Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Civilizing Processes, Paddy Dolan

Books/Book chapters

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 (Elias 2000). 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 …