Naschrift

Samenvatting

Postscript. A comment on Cas Wouters's critique (1997 ) of a 1995 issue (21, 4) of this journal on the theme of civilization. It is asserted that in trying to describe civilization processes that do not submit easily to the criterion of self-control, as defined by Norbert Elias, Wouters tries to include more criteria, a procedure that relocates but fails to solve the problem. The procedure's arbitrariness is indicated in Wouters's examples regarding (de)civilization processes operating in national socialism and the welfare state; it is argued that broadening the criteria of civilization causes their description and explanation of civilization processes to become identical. To overcome this problem, proposed here is a comparative notion of civilization as a historically specific process of defeudalization in Western Europe since the Middle Ages. S. Paul