|
| |
| |
| |
Summary
This study deals with changes in codes of behaviour, particularly in the Netherlands since 1930, with special attention to codes for loving and dying. It attempts to show how changes in standards of behaviour and feeling are indicative of both social and psychological processes: of changes in the relationships between people as well as in people themselves, in the regimes of power and emotions. This attempt is based on the methodological principle that changes in dominant codes of behaviour express changes in a. the relationships of power and dependency, and the ensuing problems of living together; b. the emotion management or self-regulation employed by individuals to try to cope with these problems.
A leading theoretical question in the study of changes in codes of behaviour is how to interpret and explain them, or more specifically: whether and to what extent they go in the direction of formalization or informalization.
This study puts forward the thesis that formalization and informalization are phases in civilizing processes. It is based on the assumption that trends toward formalization and informalization have been operative throughout history; there have always been groups trying to enforce formal rules, and others trying to resist them or evade them. If one such group has a winning streak for any length of time, a corresponding phase of formalization or informalization will be dominant. Also in the long run, one of these trends may be stronger than the other, corresponding to long-term phases of formalization or informalization.
During the period covered by Norbert Elias in his Civilizing Process, from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 19th century, processes of formalization appear to have been dominant in Western Europe. On the
| |
| |
whole, more and more aspects of behaviour were subjected to stricter regulations, partly in the form of laws and partly in the form of the standardized and formalized social codes known as good manners or etiquette. These laws and codes set limits on all sorts of dangers, including the danger of outbursts of emotions and impulses that could end in social or physical destruction or humiliation. In the long-term process of formalization these ‘dangerous emotions’ became increasingly repressed and denied. This long-term trend probably reached its peak in the ‘Victorian Era’, to be followed in the 20th century by a dominant process of informalization: in short-term phases of informalization and formalization a relaxation and differentiation of behavioural codes continued. In this long-term informalization process, more and more of the dominant modes of social conduct, symbolizing institutionalized power relationships, have come to be ignored or attacked. Extreme behaviour, expressing great differences in power and respect, came to provoke moral indignation and was banned - a diminishing of contrasts, a trend towards convergence or homogenization; for the rest, the codes of social conduct have become more lenient, more differentiated and varied - a trend towards divergence or heterogenization. This study focusses on this long-term process of informalization, in which all kinds of emotions that previously had been repressed and denied, especially those concerning sex, violence and death, were again ‘discovered’ as part of a collective emotional make-up: there was an ‘emancipation of emotions’. The ‘fin de siècle’ and the Edwardian period, the ‘roaring twenties’ and the 1960s and 1970s showed particularly strong spurts in this direction, each of them followed by spurts of formalization. This century, the growing density of networks of interdependency has allowed a wide
range of emancipation movements and ideals of equality to spread, and in this process, the extent of allowed expression of social distance and distinction has been limited, and, correspondingly, inherent feelings of superiority and inferiority had to be curbed. In processes of emancipation, rising groups have demanded new behavioural alternatives for themselves, while at the same time the margins for the old established groups have become smaller: a diminishing of contrasts and increasing variety in behavioural codes. In these processes a general increase of sensitivity to shades and nuances has developed, a greater sensitivity to more subtle, informal social pressure among the rising number of groups that experience themselves as being represented in the centres of power - centres that function as a model for the management of behaviour and emotions. In increasingly dense networks of interdependency, the art of obliging and being obliged, as well as the art of surmounting or evading these constraints, have demanded greater sensibility and flexibility in dealing
| |
| |
with others and oneself. In this way, processes of democratization and social equalization have run in tandem with collective emotional changes and informalization: more and more people have pressured each other towards more differentiated and flexible patterns of self-regulation and mutually expected self-restraints, allowing for an increase of socially permitted behavioural and emotional alternatives.
In this study of the long-term process of informalization, special attention goes to changes in the relationships between the sexes, and between the dying and those who live on. These relationships are of decisive importance for the beginning and the end of all human life. With regard to the developments in these areas, the thesis of formalization holds that in the long-term formalization process, the dangers of sex (sexual violence, venereal disease and unwanted pregnancy) and death (especially by physical violence) have become increasingly limited by more extensive and stricter regulations. In the same process, with the help of these regulations, the emotions and impulses that could lead to physical and sexual violence have become more strongly controlled and hidden. The more primary, dangerous emotions relating to sex and death were increasingly excluded from consciousness; they were put behind the individual scene, just as the actual events of loving and dying were excluded from social life and put behind the social scene.
The thesis of informalization holds that in the long-term process of informalization occurring this century, the avoidance of these dangerous emotions through constraints in the form of strict codes of behaviour has gradually diminished, giving way to avoidance through a rising level of mutually expected self-restraints, which allowed for a relaxation and differentiation of ‘good manners’ in matters of sex and death. This rise in mutually expected self-restraints has been accompanied by increasing curiosity about sex and death, which in the course of centuries have been put behind the social and individual scene; the emotions involved are increasingly allowed - both individually and socially speaking - to re-enter consciousness.
This study is based on varied sources, ranging from etiquette books and sexual primers, participant observation and interviews with women who left their partners and went to refuge homes, with flight attendants and medical students in a dissecting room, to research reports appearing under ministerial responsibility. After studying these sources the following conclusions seem plausible.
| |
| |
In the industrialized West, processes of differentiation and integration contain a long-term trend towards decreasing differences in power, status and wealth between the social classes, sexes and generations. This trend became dominant towards the end of the last century. Succeeding waves of democratization and the redistribution of economic surpluses according to welfare state principles, resulted in the depletion or disappearance of the groups at either end of the social ladder, with a sharp increase in the jostling in the middle. Inequalities, together with the social and psychological distance between people, have diminished without losing importance. Particularly since the 1950s, the process of informalization was reinforced and accelerated by a spectacular spread of wealth and opportunities to gain information, bringing about a wide range of new alternatives for behaviour, emotions and orientation.
Expressed in theoretical terms, the long-term process of informalization indicates a curve in the direction of civilizing processes in the sense that within it, an increase of socially permitted alternatives for behaviour and feeling has come about, while simultaneously indicating a continuation of the direction of civilizing processes in the sense that the contrasts in the codes of behaviour have further diminished, and the dominant pattern of self-regulation and emotion management has increased in range, becoming more differentiated, even and stable at the same time.
The book ends with a discussion of the chances that the process of informalization will also become dominant in the world as a whole, on a global level.
| |
Chapter I
The title of this chapter, Has the Civilizing Process Changed Direction? refers to the theory of civilizing processes put forward by Norbert Elias. Elias interpreted the relaxation of social codes in the 1920s and 1930s as limited and temporary; he perceived signs of a new strengthening of behavioural codes and self-restraints. He was proved wrong by the continued growth of permissiveness during the 1960s and 1970s. In this chapter this trend is integrated into a revised civilizing theory, and the thesis of informalization is put forward. In order to give an account of the criteria for the determination of the direction of civilizing processes, a summary of the civilizing theory is presented, followed by an attempt to apply them in a review of some of the changes that fall under the heading of informalization.
Etiquette books are the main sources for this chapter.
| |
| |
| |
Chapter II
Avoidance Behaviour and Status Fears; Negotiating with De Swaan is a reaction to De Swaan's explanation of agoraphobia in terms of a socially inherited fear of violence and the related restrictions on women's movements in the 19th century. This chapter argues that these restrictions were not born out of fear of violence, but out of status anxiety. The code of avoidance behaviour functioned to display and maintain the social dividing lines, and to protect the sensibilities and composure of the established classes in the face of offences that endangered their self-control: those were the dangers of social mixing. In the course of the 20th century, the dominant codes, symbolizing institutionalized balances of power, came to be ignored or attacked by socially rising groups. In processes of functional and political democratization, social mixing became increasingly unavoidable. In relating and negotiating with each other behavioural alternatives increased, and all concerned became entangled in a process of informalization in which they had to conquer their status anxiety and their fear of each other.
An epilogue to this chapter deals with the increased anxiety about disclosing status desires, status victories and defeats, particularly the connected feelings of triumph and humiliation: an increase of status secrets.
This chapter is also based on etiquette books, from the 19th and 20th century.
| |
Chapter III
This chapter elaborates on the significance of increased material security, particularly that provided by the welfare state, for relationships of power and dependency between people, particularly between the sexes, as well as for their personality or attitude. Interviews with men and women, the latter having left their husbands, show that they all did not worry about money; they took financial support by the state's social security system for granted. Most of these people belonged to the working classes. Their financial peace of mind is summarized in the title of this chapter as The Equanimity of the Welfare State. This is an example of the connection between social and psychological processes and structures, particularly the structure of social constraints and the structure of fears: social security has generated personel security. The social security of the welfare state increased, often unconsciously, the behavioural alternatives of women, and men, compelled to accept a shift in the balance of power in favour of their wives, expres- | |
| |
sed anger and jealousy about the support these women received after leaving home. The state has become a competitor of men with regard to their function of provider or breadwinner, Welfare state institutions have decreased the direct dependence of women on their men, while increasing the indirect interdependencies: the dependency and responsibility of all towards all via the state.
| |
Chapter IV
This chapter is a study of the changes at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, when the period of rapid informalization had come to an end and was transformed into a period of (re)formalization - the ‘no nonsense’ era of budget cuts. This transformation is perceived as a collective change in behaviour, feeling and morality. As is indicated by the title, Formalization and Informalization: Two Phases in Civilizing Processes, the chapter contains a more theoretical interpretation of the main changes in the 1980s. First, the question what informalization implies for one's personal emotional management is discussed, in order to clarify its contours as a social process. The description of informalization as a long-term process is followed by a more detailed account of differences between the last phase of informalization and the most recent phase of (re)formalization. This entails an elaboration of the different ways in which people perceive themselves and each other in these phases and in the criteria used for evaluating their position and determining their rank in society. These differences are documented in greater detail by a study of changes in written and spoken Dutch, with examples that further help to illuminate the developmental structure of both phases. The article concludes that the level of mutually expected self-restraints has risen and that in the 1980s, a (re)formalization of previous informalization was taking place, indicating that the long-term social and psychological process of informalization has not yet come to an end.
| |
Chapter V
Formalization after Informalization is an empirical elaboration of the former chapter, based on a comparative analysis of the latest Dutch etiquette books, published in the 1980s, and those published between 1930 and 1965, focus- | |
| |
sing on developments in behavioural codes between the sexes. There was a gap of 13 years (1966-79), during which no books on this subject were published. In this period of rapid informalization, there was, however, an upsurge of books on liberation and self-realization. In the comparative contents analysis five related changes clearly come to the fore. Their interrelatedness is demonstrated in broader developments, two of which are further elaborated upon: a spurt in the development from male protection of women towards self-protection, and a shift in emphasis from social dividing lines and ‘keeping one's distance’ according to status criteria to a general ‘right to privacy’.
| |
Chapter VI
The State and Sexual Morality again focusses on changes in the relationships between the sexes. The chapter offers an account of the implications of processes of democratization and informalization for topics like the disappearance of chaperones at dances in the 1920s and 1930s, sexual violence and sexual harassment at work and in prostitution. It is based on a comparison between an older (1931) research report on the ‘Dancing Issue’ that appeared under ministerial responsibility, with more recent reports with the same status, on sexual violence and harassment. Among other things, the comparison shows that in the 1920s and 1930s, the dangers and fears of ‘free’, i.e. unsupervised contacts between the sexes, and of being sexually stimulated in ‘modern’ dances like foxtrot and charleston, were apparently not expected to be sufficiently controlled by the individuals themselves; guarding and other forms of social control prevailed and were more or less taken for granted. There was no confidence in the capacity of either women or men to control these dangers individually: both would ‘fall’ and give in to their ‘lower instincts’. As the dominant code of social and sexual advances and avoidances became less strict and formal, human antennae for advances as well as for avoidances became refined: an erotization. Individual control of dangers and fears connected with erotic and sexual behaviour increased and the general appreciation for this kind of self-regulation rose. At the same time social controls were relaxed; the public measures taken to prevent sexual debauches and the like relaxed as conditions of mutually expected self-control and mutual consent expanded. In the same development, the quest for excitement and for provocation of one's own and each other's self-regulation, has risen, sometimes to the extent that one can speak of a ‘quest for risks in the welfare
state’.
| |
| |
| |
Chapter VII
Flight Attendants and Informalization; Towards a Sociology of Emotion Management draws from an American study of the ‘emotional labour’ of flight attendants, the kind of labour that is expanding with the service industry. The material of this study, together with material derived from interviews with Dutch flight attendants, offered an opportunity to compare the theory and process of informalization with a research report presenting a ‘sociology of emotions’. This kind of sociology is expanding and reinforces attempts to study connections between social and psychological processes, between changes in social and individual emotion management. This study of the ‘emotional labour’ of flight attendants shows that informalization processes have also occured ‘in the air’. The chapter presents the connection between the rising social and psychological pressures people exert upon themselves and each other when networks of interdependency expand and become more dense, and the growing desire to be liberated from these pressures, as expressed in nostalgia. With regard to the romantic appeal of the expression ‘sociology of emotions’, the chapter ends by suggesting it be changed into ‘sociology of emotion management’.
| |
Chapter VIII
Informalization in Mourning Processes and in Attitudes Towards the Dead in Dissecting-Rooms illustrates from two different angles changes in attitude towards death in the direction of informalization. Two main encounters with death, the death of friends and relatives and the death of strangers, support each other. Examples taken mainly from Dutch etiquette books show that in the 20th century the compulsory institutionalized aspects of mourning have lost much of their force, while the personal side of mourning has been accentuated and privatized. The dominant Standard of bereavement behaviour has become more informal and individualized, makes higher demands on self-regulation and self-restraints, and reflects the diminution of power differences in society.
In the second part of this chapter, reactions of medical students to contacts with unknown dead bodies in a dissecting-room, together with student publications on the subject, are interpreted as signs of growing sensibility, individualization and social constraint toward self-restraint - signs of a process of informalization.
| |
| |
| |
Chapter IX
Dying and Living On in The Netherlands since 1930; The Regulation of Power and Emotions at the End of One's Life is based on an historical and comparative contents analysis of the main books and journals of the nursing and medical professions. It focusses on changes in the dominant codes and ideals regulating the relationships between the dying and those who live on. These sources demonstrate that, until the middle of the 1950s, the pattern of codes and ideals reinforced a ‘regime of silence and sacred lies’. From then on, the ritual and rigid character of this regime relaxed, and more informal and varied codes of behaviour and emotion management spread. An ‘emancipation of the dying’ coincided with an ‘emancipation of emotions’ - former taboos and defence mechanisms concerning death and dying faded as the social (hierarchical) and psychological distance between the people concerned diminished. This development is first described and then interpreted in terms of processes of democratization and informalization, of a regulation of power and emotions at the end of one's life that is less hierarchical, more open, informal and individual. The growth of openness and interest in these matters is not only interpreted as decreasing denial and repression but also as increasing exercises in coping with feelings of powerlessness, in the course of which the standard sense of mortality has risen and demanded more of emotional management. The analysis also shows that, as religious beliefs decreased - secularization - interest in and knowledge of individual and social processes increased - psychologization and sociologization: spurts in a process of mutual human identification.
| |
Chapter X
In Informalization and the Dutch Monarchy in the 20th Century, changes in the ways the Dutch queens have conducted and experienced their royal profession are described and interpreted. In the first part of the chapter, the influence of processes of democratization and informalization on the behaviour and attitudes of the three queens is analyzed. The spread of more informal codes of behaviour in Dutch society also required a more elaborate and conscious management of royal emotions as well as a stricter division between the public and private aspects of royal life.
The second part of this chapter discusses the societal image of royal behaviour. Although the present queen actually behaves less formally than
| |
| |
her predecessors, some aspects of her ‘presentation of self’ have been interpreted by journalists as ‘formalization’. These distortions can be understood as symptoms of the ‘cyclical’ social and psychological changes in Dutch society. The trend of the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by identification with oppressed groups and informalization, has changed in the 1980s towards increasing interest in elite-groups (including the royal family) and formalization processes.
The developments in royal behaviour are thought to support the thesis of informalization in a special, exponential way, because of the symbolic and integrative functions of royal behaviour: on the whole there was a spiral development towards informalization.
| |
Chapter XI
Democratization, social equalization and informalization are aspects of the same trend: a diminishing of differences in power and rank are conducive to informalization. This trend has been restricted to Western societies. From a global perspective, the differences in wealth, power and status between Western countries and the others, i.e. the Third World - especially those countries involved in the ‘debt crisis’, seem to have increased. This final chapter, impressions of a journey to Madagascar, discusses the possibility of a continued expansion of processes of democratization and informalization to a global level. Will the trend of ‘diminishing contrasts and increasing varieties’, a trend in the West between classes, continue globally between states? In Social Stratification and Informalization in Global Perspective, this question also leads to a comparison of the early stages of the Industrial Revolution (and the French Revolution), in which inequalities in power and status initially increased, with the present early stage of the ‘Anti-Colonial Revolution’. From a global perspective the post-colonial era, in which the political emancipation of the new states amounts to a continued decline of means available to the old states for settling conflicts between themselves and the new ones by violence, only started in the 1980s. The new states' recent political independence has driven up ‘the price of violence’ considerably, just as that price went up in class relationships in the West when all adults gained political representation through the ballot. In a further comparison of the structure of these changes, the possibility that processes of democratization and informalization will proceed to a global level is left open.
|
|
Auteursrechtelijk beschermd