ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 described the principal conclusions that Elias reached from his detailed research on changes in behavior in Western society. One of his most important conclusions was that social and personality structures evolve together. This provides the basis of Elias' process theory of the evolution of Western society and the way in which people in the West have come to experience themselves. This chapter turns to the nature of this process and the question of just how social and personal evolution occurs. The chapter starts with Elias' explanation of social and personal evolution and then suggests that his explanation ®nds support in key ideas from the complexity sciences to do with self-organization and emergence.
