A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

This broad-ranging book on ideals of comportment and self-representation among Western European elites from the late medieval period through the early modern age is an erudite, wellargued, and theoretically sophisticated work. Its principal claim that the behavioral and linguistic patterns through which individuals present themselves to others structure, rather than result from, the hierarchy of status and power in a society is based on a fascinating and insightful comparison of the respective evolution in England and France of different norms for presenting self to other. In exploring these diverto retain the dialectic relationship between the subjective and the objective, giving the latter its necessary due. The human dependence on particular thought communities is illustrated by journeys into social and anthropological space. Nowhere have I seen a more straightforward account of what makes society possible: intersubjective objectivity and the social construction of common worlds. The book is organized into chapters dealing with six cognitive acts: perceiving, attending, classifying, assigning meaning, remembering, and dealing with time. Cross-cutting these areas is particular attention to the politics of cognition, as well as the normative rules of the above that constrain our cognition. The book can be considered a frontal attack on the individualistic tabula rasa epistemology and the essentialist view that meaning is inherent only in the object. Related to this attack is an excellent discussion of reification, which is maintained throughout the book. The early chapter on social optics shows how our very sensed experience conforms to those of others and how we see through socially inherited projections. These form the lenses through which sensed experience is interpreted and given meaning. Zerubavel discusses how the social process helps determine what enters our minds in the first place and what thought communities render unthinkable. Included here is a discussion on the illogical but conventional nature of how different societies define the irrelevant and the relevant. This leads into an important consideration of whose feelings and existences we take into account and whose we never even consider. The chapter on social classifications strikes me as an excellent follow-up to Whorfs analysis of science and linguistics, with the usual abundance of needed illustrations. Not only do cultures group objects into likes and dislikes differently, but they have different styles of grouping. Some are inordinately rigid and intolerant of ambiguity, while others are quite flexible and open to ambiguity. Mnemonic political battles are illustrated in the chapter on social memories, as are mnemonic decapitation how we divide time into what is memorable history and forgettable prehistory depending on power relations. Some generalizations are presented e.g., we remember what fits into our culturally given schemata and stereotypes, and we tend to forget those things that our culture can not render readily sensible. The capacity to locate events in culturally relative, standard time frames is seen as a pillar of the intersubjective and the basis for coordinated human activity. Fundamentally different cultural conceptions of time are relatively ignored as Zerubavel concentrates on showing the arbitrary nature of our current time frames and their social origins. I have one serious reservation about this treatment of cognition. Sociologists and neuroscientists have demonstrated decisively the futility of separating cognition and emotion. As it would be foolhardy to discuss emotion without cognition, it is equally insufficient to discuss cognition without consideration of emotion. The latter is as socially guided as cognition, and both are necessary for each other. Such omissions are perhaps inevitable in a book of only 113 pages of text, but its brevity is a part of its effectiveness. We are left with a clear conclusion. If our minds mirror anything at all, it is certainly our society rather than some absolute rendition of the natural world. The book succeeds unequivocally in introducing cognitive sociology as an exciting and important area of study.