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Manners, Deference, and Private Property in Early Modern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2012

David Graeber
David Graeber
Affiliation:
New York University
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Extract

This essay is an attempt to map out the rudiments of a theory of manners and formal deference and to demonstrate how such a theory can be usefully applied to certain long-standing problems in the historical sociology of Europe. It is also meant to demonstrate the continuing relevance of comparative ethnography for social theory—something which has been somewhat cast into doubt in recent years.

The historical problems I have in mind is how Max Weber's famous observations (1930) about how the rise of Puritanism was related to the emergence of a commercial economy in early modern Europe can be related to processes that other scholars have noted during that same general period, the rise of “puritanism” in its more colloquial sense, even in areas totally unaffected by Calvinist theology. I am thinking particularly here of the work of Norbert Elias and Peter Burke.

Type
Shaping the Social Being
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , October 1997 , pp. 694 - 728
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1997

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