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The Role of Law in the Civilizing Process and the Reform of Popular Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Alan Hunt
Alan Hunt
Affiliation:
Department of Law, Carleton University
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Abstract

This paper builds on the notion that cultural revolution has always been implicated in processes of state formation and is manifest in moral regulation, which produces the normalizing, taken-for-granted reality of deep processes of social change. Two bodies of work are examined—namely, Norbert Elias' historical sociology of the civilizing process, and Peter Burke and the English social historians' concept of the “reform of popular culture”—for the insights they can provide into the part played by law in the formation of the modern state, the modern self, and the practice of everyday life.

Résumé

Le présent article élabore l'hypothèse que la révolution culturelle a toujours été partie intégrante du processus de formation des États et se reflète dans la moralité, élément de normalisation et de stabilisation de tous profonds changements sociaux. On y examine notamment les oeuvres de Norbert Elias, sociologue et historien qui s'est penché sur le processus de civilisation, et de Peter Burke et des historiens anglais qui ont étudié la notion de «réforme de la culture populaire»—oeuvres qui jettent un éclairage sur le rôle du droit dans la formation de l'État moderne, de l'identité moderne et des habitudes de vie.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Fall/automne 1995 , pp. 5 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1995

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