The concept of epistemic change in Norbert Elias’ psychogenetic and sociogenetic research: an empirical illustration in the twenty first century

Abstract

One of the most relevant contributions of Norbert Elias’ psycho and sociogenetic research is the concept of epistemic change as a long-term process, making visible that self-consciousness and the conceptions of nature and society lag behind the progressive human capability to control them. His work highlights not only how the content of reality and fantasy assumes diverse factual expressions in the civilizing process, but how the link between the dynamics of power relations and the self-regulation of psychological functions promote or obstruct the development of reality-adequate knowledge. By way of illustration, we present some data from an exploratory and comparative research, carried on with an integrative approach to the biological, mental and social character of the behaviour and thinking of human groups. Inspired in both Elias’ historical sociology and Piaget ‘s epistemology, we study the psycho and sociogenetic formation of epistemic identities about the social order, in different groups of workers and university students in Argentina in the twenty first century. We explore the logic and moral criteria involved in their descriptions, explanations and judgments about the social processes and factors that affect their living conditions, focusing on epistemic distortions and contradictions. In line with both Elias and Piaget, we have found that the concepts of society and individual are invested with different meanings according to the degree of knowledge involved in each stage of conceptual construction. Our data shows the long-term persistence of an “homo clausus” image, in which the individual is the exclusiveresponsible for his/her life situation and social factors are unobserved. Even in the case of those interviewees who question the meritocratic individualist conception, a distorted image prevails: society is conceptualised either as an exterior totality confronting and restricting personal decisions and choices, or as the sum of isolated individuals. In other words, without group membership, interacting with other social groups with reciprocal modifications. Although in the new millenium the social configuration involves the whole humanity as unit of survival, integrating groups of different organizational levels linked by conflicting and cooperative relations, an adecuate complex conception is absent in most of the interviewees.