Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-jbkpb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-13T15:16:28.190Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Affiliation:
Department of Law, Carleton University

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
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Chase, A., “Toward a Legal Theory of Popular Culture” (1986) Wisconsin Law Review 527Google Scholar; Greenhouse, C. J., Praying for Justice: Faith, Order and Community in an American Town (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Merry, S. E., Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness Among Working-Class Americans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Sarat, A. & Kearns, T., eds., The Law in Everyday Life (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

2. Corrigan, P. & Sayer, D., The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985)Google Scholar.

3. Foucault, M., “Governmentality” in Burchell, G., Gordon, C. & Miller, P., eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991) 87Google Scholar.

4. Hunt, A., “Foucault's Expulsion of Law: Towards a Retrieval” (1992) 17:1Law and Social Inquiry 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Elias, N., The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners, vol. 1 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978) [thereinafter History of Manners]Google Scholar; Elias, N., The Civilizing Process: State Formation and Civilization, vol. 2 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982) [thereinafter State Formation]Google Scholar.

6. Mitzman, A., “The Civilizing Offensive: Mentalities, High Culture and Individual Psyches” (1987) 20:4Journal of Social History 663CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Bauman, Z., Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Postmodernity and Intellectuals (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987)Google Scholar

8. Foucault, M., History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure, vol. 2, trans. Hurley, R. (New York: Viking, 1985)Google Scholar; Foucault, M., The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, vol. 3, trans. Hurley, R. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986)Google Scholar.

9. It is interesting to note that sport-hunting in its many forms has for a long time teetered on the edge of the discourses of animal cruelty; for Elias sport in general provides a displacement of the instincts repressed in the civilizing process. See Elias, N. & Dunning, E., The Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar.

10. Elias, State Formation, supra note 5 at 236.

11. Ibid. at 326.

12. A further consideration is the need to distinguish between “civilizing restraints” and what we might usefully call “distinguishing restraints”, that is where restraints develop and are institutionalized which involve hierarchically organized tests of “distinction,” for example, where food is consumed in only modest quantities in order to draw attention to the unrestrained gluttony of social inferiors. Although Elias does recognize the power of the urge for distinction, he does not address the issue of whether it undermines in any way his preoccupation with the long-range civilizing process. Elias, N., The Court Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983) at 65Google Scholar.

13. Elias, History of Manners, supra note 5 at 121.

14. Krieken, R. Van, “The Organization of the Soul: Elias and Foucault on Discipline and the Self” (1990) 31:2Archives Européennes de Sociologie 353CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977)Google Scholar.

16. Elias, State Formation, supra note 5 at 61–62.

17. Restraints on sexual conduct may perhaps be an exception to this distinction between “civilizing process” and “civilizing projects” since, although far from universal, sexual restraints are densely present in societal norms, in moral systems and in legal regulations. Although I do not have scope to consider this matter further, it does suggest that something like “the repressive hypothesis”, which Foucault is so keen to reject, does seem to be complexly implicated in the histories of human societies. See Foucault, M., The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. 1, trans. Hurley, R. (New York: Random House, 1978) at 89Google Scholar.

18. Berman, H. J., Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

19. Freud, S., Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (London: Hogarth, 1962)Google Scholar.

20. Valverde, M., Sex, Power and Pleasure (Toronto: Women's Press, 1985) at 149Google Scholar.

21. Burke, P., Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Temple Smith, 1978) at 207Google Scholar; Reay, B., ed., Popular Culture in Eighteenth Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1985)Google Scholar.

22. Bushaway, B., By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England 1700-1880 (London: Junction Books, 1982)Google Scholar.

23. Ibid.

24. Burke, supra note 21.

25. Wrightston, K. & Levine, D., Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525–1700 (New York: Academic Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

26. Wrightson, K., “Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-Century England” in Brewer, J. & Styles, J., eds., An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Hutchinson, 1980) 21 at 21Google Scholar.

27. Ingram, M., “Religion, Communities and Moral Discipline in Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century England: Case Studies” in von Greyerz, K., ed., Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984) 177 at 179Google Scholar.

28. Clark, P., The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200–1830 (London: Longman, 1983)Google Scholar.

29. Wrightson, K., English Society, 1580–1680 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1982) at 167 [hereinafter English Society]Google Scholar.

30. Thompson, E. P., “Rough Music” in Customs in Common (London: Merlin Press, 1991) 467Google Scholar; Ingram, M., “Ridings, Rough Music and the ‘Reform of Popular Culture’ in Early Modern England” (1984) 105 Past & Present 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, N. Z., “The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France” (1971) 50 Past & Present 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Donajgrodzki, A. P., ed., Social Control in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Croom Helm, 1977)Google Scholar.

32. Von Greyerz, supra note 27; Muchembled, R., Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Mullett, M., Popular Culture and Popular Protest in Early Modern Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1987)Google Scholar.

33. Curtis, T. C. & Speck, W. A., “The Societies For the [sic] Reformation of Manners: A Case Study in the Theory and Practice of Moral Reform” (1976) 3 Literature & History 45Google Scholar; Portus, G. V., Caritas Anglicana; or an Historical Inquiry into those Religious and Philanthropic Societies that Flourished in England Between the Years 1678 and 1740, intro Hutton, W. H. (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1912)Google Scholar.

34. Epstein uses the label “proto-feminist” to describe this phenomenon. Epstein, B., The Politics of Domesticity (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1981) at 1Google Scholar.

35. Gusfield, J., Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Harrison, B., Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815–1872 (London: Faber & Faber, 1971)Google Scholar.

36. Boyer, P., Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Bristow, E., Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain Since 1700 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1977)Google Scholar; Valverde, M., The Age of Light, Soap and Water: Social Purity and Philanthropy in Canada, 1885–1925 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990)Google Scholar.

37. Hunt, A., Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Regulation (London: Macmillan, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. Corrigan, P., “On Moral Regulation” (1981) 29 Sociological Review 313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39. Thomas, K., The Perception of the Past in Early Modern England (London: Creigton Trust, 1983)Google Scholar.

40. Foucault, M., “Technologies of the Self” in Luther, M., Gutman, H. & Hutton, P., eds., Technologies of the self (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusets Press, 1988)**Google Scholar.

41. Collins, S., From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: An Intellectual History of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

42. Burke, supra note 21; Davis, N. Z., Society and Culture in Early Modern France (London: Duckworth, 1975)Google Scholar; Fletcher, A. & Stevenson, J., eds., Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Easton, S., Disorder and Discipline: Popular Culture from 1550 to the Present (London: Temple Smith, 1988)Google Scholar; Yeo, E. & Yeo, S., eds., Popular Culture and Class Conflict, 1590–1914: Exploration in the History of Labour and Leisure (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

43. Ladurie, E. Le Roy, “Carnivals in History” (1981) 3 Thesis Eleven 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scribner, B., “Reformation, Carnival, and the World Turned Upside-Down” (1978) 3:3Social History 303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hsia, R. Po-Chia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (London: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar.

44. Oestreich, G., Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) at 259–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Wrightson, English Society, supra note 29 at 165–69.

46. Cranmer, T., Miscellaneous Writings and Letters, vol. 2, Cox, J. E., ed. (Cambridge: Parker Society & Cambridge University Press, 1846) at 194Google Scholar.

47. 12 Rich. 2, c. 6; Statutes of the Realm 2, 57 [hereinafter SR].

48. This statute also had a public order dimension, following as it did only a few years after the Peasants Revolt of 1381, in that husbandmen and labourers were forbidden to wear a sword or a dagger.

49. Bushaway, supra note 22 at 250–52.

50. K. Wrightson, “Alehouses, Order and Reformation in Rural England” in Yeo & Yeo, eds., supra note 42.

51. Clark, supra note 28.

52. 17 Edw. 4, c. 3; SR 2, 462.

53. Thompson, supra note 30.

54. 11 Hen. VII, c. 5; SR 2,569; reenacted in 1503 as 19 Hen. VII, c. 12; SR 2, 656.

55. 3 Hen. VIII, c. 3; SR 3:25-26 “An Act concerning shooting on Long Bows”. Only two years later this statute was reaffirmed in 6 Hen. VIII, c. 2; SR 3, 123–24.

56. 18 Hen. VIII Procl. 5/5/1526; Hughes and Larkin 1964 I: No.108; and also in 30 Hen. VIII, Procl. 13/9/1538; Hughes and Larkin 1964 I: No.183.

57. Procl. 12/11/1527; Hughes and Larkin 1964 I: No. 118.

58. Hughes and Larkin 1964 II: No. 587; Lindesiana 1886.

59. Abray, L., The People's Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy and Commons in Strasbourg, 1500–1598 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Greenfield, K., Sumptuary Law in Hürnburg: A Study in Patriarchal Government (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1918)Google Scholar.

60. Oestreich, supra note 44 at 158.

61. Vincent, J., Costume and Conduct in the Laws of Basel, Bern and Zurich (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935) at 115Google Scholar.

62. Greenfield, supra note 59 at 93–94.

63. This lack of anti-dancing legislation existed despite the Puritans' strenuous criticisms of the moral laxity of rural dancing.

64. Lis, C. & Soly, H., “Policing the Early Modern Proletariat, 1450–1850” in Levine, D., ed., Proletarianization and Family History (Orlando: Academic Press, 1984) 163Google Scholar.

65. Lis and Soly are particularly valuable source as they contrast the English case with that of France and the Low Countries. Ibid.

66. Statute of Labourers, 23 Edw. III, c. 1-4: SR 1, 307.

67. The more important details of these provisions were as follows: c. 1 “Every man and woman … able in body and within the age of threescore years not being a merchant, a craftsman, a land-holder or a servant … he shall be bounden to serve him which so shall him require”; c. 2 imposed imprisonment for leaving employment; c. 3 fixed wage-rates by re-imposing the “old rates” existing in 1346; c. 4 laid down penalties for any master paying over these statutory rate; c. 5 fixed rates for 11 named occupations “and all other artificers and labourers” at 1346 rates; c. 6 forbade the giving of alms to able-bodied beggars.

68. Statute of Artificers, 1563, 5 Eliz. I, c. 4; SR 4(1), 414-22

69. Tierney, B., Medieval Poor Law: A Sketch of Canonical Theory and Its Application in England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

70. Beier, A. L., Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640 (London: Methuen, 1985)Google Scholar.

71. Moore, R., The Formation of a Prosecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987)Google Scholar.

72. Hufton, O., “Begging, Vagrancy, Vagabonds and the Law: An Aspect of the Problem of Poverty in Eighteeenth-Century France” (1972) 2:2European Studies Review 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slack, P., “Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1598–1664” (1974) 27 Economic Historical Review 360Google Scholar.

73. 12 Richard II, c. 7-9; SR 2, 58. Pilgrim passports all served to verify the completion of all the stations of the pilgrimage and to entitle the bearer to pilgrim's privileges on route.

74. Supra note 68; Slack, P., Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Longman, 1988) at 100Google Scholar.

75. MacCaffrey, W., Exeter 1540–1640: The Growth of an English Country Town (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958) at 94Google Scholar.

76. 22 Hen. VIII, c. 10; SR 3, 327.

77. Okely, J., The Traveller-Gypsies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) at 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, T. W., “Consorting With and Counterfeiting Egyptians” (1923) 2:2Journal of Gypsy Lore Society 81Google Scholar.

78. McMullan, J., The Canting Crew: London's Criminal Underworld, 1550–1700 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

79. Hufton, supra note 72; Slack, supra note 72.

80. Marx, K., Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing, 1961) at 737Google Scholar.

81. Aydelotte, F., Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (London: Frank Cass, 1967)Google Scholar; Beier, A. L., “Vagrants and the Social Order in Elizabethan England” (1974) 64 Past & Present 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82. 14 Eliz. I, c. 5; SR IV(1): 590-598 An Act for the Punishment of Vacabondes, 1572, 14 Eliz. I, c. 5.

83. Muchembled, supra note 32 at 342.

84. Walzer discusses the contested evidence. See Walzer, M., “The Revolutionary Use of Repression” in Richter, M., ed., Essays in Social and Political History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholar. It should also be noted that impressment into the army or navy grew and, by the end of the century, transportation was added to the armament of the state. See A. L. Beier, supra note 70. In France, the “recruitment” of vagrants and those convicted of criminal offences into the galleys was a major component of the French merchant navy. See Bamford, P., Fighting Ships and Prisons: The Mediterranean Galley of France in the Age of Louis XIV (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1973)Google Scholar. In England a proclamation in 1545, “Ordering Vagabonds to the Galleys” states that “his royal majesty hath thought convenient and doth determine to use and employ all such ruffians, vagabonds, masterless men, common players, and evil-disposed persons to serve his majesty and his realm in these his wars in certain galleys and other like vessels” (Proclamation, 26 May 1545, 37 Hen. VIII; Hughes and Larkin 1964 I: No.250). I have not discovered how much use was made of the galleys in Tudor England.

85. Tawney, R. & Power, E., eds., Tudor Economic Documents, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, 1924) at 331–32Google Scholar.

86. 19 Hen. VII, c. 12; SR 2, 656.

87. 3 Hen. VIII, 5/7/1511; Hughes and Larkin 1964–67: II: No.63.

88. Bayne, C., Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII (London: Seldon Society, 1958) at 4041Google Scholar.