ABSTRACT
Preliminary remarks Norbert Elias, as is well known, developed his ‘theory of civilization’ on the basis of a detailed empirical analysis of French political, social and cultural history. When analyzing the civilizing and de-civilizing processes in Germany in his The Germans (1996), Elias deploys a narrower temporal framework than in his work on France, concentrating on historical developments since the Wilhelminian Empire. His work on Germany lacks the observations, rooted in the sociology of literature, that played a key role in his understanding of, for example, changes in the French court and the modulation of affect among the French upper classes. Elias’s treatment of English history also lacks the breadth and depth of his analysis of France. Nonetheless, in examining Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process, the subtitle of their Quest for Excitement (1986), Elias and Eric Dunning furnish us with suggestive observations on English developmental history. While we can, therefore, draw on Elias’s and Dunning’s assertions in our analysis of England, which is anchored in civilization theory, we are unable to take the same approach in our second case study, of the Habsburg Monarchy. Elias did not explore this particular power configuration in any great detail. We thus adopt of necessity differing approaches to the analysis of each case. Our examination of English history begins with Elias’s thesis that England experienced a ‘civilizing spurt’ in the 18th century (Elias/Dunning 1986: 33). We shed light on this ‘spurt’ by linking it with processes of state formation. This strategy also seems justified by the fact that the history of England is one of the most solidly grounded historiographically; without a clear focus, the available material would overwhelm our account. We do not intend to provide a condensed version of English history. We can, however, identify those aspects of English history that lend empirical weight to Elias’s civilization theory. We present the history of state formation in Austria, less well known by readers with social scientific leanings, in rather more detail and through a more conventional chronological approach, in part because Elias, as mentioned above, did not analyze the subject. We nonetheless devote particular attention to those aspects of Austrian history that are of central significance to our interpretation of Elias’s civilization theory.
