Elias, N. (1991), The Society of Individuals, New York/London: Continuum.

From static ‘human nature’ to long-term social process

Elias attacks the rigid oppositions we’re used to,

• individual vs society,
• nature vs society,
• inner self vs outer world.

They feel true, but they actually distort what’s going on. They make our problems look like timeless, tragic contradictions. We say individual versus society are forever in conflict, while we actually see historically specific mismatches inside particular societies. To see more clearly we have to look at the long development of humanity. Over millennia, humans have gained more control over natural forces. This made possible a more complex division of labour, more self-control and restraint of impulses, and more individualisation (people becoming more different from each other, and aware of that difference). So things we call “intelligence”, “civilization”, “individuality” are not fixed inner essences. They’re aspects of a process – evolving configurations tied to social structure.

 

Individualisation as a social product

Elias zooms in on individualization. In very early human groups, differences between people certainly existed, but behaviour was more uniform because instinctive drives were less controlled and differentiated. As social controls deepen (through others’ expectations, love, fear, norms, then self-control and conscience), differences in behaviour, feeling, thinking, and even facial expression become more pronounced. From this emerges a specifically modern ego ideal, i.e. the ideal of being different from others, standing out, having something unique that distinguishes one from everyone else. This desire to stand out and be unique feels natural, but it’s actually socially produced. It’s a product of particular institutions, upbringing, and the structure of highly differentiated societies. Further, it spreads historically: first small groups, elites, men; then more classes; then women; and now also in industrializing countries in Asia and Africa. It’s also risky, as  many are socialised to strive for exceptional achievements, but only a minority can actually attain them. This mismatch produces fulfilment and pride for a few; disappointment, frustration, boredom, depression, guilt, and a sense of meaninglessness for many. Instead of seeing this as natural individual needs versus oppressive society, Elias writes that it’s a socially produced striving versus social opportunities that don’t match. The tension is within society, not between nature and society.

 

The concepts “individual” and “social” have a history

Elias then pulls apart our language itself. We toss around individual and society as if they were timeless, universal categories. He shows they’re not. In classical Greek and Roman societies, we-identity (belonging to family, clan, city, state) was far more central than I-identity. There was no concept equivalent to the modern “individual” as a groupless, autonomous entity with high value placed on uniqueness. Idiotes in Greek meant something like “private person / layman / fool” – being outside public life was negative. Persona in Latin referred to a mask/role, not a universal category of “person” as we use it. The word individuum originally meant indivisible, then in medieval scholasticism a single instance in a species. Only much later does it become the individual person as a valued, unique being, and then gets bundled into ideological oppositions like individualism vs socialism/collectivism.

Concepts develop socially, not by a lone thinker abstracting from a single example. Language evolves as a kind of collective rise to higher levels of synthesis (seeing more, more broadly, not just stripping details away). Our current sense of individual versus social as strict opposites is relatively recent and reflects modern conflicts and value struggles, not eternal truths.

 

Process sociology vs static (physics-like) thinking

Elias criticises the habit of copying methods and assumptions from physics. In physics, it’s okay (up to a point) to assume that experiments here and now show laws valid everywhere and always. But with human societies, this is disastrous, as social forms change relatively quickly, and personality structures change with them. The relation between individual and society at one stage (e.g., 20th-century industrial states) is not a good model for “humans in general”.

So we need process-sociology:

• Focus on sequences and transformations instead of timeless states.
• Use long-term models from early homo sapiens / hunter–gatherers up to modern global society.
• Ask: what is the order of change? what depends on what? rather than “what are the eternal laws?”

Humans as social beings from the ground up

To break the illusion of an extra-social individual, Elias reconstructs early human life. Small groups, maybe 25–50 people, cave or rock-shelter dwellers, big-game hunters and gatherers. In such a world filled with predators and dangers, an isolated human had almost no chance of survival. Group life was an indispensable survival condition. Our biological equipment reflects this deep social embedding. The human child’s brain is predisposed to learn a specific group language – not a universal species language like animal calls. Human faces have highly mobile musculature, allowing intense individualization: we can recognize and read hundreds of faces and subtle expressions over decades. These biological features show that the individual organism is already shaped for group life. Our capacity for group-specific language and individualizable faces is a unique evolutionary leap. You can’t separate the individual from the social without tearing apart reality.

 

Habitus and the we–I balance

A central pair of tools:

1. Social habitus:
   • The socially formed personality structure shared by members of a group (national, regional, class, etc.).
   • It’s like the “common script” out of which each person develops a personal “handwriting” (their individuality).
2. We–I balance:
   • Every person answers “Who am I?” both as I and as part of various we’s (family, village, nation, humanity).
   • There is no I-identity without we-identity; only the weighting shifts historically and between societies.

Elias uses everyday examples. Names (first + family name) show the intertwining of individuality and group membership. Identity over time depends on continuity of development of one organism; continuity of memory; and is visibly embodied in the face, which changes but remains recognizably “the same person” throughout life.

Elias also critiques dualism and crude materialism. Talking about my body and my soul/mind as if they were two separate things comes from our ability to step outside ourselves and observe ourselves. But it’s still one process, one organism, viewed from different angles, not two entities glued together.

 

The mirror effect and self-consciousness

Humans have a special capacity. We can see ourselves as I, you, he/she/it; we can stand opposite ourselves, judge ourselves, and talk about ourselves. This mirror effect underpins tool-making, planned action, and especially transmission of symbolic knowledge across generations (cumulative culture). Elias writes that this is a biological innovation, not a pure spiritual miracle, yet it can’t be reduced to rat/ape behaviour either. Animal behaviour research (ethology) helps, but if it ignores this unique self-detaching capacity, it misses what’s specifically human.

 

Historical shifts in the we–I balance

From medieval/early modern Europe to now, Elias charts a big change. Earlier, we had strong, often hereditary embedding in we-groups such as family, clan, estate, guild, village, church, and kingdom. One’s I-identity was overshadowed by group memberships. Later (Renaissance onward), there came a growing weight of I-identity. Humanists and others could rise based on personal merit. Descartes’ “Cogito, ergo sum” symbolically expresses this change; the thinking I declares itself as the most certain reality, forgetting its social conditions (language, education, censorship etc.). In modern philosophical and literary traditions, this becomes the figure of the we-less I or homo clausus:

• The isolated subject who doubts whether anything exists outside his own consciousness (Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Husserl).
• In literature, the solitary, emotionally blocked modern individual:
  • Sartre’s Nausea
  • Camus’ The Outsider
  • the bathroom-obsessed protagonist in La Salle de bain

These characters feel abandoned, unable to truly connect emotionally, and suffer from a conflict between the need for emotional affirmation and the incapacity to give/receive it. For Elias, this is not a personal quirk; it’s a habitus problem typical of highly individualised societies.

 

Multiple layers of we and modern individualisation

In today’s world, “we” operates on several levels, e.g. family / kin, neighbourhood, village/town, region, nation-state, post-national groups (e.g., Europe, Latin America, Africa), humanity as a whole. The emotional intensity of we-feelings usually is strongest at family/local/national levels, and much weaker at continental and global levels. Modern societies bring greater mobility and changeability of relationships. You can move away from your family, change jobs, even change nationality. This increases individualisation and freedom, but also demands more self-regulation, reflection, and conscious balancing in relationships; it reduces inescapable, lifelong bonds; relationships become more voluntary and revocable. Yet the basic human need for warmth, security, and emotional bonds doesn’t disappear. Hence there is more relationship variability, and more pressure on the individual to manage ties themselves, and more cases where people crave closeness but lack the capacity to; the we-less I again.

 

State formation, democratisation, and individualisation

Elias links individualization to state development. The modern state levels people down to abstract citizens (numbers in registers, taxpayers, clients of welfare). But precisely as such, it treats them as individuals instead of just as kin members. So it both standardizes and individualizes. In dictatorial states, external control is very strong, self-regulation is weaker, people’s habitus is attuned to obedience and surveillance, and the scope for individualisation is limited and often confined to private life. In parliamentary democracies, individuals have more freedom of choice and responsibility, more chances for distinct life paths, and a more advanced individualization, but also more tensions and insecurities.

 

Integration: from tribes to states to unions of states to humanity

Elias then places all this in a historical perspective. Human history shows a recurring integration process from small groups to tribes to states to larger state systems to emerging global structures.

Each change to a higher integration level transfers power upward (from tribe to state, from state to unions/planetary level), and initially reduces individuals’ direct influence over decisions that affect them. It also demands new learning, new institutions, and often new conflicts.

Today, there are ~150 states with very unequal power. There are powerful states (superpowers) and supranational institutions (UN, World Bank, etc.) increasingly shape global processes. Environmental disasters, nuclear risks, economic interdependence show that humanity as a whole now functions as the ultimate survival unit.

But people’s we-identities are still mostly attached to nation-states. Foreign policy remains largely absolutist in style (secretive, elite-driven, state centred), even where domestic politics are democratic. Weapons technology (especially nuclear) makes old state-centric power games vastly more dangerous, but habitus and political routines lag behind.

 

The drag effect - when habitus lags behind integration

Social processes push towards a new stage (e.g., from tribes to states, from states to unions/global structures). But people’s social habitus and we-identities remain attached to the older level.

The result is resistance, conflict, and fossilisation of earlier forms. Examples are native American tribes in reservations, whose way of life as warriors/hunters is no longer viable, but the tribal habitus persists, sometimes in museum-like or tourist-attraction form, or as islands of pre-state structure. In African states, groups are pushed into state integration, but tribal loyalties remain powerful, producing internal conflicts, civil wars, and identity struggles. There are also pre-state forms within modern states, e.g. Hutterite communities or similar sects maintain semi-closed, traditional ways of life; the Mafia preserves a kin-based loyalty structure (we > I) and uses it to operate in the “shadow” of the state. European nation-states versus European integration shows that, structurally, a united Europe would be more competitive and secure. Emotionally, national we-identities (and “national character”) are deep, affectively loaded, and resistant. So development at the level of power and function pushes toward integration; the habitus pulls back. Crucially,  resistance to integration at a higher level is not just irrational. It feels like a threat of collective death. If a tribe or nation dissolves into a larger unit, people feel that the meaning of ancestors’ struggles and sacrifices is lost; the continuities of memory, honour, and identity vanish.

So there’s often a long transitional phase where the old we-unit’s survival function is declining, the new higher-level unit still lacks emotional attachment, and individuals feel caught between rational insight and emotional loss.

 

Humanity as the emerging survival unit and the idea of human rights

Finally, Elias turns to humanity as the highest integration level.

Factually, global interdependence, weapons, and environmental dangers mean that human survival now depends on what happens at the level of humanity as a whole. But we-feelings at the level of humanity are underdeveloped; the concept “mankind” feels abstract or sentimental, not binding.

The emerging discourse on human rights is, for him, a sign of a new stage. Human rights assert that individuals, as human beings, have claims that limit what states may do to them, regardless of national law. Examples: freedom of movement, due process, protection from arbitrary arrest.

Elias argues we should also clearly include the right to be free from violence or threat of violence, and the right to refuse to use violence on behalf of others. So the rise of humanity as a survival unit also advances individualization. Individuals gain a status above the state: as humans, not only as citizens. But this is only at a beginning; states still strongly resist any higher loyalty.