The embedded state and social provisioning

Norbert Elias (1897–1990) is one of the giants in the social sciences in the twentieth-century. His rich contributions are, however, not much discussed by economists—mainstream and heterodox economists alike. It might be because the topics he dealt with seem barely related to the ‘economy’ as we understand now. Titles like The Loneliness of the Dying or The Court Society appear to be more akin to an analysis of Faulkner or Shakespeare. But Elias has also made some major contributions to topics like individualism, sport, social norms, knowledge, and behavior. The Civilizing Process is probably the core of his works. In 1998, it was listed by the International Sociological Association as the seventh most important book of the twentieth century. ¹ The idea of this book is very ambitious. Elias’ plan is to explain the emergence and the structuration of the modern state throughout a very long historical overview that goes from the end of the Carolingian Empire to absolute monarchy in Europe. He considers that the civilizing process involves a deep historical transformation of social habits, including the most trivial ones like everyday life manners, where self-restraint behavior is more and more internalized by individuals with the growth of social differentiation and interconnection. This internalization process is related to the change in the social access to violence which is increasingly centralized and monopolized through the formation and development of the state system. Initially the book was made of two volumes; the first one discusses the historical development of social attitudes and the second volume analyzes the state formation. The latter part is directly related to the concerns of heterodox economics as it focuses on the emergence of the modern state but, strangely enough, such an important book remains overlooked by heterodox economics. ² Note that in other disciplines, like medieval history or sociology, Elias’ global framework of analysis on the modern state formation is considered as a kind of model. ³