Cas Wouters

Informalization : manners and emotions since 1890

Manners: Theory and History Social Mixing and Status Anxieties Decreasing Social and Psychic Distance - Increasing Social Integration and Identification Introductions and Friendships, Forms of Address and other Differences in National Habitus Formation The Spiral process of Informalization Phases of Informalization and Reformalization Connecting Social and Psychic Processes Third Nature

Developments in the Behavioural Codes between the Sexes: The Formalization of Informalization in the Netherlands, 1930-85

This article is about changes in dominant modes of social conduct, particularly involving relationships between the sexes. Changes in behavioural codes and ideals were noted in the course of a comparative analysis of etiquette books published in the Netherlands from 1930 to 1985. There was a gap of approximately thirteen years (1966-79) during which, with one exception, no books on this subject were published. There was, however, an upsurge of books on liberation and self-realization, coupled with a relative loosening of behavioural codes and ideals. Since the start of the 1980s, there appears to have been a tightening of these codes and ideals, both as regards relationships between men and women and in general. These changes are presented as developments in the sense of informalization and formalization, aspects of civilizing processes. The article commences with a short elaboration upon the concepts of informalization and formalization, goes on to present the results of the comparative analysis of the etiquette books, and concludes that nowadays a (re)formalization of preceding informalization is taking place, a stage in the long-term process of informalization.

Power Changes and Self-Respect: A Comparison of Two Cases of Established-Outsider Relations

This article is based on two studies of outsiders in an emancipation process. 1) The first one deals with homosexuals (van Stolk and de Regt, 1979), and the second with women (van Stolk and Wouters, 1983); both studies were carried out in a social service organization. Most of the homosexuals sought counselling because of difficulties in accepting themselves; they suffered from a lack of self-respect. The women, predominantly working-class, had been taken into a crisis centre after having run away from their partners. In doing so most of them had given way to pressure due to an increase in self-respect; in effect they could no longer tolerate the way they had been treated. The problems of both the homosexuals and the runaway women are examined in the context of a decreasing inequality of power in the relations between homosexuals and heterosexuals, and between men and women respectively. With the help of Norbert Elias’s established-outsider theory, the relation between women and men is compared to that between homosexuals and heterosexuals. The main focus is on the connection between changes in their mutual balance of power, in the respect shown them socially and in their self-respect. The comparison is preceded by a short survey of the main conclusions of the two empirical studies.

Social Stratification and Informalization in Global Perspective

In the industrialized West, processes of differentiation and integration contain a long-term trend towards decreasing differences in power, status and wealth between the social classes, sexes and generations. Toward the end of the last century, this trend became dominant. Succeeding waves of democratization and the redistribution of economic surpluses according to welfare state principles, resulted in the depletion or disappearance of the groups at either end of the social ladder of Western countries, with a sharp increase of the jostling in the middle. Inequalities, together with the social and psychological distance between people, have diminished without losing importance. These processes of democratization and social equalization have run in tandem with collective emotional changes and informalization: more and more people have pressured each other towards more differentiated and flexible patterns of self-regulation and mutually expected self-restraints, allowing for an increase of socially permitted behavioural and emotional alternatives. In informalization processes, more and more of the dominant modes of social conduct, symbolizing institutionalized power relationships, have come to be both ignored and attacked. Behavioural extremes, expressing large differences in power and respect, came to provoke moral indignation and were banned - a diminishing of contrasts, a trend towards convergence or homogenization -, while for the rest the codes of social conduct have become more lenient, more differentiated and varied - a trend towards divergence or heterogenization.

Die Gemütsruhe des Wohlfahrtsstaates

Vor einiger Zeit erforschten wir zusammen die Hintergrunde der Probleme von Frauen, die in einem Krisenzentrum in den Niederlanden aufgenommen waren. Wir waren dort ein Jahr lang zwei Tage in der Woche und sprachen mit ungefahr 250 Frauen, von denen wir 40 ausfuhrlich interviewten. Die Frauen kamen (und kommen) fast immer wegen Schwierigkeiten mit ihrem Partner.