Prologue: Civilizing processes -- "American civilization" -- "Fellow Americans" and outsiders -- American manners under scrutiny -- American aristocracies -- The market society -- Violence and aggressiveness -- And wilderness is paradise enow : from settlements to independence -- But westward, look, the land is bright : from frontier to empire -- Integration struggles -- The curse of the American dream -- Involvement, detachment and American religiosity -- America and humanity as a whole
This paper is the slightly revised text of the opening address of the conference on "Long-Term Processes in Human History: A Tribute to Johan Goudsblom," held in Amsterdam on 17-19 March 2022. It pays tribute to the Dutch sociologist Johan Goudsblom (1932-2020), leader of the Amsterdam School of Soci-ology and major champion of the work of Norbert Elias. The author sketches Goudsblom's early life and reminisces about his own debt to Goudsblom as a friend and mentor. Tribute is paid to the extraordinarily wide range of Goudsblom's interests, his prolific output as a sociologist and essayist, and the number of postgraduate theses he supervised. The connecting thread running through all his work was a concern with long-term social processes and the inseparability of sociological thinking and historical evidence. The breadth of his learning is especially obvious in his magnum opus, the book Fire and Civilization, and his late multidisciplinary collaborations in the study of ecological regimes.
The thesis of this paper is that the key element in the shaping of the habitus of Americans has been their very long-term, virtually unbroken, experience of their country becoming more and more powerful vis-à-vis its neighbours. An increasing sense of their own powerfulness is related to the "individualism" that has so often been discussed as a key characteristic of the American "national character." The long-term process of habitus formation has had important consequences for the role of the USA in world affairs since the Second World War, and may continue to do so in a future marked for the first time by a long-term decline in American power.
How is it possible to write about "American" habitus in general, when the United States is socially, geographically, ethically and politically so diverse? "The USA", it has been observed, "is not a country, it is a continent". The social forces and social processes shaping the habitus of Americans are multifarious. There has not, for example, ever been a single elite in the USA as a whole that has succeeded in monopolising the social "model-setting" function to the extent that was common in the history of many Western European countries. For the development of American habitus, Stephen Mennell advances a central proposition: His thesis is that the central historic experience shaping the social habitus of Americans is that of their country constantly becoming more powerful relative to its neighbours. This has had long-term and all-pervasive effects on the way Americans see themselves, on how they perceive the rest of the world, and how others see them.
AbstractAndrew Linklater's projected trilogy of books for Cambridge University Press rests distinctively on the work of the sociologist Norbert Elias (1897–1990). Linklater is creating a powerful theoretical orientation for the field of International Relations by synthesising the ideas of Martin Wight and the 'English School' of IR with those of Elias. Though Elias is best known for his theory of civilising processes – on which Linklater draws most prominently – his writings are far more extensive. In particular, his sociological theory of knowledge and the sciences underlies Linklater's recent writings, even if that is not immediately apparent on a cursory reading. This article spells out some of the 'Eliasian infrastructure' that may not be familiar to many of Linklater's readers. It also discusses ways in which common misunderstandings of Elias's ideas may lead to parallel misunderstandings of Linklater's. The article concludes by asking whether, even if Linklater's vision of the growth of 'cosmopolitan responsibility' may prove correct in the long term, we may nevertheless be experiencing something of a (possibly short-term) reversal towards 'cosmopolitan irresponsibility'.
The claim to a nation's `exceptionalism' can only be assessed in relation to a specific theory. This article discusses the history of the USA in the light of Norbert Elias's theory of civilizing (and decivilizing) processes. Although, unlike many Western European countries, the USA never had a single monopoly `model-setting elite' and had no nobility, it did have several competing aristocracies. The Northern Bildungsbürgertum dominates perception of the USA at the expense of the Southern Junkers, whose political and cultural legacy nevertheless continues to be of great significance, notably in the comparatively high level of violence that afflicts present-day America. The peculiarities of state formation processes — the formation of a (relatively) effective monopoly of the legitimate use of violence — in the USA and their continuation in empire formation are examined. Ironically, the USA has become a model-setting elite for the whole world at a time when its popular egalitarianism represents a kind of false consciousness in a factually increasingly unequal society; when the USA may be undergoing a process of de-democratization; and when American misperceptions of the wider world, together with diminishing foresight by American governments, are becoming a serious problem in world politics.
This essay challenges various myths about the USA: 'American exceptionalism', & the assumption that the USA is both predominantly European in character & a general force for good in the world. Using Norbert Elias's theory of civilizing processes, it examines what is distinctive about American manners, violence in the USA, & state formation processes that have been continued in the form of empire formation processes. Overall, it is argued that the central historic experience shaping the 'national character' of Americans is of their country constantly becoming more powerful relative to its neighbors. This has had long-term & all-pervasive effects on the way they see themselves, on how they perceive the rest of the world, & how others see them.
