard what happened in other civilizations such as China? There too the

development of manners, the use of intermediaries between food and mouth, the com-plicated rituals of greeting and of bodily cleanliness, of court constraint as contrastedwith peasant directness as, for example, in the tea ceremony all this presents paral-lels to Europe at the time of the Renaissance that should have attracted his attention andled to geographical (cross-cultural) analyses rather than to one confined to Europe given the more general psychological thesis he was attempting to substantiate. Stick toEurope if you will, but not if you are making more general claims. And that Elias wasdoing, viewing in a Weberian fashion what was happening here in Europe as the uniquepath to modernity.

I believe there is no excuse for this neglect of other civilized cultures in such a venture.Weber realized he had to take them into account, even though his western orientationdid, in my view, get in the way of a correct evaluation of the material (see Goody, 1996).For example in a famous contribution Weber related the rise of capitalism to theProtestant ethic. But since then many articles have appeared, showing a similar spiritto have existed elsewhere (e.g. Amstutz, 1998). Elias did not even try to pursue thiscomparison.

I have spoken primarily of the relevance of Elias and Weber for anthropologicalenquiry. There is also the question of theory. One is aware of the problem in the social

sciences; the concepts one uses almost invariably have theoretical implications.Historians and others may see a term such as feudal as being theoretically neutral but itdoes in fact refer to a specific view of development in Europe and by implication (oreven by direct usage) in the rest of the world. Such usages need to be examined criticallyand if necessary reconsidered. Elias does just this regarding civilization.


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But there is another level of theory where such a re-examination has turned out to beless valuable. Here I refer to the kind of discussion embodied in Talcott ParsonsTheStructureof Social Actionand subsequent works, on the supposedly systematic relationsbetween sub-systems, though similar considerations apply to Anthony Giddens dis-

cussion of structuration, Bourdieus of habitus, Radcliffe-Browns structure andfunction. I believe it to be the same with most discussions of culture and society, and itapplies to Elias notion of figuration. The use of some of these concepts has occasion-ally served to redirect research activities but at a more profound level they have beensingularly unprofitable, a repetition of the obvious, a dilation on what nobody neededto know, a commentary on previous texts or abstract model building. We can usually dojust as well, perhaps better, with the language of ordinary men.

What the work of Weber and Elias has helped to keep alive is the interest in historyand comparison. There must always be some problems in these two areas for a subjectbased on fieldwork. I would argue that one cannot neglect them for that reason but

should use the results of fieldwork to improve comparison and historical reconstruction.We are accustomed to the reports of fieldworkers whose efforts, when not confined tothe recording and analysis of observations, tend to turn to gross comparison with theirown cultures as a substitute for serious sociological enquiry. It is of little surprise thatrecent anthropology has failed to make a substantial contribution to understanding inthe social sciences, indeed some of its practitioners have given up the attempt, rejectingthe methodology of fieldwork and relying on literary or philosophical intuition (seeLatour, 2000).

I do not wish to suggest that comparison is the only strategy anthropology can adopt.

Clearly there is a place for those who wish to concentrate upon the Nuer or upon thewider frame of Nilotic studies. There may also be a place for a mode of enquiry thatembraces neither intensive fieldwork nor systematic comparison, though I myself wouldprefer to see this listed under a separate designation, perhaps philosophic anthropologyas practised by Habermas is a possibility here. But if one wants to say something aboutthe differences between certain types of society (however defined), or even to imply theexistence of such general differences, there is really no alternative to systematic com-parisons. In a recent book Pomeranz acknowledges that much of classical social theoryhas been Eurocentric but argues that the alternative favoured by some current post-

modernist scholars abandoning cross-cultural comparison altogether and focussingalmost exclusively on exposing the contingency, particularity, and perhaps unknowabil-ity of historical moments makes it impossible even to approach many of the mostimportant questions in history (and in contemporary life). It seems much preferableinstead to confront biased comparison by trying to produce better ones by seeing bothsides of the comparison as deviations rather than as seeing one as the norm (Pomeranz,2000: 8). That goal should remain an important aim for all the social sciences, and it isone with which the work of Weber and Elias urges us to engage.

Notes1 See Kortes forthcoming work on Elias letters to Rene Knig, to which I am indebted.This general attitude is strongly reinforced by conversations with those who workedwith Elias.

2 Some years ago I attended a seminar in Cambridge arranged by a number of these


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scholars (including other distinguished contributors) on Europes uniqueness inrespect to capitalism. My own attempt to query this approach was not included inthe published outcome.

3 As with many writers, there has been change over time. I am talking about the original

work.

References

Amstutz, G. (1998) Shin Buddhism and Protestant Analogies with Christianity in theWest, ComparativeStudies in Society and History40: 72447.

Blaut, J.M. (2000) Eight Eurocentric Historians. New York: Guilford Press.Busia, K.A. (1950) Report on a Social Survey of Sekondi-Takoradi. London: Crown

Agents.Elias, N. (19812) [1978, 1939]TheCivilizing Process(Edmund Jephcott trs.).

Oxford: Blackwell.

Elias, N. (1994a)TheCivilizing Process. Revised edition(Edmund Jephcott trs.).Oxford: Blackwell.

Elias, N. (1994b) Reflections on a Life(Edmund Jephcott trs.). Cambridge: Polity Press.Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (1951) Social Anthropology. London: Routledge.Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (1966)ThePosition of Women in PrimitiveSocieties and Other

Essays in Social Anthropology. London: Faber & Faber.Goody, J. (1996)TheEast in theWest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Goody, J. (1998) Food and Love. London: Verso.Goody, J. (forthcoming)TheCivilising Process in Ghana.

Gough, K. (1981) Rural Society in South-East India.Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Latour, B. (2000) Derrida Dreams about Le Shuttle. Review of E. Darian-Smith(Bridging Divides: TheChannel Tunnel and English Legal Identity in theNew Europe.Berkeley: University of California Press),Times Higher Educational Supplement2/6/2000: 31.

Lloyd,G.E.R. (1990)DemystifyingMentalities.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.Parsons, T. (1937)TheStructureof Social Action. New York: Free Press.Pomeranz, K. (2000)TheGreat Divergence: Europe, China, and theMaking of the

Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Richards,A.I. (1950) SomeTypesofFamilyStructureamongtheCentral Bantu, in

A.R. Radcliffe-BrownandC.D.Forde(eds)AfricanSystemsofKinshipandMarriage.London:OxfordUniversityPress(FortheInternational AfricanInstitute).

Schapera, I. (1956)Government and Politics in Tribal Societies. London: C.A. Watts.Worsley, P. (1957)TheTrumpet Shall Sound: A Study of Cargo Cults in Melanesia.

London: MacGibbon & Kee.

JACK GOODY was William Wye Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and is

now a Fellow of St Johns College. He carried out fieldwork in Ghana among the Lo Dagaa and Gonja, and

also carried out enquiries in Gujerat and South China. He has written more generally on kinship and family,

on literacy, on food, on flowers and on other cultural topics. Address: St Johns College, Cambridge CB2 1TP,

England. [email: [email protected]]


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