Civilizing Processes

The theory of civilizing processes was developed by Norbert Elias in the 1930s to describe and explain the generation of higher standards of various forms of conduct in the context of unplanned but structured changes in state formation and lengthening chains of social interdependencies. The idea of civilized conduct may seem a strange companion to popular understandings of consumer culture, when the latter phrase is often associated with hedonism, individualism, and excess. But consumer cultures do refer to the meanings, values, emotions, and practices surrounding the use of goods and services, including how people use their bodies through acts of consumption. Elias's book The Civilizing Process, originally published in 1939, examines changing expectations regarding eating, especially, but also other bodily practices, such as deportment and dressing. Through broader social processes, such as urbanization, industrialization, and commercialization, within the context of the state increasingly pacifying people within the territory (i.e., state agencies such as the police force become solely responsible for keeping the peace), each person comes to depend on more and more interlinked people for the fulfillment of needs and wants on a more consistent basis. For example, in very agrarian societies, people tend to rely on themselves or small local groups for the provision of food, but within industrial societies, the various processes involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of food can involve many individuals connected through specializing in the various parts of these processes (the division of labor). This is an example of lengthening chains of social interdependencies, and as this occurs, cultures of consumption also change.

Through these changing norms and ideals of social conduct, including consumption practices, within broader and tighter networks of people (figurations), each person increasingly feels the need to exert greater self-control over behavior and emotions. Thus, civilizing processes also refer to the changing balance of restraints exercised on and through the individual, from social constraints toward more self-restraint and self-steered conduct. Part of this process involves the elevation of ideals of individualism and, as a variant of this, the notion that “the customer is king.” In other words, in principle, the consumer has come to be imagined as a sovereign, self-contained individual who knows his or her desires and is capable of fulfilling them in the market.